A new semester started. The girls were coming back into the hostel, R.K. too. In our relationship nothing changed, we carried on to the point we had to quit. We went out almost every night, we went to theathers and to opening parties of exhibitions, not really interested in the art of other artists but in the always great buffets. I mainly lived on that. She inspired me so much. I shooted a nine minutes 8mm film, she had the leading role in it, the only role. I called the short movie „up and down“ I shooted it at the academy. There was an elevator with a transparent glass door, of course the view from outside in it was blurred and alienated because of the patterned thick glass. The story was: R.K. went up and down in the elevator, till she fell in a claustrophobic panic and started to pantomime (the wall), caught in a transparency of a closed room. She went up and down for hours till the elevator came to a stop between two floors, and she really was caught in it. I intended to take this song from Laurie Anderson as soundtrack, her voice and the tempo of the song fitted just perfectly to the movements and to my thoughts about being caught in oneself, but also in reality. I just never cut the movie. I also shoot houndreds of photos of her, from her cosmic grey-blue-green eyes, from her perfect body. Some of the photos were published later in a gay journal. But she wasn’t gay, not really, not in her sexual habits and not in her lifestyle, and I still didn’t know, who I am.
One night we went to an alternative student party, and met independent from each other two guys, who were friends, and shared one room in a living community. We spent the night there, all in one room. As I woke up next morning, I hated and loathed myself infinitely. Suddenly I had the feeling, that R.K. was awake as well, and she watched me. I cleared out, quickly and silently. I was sitting for hours on a bench on the riverside of the Danube canal, watching the dirty grey-brown water, throwing chestnuts in the river, and tried to get rid of those awful bad feelings. Sitting there I got aware, that I cannot separate feeling from sexuality, my soul from my body anymore. I longed for being loved in all senses only from a woman. My perception was so crystal clear, my decision so definitely, the constant unrest, which I always carried around with myself, subsided slowly. I stayed consequently in my decision (till today), finallly I subdued my own homophobia. R.K. helped me to get MY coming out. But she herself made a different choice. Before long she got to know a painter, she dated him. I called him Pinocchio. He looked always scruffy. Our situation got pretty worse. One day she said „I don't want to feel your skin on my skin.“ But then she acted in a different way, so I didn’t understand anything, anymore. I didn’t know for what I should wait, if still I had to wait for anything at all. We didn’t talk to each other often for days, but then she did write desperated letters filling pages. "Where are you?"
LAURIE ANDERSON • THE SNAKE