by Violet Shaw
“Valerie, listen, you can completely forget his girlfriend. Recently, when I was at his home, I saw a framed photo of her and I can only say – and I mean it kindly: gray mouse! He can’t possibly have any fun with her. Then I took a look around her closet, simply out of curiosity, and I tell you, it’s full of mousy gray suits and pantsuits, size 10. Isn’t that unvelievable!?” her friend Severin recently told her.
“Yes, he’s with her based on pure comfort and because he hasn’t had the courage to finally leave her!” Severin added.
Indeed, Valerie’s friends were each crazy, unique characters. Chloé was a very talented artist who, influenced particularly by Pop-Art, painted modern paintings the beauty and subtlety of which lay in the mystery of the unfathomable.
Valerie always had the impression that under the top layer of her artworks and the different combinations of colors, a second level of meaning was to be found, which allowed respective viewers various possibilities for interpretation.
Chloé was, as most artists, emphatic but also very sensitive. She lived the classic life of an artist, which Valerie admired very much. She mostly worked through the nights, commingling different substances, mostly alcohol or marijuana, so that, as Chloé liked to emphasize, “unfurl herself freely as an artist.”
In her small apartment, which because of her limited resources also functioned as her studio, various pictures were piled up in spaces between the kitchen, sleeping area, and easel.
“Hey, Chloé, your pictures are really fantastic; you definitely have to have an exhibition,” Valerie often encouraged her.
But Chloé, whose constant swing between artistic delusions of grandeur and the greatest self-doubt often was so bad that she wanted to destroy everything, seemingly on the edges of insanity, did not have at her disposal the economic wherewithal or skill to market herself or her art. Finally this situation was such that already in the middle of the month, she didn’t know how she could go on living, much less pay her rent. She was an artist who always lived at the edge of existence and who was aware of her existential fears but couldn’t conquer them.
Alex had met her through friends who told him about Chloé’s extraordinary pictures, and as was fitting for a classic investment banker, he passed himself off as someone interested in art, in that he often acquired new pictures from supposedly very hot newcomers on the art scene, without having any actual serious interest in the art market. Alex was simply pseudo-interested in art and wanted to use his acquired paintings as a new and somewhat different investment.
At the recommendation of friends, he looked up Chloé in her studio, that is, in her apartment, and in the throes of his enchantment with her appearance, immediately bought four of her works. It was love at first sight for both of them, and both were attracted to the world of the other from the first moment on.
Alex was moved by Chloé’s appearance right away. She reminded him of a shy, beautiful deer with her brown eyes, her chestnut brown hair and her feminine body.
Chloé in turn was impressed by his self-confident presence, his calmness and strength, which he manifested immediately upon entering her studio that day.
He seemed to know exactly what he wanted and didn’t delay very long. That applied to her art as well as her person.
In comparison to Chloé, Severin embodied antagonism. She was a classic Northern German beauty and appropriately gave off a Hanseatic coolness and unapproachability. Her entire life up to the present had been based on rationality.
She had studied architecture in London and Zurich. She was very ambitious and talented and was consequently promoted and fostered by one of her professors. After she had worked in London at a renowned architectural firm for two years, she returned to Frankfurt to devote herself to a large project in the banking field. Everything, her whole life, was on track according to plan at the end of her twenties, as she admitted to herself with satisfaction and a little pride.
Valerie knew exactly that she was a thorn in Alex’s eye because she saw the affairs that he was having with her two friends, Chloé and Severin, as a great potential danger.
A variety of information gleaned from the girls who confided in her again and again came together under her aegis. And Valerie wanted to remain loyal and not take sides, remaining above the situation insofar as possible given the crazy circumstances.
Valerie knew about a number of individual episodes in both affairs and also about all of the lies that had been exchanged. When, for example, Alex told Chloé that he had to make a quick trip to London and broke a date, she knew that he had a date with Severin instead.
This situation required great discretion on her part; in no way did she want to become involved. Whatever her friends arranged or didn’t arrange with Alex was only their concern.
When Chloé or Severin invited Valerie on one of their dates with Alex and his friends, Valerie was well aware how suspicious Alex was of her.
His attitude toward her was skeptical; he didn’t know exactly whether or to what degree she was to be trusted. She could have immediately let him run aground. Therefore, both of them avoided talking with one another more than necessary.
But Alex had no other choice; she was privy to important information, and it was dependent on her favor toward him whether he could continue his affairs without a problem.
As soon as Valerie and her friend arrived at their location, the Rosé Champagne was usually already waiting. Alex was more than generous. Thanks to his super- abundant success at the bank, he could also afford to be.
What made him so much more successful than the average banker was not clear to Valerie.
And she also couldn’t quite understand that her friends were so attracted to him and seemed to be under his spell. Alex was not the classic womanizer; rather, he more readily represented the opposite thereof.
