TEXT: BRET
Charly: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Bret Dreschler! You are so old now it makes me feel very young. Me and Jutta will bring your present over later xxx
KIROKAZE
wallacepolsom

roma★
Jules of Nature
Peter Solarz
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

No title available
NASA
Sweet Seals For You, Always
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
we're not kids anymore.

titsay
No title available
occasionally subtle

pixel skylines

Andulka

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣

tannertan36

No title available
styofa doing anything

seen from Saudi Arabia

seen from South Africa

seen from Uzbekistan

seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands

seen from Indonesia

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from United States

seen from Armenia
seen from United States
seen from Cameroon
seen from Bulgaria

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Germany

seen from Türkiye
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
@fmlcharly-blog
TEXT: BRET
Charly: Alles Gute zum Geburtstag Bret Dreschler! You are so old now it makes me feel very young. Me and Jutta will bring your present over later xxx
Wilhelm is not open around a lot of people. But… he is my best friend and my brother, too. He can be shy, but do not get upset by it. That is just Wil. As for Dennis… there is not a lot to talk about. But Rosy will have a lot to say about her date. Her name is Lydia and she is a cheerleader from California. Rosy is very smitten.
I do not mean funny… sorry, I meant… cute?
No he is not, but that is okay. That’s such a sweet thing to say, I think Jutta is more like my sister than she is like my friend too. No I know, he is still nice to me. Okay, Jutta said things like there was a lot, but she might have been making it bigger in her mind. That’s very cool, I hope their date goes well.
Cute is better. Dankeschön.
That is a good idea. But you are right, they do look alike. I promise you that Wilhelm laughs. It is a very beautiful laugh, too. I see Jutta has been talking to Rosy, who I do love, but can not keep quiet for long. Has she told you about her date, yet?
Oh no! You looked very sweet. It was funny.
He doesn’t laugh a lot when I see him, sometimes I think he is shy about me, but I am not as loud as Jutta. But she is his sister, and I am just his sister’s best friend. Yes I think she has been, I will not talk about Dennis if you do not want me to. She has a date? That is so good, who is she dating?
I do not want to look funny.
She is. You do not want to get into that, Charly. You are a nice girl. And it is very illegal in most places. Just how they are so different. But you think my smile is nice? That is very kind of you. Your smile is nice too. But do not worry, I am rarely sad.
A little! Come here, I will get it.
No, no, I do not want to, I was just...hypothesising. If it is illegal then I will not do it. They are different, that is true, but I think they look similar, their eyes both crinkle when they laugh. But Wilhelm does not laugh as much as Jutta laughs. That is good. Even when you talk to Dennis? I heard Jutta saying she thinks he makes you sad, but I do not know who he is.
Thank you, if I went outside with that, that would have been embarrassing.
Jutta has been a very bad influence on you. Sometimes I see her, and I see Wilhelm, and I wonder. I am sorry. I will try to smile more in the future when I tell my jokes.
I can tell. You look like you are enjoying it a lot.
Jutta is wonderful, selling drugs would not be that bad, if I did not get caught. Because I think it is still illegal here in New Zealand. What do you wonder about them? You should smile, you have a nice smile. But not all the time, because then I would not know when you are sad, and then I can not cheer you up. Or try to.
It’s on my face isn’t it? I knew there was too much tomato sauce in here.
Would you have taken drugs if a kind man had wanted to sell them to you? Because that is when I need to start worrying about you, little Charly. And do not worry, it was only a joke. Did that not come across well?
Well, my food is your food. But that is not what you meant. I am very ok, I promise!
Maybe, if they were not that dangerous, I do not have to use them, I could sell them, or give them to someone I do not like. Oh, I thought so, sometimes you do not smile and then I cannot tell.
Ok then, but it is very good, you are missing a good sandwich.
You should not let kind strangers persuade you into alternative lifestyles, Charly. That is how the gay thing occurred for me, and it stuck.
No, no. Joking aside, please enjoy your bacon.
It is not like being vegetarian is dangerous! It could have been drugs, that would be bad. I do not think that is how being gay works, but you would know, not me.
You can have a bite, I do not mind. Your food is my food. Wait no, the other way around.
Three days is still very good! I am proud of you. I could not go three days without bacon.
The man at the vegan cafe was very nice and persuaded me, but I think he only wants to sell more qui-...quinoa I think it is? Bacon is too good, want some?
I was being a vegetarian for three whole days before now, but I forgot bacon was a pig, and now I have ruined it. But this sandwich is very good so I am going to enjoy it.
