KATJA

It is Friday and I am sitting in front of Brussels city hall, drinking beer and for the first time in the last 5 or so years simply enjoying my day. I shouldn’t be drinking any kind of alcohol because of my state and because I am on medication but I couldn’t help it. I ask you not to think that I am some kind of alcoholic, I am not. I hadn’t had any alcohol for at least one year and when I had it, it was also a beer, just one beer. Of all the people I know what alcohol can do to your soul, if you start taking too much. This beer reminded me of time I spent with my only girlfriend Katja. I was young, only 16 or so. She was one year older than me. She was the most beautiful girl I have ever met.

It was the winter of 1980. The first time I saw her was just in front of Bronx ZOO. I couldn’t help myself not to stare at her and she noticed. She came to me and told me that she likes my smile. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I didn’t even know that I was smiling. Girl walks up to the boy and actually starts speaking like she has no worries in the world. And she didn’t had any, she was the happiest person I met in my life, she was pleased with everything and got anything she wanted without ever being or acting rude. She is probably what kept me going over all these years, her happiness and her will for life and her way of showing everything in a good light. We were at this party one of the following years. We were drinking beer and having fun. This was the first time we made love. The biggest mistake of my life! I was and I still am a carrier for AIDS. It doesn’t affect me but I can transfer it to anybody who comes in sexual contact with me. When her parents found out that I had AIDS they fore bided me to ever see her again. And I didn’t. She died 15 years ago. She was a fighter. She fought the dieses for almost 15 years. My mother died the same year I found out Katja was infected. That year, 1984, everything in my life started going wrong and I never found a happy day or ever probably will in my life.