His face was everything but attractive. His eyes, if one wanted to be nasty, could be described as goggles, and his slender figure seemed frail. He didn’t play any sports and now at the beginning of his thirties, he had
already developed a prominent belly, which he tried to hide behind expensive made-to-measure suits. To top it off, his face was bloated due to his over-indulgence in drugs and alcohol.
If Valerie hadn’t had copious information about his life, she wouldn’t have thought anything of him. He always seemed naïve and harmless at all of their encounters.
But what else was there left for him to do? He was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. Because he was able to continually fool everyone, he was in the position of being able to lead his various double lives. He had at least three cell phones, apparently one for each of his mistresses.
It was absolutely incomprehensible to Valerie what her girlfriends saw in him. Did his money and his power, both of which he possessed in great measure, make him so attractive and irresistible?
Nobody knew exactly how much money he earned in a year, but it was speculated that inclusive of bonuses, it was a respectable number in the range of a million dollars.
Chloé was not only the incarnation of the typical artist, she also played the role of the femme fatale, in which she was exceedingly comfortable.
She was now 33 years old, had not had a serious relationship in the last five years, but could provide evidence of several affairs during that time. Mostly she had parallel affairs.
She was, as she liked to say about herself, “a sexual being.” For her, sex was more than necessary in life, and in this realm, she was very open to experimentation and new approaches.
She was also aware of the sexual arousal that her doe eyes and obsequious manner brought about in most men. She enjoyed the attention that she drew to herself and most men were sexually attracted to her. She loved enjoying sex with a variety of partners. It was particularly gratifying to her when she determined once again with some satisfaction that a man was sexually dependent on her.
She saw herself as the femme fatale par excellence, and unlike most other people, her self-awareness a
nd confidence resulted from the number of sexual adventures that she had experienced in recent times, and from situations in which a man had sexually surrendered to her.
That was exactly what had happened with Alex. In a very short time, she managed to make him sexually submissive to her. He called her every day and sent her countless text messages; he was quickly ensnared in her web.
For the last several days, Chloé was not able to be reached on her cell phone.
Valerie knew that Alex had invited her on a short trip to Saint Tropez. Consequently, Valerie began to worry about her friend. It was simply not like her to turn off her cell phone, no matter where she was currently involved. Possibly she was so deeply immersed in a romantic getaway with Alex that she had broken off all contact with the real world.
Chloé and Alex had spent a crazy-exciting time with one another in the south of France. At first Chloé didn’t even want to go on vacation with him because she feared falling more deeply in love and having everything become even more complicated than it already was. But he had made it so appealing to her, convinced her so completely that she should go, that she threw her concerns overboard and got on the plane with him.
It was Chloé’s first trip to the south of France; because of her disastrous financial situation, she had hardly left Frankfurt at all in the last few years. As soon as she sold one or two pictures, the income immediately went toward her ongoing expenses such as food and rent. Actually, she was chronically broke and eked out a poor, meager artist’s existence, which she emphasized in conversations with Valerie again and again.
Now however, through her affair with Alex, a new and different world had opened up to her. Money didn’t play any role for Alex; he simply put it to use and spent more in one evening than she had available for an entire month.
Yet, it was more by far that she found fascinating about him – it wasn’t only about money. She had seriously fallen in love with him. Nonetheless she sensed and also felt that she could not win him for herself – despite all the warm feelings that he certainly had for her.
He was weak and physically frail, and therefore dependent on drugs. He inhaled coke the way others drank water. To her great shock, she discovered that he was also addicted to alcohol and medications for latent conditions as well.
And in this respect, Chloé was not a reliable support. She was similarly weak and possessed too little personal strength to be able to refuse the dangerous temptations. Ultimately, her affair with Alex was based, for the most part, on their joint consumption of alcohol and on sex.
And until now she had – aside from the occasional grass – not taken any hard drugs. But with Alex her reservations about using them tended to fade away.
She had often watched him getting high on coke, and finally decided also to do a line, which gave her the happiest feelings of self-awareness and untouchability, and while she didn’t become addicted at once, she began to find more and more pleasure in partaking.
One could, in a word, “coke” away one’s daily worries and stress, one’s entire miserable existence. It was very simple and functioned much better and more effectively than alcohol.
And it was also far more dangerous – Chloé could recognize that fact in Alex’s addictive behavior.
Once a year, Alex and his “boys” took a trip to Ibiza. As Chloé told Valerie, one could describe the trip as similar to a drunken beer party on a somewhat higher plane. The regular girlfriends and mistresses were left at home and the boys were alone for the duration, to devote themselves to the party: They drank themselves almost to oblivion in the morning, took drugs continually and carried away everything that wasn’t nailed down. What couldn’t be taken was bought. Prostitution was among the pleasures available and was an essential part of these so-called “men’s outings.”
