While I was away recently, my neighbor sublet my place in Berlin to backpackers. I was gone for five weeks and in that time he got four different people to take my apartment. Each one stayed around a week. I felt a little violated on my return. What had they done in there? Maybe they’d tried my clothes on, played my guitar, flipped through my dream journal? Maybe they’d done things in my home that I would never ever get the opportunity or the balls to do.
All I had were their names but I was curious to find out more about these globe-trotting freeloaders. Luckily for me, they were messy and they left junk lying all around the place. Using these clues I’ve come up with character profiles for the bastards who lived in my bed. It wasn’t easy and admittedly racism played a massive part in each evaluation, but in the end, I feel a got a little closer to each one of them.
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KT
Of course the condom must be KT’s and KT must be American. No other nation would allow such shitty acronym to be used as a name. The condom’s hers because Americans have a preternatural fear of infection whenever they leave home. They treat a European trip like a trek across the Darien Gap but with good internet. KT has no doubt been warned about the dangers of hooking up with a native European, after all some of them aren’t circumcised and some don’t even wax their testicles. Oh and the note’s hers too. Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it? But the snacks were gone and that leads us on to Dave.
Dave
Was probably a Brit. I’m basing that on his name, but if we work from that presumption everything else slips into place. Dave’s British and so he was most likely the owner of the Rizla and his ownership of the Rizla was almost definitely the reason my snacks from KT were nowhere to be seen. I had my suspicions that the photo was his too. Not of him, no, but maybe given to him. My guess is that Dave, nice guy that he may well be, was off scoring weed when this kind man in the suit came along to tell him about the love of Our Lord Jesus Christ who forgives the sinners, including the weed smokers. He then gave him some literature with his photo attached. Dave read the Holy Text, it hit him like a train, he threw the rest of the Rizla into the bin and decided to follow Jesus. He took the text but left the photo behind because the ugly German’s passport picture has no spiritual value.
Nada
Now the only Nadas I’ve ever met have been Muslim, either from Turkey or Morocco. I think Nada was reading the Blackwater book as it’s a book about how the rest of the world are giving Muslims a hard time. The sleeve describes it as “explosive” and calls the author a “one-man truth squad.” I think Nada is probably a young, lifeguard Muslim chick backpacking around the beaches of Europe. Of the four of them I think I’d have been happiest to have arrived home and found her still tucked up in my bed, in her conservative Baywatch gear.
Francesco
Now I knew Francesco was Italian, because my neighbor told me. I think that necklace had something to do with him too. It’s the Virgin Mary and if there’s one thing Italian men like more than touching their balls, it’s virgins. Apart from that I got nothing else on Francesco, except he was the last person to stay and he very kindly made the bed, opened the windows and left my mail in a little fort on the table.
CONOR CREIGHTON