Ulrike Draesner

GINA REGINA

It was Saturday lunchtime and it wasn’t raining for a change. When it rained, even in town, the gutters ran with torrents of birch pollen tea. Via her sinuses and nasal cavity, Gina’s brain was far too closely connected with the rest of her head which, although the rain had let up, still tasted of birch pollen soup and itched like hell. Spring had arrived swinging its colourful bag of allergies. A cocktail on the skin, an extra shot of Mother-Drug-Nature. Gina selected Volcano Red from the colour chart and took a seat in the waiting room.

Outside the window, Day-Glo green cranes swayed, frozen in a hunchbacked pose, a tough challenge for the afternoon red, a half-hearted attempt at an orgiastic glow. Varnished nipples were the latest big thing, freshly imported from Japan.

You didn’t varnish them yourself, you had them varnished, for example in Volcano Red. The woman next to Gina on the waiting room bench at the nipple varnishing studio was wearing pale yellow linen shoes. Gina was relieved, someone like that wouldn’t pinch him, her sweetheart, this Gordian whose ears had a hole at the upper edge – there was just a chunk missing as if it had been chewed off in the womb. Maybe that was why he was so handsome – to compensate. He wore white shirts over his Gordian chest that was quite smooth and free of hair, existing only to tie knots in the hearts of people like Gina by means of eager pressing together of sternums. For weeks now Gina had been puzzling it over: what on earth had happened? The guy’s Vicks-blue eyes flashed so much that she’d have liked to suck on them, but before Gina could ponder this any further, her name was called. A minute later, she willingly slumped back into the lap of a giantess with black curly hair who was already tenderly rolling the spraycan between her hands.