The wives waited patiently at home, as did the girlfriends and lovers. Were they really so naïve, Valerie asked herself, or were they also so hardened that it didn’t matter what their men were doing? The most important thing was that they could continue to drive their Porsches and put on airs at the Golf Club. Apparently everyone was playing the game, as long as money was available. The beautiful shiny exterior was more important than the reality that lay beneath.
For the last year, Chloé had been going to see Dr. Pfennigmeier once a week. Therapy was supposed to be helping her bring her childhood experiences to the surface and deal with them, so that she would be free from psychic pain and be better able to cope with her daily existence.
Yet, Chloé found herself in conflict with herself, trying to free herself from her difficult past on the one hand, while on the other hand, as an artist, forcing herself to remember her painful wounds and anguish again and again, in order to express them in her work.
She found herself on a dead-end street, where on one side she needed her art to live, and on the other side, her art made living more difficult.
“Ms. Esser,” Chloé’s therapist asked her frequently, “what does your profession, your art, mean to you? Do you feel you have a calling?”
In recent weeks, Chloé had concluded a number of times that despite her regular therapy with Dr. Pfennigmeier, she didn’t feel any better. Quite the opposite, actually; she had the feeling that her life in general was becoming more and more of a burden. She was constantly tense and found relaxation only when she was under the influence of alcohol or coke.
Among other things, her affair with Alex and affairs with other men whom she also saw regularly, were making her feel worse too.
For some time now, Chloé had felt that Alex wouldn’t decide to leave his girlfriend to stay with her, despite his sexual dependence on her.
Besides, they had been arguing more and more lately, and the situation had escalated precisely because both of them had frequently been stoned.
The last time he had sex with her, he immediately wanted to return home, but Chloé begged him:
“No, please stay here, sleep with me, don’t leave me alone!”
But Alex remained firm and wouldn’t give in; supposedly he was to get up very early the next morning to fly to London.
In reality, however, her tendency to cling to him frightened him. Suddenly he felt smothered by her presence and emotionality and he wanted to be free of her, at least for that night.
Chloé felt more and more as if an invisible power controlled her.
Up ‘til now, according to her psychologist’s diagnosis, she had been manic-depressive, whereby phases between manic happiness and terrible periods of depression alternated like waves. Her happy, positive moods meant high tide for her – calm, recovery, and relaxation -- which were then followed by a flood of deep fits of depression.
Now however, for the first time in her life, she was captive in the depth of depression. She saw no light at the end of the tunnel. For the first time in her life, she could see nothing positive in her own existence. Everything was just a great black hole, into which she would have gladly thrown herself.
In general, her whole life was a unique catastrophe; she felt like an absolute failure, worthless and unloved. The many affairs that she had had in recent years could also not bring her happiness.
And she had even lost interest in sex, her favorite hobby.
She felt more and more that life was too demanding, and that it had gotten the best of her.
Her negative thoughts and depression grew worse daily. She was caught in a carousel of negative thoughts.
In addition to her depression, she began to suffer anxiety and panic attacks.
Her last attacks were so sudden, apparently arriving out of the void, and had washed her away like a wave. She felt as if she couldn’t breathe, as if she couldn’t get any air. It seemed as if an unseen power was in control over her.
After the episode was over, she lived in fear of having another panic attack.
A vicious circle. Her life was one of pure sorrow – she felt as if she were traveling on a ghost-train.
For some time she had
been taking antidepressants for her mood swings.
Valerie visited Chloé at home, although she had wanted to go out with her somewhere. But her friend was not in a position to do so – she simply couldn’t muster the strength.
Valerie had never seen Chloé like this: From a radiant femme fatale she had mutated into someone marked by life and fate.
It was a mutation that had occurred in a very short time.
Curled up like a terrified bunny, Chloé sat on the couch. Her face was very red and swollen from all of her tears. Her arms encircled her legs, which she had pulled up close to her body, as if she had to protect herself from something.
“I am so sorry, Valerie. I simply can’t do anything anymore. I don’t know what’s the matter with me!”
Valerie was very worried about her girlfriend Chloé. From one day to the next, she had disappeared out of her life.
She had called her briefly to say that she had been on the way to visit her parents when she suffered a panic-attack on the train and had subsequently been taken to a psychiatric clinic.
Although she had noticed grave changes in her friend for some time, she was more than shocked to receive this bad news.
She realized Chloé’s condition was grave, but had not been aware just how serious the situation really was, and had not recognized the drama as it played out.
The attending physicians in the psychiatric clinic judged Chloé’s condition to be in the highest suicidal category, and she was placed in a high security section.
Although Chloé was one of the lighter cases, here, in the midst of the other psychically ill patients, she became aware and was informed by the attending physicians, how ill she actually was.