***EDIT – part of the LOVE ETC book.

(made available to read online for free once in a while or generally with a donation based password.)

[a short story]

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I

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Swaying down the catwalk like she’s done so many times before, the photographers’ flashes this time spit up on her like venomously striking sniper-fire. Zoe’s presenting the fifth outfit of McQueen’s Spring / Summer collection – when it suddenly dawns on her – she isn’t at all ready to die. Her long, staggering legs bend and everything’s slowly fading away as she stumbles off the planks she’s thus walked herself to stardom on. A unified gasp ruffles the audience. The soundtrack of the show, a bizarrely confident punk track, cuts-off abruptly as if backstage somebody’s head’s just been smashed up against the mixing desk’s volume control. People are panicking all over the place. Another storm of flashes strikes even the remotest corner of the elegant Parisian Art-Deco venue. Behind Zoe’s closed eyelids, everything’s starting to slide away. “Where’s the fucking ambulance?”, she can vaguely hear someone screaming. The voice is distorted and not much different from the all-encumbering noise in her head which increasingly seems to be coming from millions of miles away. From some other dimensions? She’s grasping some last, fading fragments of tremor. Until there’s only just silence – absolute.
Has this been it?

Lucy from the agency’s sitting next to her in the neat and bright room of the private clinic they’ve booked her into. She’s completely withdrawn into an inane game on her latest phone-toy.
“Hey – oh wow … Zoe – you’re back,” she suddenly bursts out, clasping her hands in front of her chest like a child. “How d’you feel?”
She bends down to kiss both her cheeks as if they’d just met at some party. Such a sweet girl, Lucy. Kind-of totally innocent which is pretty hard to find these days, especially not in bloody fashion.
While Zoe’s slowly getting accustomed to her re-gained consciousness she notices that the sun is shining straight on her face. She can also hear birds twittering and their soothing tunes gracefully cocoon the grinding sounds of a remote city – was it Paris? Next to the window, a calendar’s showing some beach scene. Mediterranean. Lots of yachts – Nice, Cannes, Monaco? It is Sunday, it says, the 21st of July. A hot, French mid-summer afternoon.
Lucy tells her that instead of coming to see how she’s coping, David, her current ‘boyfriend’, pretends to be simply too busy to fly all the way across the Atlantic. Presumably he’s shagging yet another talentless wannabe actress, in yet another generic Manhattan five-star hotel, instead. She can also already see the guys back at the agency, looking all deeply concerned and-what-not but in fact only adding-up any financial losses her accident might’ve caused to their annual company turnover. Most of her friends are unfortunately just as shallow. And as to her mother – she wouldn’t even dream of contacting her, a deranging ex-crack-whore rotting away in a West London old people’s home. She’s utterly alone, basically. And she’s just had a near-death-experience – a ‘wake-up-call’ as her counsellors would soberly put it. And yet – weirdly – she cannot seem to find the emotional tune to drown herself in any misery or some kind of self-pity. Instead, she just looks at sugar-sweet Lucy and smiles. At this very moment, she’s deciding to change her life completely. She doesn’t know what she’s going to do or how she’s going to do it. But things have definitely got to be different. Who is she anyway? She basically hasn’t got a clue. A brand-new and much more genuine Zoe is only just dying to be born.
“To be honest, Lucy, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my entire life”, she whispers. Her voice is still weak. She‘s breathing-in fresh air and it explodes in her lungs sharply. This is how it must’ve felt at the time of her original birth. Another couple of deep breaths and she’s beginning to feel quite inebriated. Everything’s spinning, her face flushes. Goose-bumps are crawling all-over her body. It is as if she’s just downed several salty shots of tequila in one go before hitting the stage life has chosen for her to be on from now on. With confidence brimming and a huge smile on her face, she’s scattering her fullyblown kit across a gathering audience of befuddled fools. Until she just stands there, naked and sacred. And up for virtually     “To be honest, Lucy, I don’t think I’ve ever felt better in my entire life”, she whispers. Her voice is still weak. She‘s breathing-in fresh air and it explodes in her lungs sharply. This is how it must’ve felt at the time of her original birth. Another couple of deep breaths and she’s beginning to feel quite inebriated. Everything’s spinning, her face flushes. Goose-bumps are crawling all-over her body. It is as if she’s just downed several salty shots of tequila in one go before hitting the stage life has chosen for her to be on from now on. With confidence brimming and a huge smile on her face, she’s scattering her fullyblown kit across a gathering audience of befuddled fools. Until she just stands there, naked and sacred. And up for virtually anything.