Charly liked working at The Busy Bean a lot. Mostly she thought that had to do with the fact that she got to work with her best friend. It was also a lot nicer than anything other job she’d worked back in Germany. She didn’t have to work night shifts, her boss didn’t yell at her, and she got paid by the rules set out in the law. It was also nice to work pretty much next door to the apartment she shared with Jutta, it meant that if she was ever late, or left her apron on her bed, she could just run home and get it. That tended to happen often. Living in Wellington had made her lazy, she could tell. But she liked it too much to let it bother her just yet. She liked having a bed and a room all to herself, she liked being able to stay up late with Jutta, curled up on the sofa watching those American sitcoms she liked that played on an almost endless repeat on the TV in New Zealand. She also liked living near Bret and Rosy, and Jutta’s brother Wilhelm, about whom she hadn’t made her mind up yet, mostly because he didn’t talk to her all that much, but she thought he seemed like a good sort though. She liked the beach too, and the rolling green hills, and the white peaks of the mountains that were sometimes visible through the sea mist across the harbour. She liked a lot of things about Wellington, but mostly she liked how far away it was from Essen and everything she’d left there.
At the end of her shift, she headed into the break room so she could untie her apron and pick up the guitar. Her hands were stained by half ground coffee beans and syrup, and she tried her best to wipe them on the towel in the small bathroom, so they wouldn’t dirty Friedhelm’s guitar. Though she got most of the mess off, the smell lingered so every time she moved her hands to her face she was caught off guard by the pungent scent of hazelnut and vanilla. Ever since she’d started working there she’d never been able to get the smell of the coffee shop out of her hair, and sometimes it gave her a headache, like she was gaining a caffeine overdose from inhalation alone. The Busy Bean was still as crowded as its name would suggest, many people stopping off on their way home from work and school, but mostly they ignored Charly as she made her way to the small stool and microphone that her boss had set out some time earlier. Playing there wasn’t like performing, with everyone’s eyes fixed on her so she was some deer caught in a proverbial set of headlights, once she started playing, her voice and her strumming just became another part of the hubbub of the coffee shop. She preferred it like that, the idea of playing on her own made her feel uncomfortable just from the thought. She liked to be able to drift from one song to the next, her mind almost entirely empty, like she was trapped in a huge bubble where she couldn’t be disturbed by anything else. In that sense, it was a lot like meditation she supposed, only she didn’t feel nothing, sometimes she felt such a quiet joy she thought her heart might burst, and other times a melancholy settled in her bones that was so heavy it was hard to lift her finger to pick out even the simplest of melodies. The only other person she let into this bubble in her mind was Jutta, who watched her from the counter, smiling at her encouragingly, bobbing her head along if she liked a particular song, and sometimes sticking her tongue out at her best friend and pulling faces in an attempt to distract and make her laugh. Which always almost worked.
Usually she tended not to look at the customers when she played, but that particular evening, she couldn’t shake the sense that someone other than her best friend had entered her little bubble and was actually paying attention to what she was doing. Slowly, so she didn’t distract herself from the chords she was meant to be playing, she peered around the room, trying to find who was watching. Standing in the corner, by a stand which held coats and hats, was a boy, around the same age as her, possibly a little younger, watching her quite closely, his eyes flicking from the hand she had around the neck of the guitar, to the one that she was using to strum with. Shaking her head a little, she returned to her music, figuring he was just curious, and would leave once he’d finished his drink. At seven, when she usually finished up, she played one last song, a German folk song she’d been taught at school, about a solider separated from his love, only allowed to return to her when she fell gravely ill. The song perhaps wasn’t the right mood for a sunny Thursday evening, but it was unlikely that anyone but Jutta could understand what she was saying, and without the meaning of the words, the song sounded soothing and only a little mournful. It was only as the song was ending that she realised the boy was still there, still watching her play. Frowning lightly, she picked up the guitar, with every intention to sit in the backroom with it until Jutta was done and then they would walk home together. But halfway there she changed her mind, and a little like her feet were working of their own accord, she made a beeline for the boy still stood by the hatstand.
“Is there something you would like?” she asked him, balancing the guitar on the floor between them, and placing her hands on the head. He was not as tall as she had expected, which made her feel a little better, since she was vaguely worried he was looking for trouble. Trouble she thought she could handle, but only if she was able to hit trouble round the face with Friedhelm’s guitar.