I made so many mistakes in my life. I went to school beyond the mandatory 8 years, I curated a home library, I licked a woman’s armpit freshly coated with Rexona. I then burned the same tongue on garlic soup. And kept eating.
My buddy and I were avid geographers. One day we argued about what the capital of Ivory Coast was. He wanted to bet on it. As 14-year-olds didn’t have any money we bet on a dare: whoever is wrong blows the other one. We looked in the atlas, they had moved it, I lost. And I broke my promise. He then gossiped around the neighborhood I wasn’t a man of my word.
Around the same time, I brought home a cassette tape of Napalm Death. I had a phase when I was convinced tough guys had to listen to hard music. My dad told me what napalm was and what it was used for. I agreed to take the tape back, but I still thought it was an awesome invention.
I masturbated long before my body produced sperm. I felt the climaxes, but there was no visual evidence something was happening. You can imagine my surprise when the white goo appeared. I knew about cars and thought my oil tank had cracked because I had clearly overloaded the intricate apparatus. I decided not to tell anyone and die in seclusion like a cat.
I’m fine now, but I can’t pee in public restrooms when there’s one guy five urinals away. Even when I’m in the stall and there’s somebody outside, I have to think of swans submerging their necks into the Moldau river.
Once I smoked black tea, rolled up in newspaper and pasted with adhesive tape. I inhaled paper, lead, plastic, glue, and whatever was in that tea, a cheap Slovak brand called Pigi. Effects: tinnitus and vertigo. I was outside, but the smoke was so thick you couldn’t see my head. Incredibly cool.
I walked around the university computer room because the class had already started and the teacher wasn’t in yet. I noticed a small white box on the wall with a lock and key on it. I thought it was some nifty storage. I turned the key to peek inside. It was the main electrical switch.
I forgot my umbrella in a grocery store I had frequented for two years. I hung it on the railing at the front of the turnstile, I wanted to have both hands free to feel up the produce. At the cash register, I had a sincere small talk with the checkout lady, took my stuff, and left. All the clerks knew me, they definitely stored the umbrella away, but I never went back. The shame of this level of absent-mindedness couldn’t be risen above. The shop was lost.
When I was 27, I moved in with my parents again. I’m a member of the lesser-known but much larger Club 27 of people who fell on hard times at 27. I brought a girl over when nobody was home. We were still dressed when my mom came back earlier than expected. I had no plan of introducing them and thought about extraction. Two minutes later, the door to my room opened and she walked in with a bowl of tangerines and extended it to the girl: “Hi, I’m Mom.”
My mom is a charitable person. I recently told her I ordered pizza for 8 euros and gave the delivery girl a tenner. Mom objected to the size of the tip, but I explained to her that the girl had a camel toe. “Oh, okay then,” said mom, thinking the girl had some sort of deformity.
When I got my first job, I called my SCAMP TRAMP, my SEXY EXY by then.
- “How much?”
- “I don’t wanna say.”
- “Martin, I stuck my fingers in your ass and you won’t tell me what salary you received?”