From her Upper West-side apartment she’s got a lovely view over Central Park, which is always nice, for sure, but freaking awesome in summer. She bought the place about two years ago and it was certainly one of the most life-changing decisions she’s ever made – somewhere along the lines of her abortion three years earlier. Although she really liked the guy back then and in a way getting pregnant by him had felt somehow right, she decided against becoming a mother at those particularly early stages of her career. And puff – just like that – the very same career almost overnight shot through the roof, cementing her face and her body on countless fashion and lifestyle titles all over the world. Funny how things go sometimes.

“Thanks Rachel – yeah it’s definitely been a wake-up call. I just can’t carry on like this anymore,” she says on the phone. She’s talking to her best friend, a similarly successful model – although she’s got to star in an urban-cool glam-rock pop-promo not long ago and is now keen to get into movies. Zoe lies on the couch and rants into her flip-top.
“I haven’t done anything else in my life apart from modelling and I know it sounds pretty pretentious, because, y’know, we’re all stars and whatever”, she contemplates. Rachel feels silent on the other side. “But at the end of the day we’re still always hanging out with the same bunch of people, y’know – ‘our own kind’ – and the rest of the world feels like a threat in a way – d’you know what I mean?”, she asks Rachel although she herself doesn’t really know what she’s actually talking about. Well. She’s gonna take a bath, she decides.
“Anyway, good to be back and let’s catch up soon. You going to Giorgio’s party tonight? … well perhaps see you there then. Byyye.” She throws her phone on the loo seat and slides-off her panties. Steaming-hot water pours into the warm and soft polymer-tub matching the luminescent-green toilet next to it. She found them both in her favourite designer-shop downtown, like the eggshaped, musk-flavoured candles neatly spread-out across the room. She ignites some and turns-off the main light to have one of her favourable looks at herself in the mirror-wall facing the tub. Sighing and satisfied with what she sees, she finally slides into the water.
This is it, her life so far. Looking at it from the outside it isn’t actually too bad. Only that ‘something’ deep inside her – something essential – is missing ‘something’ in it. After puffing away half of the joint a Moroccan model-friend left her the other day – “is really niiice”, he promised – it gradually dawns on her that she’s got to get out of here in order to find out what this ‘something’ may be.

“To say I’m shocked would be a complete understatement, Zoe”, Françoise throws back at her, looking down on Broadway from the striking panorama-view of her office.
“It’s only six months, Françoise, not such a big deal. It’s not that I’m telling you I’m quitting, is it?” Zoe takes a deep breath. “Why don’t you look at it as a big holiday, I haven’t had one for ages anyway”, she further reasons. A pin-board behind the desk is plastered with pictures of ethereal, pretty outlandish models.
“I need a holiday too, believe me”, Françoise admits after a while.
“You should get one, Françoise. It really doesn’t help anyone if you’re not happy.”
Françoise doesn’t look at her but has spotted a strangely peculiar ant crawling along 127 floors below – and it might as well be one of her model-scouts she’s stubbornly convinced for a while.
“In a way, your whole life is like an endless stream of addictions”, she finally says, almost to herself, “and at some point your career, your hobbies, your friends and your love-life simply become yet another series of bad habits – increasingly difficult to break the older you get, really.”
The humming chords of another day passing in New York City are all they hear for a while. Never before has Zoe seen her agent this serious and the whole confrontation has turned out quite touching – if that’s the right expression.
But then Françoise-the-business-woman returns and their conversation changes tune once again. “So I’ll take your new bookings from the 1st of January, is that correct?”, she wants to know.
Zoe laughs, “you’ll get over it, Françoise. There are lots of other hot models under your roof to keep you perfectly happy.” She steps over and kisses her cheek. “I’ll see you in a couple of months again. I won’t take any mobile with me and I’ve decided not to do any emails either.”
Zoe’s spreading her arms and bending her knees in an ironical stage-performance. “This will be it then …”
“So where’s this place you’re going again?”, Françoise asks her, mainly to keep her lurking melancholy under control.
“Iceland. A friend’s already been there a couple of times and she says it’s absolutely amazing.”
Françoise glances down on Broadway again. She catches another ant-scout and thus once again successfully represses any too uncomfortable emotions. “Sounds great”, she mutters, in her mind somewhere else already.
“Take it easy, Françoise. I’m already looking forward to seeing you again”, Zoe says in her sweetest voice. “Byyye.”
She turns around and leaves the office, passing by a ridiculously busy agency floor – to reach the postmodern, slick hyper-speed-lifts bringing her back down to baseline.

