[smc]

the story, continued …

While Frankfurt is merely a transfer point on my way to Hamburg, I wonder whether it will, indeed, become my final destination in Germany. This thought is consuming me as I approach the man in what appears to be a police uniform who I can see at the end of the gangway.

“You are the young man who caused the problem on the plane?” he asks. It surprises me that he puts it in the form of a question, but I attribute it his facility with English. I nod in the affirmative, and he takes my arm, leading me down a hallway and into a small room, where another policeman sits at a table.

“Sit, please,” the second man says. I comply.

He does the talking. I find his English a bit difficult to understand through his thick German accent, but I listen carefully.

He begins by asking for my passport, and then for my name, age, and address in the United States. He spends an inordinate amount of time looking at my passport picture, and then at me, and then at the picture again, over and over. Finally, the interrogation begins.

“We understand that you caused a disturbance on the plane that put passengers at risk. Is this true?” It is difficult to take him seriously from his tone.

“No,” I reply. “All I did was take a magazine out of my bag, and a woman screamed. I did not realize it would be offensive.”

“Is this the magazine?” He puts the cover of “Sex Inspiration No. 11” on the table, and lays out an array of torn and crumpled pages, one after the other.

“Yes,” I say, and I can feel myself turning red.

“We received a complaint from the crew of the Lufthansa flight, because they said that you deliberately provoked a small riot on the plane.” He says this with a smile. “What was your purpose?”

I am finding this difficult to take seriously. “I did no such thing. My sister gave me a gift for my trip. I didn’t know what it was when I opened it.”

He looks at me and begins to snicker. “What kind of a sister gives her brother a magazine of this sort?”

The policeman who brought me to the room begins to snicker, too. ““What are you laughing at?!“ shouts the interrogator. "Warum lachen Sie?!”

They speak in German, and while I grasp a bit of it, I am pretty much at a loss. At the end of the brief conversation, the one who brought me to the room uses a word I do know from my tri-lingual Keliana magazines.

He points at me and whispers, “Schwanzlutscher.” It means “cocksucker.”

This angers me, not because I deny the accusation. I want so desperately to suck a cock, to suck Keliana’s cock. So, I haven’t yet become an “official” cocksucker. But it’s the way he says it that riles me. He says it with scorn.

My interrogator tells him to leave the room. Once he is on the other side of the door, the policeman smiles at me and says, “Do not let him bother you. He is a scheissekopf, a shithead.”

There is silence for a moment, and when I calm down, I ask the officer what is going to happen to me.

“Well,” he answers, dragging out his response. “That will be determined by whether you can pay the fine that I must impose.” The way he says this makes me think immediately that the “fine” is not something official.

“How much will it cost?” I ask.

“Oh, it is not money.” He pauses, and gathers his thoughts. Suddenly, he bangs his fist on the table. Shouting, he asks, “Where are the two missing pages from this magazine? Where is the rest of Keliana’s ‘Car Trouble’ story?”

He stares at me menacingly. I reach into my bag and pull out the last two pages that the man on the gangway gave me. He grabs them from my hand, and gathers all the pages from the table, shoving them quickly into a small satchel. He stands, puts out his hand, and looks me right in the eyes. “Let me show you to your connecting flight to Hamburg.”

* *

On the short flight to Hamburg, I spend most of my time trying to catch my breath. I feel as if I have dodged a bullet. While I have lost one of my Keliana magazines, and a gift from my sister no less, I am relieved that I am not in some German jail cell.

Finally, the flight arrives in Hamburg. I go through passport control with no problem, board a bus from the airport into the city, and search for the hostel at which I have a reservation. As I turn onto correct street, I notice a red neon sign: “Erotikshop.” It is directly across from the hostel, which seems rather odd. I enter.

There, on the very first rack I see, displayed prominently, is my beloved Keliana. I recognize her immediately, on the cover of “Fascination Nr. 2.” All is well with my world.

I hurry across the street to the hostel, my new magazine in my bag. At the desk, a young, pretty German girl checks me in and tells me the rules of the hostel. She speaks perfect English and uses a lot of British expressions. As I walk to the stairway to head to my room, she shouts across the lobby. “One more thing I forgot. I noticed you went into the sex shop across the street. If you’re going to do some wanking, try to keep the noise down when you …”

I am already on my way up the stairs, and can only imagine what might have been her last word.

to be continued …