Am I Cold

by Martin Kongstad

  ‘Do you want a glass of spumante?’ I said.

  Erik Brinch was back and panting. He kissed her on the neck.

  ‘We could do with that, couldn’t we, darling?’

  ‘You’re sweating like a pig.’

  ‘Come and sweat with me.’

  She stepped away from him.

  ‘Is this all going to end up in a sex orgy?’

  ‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘That’s for the party to decide.’

  She looked at Erik Brinch.

  ‘Why don’t you say something?’

  ‘You look ravishing tonight,’ he said.

  ‘You’re showing me up!’ said Clara.

  ‘Me, darling?’

  ‘Yes, you, writhing about with your dick hanging out!’

  ‘It’s a party, Clara. We’re dancing, that’s all. Having a good time.’

  ‘I’m driving back to Asserbo.’ She strode off with determination.

  ‘Yesterday she accused me of flirting with the check-out girl at the supermarket,’ said Erik Brinch. ‘I was buying toilet paper and caustic soda.’

  Clara came back.

  ‘You needn’t bother taking me into account anymore, Erik. We’re finished! End of story!’

  He said nothing, and Clara began to cry.

  ‘I’m such a fool,’ she said. ‘I can see it’s never going to work with us. Why do I even bother?’

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed for a minute.

  ‘I’m not going to ask you to live a life you obviously don’t want.’

  She said goodbye and went quietly off towards the car.

  ‘Are you selling whisky?’ said Erik Brinch. ‘I might need to work up a tab at the bar.’

  I found Diana in the midst of a group of skater models and pulled her over to dance to Dusty Springfield. I buried my nose in her hair. ‘I love you,’ I said, to my own surprise.

  ‘Do you want to walk down to the sea with me?’ she said.

  We went along the Skolestien path and the honeysuckle ought not to have been there.

  She wanted to tell me something, it was that kind of walk. Why did the sea always have to be involved?

  We didn’t say a word all the way there. We went down the steps of the hotel hill and sat down with our backs against the big rocks. For the first time in three months we were behaving like a couple, which by definition meant it was over.

  My body felt heavy and abandoned, and she looked at me intently, as if mustering the courage to say something I was going to find painful. She took my hand in hers.

  ‘The cunts are no good, Mikkel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My exhibition, it’s no good.’

  I was overwhelmed with relief, and assured her that her tapestries were going to be utterly astounding. We lay down at the water’s edge and gazed up at the stars.

  The party was alive with stories by the time we got back; some would be told again at a dinner party the following winter, others would turn into sex, or the beginning of a friendship, or three notes in a trombone solo, but most survived only for that night. I fetched the old guitar and sang ‘Touch Me’, and when Mille stood behind Diana and put her arms around her breasts I maintained eye contact with her throughout the song.

  Djuna Barnes DJ’ed and she could get away with anything, David Essex or Stravinsky, but then she chose ‘Young Folks’ and people jumped around like baby goats. I felt the thumping bass line and threw myself into the party with my arms above my head. In the middle of the dance floor Erik Brinch had his hands buried deep in a solidly built blonde. His pink neck seemed almost to be drooling from its folds.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s a little room or a cubbyhole somewhere where a couple might find a little privacy?’ he said.

  It wasn’t the kind of party to refuse anyone anything.

  ‘My cabin, Skotte Olsen, is empty,’ I said, pointing him in the direction.

  ‘I’m sure I can count on your discretion,’ he said.

  Levinsen waved me over to the bar and opened a Launois Millesime.

  ‘Can you keep up, Vallin? Mad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fancy a go in the tent with the Sisters of Mercy?’

  ‘You haven’t asked us yet,’ said one of them.

  ‘Didn’t I just hear you say Mikkel was cute?’ said Levinsen.

  ‘We don’t want you,’ said the other. ‘You can go and play with yourself!’

  He struggled to keep a smile on his face and danced off into the throng with his Launois. I could tell he wasn’t the sort who shook hands over the net after a hammering at tennis.

  ‘Come here,’ said a Sister of Mercy.