“Yeah baby, exactly, for six months … that’s right.” She’s back at her place and on the phone to her ‘boyfriend’ David. For a few minutes he’s totally with her, something he hasn’t been since they’d met at last year’s Golden Globe after-show party and which also then only lasted right until they’d fucked-out their brains back in her room, coked-up and turned-on like two lonesome lab-rabbits. Now he’s again behaving like this boy whose mother’s just told him to stay put while she’s gonna pop down to do some extensive Christmas shopping. Her announcement’s obviously triggered his ‘caring instinct’ again – let’s call it ‘love’ to keep things simple. Well well, my poor David – perhaps you do want to progress into some deeper and more serious, perhaps even lasting relationships, after all?
“You won’t miss me anyway”, she jokes while packing her suitcase.         “Yes, of course I will”, she replies to his almost fatherly advice to look after herself. Toothbrush? Tweezers? She roams through her bathroom cabinet. His tone of voice’s gone back to normal again. Like so often, he’s probably with a girl or two and even as they’re talking about her leaving for quite a long period of time, one of them will have already pulled down his pants in giggling anticipation of his admittedly accomplished lovemaking skills. She’s suddenly got to laugh at this thought. He just loooves sex and never really gets tired of telling her – good old David.
“Well David, I’ll see you again in winter. Have a good time until then – I know you will. Thanks. Byyye.” She closes the phone and chucks it onto the bed next to the suitcase. Has she got everything? It really doesn’t matter since most of the time she’ll be naked anyway. “The only thing you need at the retreat is your Self”, it promises in the brochure. Somehow this makes sense, to turn up like a baby, fragile and exposed, if any rebirth is supposed to happen.

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II

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The mud is completely covering her body like a second skin. She can feel the cooling, caustic consistency of the loam-pack even inside her ears. Alone in the darkened room, which looks a bit like the tomb for an intergalactic war hero, she notices that this earth doesn’t smell too bad at all. Slowly drying, its rejuvenating juices are dissipating into her slender and tanned body. The whole thing is indeed beyond anything she could’ve ever imagined and – well, definitely absolutely amazing.

Later on in the evening, she has a swim in one of the hot sulphur-pools outside. Through the thick, crawling steam she can glimpse the vast ice-crusted landscape surrounding the spa. For a good while, she cheerfully paddles with her arms, hanging in the water, before leaning back to let herself float on the surface. The beauty of the stars, as they glitteringly flicker through heavy layers of steam, overwhelms her on the second day. She’s starting to cry – an already poriferous valve has suddenly burst open. Between alternating waves of pain and bliss she lets go, at once, of all the stress and tensions accumulated from years of hiding. The years of lying. And it just wouldn’t stop for another three days.

“Do you like it here?”, the short, chubby guy asks from the opposite bench of the sauna. At this time they’re the only guests there. His white, fluffy towel has been carefully draped around his waist so that the flabby chunk of his belly can present itself to the dry heat of the room with a sweaty but polite bow. She’s noticed this guy for a couple of days now. Despite her flawless body and her pretty relaxed but all-the-more in-your-face way to present it, she hasn’t seen any signs of the submissive demeanour most other men would usually display in her presence. She’s getting up from her comfy position for her cute, pear-shaped tits to poke straight into his eye. Not the slightest reaction and he doesn’t seem to be gay either – how funny.
“For me it’s the first time I’m here and to be honest with you I’m totally blown away by the whole thing”, she finally answers, introducing herself on the way – “I’m Zoe.” She stretches her slender neck every-so-subtly.
“I’m Paul, it’s very nice to meet you”, he says, “for me it’s also the first time and I’m also absolutely loving it.”
“It’s beyond any dream.” She gives him one of her sweetest smiles. He seems to be a really nice guy.
“I’m a … molecular biologist”, he then says, a bit awkward, somewhat out of context, almost as if he was a bit ashamed of it, but then again, not really.
“Oh wow, that sounds really fascinating.” For some reason she feels very relaxed with this guy and somehow trusts him completely – although she couldn’t exactly pin-down why. “I’m working in fashion, basically selling clothes with my looks”, she tells him, leaving her job description as low-key as she’s spontaneously being capable of.
“I see”, he nods, understanding.
Still smiling, she goes back into her favourite lying position. It feels so good to meet this guy.
A friendly staff member pops in with a wooden water-bucket, obligatory at half-hourly intervals. “Aaah, very good”, Paul welcomes her and then gets up while the woman leaves again quietly. He draws water out of the bucket, adds a few drops of the mandarin oil he’s been hiding somewhere deep in his towel. Then pours it all in one go on the gleaming-hot stones of the heater. Outbursts of steam keep flooding the room and they’re both groaning in unison – eaten alive by zillions of rejoicingly gnawing water-particle piranhas.

