HEARING VOICES

One of the outcomes from my course at Dr Hinkelmanns's academy for the advancement in manners and social standing was an explanation as to why I had been hearing voices most of my life. Dr Hinkelmann told me that I had an alter ego sitting on my shoulder making suggestions that would drive my bad behaviour and that I had to learn how to  only listen to the good suggestions. After being told that, I concentrated hard when looking in the mirror and one day I could see my alter ego.

I named him Noel. For the life of me though I don't know why he was a schwarzer. He would try to embarrass me at every opportunity by making me stare down women's blouses, ogle their legs and bottoms and even, once, to stand under the stairs and look up their skirts. Noel was bad. When caught out I would try to explain that it wasn't my fault, it was Noel's but as people couldn't see him they just gave me funny looks and moved away quickly. Sometimes I would get slapped. This was socially embarrassing but privately very enjoyable and would lead me to another level of erogenous experimentation. More later.

SELF IMPROVEMENT

My lack of success in finding the right companion of the opposite sex (and not a weird one) made me wonder if there was something wrong with me. The self doubt led me to investigate ways of making myself more charming, more desirable and an overall better person. I enrolled in Dr Hinkelmanns's academy for the advancement in manners and social standing. This was a 12 week course of very strenuous exercise, healthy eating, facial and scalp massages and instruction in polite conversation, politics, economics and social graces. The results were outstanding. I was ready to face the world again. More later.

GOING DOWN

Having given up on Minnie I decided to have a go at Matilda, her older sister. Matilda wasn't as good looking as Minnie but as I was getting older I thought that I should lower my standards a little like some friends of mine who would court the ugliest, fattest and most unpleasant females in the hope of 'getting lucky'.
Matilda I must admit was strange, even by my standards. She used to like to dress up and have me do the same. "Oh well" I thought, its means to an end. One day I thought that I had 'got lucky' when Matilda said that she had discovered the joys of diving and invited me to her rooms to indulge.

The reality was a bit different from what I had envisaged. More later.

FIRST ROUND

The mad Manowski sisters played with my affections for a while and no matter how hard I tried to play with them they wouldn't let me near other than being astride a bicycle. I grew frustrated and decided that the only way forward was to make  declarations of love supported by the true intention of marriage.
I approached Minnie Manowski first, thinking that as the youngest she might be the most vulnerable. 
What I didn't know was that somewhere back in her past she had been mistreated or jilted or something and was very defensive in her dealings with young men. All of my attempts at intimacy, no matter that they were couched in fervent declarations of true intention, were rebuffed. I had, in my rooms, contemplated how I might slip my hands down her blouse or up her skirts but the reality was quite different. I was unable to get even near an embrace without a severe boxing around my ears. 

Alas, after months of trying and suffering from mild concussion, I abandoned my pursuit of Minnie. More later.

PLANCKING

The teenagers are thinking that they have invented the new craze 'planking'.

 Huh. When I was young we used to do the real thing with old Max.

Max was my physics tutor in Berlin and on Friday nights we would have fun watching him get pissed in the beer hall. He would usually proclaim "My unavailing attempts to somehow reintegrate the action quantum into classical theory has extended over several years and caused me much trouble" before going completely rigid. My fellow students and I would carry him out each week and position him on top of different places of interest around the city. We called it 'Plancking'.

Nothing new under the sun I guess.

KNEE TREMBLER

Eventually my endless perambulation came to the notice of some ladies. They also had an interest in bi-axle rotating transportation, albeit for different reasons than my own. I was seeking solace between firm yet mysteriously soft thighs. They were just crazy. The mad Manowski sisters, unknown to me, had a reputation around town.

They were rich. Filthy rich but unfortunately the filthy aspect was just a measure of their wealth, not of their disposition. After a few Sunday's circuits of the park and nearby boulevards they invited me home to their villa. Villa was an understatement. They lived in a huge and well maintained city residenz that gave me a strange tingling in the nether regions.

We dined, listened to music (a most disagreeable double bass performance) and retired to a drawing room for schnapps and brandy. Even though Agnes the hen had rather diminished my functional capabilities at an early age I still thought that this night was going to be the big experience. Imagine my disappointment and frankly my concern when the 'drawing room' was in fact some sort of gymnasium and the sisters were all set to play. Play what I wondered. More later.

BONE SHAKER

As I grew older it dawned on me that the smoking not only wasn't making me look debonaire enough to pick up women, it was also making me unfit. I decided to exercise a bit more and took to perambulating around the local park on Sundays with mein freund.

We got some amazed looks which I put down to the fact that I was dressed in my Sunday best. After a few months of this I still hadn't attracted the attention of the opposite sex so more drastic measures were called for. More later.

FEELING HORNY

Eventually I realised that I couldn't rely on just my good looks and the cultivated debonaire pose to pick up women. I had to have a schtick. I read that young women were impressed by musicians, liking their 'dangerous' edge, so I borrowed an instrument and began hanging around in bars and cafes with it. I couldn't play anything so hoped no-one would ask me to. Strangely no one did.

It was only later that I learned that women liked jazz musicians and none of them played the French horn. More later.

SMOKING TO LOOK COOL

As I grew older I was aware, from watching cigarette advertisements, that smoking was cool and sophisticated. I cultivated a 'lounge lizard' pose that made me look quite debonaire I thought.

I was usually so concentrated on the pose at parties though that I often didn't notice interest from eligible young ladies and missed out on opportunities. More later.

SMOKING

Another reason for giving up football, other than Anselme beating me up all the time, was that my fitness level was low due to my smoking

I had taken up the habit at an early age and it became a big part of my life. Mother and Father weren't around to discourage me and nanny thought that it made me look rather sophisticated. More later.

OFFSIDE

Mein freund and I played along well for a while but eventually we became disgruntled with each other. He said that I didn't follow the rules, in particular, the off-side rule. He went to great pains to explain to me what I was doing wrong. For my part I couldn't understand the rule and, even if I did, it should not apply to us as there were only the two of us playing. Our debates went on and on until Anselme would eventually wrestle me to the ground and pummel me senseless. Oh friendship. You can't beat it.

MEIN FREUND ANSELME

I mentioned mein freund Anselme in the last post so thought that I should explain things about him. He was strange. My parents, being away a lot, gave him to me when he was quite small. I was too. They thought that he would be a better role model for me than Agnes the chicken. Anselme loved to play football and eventually he got me interested in the game. We had a lot of fun playing this football but I soon got tired of it. No one else wanted to play with us so it was just the two of us on a great big football field running up and down. We had to take turns being the goalie. Anselme used to let me win some times hoping to keep me interested. More later.

Anselme in goal

ADOLPHESCENCE

I remained confused as I grew into adolescence and my parents grew worried when they occasionally visited me from their homes in either Austria or Argentina. My father was an instruments engineer and said that he was developing a special sort of gyroscope for ships compasses ...I wondered. My mother was a research chemist and said that she was investigating a cure for malaria....I wondered. They pulled some strings and removed me from the HJ and enlisted me with the Einsatzgruppe as a cadet. Although I was really too young for this the commander seemed to like me ("nice legs" he said) and took me on as his personal assistant. I liked this group as they played by different rules and while there was still strict codes to be followed re uniform for parades etc., at camp we could do what we wanted.

Mein freund Anselm took this photograph of me one Christmas morning. He was a funny chap.
We did a lot of orientation exercises as the commander said that soon we would be going on expeditions. More later.