  I immersed myself in bum, breasts and bare thighs.

  She dug her nails into my cheek and we kissed this way and that. A spliff came by, and after a few tokes I was consumed by a feeling of indescribable truth. My head spun rather gently, and of course they had no knickers on under their skirts and were simply warm and serious cunts. We went in a little chain towards the tent, and I tumbled through twenty years of festivals into sauna-like heat, and through our sweat we metabolised into predatory carnivores and oysters. Our fingers became eels squirming upon exquisite cadavers, we dribbled and drooled like imbecile beasts of fable and wanted more, ever more of it all, further out, further up, and I whimpered as a finger was inserted into my arse, my throat rattling as I plunged towards blackout, veins quivering, face buried in cunt.

  I woke up in a fug of sex and zipped the tent open to get some air.

  All over the garden people lay in each other’s arms. I’d had four missed calls from Clara and a text message:

  Is he still alive?

  I peered cautiously through the window of my cabin and saw an empty whisky bottle on the floor and Erik Brinch’s fat bollocks. The solid blonde was talking and he tipped his head back and laughed, and I could see all the way into the murk of his insides.

  I poked my head around the door. ‘Clara’s worried about you,’ I said.

  Her name was Miriam and she extended a ladylike hand across the duvet. I was about to say something polite when Erik Brinch put a finger to his lips.

  ‘Hi, darling. Sorry I didn’t call… Yes, we all had a lovely time… Mikkel was kind enough to put me up for the night. I just need to get ready here and then I’ll jump in a cab to Asserbo… Herring! Delicious, marinated herring… Just what the doctor ordered. Don’t forget the red onion, now, will you?… Looking forward to seeing you, darling.’

  He gave us a wink as he hung up.

  Diana and Mille lay curled up together in Skotte Olsen, and I looked at them for a long time and let my feelings run loose inside.

  Diana opened her eyes and pulled the duvet aside.

  ‘Were the Sisters nice to you?’

  ‘Extremely,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I want to sleep,’ said Mille.

  ‘See you over in the house in a minute, darling,’ said Diana.

  I told her everything in detail: the shape of their cunts, the look in their eyes, their heavy breasts and sweet-smelling alcohol breath. Diana took my hand and put my fingers inside her pussy.

  I floated down to the grocer’s on Købmandshjørnet with Nikolaj Krogh. We bought eighty-four eggs, twelve tins of baked beans, six loaves of rye and sixteen litres of juice, and after we’d fed the dishevelled masses, we all piled down to the beach and I coaxed people into the sea.

  By five o’clock we had reclaimed half the beach from the intellectual left.

  At half past five I called Andreas Møller and invited him up.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ said Diana.

  ‘I’d like God to be with us,’ I said.

  ‘God’s already here,’ she said.

  ‘Why don’t you like Andreas?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s just something about him. It’s the way he looks away.’

  Andreas was sitting at the bar when Nikolaj Krogh and I came dancing across the lawn with two h
undred people in tow. Now that word had got out, people who wanted to join the party had been arriving and putting up tents all day, and two chefs were getting the big barbecue started.

  There was no sign of the Lutheran ruff, but Andreas Møller didn’t need to exert himself to establish his position.

  Once we read books, then we read mostly magazines and skipped the long articles to look at the pictures instead. Now it was film, and much rather a well-turned thriller than Truffaut or Bergman. Problems were not to be gone into in too much detail, conflict was to be quickly outlined and solved, and such an approach might even have been workable if only we hadn’t been brought up to consider reflection to be better. We promised ourselves to spend the next holiday on the Russians or Mann, and we reserved tickets to the Cinemateket so that we at least might see every episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz on the big screen, but instead we ended up eating too much risotto and staying at home on the sofa. People punctured when they encountered a priest. They gasped for breath and staggered backwards. It wasn’t just that studying theology involved reading Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Latin, it was also the fact that the seminary and an incumbency meant an obligation to sermonise week after week.

  Nikolaj Krogh had the complete works of Kierkegaard at home, and let me put it this way, they weren’t exactly hidden from sight.