Breakfast usually takes place between seven and eight in the morning. If you don’t turn up on time you’ll not get anything to eat for another five hours. After almost two weeks, she still can’t get used to the tight regime of the sanctuary. She’d gone to bed late last night and couldn’t possibly drag herself out of it this morning. Now she’s bloody starving and unfortunately has got to hold it for another three hours. To manage, she opts for the steam-room. There are a few people there. Paul is one of them, although almost entirely hidden behind the thick fumes.
His day’s so far been quite good. He enjoyed a green loam face-pack in the morning, followed by some therapeutic deep-organ massage which had been really painful to start with but after a while felt almost outrageously relieving. This was then followed by a refreshing swim in the eucalyptus-chambers around the main pool area. He now feels fairly ‘content’, if that’s the right expression. ‘Happy’, if that wouldn’t sound too silly.
After everyone else has left, him and Zoe move closer together. She stretches back into her favourite position, naked and dignified. A goddess. Endless layers of fog sweep through the room like vacant, translucent visions.
“Did you know that we’re continuously photocopying ourselves?”, Paul starts. His voice is calm and consistent, she finds it extremely comforting to listen-in to. “This photocopying seems to be Life as we know it.”
She doesn’t feel the need to answer or to interrupt. In fact, she can’t wait to hear more.
He continues, “every single minute we photocopy several kilometres of our DNA. That’s like … – … it’s in a way like the heartbeat of the universe, isn’t it?”
With her eyes closed she’s riding the waves of thought he’s just imparted on her. It’s quite an odd journey but she can’t remember a time when she’s felt that much at ease with herself.
According to his experience, it’s definitely not an easy task to take the truth about life on board – about us, the futile, transitory machinery that we are. Awareness needs time to settle. This gives him a chance to look at her for the first time properly. Through the heavy, hot fumes he examines her excruciatingly flawless grace. What a sheer perfect code. It is in fact of such mind-boggling magnificence that he can’t remember of ever having seen anything like it, not even under the microscope and most definitely not this alive and sprawled-out right in front of him. Her magnetism is so overpowering that he has to literally force himself to look away. Endorphins rush through his brain in a frenzy, underpinning his general contentment with a broad grin on his face. The hormones of love. Yes indeed, he does feel profoundly ‘complete’ at this particular freeze-frame of eternity. What an amazing experience. He breathes in and out deeply, indulging in the feast of comfort swelling up in his chest.
Slowly he carries on, letting it pour out from even deeper, this time. “Any sloppy copying alters the initial code and thereby results in mutations. Some of them are advancing us, making us ‘better’. But most of the time they’d simply just drag us down. Ageing itself is ultimately just a mutation.”
Heavy wafts of steam continue to float through the room quietly. Again, he’s letting the data settle before he eventually concludes, “hence life on earth is merely a six-million-years-long history of photocopying primordial soup-recipe to eventually look like you and me here, sweating away in an Icelandic steam-chamber.” Pause. “And while I’m talking to you and you’re listening to me we’re actually photocopying ourselves into the future.” Another pause, this time it is final.
She sighs. So this is what existence comes down to then. Here it is, the truth she’s always felt somehow. The steam above her head is now so dense that it almost seems to stand there, without any signs of movement, without any sense of weight, just waiting for something to happen, some code to be generated, some time to be passed, some light to be shed into yet more corners of darkness. Pinned down to her bench. her mind is drifting-off deeper into this world – the Real World, the Universe and her deserved place within. This is for sure the most amazing trip she’s ever had. Both her body and mind have never been more pristine and clear than at this very moment, in this timeless parallel-universe of an Icelandic steam-room where she’s having the time of her life with some overweight guy who just happens to be incredibly sweet. And she’s starting to feel like a crystal.

