MANIAC - LOVE DERANGED

by Violet Shaw

  Perhaps only psychiatric therapy would have been able to help him – a fact about which he joked more often of late – knowing full well that he was in a precarious situation.

  Had he ever sincerely loved another person? Valerie asked herself that question often. The answer that she gave herself was always unsatisfactory, however.

  It was hard to imagine. Presumably he was so badly psychically injured during his childhood, almost destroyed, that he grew frigid inside, and lost his capacity for, and ability to, love.

  Ultimately, he completely lost his trust in other people during his childhood. Consequently, the result was that he counted on no one and no one could trust him.

  When he did feel love, it manifested itself in the destruction of the beloved person; he didn’t raise up the other person through his love, didn’t cause her to glow; just the opposite. He debased her psychically for such a long time until she was consumed by a feeling of worthlessness and inner emptiness.

  His kind of love was sick and made his love objects sick.

  For him, love meant degradation. He used the power of love that he was able to wield over another person to rob her of her brilliance, her ability to shine, her will to live, and ultimately to destroy her.

  It was unclear to Valerie whether he was aware of this, and did all this on purpose, or whether it was an involuntary process.

  He himself seemed to want to suffer and to see the other person suffer. Then he felt satisfied. Only then did he feel loved, it seemed to her, and finally alive.

  Loving him meant making a pact with the devil.

  And his entire life was the purest sham. He tried to position himself as the ever elusive womanizer, a role that suited him well. Ultimately, he did have an enormous and inarguable effect on the opposite sex.

  In addition, his job at the bank guaranteed him the perfect alibi for his life. Because of his work, he never had to stay in one place too long, never had to engage in long-term relationships, had only to present himself appropriately in “short and sweet” encounters.

  He was the equivalent of the perfect power-point presentation.

  He was somewhat of a phantom, not really touchable, whether physically nor psychically.

  He increasingly barricaded himself behind his work, and used it to hide and avoid meetings.

  As compensation, he sent passionate text-messages from exotic places like Kazakhstan, Beirut, or Moscow, declaring from a great, irreconcilable distance, how much he longed for her and how he missed her:

  “Sweetie, I’m currently in the beautiful Kempinski Hotel in Moscow. I recommend it for us, if it should come to pass. I miss, love, and desire you! How are you? When will we see each other again at long last?”

  But often weeks passed and she didn’t see him. Friends, acquaintances, and others wouldn’t see him either. He would disappear without a trace, for an unspecified period of time.

  Although it enraged her internally to constantly be in a state of waiting, externally, her life seemed to go on perfectly.

  She knew that he was without scruples, and that he was the master of a non-existent character, i.e. a bad character, of his own. And she still believed in him.

  It was grotesque; and almost perverse.

  Her attraction lay in his constant declaration of his love for her and his absence and unattainability at the same time.

  She also knew that it was only a game on his part, to make himself interesting and also to remain interesting.

  And yet, even with this awareness, she continued to play the game with him.

  She always continued to hope that she would be able to catch him, in whatever sense possible, and to bind him to her.

  Jason’s colleagues at work led similar lives – no better, no worse. Chris spent his entire day on the trading room floor; boredom and monotony prevailed there. He was supposedly compensated by imbibing excessive alcohol, drugs, mistresses, or hookers. Outwardly, Chris always took pains to maintain a bourgeois façade, spending his weekends with his wife and children on the Starnberg Lake.

  But during the week he was in London and Zurich. There he had access to alcoholic drinks and coke in abundance.

  Besides his wife, he had two parallel girlfriends. In addition, he liked dress-up sex, preferring the ladies in nurse or nun costumes.

  Another friend was a married womanizer, who always longed for action and finding new partners besides his wife who was a boring aristocrat, and whom he didn’t dare to leave. He especially enjoyed screwing in stairwells or in hallways.

  And he, too, was addicted to drugs, although he looked splendid. By day, he was conservative and solid, but in the evening, thanks to the drugs, completely loose and crazy.

  He was a habitual adulterer and charmer. At noon the next day, however, he was at his in-laws’ table at noon, all coked-up.

  Christian von der Klatten: an aristocratic top banker, with a position in the first rank at his bank, was highly respected. His annual salary was in the two-million-plus dollar range.

  In private, he was extremely shy, however, and inhibited. Christian preferred hookers, most certainly because of their willingness to be submissive, which is why he liked to frequent whorehouses and similar establishments. If one asked about his whereabouts among his friends, one received the standard answer as a matter of course:

  “He’s at a bordello at the moment!”

  Richard was a confirmed alcoholic, who already began drinking at noon, a light white wine with his clients at lunch, to start the day. He was constantly on the circuit; his life was dedicated to alcohol. Eight to ten drinks in the evening was normal for him; only then did he reach the point where he was able to cope.

  There was usually nothing to eat in his refrigerator, but it was filled with alcohol: the best Champagne and also hard liquor.

  Richard was out every night and covered the distance, where he was well-known at every stop, by the employees as well as the guests. He couldn’t get through an evening without going out and drinking.

