It was Lent, the bleak post-winter season that preceded real spring, and Berlin was gray. 19-year-old Klaus Heinz von dem Eberbach stared unseeingly at the Wall, ignoring the Saturday foot traffic of other curious souls who came up the Wilhelmstrasse to spend minutes or hours staring at the frontier.

He hadn’t come to this spot on purpose; he wasn’t in Berlin for philosophy or politics, this time. He had seen the Wall before.

He’d never seen it from the other side.

The impulsive jaunt to Berlin had seemed so simple, when Manfred had first proposed it. Their last-year Gymnasium studies were demanding but well in hand. Carneval was nearly a month past and Easter still weeks distant. They deserved a rest from school, from the restrictive atmosphere in Köln. They two and Heinrich and Thomas would take a Friday holiday and go to Berlin, where Lent was less absolute and the nightclubs never closed.

And there would be, Manfred had said, girls. Klaus turned away from the Wall and walked grimly back down the gray street. Away, anywhere away.

Well, there had been girls.

Berlin, especially the Kreuzberg district, was a riot of color and light in the evening, Lent or no. Here under the Wall the clubs were lively, the music livelier, the stage shows exceedingly licentious. Everyone moved to a fast tempo, as if to hold back the dark by action.

How had it happened? Last night?

* * * * *

The four of them, Manfred in the lead, established themselves at a table in the Club Lulu. It was, Manfred said, the place to be in Kreuzberg. And why not? The drinks were decent, the scenery interesting. After a second glass of schnapps, Klaus abandoned Manfred’s pretensions and returned to beer. He did not want to become too drunk to know his surroundings, and in any case, he liked beer. Thomas, the youngest of the party by a small margin and the brightest by a larger one, grinned across the table and followed Klaus’s lead.

The club was crowded with people, couples and singles, all dressed for an evening’s pleasure. Thomas eyed the dancers, few as yet, with evident interest. The club had a great deal to offer besides drinks.

Manfred, momentarily absent on an errand Klaus had not bothered to decipher in the bustle of noise, returned just then. With girls. "This is Lise," said Manfred, of a slim, very fair creature with pale curls and blushing decolletage. "And Margreta," of darker gold hair and long legs in a short black dress. "And Yvette," of a dark-haired, smiling girl who might well be French. "Lise," he went on, "these are my friends, even the solemn one here." He clapped Klaus on the back. "Sit with us and see if you don’t like them, all of you."

The girls settled themselves, Lise between Klaus and Manfred, Margreta with Thomas. Someone sat on Klaus’s other side. Yvette seemed to have chosen Heinrich, off at the farther reaches of the table, and everyone was ordering more drinks from the sequined, harried—but laughing—waitress. Klaus tried to catch Thomas’s eye, but Thomas’s attention was all on Margreta. Klaus ordered the next variety of beer on the Club Lulu’s list of "exotics," for himself, and left it at that.

"Do you think I could try one of those too?" asked a throaty voice from his left. Klaus looked, and saw a thicket of tumbling red curls, a spangled dress that was curiously demure and a sharp, dark-browed little face. The accent was pure Berlin. She leaned closer. "I don’t think we were quite introduced. I’m Renée. I’ve never had Sapporo beer before."

She would do well enough, Klaus thought. She liked beer. She wasn’t gushing at him. Yet. And she was … interesting. Well. "Two Sapporo," he said to the waitress, whose amusement had only increased during the exchange.

"Thanks," said Renée with a sharp little smile. "What’s your favorite when you’re not experimenting?"

"I’m Klaus Heinz," said Klaus. "We’re all from Kö1n, and I like the Kölsch, but really dark beer can be better…"

And the evening, unexpectedly, improved.

* * * * *

The Berlin afternoon was sunny and gray. Klaus walked past shops and foodstalls and drinking places. Past the vacant remains and bare tracks of a destroyed train station, toward crowds and more shops on the other side.

It wasn’t any good to blame Manfred. He very much hoped Manfred hadn’t known Renée was one of the group with Lise. He wondered if Lise knew Renée at all. Perhaps not. She had merely sat down next to him, as though she belonged there.

Abstractedly, Klaus became aware that he was dodging pedestrians and forcing them to dodge him, in the thick of the weekend shoppers. Where could he go to walk by himself? The Tiergarten, he thought vaguely. That would be north of here. No one would find him there, until he was ready to face Manfred and the others again.

It hadn’t been Manfred who threw Renée into his arms, though Manfred had not warned them what kind of place it was. Clearly, Manfred’s standards of entertainment were looser than Klaus had expected. What had Manfred known, anyway? What had he and the others seen in Club Lulu?