After another day of massages, steam-baths and saunas she wakes up from a dream where her and Paul have been touching each other in one of the sulphur-pools outside. The dream really irritates her, firstly because she hasn’t had any sexual ideas for ages. And secondly, because she doesn’t even remotely fancy Paul. Of course he’s really cool – an absolutely amazing guy and everything – but making love to him, that’s a different story entirely. Perhaps it is sad, but looks to her are really important and in this department Paul’s definitely not her kind of guy – sorry about that.
Unable to go back to sleep, she heads towards her kitchen. She flicks-on the kettle and prepares herself an organic nettle-tea. In the mini-fridge, there’s still a little bit left of the flame-grilled soya steak from the day before, garnished with still surprisingly succulent leaves of baby-spinach. She decides to devour it cold. The steady chewing calms down her itching nerves nicely. “I know, the realisation that our life is futile and pointless is a very lengthy and painful process”, she remembers Paul’s words and takes a sip off the tea. It is nice and further contributes to calming her down. Can she ever go back to her old life again? Could she basically ever do anything else than model, snort coke and hang out with people who’re only pretending to be her friends all the time? And what’s all this about Paul? It is true, she really likes him and everything and there’s something really strong goingon between them. But what does this ultimately mean?

It feels odd the next time they meet. There’s also a pang of loneliness in the air as she knows that he’ll leave in just a few days.
“I can’t sleep at the moment”, she starts today’s conversation in an attempt to distract from the extremely uncomfortable situation. He moves closer towards her on the sauna bench that day and rubs her back comfortingly. It must be the first time that they’ve actual physical contact. Although he remains as distant as ever, the gesture alone is soothing her.
“I know how it feels,” Paul says with a hoarse and low voice. Father to girl. It all feels so bloody comforting. Zoe resists the urge to drop her head on his lap, allowing herself to turn into the melting receiver of his delicate strokes through her hair. What the hell is happening? Could this be love then, after all? Is this how it feels, this ‘love’?
No, it’s simply impossible – it can not possibly be. And yet, there’s this almost painful urge to be close to him and … whatever, today she simply can’t deal with it.
“I’m really sorry, Paul”, she finally says and gently pats on his shoulder. She gets up, grabs her towel and heads towards the exit. Before she’s leaving, she turns round, with a shrug and a grimace indicating something like ‘it’s-just-too-hot-in-here-today’. And it skilfully allows her to escape without leaving any traces of tension or sadness behind. At least not this time.

They’re in the sulphur-pool outside. It’s around 11.30 pm and most guests have gone to bed already. This evening, there’s an icy breeze pulling the steam swiftly across the water. It’s Paul’s final night. A grey cloud of depression is hanging above their heads, waiting to come down as soon as they’d lose their frail composure. It’ll be extremely difficult to say goodbye. Of course they’ll try to stay in touch but it’s in reality highly unlikely. He lives somewhere in countryside England, with a wife and three kids. And she’s going to be back in New York again, with an after her absence most likely to be even busier timetable than ever before. The prospects of a friendship like this are not particularly rosy, are they? Perhaps an email every now and again. But she’s just not the kind of person to bother about typing what she feels into some machine connected to  another machine. And she knows all-too-well that he wouldn’t be the kind of person either. Mutual holidays here in Iceland every two years? How pathetic.
“More or less this is it”, she thinks. “More or less this is it”, she says. Finally, after four months of innumerable loam-packs, steam-baths and massages, her thoughts are entirely in tune with her actions. Everything comes out pure and unadulterated.
“I’m not sure how to deal with this either”, he answers after a while. His voice is coarse and trembling.
The stars have now become completely hidden from them. They’re both entrenched in an infinite capsule of white fog. Here and now. The heartbeat of the universe. She’s resting her head on his shoulder and doesn’t say a thing. He also remains silent – staring blankly into the lucid, transiting steam as it keeps changing its shape, size and position.
Fractals. Fractals passing through time and space.
Both their lives are nothing more than this. But then again. They’re also nothing less.

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london, june 2005 – march 2009
© 2005 – 2009, all rights reserved