  In the meantime, Valerie had also set herself up nicely.

  “Do it like a playgirl!” was her new motto in life. She dated men non-stop, who swarmed around her, but for whom she felt nothing and with whom she was just playing her own games.

  Just as she was being played. And she didn’t feel uncomfortable in this role. It was fun to go out, to be admired and surrounded by suitors.

  She was young, beautiful, smart and charismatic -- simply desirable -- and the Munich nights were long and wanton. One could describe Valerie as a part of the “chic young crowd” in Munich.

  It was a world which, seen from the outside, seemed shrill, glamorous, and interesting, but which was decaying on the inside. Everyone in this world thought only of his or her outward effect and devoted themselves to their own narcissistic self-promotion. The usual social interaction became a mirror of one’s own narcissistic projection.

  She had now been living in this pretentious world in Munich for almost two years.

  Her job at a PR agency, which actually should have been her dream job, also turned out to be a flop. The work was unimaginative and superficial.

  Meanwhile, Valerie met many men and had started a couple of affairs, but they really didn’t satisfy her.

  Her friend Chloé reminded her again and again:

  “You have to screw around to free yourself of Jason!”

  And Valerie tried very hard, making every effort to free herself of Jason.

  Her powers of reason said “no,” but her heart cried out “yessssss!!!!”

  It was both bizarre and tragic. She found herself on a dead-end street.

  She couldn’t live with him, but also not without him.

  What should she do? Would she ever be able to withdraw from the Jason drug?

  She couldn’t, as much as she would have wanted to, seriously fall in love with someone else.

  And at a point when she was once again really angry with him, Valerie asked him:

  “So,
Jason, are you now finally in therapy?”

  “He laughed flatly, but not at all surprised, before he answered coolly: “No, not yet, but soon!”

  She was unable to lure him out of his distant reserve; he was eternally cold and crafty.

  Broken. Not capable of any normal emotions.

  The worst thing was that he had also broken, emotionally ruined and messed her up to the degree that she herself was not capable of a “normal” relationship.

  All of the other “normal” men and affairs that she had been having bored her so much in comparison to Jason that she couldn’t muster any serious interest in them whatsoever.

  Everything else was the normal, bourgeois world – and it was tedious and dreary.

  Bitch-alarm was rampant at the Agency, everything was topsy-turvy, and the girls were snapping at each other. This week they had three press previews scheduled for the collections.

  There was so much that still had to be prepared to get ready and the atmosphere in the Agency was fired up.

  At first Valerie liked her new job as PR Agent for Fashion, Events, and Lifestyle very much. She had the feeling that she could finally make something happen.

  Although she had to work a lot, the job was fun, and she also found a significant amount of self-validation in her work.

  If only her dear co-workers weren’t a part of the deal.

  How could she have been so naïve as to choose a job in an Agency full of women!?

  Twelve women worked closely together at the Agency in Munich in the smallest of spaces.

  In the beginning, when Valerie was applying for the job, she was stupid enough to believe that it would be more pleasant to work with other women.

  But she had gotten this hypothesis completely wrong.

  The atmosphere in the office was always highly charged; each woman fought with every other one. There was absolutely no team or fair play attitude.

  It was unclear to Valerie why exactly this was the case. Apparently bitch-wars were a normal aspect of and everyday behavior in a PR Agency in which only women were employed.

  Valerie’s head was ringing today in light of the amount of work that had accumulated on her desk. So much still had to be done to get ready. And on Thursday she had to fly to Berlin on business, too.

  Valerie shared her desk with two other women, and that alone was nerve-racking enough. One could never work or make telephone calls alone and in peace, and one was also involuntarily privy to everyone else’s conversations.

  It was endlessly exhausting and the atmosphere in the Agency was extremely strained, accordingly. And beyond that, it was an office arranged in Great Room format, so that not only all the noise from Valerie’s desk area, but also from all of the other teams, ran together.

  Her colleague, Petra, worked as if she were doing piece-work. Her energy was unbelievable and inexhaustible. In the beginning, Valerie thought that she was working with a coke-head because of the way her colleague behaved. But over time Valerie realized that it was simply Petra’s nature to work like a madwoman.

  Twelve-hour days were normal for Petra. She was the first one at the agency in the morning and also the last to leave in the evening.

  She lived for her work and really did a super job.

  Petra was also someone whom Valerie had hired, and they both worked together as a team.

  But Valerie had imagined her job would be far more glamorous and glittery: Fashion, Events, and Lifestyle.

  Although she knew she wouldn’t be traipsing across the red carpet in an evening gown with a Champagne glass in her hand, her everyday experience in the office was far less exciting than anything that she had imagined.

  Petra’s working style was extremely hectic; she exuded stress as always as she waddled around the desk with her coffee mug in one hand and the telephone receiver in the other:

  “Good Morning, Valerie, there you are! Our boss called me this morning at 7:00 o’clock on my cell phone to say that there are problems with the collection from Milan. It doesn’t seem to have been lost in transit, but has not yet arrived here, and the press preview is the day after tomorrow.”