  Nikolaj and Mille held salons, the time they had been living in Christianshavn, and whether it was out of genuine interest for the major issues in life or just attitudinal relativism I was obviously unable to judge, but what was certain was that Nikolaj Krogh was determined to add to his work in aesthetics a superstructure of philosophical, ethical and religious dimension.

  They had only just said hello to each other and he’d already invited Andreas Møller to occupy the F.P. Jac cabin.

  ‘May I rename it Michael Laudrup or Johannes Sløk?’

  ‘We’ve got chefs, we’ve got a doctor, and now we’ve got a clergyman,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.

  ‘Would you care to give a sermon tomorrow morning?’ I asked.

  ‘That’d be great,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve an idea as to what it could be about, Mikkel?’ said Andreas.

  ‘I’d like it to be about community,’ I said, and walked him down to F.P. Jac.

  The chefs were almost ready with the food, and I stood on top of a chair with the old guitar.

  People were sitting on the lawn holding each other’s hands and I didn’t have to raise my voice.

  ‘Maybe this party’s never going to end,’ I said to them. ‘All my life I’ve believed I had to be part of a couple in order to function, but I’d much rather be part of you!’

  I beckoned to Andreas Møller.

  ‘This is Andreas and he’s our camp priest. Tomorrow morning at ten he’s going to give us his first sermon.’

  I played ‘Touch Me’, and people stood in line to put their names down for cleaning up, refuse collection and dishes.

  ‘What are you cooking up, Mikkel?’ said Mille.

  ‘I’ve got ambitions,’ I said.

  ‘Ambitions are good, sermons less so.’

  ‘I invited Andreas to stay in F.P. Jac,’ said Nikolaj Krogh.

  ‘The girls love him,’ said Lisa.

  Andreas Møller was eating at the bar with two single acid-jazz mothers.

  ‘He’s been celibate for eleven years,’ I said.

  Diana and Mille looked across at him, and he looked away.

  Kreuzmann was sitting outside his tent.

  I sat down in front of him on the grass and the dew soaked through the seat of my trousers.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  He squeezed me a glass of red wine out of his box. It tasted of scaffolding.

  ‘Do you remember Arthur Ashe? He floated on the court! Connors was a powerhouse, and Borg was sly, but Ashe was on a completely different level. There was more to it. Do you see what I’m getting at?’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ I said.

  ‘I’m short on red wine.’

  ‘Do you want me to pop over to Vin og Grønt and fetch you a couple of bottles of Anjou?’ I said.

  ‘No thanks, no hocus pocus for Kreuzmann. I’d be happy with a new box from the minimart. There’s a great tit on the front.’ He turned the box towards me and there was the bird in front of a little waterfall.

  It was midnight and there was no wind. Through the treetops you could sense the light in the north. A half-moon shone over the house.

  There were about fifty of us around the campfire, and I sat between Mille and Diana and stared into the flame. A spliff went round, and a curly-haired guy with eyes that told of a twenty-four-hour binge played A7 and G major in 6/8 on the guitar.

  A star comes falling down, and hardly makes a sound, now I believe in love.

  We talked about our first experiences with sex. A pretty skater boy with welcoming body language and serious blue eyes told us about the girl from Vedbæk who had shaved off her eyebrows and begun to cut herself, and how they smashed up the house afterwards. A redhaired girl told us about her first boyfriend in the badminton club who slagged her off behind her back, and I told the story of my first shag, with Lotte in her white clogs from the Trocadero club.

  ‘My first had a huge cock,’ said Mille. ‘I was Interrailing with a friend, we met this group of older Swedish boys in Estoril, and I fell very much in love with one of them, a tall tennis type. I asked him out and we had sardines and wine. I was impatient and wanted to do it, but I got the shock of my life when I stuck my hand down his shorts. I didn’t think they could be that big.’

  ‘What did you do with it?’ said Diana.

  ‘He had lubrication with him, but we still had a job getting it in. Once we did, we tore along at a grand old pace. I had the most amazing orgasm.’

