Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Mariella Mehr

we guests, we were the hardened ones, the tough ones. yet we were not aware of the marionette-like side of our behavior, our shadowboxerexistence. the way that silvio was he might just as well have grown up in the slums of a big city. often he felt he was a rat that could survive in the greatest filth. it was the same a few years later, when i at seventeen got to know the father of my son. i knocked around in disreputable dives, hang outs of vagrants, alert as a lynx, in a grotesque way mature, booze guzzling, arrogant. behind this masquerade hid the fear and sorrow of a helpless, little girl. even today silvana still feels more at home in the hooker alley among hookers, pimps and old drunks than in any snazzy, flipped out artist’s café. drunkards and hookers don’t talk about great deeds they still have to accomplish, their conversations are raw and without make up, they have no more need to pretend. and they are sad, everyone can feel that, they are aggressive, but often also of a shy, moving tenderness. a world which i can understand. every hooker which consoled me for hours in the “thumb” and because of it did not go out to the curb, that was warmth. this happy “hello” from lisa when she leans against a pillar waiting for customers at three in the afternoon, her soft hands that very gently touch my cheeks, these old, sad eyes in the young face — there is more affection right here than my drinking buddies in the artist pub can ever muster.

226