  In a beer-garden in Schwabing, Valerie met an interesting man who was an artist and also worked as a model. He was creative, sensitive, and also very sexy.

  And Valerie started an affair with him, so that Jason was somewhat removed from her emotionally.

  With Ben, the model, Valerie spent a wonderful day at Starnberg Lake.

  She found him to be very pleasant and sensitive. Finally again, after many long weeks of inner restlessness, she could relax.

  Ben was almost therapeutic for her. She not only felt incredibly well in his presence, but also relieved of everything that bothered her, particularly the Jason drug.

  In addition, he was very attractive. Ben was tall and blond, with beautiful turquoise blue eyes; he was very charismatic and also very sexy, a combination one rarely finds in men. Finally she had found a suitable optical counterpart to Jason, as one would expect, since Ben was a model by profession.

  But in total opposition to Jason, he had an immense amount of free time and was not bound by a nerve-racking job.

  He lived, as he explained to Valerie, with a completely happy-go-lucky attitude, and mostly did what he wanted to do. He had a mode of life that appealed to Valerie greatly.

  With Ben, it was as if she were on vacation. He had, and devoted, a great deal of time to her, was never harassed or nervous.

  To Valerie’s greatest amazement, he didn’t even wear a watch on his wrist. Instead of a watch, he wore a bracelet with the well-known words of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

  Oh yes, she thought to herself, he is so cute. A being from another planet.

  He was also a positive-thinking person; he saw the good and beautiful in everything.

  With Ben, she could laugh a lot, and felt valued. He gave her a sense of calm and inner strength. This made her very happy and she was very grateful to him.

  Ben also had no fear of being close. He simply took her in his arms, and came straight to the point. Everything was uncomplicated with him. Fantastic.

  At the Starnberg Lake, Valerie and Ben hired a rowboat to take them to the beautiful Isle of Roses, a small, romantic island in the middle of the lake. And there, at sunset, Ben kissed her for the first time.

  It was almost too beautiful to be true. And at the same time so kitschy and not of this world . . . as in a Rosamunde-Pilcher film.

  The next day, Valerie met a friend at the beer-garden:

  “My heavens, Valerie, your brown eyes are exceptionally bright today! I think Ben is very good for you!”

  Yes, Ben had indeed managed to bring her to a state of radiance – to glow – in a very short time.

  Valerie was happy and felt like embracing the entire world. Finally someone really appealed to her again. She was in love again and hovered on Cloud 9.

  Life was beautiful.

  Despite her affair with Ben, she stayed in contact with Jason. And since the relationship, despite all its complications, had always been characterized by complete openness, she told him about Ben. It apparently hit Jason out of the blue when she told him at dinner in Munich one evening.

  At first he was shocked, because he couldn’t and didn’t want to imagine that Valerie could have a serious affair with another man.

  He was furiously jealous.

  At the same time, Valerie’s affair with the model made him very hot. Now he didn’t want to lose her under any circumstances.

  It seemed to Valerie that this was the first time he became really afraid that he would lose her to another man.

  “And in bed, do you get on well?” Jason barked at Valerie.

  “Yes, very well!” she countered and gave him a challenging as well as triumphant look.

  Internally, she rejoiced: He was really jealous, after all! Not bad! Yayyyy!


  And the longer Valerie’s affair with Ben continued, the greater Jason’s jealousy grew.

  He practically burned with jealousy, called her frequently and sent her countless text-messages.

  And Valerie made sure that his jealousy continued to be stoked. Now she began to play with him, like a cat with a mouse:

  “Sorry, dear Jason, but I can’t right now. Am about to crash with Ben!” she answered him at 2:00 a.m., after he had tried in vain to reach her by phone several times.

  The next morning she found a message on her cell phone:

  “Good Morning, Sweetheart! How was your night? Give me a report of how it went with your lover!”

  “Amazing!! We had passionate sex on the lake!”

  “Oh, that sounds exciting . . .you have to tell me more when I see you again! When will that be?”

  “Sorry, at the moment I’m very busy, but let’s talk over the next few days! Happy weekend and kind regards”

  With Ben, Valerie experienced an intense, continuous, fluid relationship.

  But, within a very short time, he developed from Mr. Right into Mr. Wrong.

  Ben belonged to the “Cozy Generation;” he wanted his life to be as snug and comfortable as possible.

  Everything was to be as if packed in cotton – light and easy.

  His high proportional emphasis on Easy Living was combined with a clearly defined narcissism, in which he saw himself as the measure of all things.

  Everything was organized under the “cozy” principle. He continuously wanted to hold hands, pet and stroke, and be petted and stroked. Snuggling was the new motto for living.

  A parting with Ben was always monumental, as if one were leaving a man about to depart for war, whom one wouldn’t see for years to come.

  In the course of time, he began to seem less and less manly to her.

  It became more and more difficult to describe him as a man. Where was his masculinity?

  Even on the topic of sex, his speech was more feminine than that of a woman. He spoke about a “meeting of souls,” that was supposed to occur between two people having sex.