  ‘Where did Levinsen get to, anyway?’ said Diana.

  The Sisters of Mercy smiled.

  ‘He’s gone off to Skagen with that blonde DJ,’ one of them said.

  ‘Her father’s an art collector,’ said the other.

  The spliff went straight to my dick and I stuck my hand down Diana’s knickers. Her cunt was smooth and willing, she spread her legs and moaned in my ear. Mille’s tongue was long and firm, and the pretty skater boy calmly watched as I walked off towards the cabin with a girl on each arm. The lawn felt as soft as foam rubber beneath my feet, and the universe was breathing all around us. We were souls together under the sky, and the world was hunky-dory.

  We had just undressed each other when he put his head round the door.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  ‘Take your clothes off, gorgeous,’ said Mille.

  He was muscular, yet thin at the same time. His dick lay in an arc across his balls.

  Mille lay down on the bed and put my hand to her warm cunt.

  ‘Kiss his bum, Diana!’

  Diana put her lips to the nape of his tanned neck, then kissed the myriad of tiny muscles along his back, eventually arriving at his pert little behind. Mille’s clitoris was big and hard as a nut, and she grunted with every touch.

  ‘Take hold of his hips and turn him over,’ said Mille.

  His cock stood erect, jutting out at the ceiling, his sack as tight as a tennis ball.

  ‘Lick his sack,’ said Mille, keeping my hand on her swollen clit. His stomach muscles contracted as Diana’s tongue swirled at his scrotum, and his dick quivered, tiny spasms of delight.

  Mille let out a heavy moan.

  ‘Come here!’ she said.

  Diana led him over to the edge of the bed.

  ‘Wank him off!’

  Diana gently took hold of his cock and slowly pulled back the foreskin. Mille gasped at the sight of the glistening purple head. She had begun to cream, my fingers were soaked in thick, white secretion.

  Diana stared in wonderment at the cock in front of her.

  ‘Is it hard in your hand?’ Mille said. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘Yes, it’s
hard,’ said Diana.

  He groaned, his chest blooming red. Diana began to masturbate him with long, lazy strokes of her hand.

  ‘Stop!’ said Mille. ‘Put it in your mouth!’

  Diana crouched down and placed her lips around the dome of his cock. Mille put two fingers inside her cunt.

  ‘You’re so turned on, Diana.’

  She gripped Diana’s hair, drawing her mouth further down the cock.

  ‘All the way.’

  Diana gasped through her nose as Mille finger-fucked her. My fingers slid around inside Mille’s cunt.

  ‘I’m going to make you come with his dick in your mouth,’ said Mille.

  Diana gasped for breath and whimpered.

  ‘You’re gagging on cock!’ said Mille.

  She pressed her hand against the back of Diana’s head, pushing her down on to the guy’s cock, and Diana whimpered again, her lower body trembling uncontrollably.

  Mille raised her hips and thrust herself towards his cock.

  ‘Make him come all over me!’

  She rubbed her gigantic clit furiously as Diana took hold of his cock and began to jerk him off. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glazed over.

  ‘He’s coming!’ she said.

  The first burst was quick and modest, and splashed Mille’s throat. The second fell heavily on her, and Mille roared like a weightlifter as waves of pleasure passed through her and Diana milked every last drop.

  I heard the blackbirds outside. It wasn’t going to get dark.

  ‘Wow, look at them,’ said Mille.

  Diana and the skater were kissing passionately. His cock had not become limp, but waved promisingly in the air between them.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Mille asked him.

  ‘Mies,’ he said.

  I refrained from looking down at myself, at my little pot belly and spindly legs. In five years’ time Diana might be the mother of children, and their father would not be a man with low-hanging bollocks and the first stages of diabetes.

  Mies had his fingers up her cunt.

  This wasn’t just sex. It was about the survival of the species.

  Mille patted the bed next to her and got Diana to lie down with her legs apart. She then went to work purposefully on my cock, sticking the fullness of her bum in the air and snuggling into place on the front row. ‘Fuck her, Mies. I want to see you stick it up!’