TODAY -- EXACTLY 50 YEARS AGO

TODAY -- EXACTLY 50 YEARS AGO
CHRISTMAS ON EARTH
 

  I was 18, it is the year 1964 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Time of the economic miracle. My mother escaped to the countryside to escape our permanent war.
   So I was going to be home alone this Christmas.
   What to do?
   After taking the bus to Düsseldorf I drifted around the “Old Town” where people rushed to do their last-minute Christmas shopping while already the first Christmas-drunks loitered noisily – more of them to come – lonely souls who needed to drink themselves loudly through the Silent Night.
   Then I noticed a unique couple I had never seen before. He was a very small, very pretty Asian, with long spiky hair, and she, a thin blond with outrageously short hair.
   They were obviously on the road.
   I met them again in one of our hangouts. “British Mike” introduced me. His name was Duc, and her name was Puck.
   Duc was from Vietnam where he was a Guerrilla-fighter at age twelve, but had escaped to Europe where he traveled with his only luggage: a five to seven meter flag – red silk with a golden Vietcong-star in the middle!
   She was Dutch and naturally spoke Dutch, French, English, and German.
    Duc only spoke French and Vietnamese.   
    “British Mike” only spoke English, and I spoke English and German.
    They had no place to stay!
    On Christmas Eve!
   “There is no room at the village inn…” wasn’t what I was about! I invited the three strangers to stay with me for Christmas! Later in the afternoon we took the bus to my hometown – and when we arrived in my mother’s apartment in a fairly proletarian project, Duc, who had been food-shopping before, started cooking and created a most spectacular meal for the four of us.
   We sat around the table – each of us from a completely different world – damn – we hardly could communicate verbally – but we were loving, honest, and giving. On the place mats it said in fractured lettering: “And Peace on Earth” which reflected the perfect bliss I was experiencing. We were embracing peace like Jesus asked from us.
   We had to – and would do it! 
   Create world-peace in this generation!
   Well, we had made our plans without the neighbors!
   After listening to a stereo-record of Thelonius Monk with Art Blakey and the Jazz messengers we went to bed.
   In the small three-room apartment Puck and Duc got my mother’s room and bed, “British Mike” got the couch in the living room and I was in my own room and bed.
   Peace on Earth!
   The next day we all went to Düsseldorf and I learned how Duc and Puck made their living. They had bought a bunch of watercolor-prints on watercolor-paper for one Deutsche Mark a piece that they sold right there on the sidewalk for fifteen.
   Of course, it wasn’t the prints that did the selling – it was the exotic cuteness of this couple – and they raked in the money – a couple hundred Marks a day easily.
   But Duc was a walking time bomb. Any imperceptible insult could turn him into a furious killing machine.
   For unknown reasons Duc seemed to trust me and I was usually called to defuse situations like this: I would find Duc opposite a pimp twice his size. The pimp had a hard time taking this effeminate little girlie-man seriously.
   Little did he know that Duc, with his bare hands, could rip out his heart! It became my responsibility to pull Duc away before something happened, and – amazing enough – usually he did follow me!
   Duc had a long history of almost killing people (I saw the newspaper-clippings!) and he was as mysterious as he was beautiful. We would have lunch at the Grand Central Station in Munich, when suddenly he went to the men's room, from which he never returned.
   He performed stunts like this with everybody!
   Next time I ran into him, was half a year later on the Boulevard San Michel in Paris.
   For the time being, we celebrated Christmas!
   Duc kept cooking delicious meals; we listened to my few Jazz- records and danced to Ray Charles, singing, “What’d I say.”
   For a couple of days now the neighbors saw me coming out of the house in the company of what they perceived as three women (because of the non-conformist style of our hair and cloths -- no doubt!), and they couldn’t wait to call the landlord to inform him about the orgies in his apartment-complex.
   They had no idea I had never had sex with a woman yet, that I was a teenage-virgin with great romantic ideas, about love and in the middle of a religious epiphany about Christmas, Christ, love, and peace.
   The landlord explained to me that my mother would have to move out. I argued that she hadn’t even been there. All this was my responsibility and I would move out end of the month.
  “Fair enough!” he agreed.
   By then my guests had left on their voyage to wherever.
   They left the apartment clean, nothing was stolen, and the kitchen was cleaner than before, but also devoid of anything edible.
    Duc and Puck were aiming for the Canary Islands, West of Africa, to wait out the winter, and I agreed to meet there as soon as possible.
   When my mother returned from her holiday she was understandably upset. When she heard of my plans, she sent me to a psychotherapist.
   Not that she would say so:
  “It’s the insurance, they want you to see this doctor, you have to go Thursday, it’s for the insurance company…”
   She lied to me, and didn’t mention the word psychotherapist – which was impossible to ignore on the sign at the office.
  “They think I’m crazy!” I realized!
   I went in anyway.
   The surroundings were unexpected – all the curtains were drawn – there were sparingly few electric lights. A small number of other patients, hard to make out in the semi-darkness, inhabited the sofas.
   I was called in instantly and found myself greeted by an elderly lady with a kind and very wrinkled face.
   She wanted to know what had happened, and after I was done with my story, she glanced over her glasses and asked seriously:      “Tell me, do you have friends?”
    Yes, a few, but those, I felt, I could stake my life on! Ever since I recognized myself as a misfit – all the other misfits became instant friends – and since they comprehended pain, they were friends in need.
   Not just for the sunny days!
   She was delighted to hear this and lowered her voice:
   “You have to understand, your mother is almost sixty – she comes from a completely different background and doesn’t understand anything you’re talking about. I wish you good luck on your voyage and don’t forget to eat lot’s of nuts because they are a very important brain-food.”
   I’m still grateful to this surprisingly sane therapist…
   Christmas on Earth had catapulted me out of my home, my job, a future career, my social standing, but it was going to put me on the road!

From the E-Book "Runaway Jesus" by Brummbaer:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/187-4269114-2384702?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Brummbaer#/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Brummbaer+runaway+jesus&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3ABrummbaer+runaway+jesus