Whatever it was, Klaus wanted to be able to avoid it, and to do that, he had to know what it was. Last night, all he’d known was that this was the most interesting to date of his several forays into the world of socializing with women.

* * * * *

By late evening the music had become riotous, the drinking and laughter likewise. Lise, draped on Manfred’s shoulder, ignored Klaus almost completely, and Margreta had taken Thomas off to dance, so he turned without regret to Renée. They shared three brands of beer Klaus had never heard of, two of which they agreed no one should have to drink. Renée liked the third. Klaus decided he liked it too.

Renée didn’t seem to have any notions about dancing and Klaus, relieved, was content to stay at the table listening to her odd, throaty voice, replying to her questions. He didn’t like to look at her too often or too hard; it seemed a bit obvious. Forward. Just because Manfred and Lise were all over each other and Thomas and Margreta were making an exhibition on the dance floor, didn’t mean Klaus had to do the same.

Heinrich and Yvette also paid attention to hardly anything beyond each other, Klaus noticed, and when Renée’s chair was somehow jostled quite close to his own, he knew it was time to put an arm around her waist.

So he did. It felt… nice. Lithe, but solid, without the terrifying fragility of (what had been her name?) Marya, from one of Manfred’s previous parties. Maybe he did feel forward. Maybe it was time to.

Earlier expeditions, in Köln for the most part, had made Klaus aware of the unwritten protocol for such situations. It was a fairly straightforward exercise: One found a girl who seemed to like you, one pushed the acquaintance by stages into physical intimacy throughout the evening, and if neither of you cried off, one took the girl to a private room—hers, yours, or hired—for the remainder of the night. As a conscientious mechanical exercise for a rather specific reward, Klaus could appreciate the procedure. He had nothing against girls as such, though the conversation tended to be frivolous.

Renée’s conversation was frivolous. That wasn’t different. Nor was her smiling acceptance of his attention anything strange after Marya and (had it been one or two?) whoever the others had been. Renée was perhaps more eager than conscientious about it, which encouraged Klaus. He was here to abandon certain proprieties; if she was too, so much the better.

Well. Was it late enough to leave yet? Manfred and Lise, by the look of them, would do so very soon. Klaus did not think his own preference for decorum in public meant that he would be less enthusiastic in private. Not this time.

Margreta and Thomas, laughing with exertion, came back to the now rather quiet table. Thomas included Klaus and Renée in his burst of general good will, but Margreta eyed Renée consideringly, then Klaus, then gave him an odd little smile. Klaus didn’t know quite what to make of it, but it was Thomas’s problem, he thought.

* * * * *

He’d walked past another stretch of ground still scarred by the war a quarter-century past. Like Berlin. Like Germany. Everything was gray, but at least it was quiet here.

What was wrong with him? Why was he brooding about himself when there was lifetimes’ worth of work to be done? What was different now, really?

Klaus was glad he wasn’t at home, either at school or at Eberbach. Eberbach, just at the moment, would have been worse, but he’d hardly have gotten into a problem like this at home, now would he? What would his father say? Klaus paused, staring at a mass of winter-bare trees. What had his father said? That true men didn’t indulge in such vices, and that he hardly expected Klaus to find any temptation in them. It would be quite beneath an Eberbach.

Perhaps it was. Of course it was. But the temptation had been so effortless that Klaus could not recall having resisted it at all.

What should he do? Now? Ever? If he couldn’t even stop himself, what kind of person was he? Could he have stopped, at any point? Stopping just hadn’t seemed possible.

* * * * *

At the hotel, Heinrich and the sleek little dark-haired girl… Yvette… disappeared into Heinrich’s room. Down the corridor, another door closed behind Lise and Manfred. Klaus did not look at his companion as he opened his room’s door, though her grip on his free arm was comforting. Klaus had never thought the short stroll from club to hotel could seem so unbearably long.

Ever since the group of them had risen from the table at Club Lulu, and Renée had nodded assent to his pro forma query, Klaus had been in a state of intense anticipation. He did not know what had been missing from the previous occasions, but now he knew why Manfred was so ready to set up parties like this. It was not mechanical, not conscientious. He couldn’t imagine why Thomas and Margreta had chosen to go off to another club, no matter how good the dancing was said to be.

He closed the door behind himself and Renée and looked briefly around the neat, impersonal room before turning back to her. He wondered how to tell her she was exciting and desirable and he wanted—

"Let’s not waste any time," she said, before he could speak. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes, leaned against him without letting go of his arm and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

It was terribly unfeminine and not at all what a well-brought-up girl would do. Klaus responded immediately, heat surging through his body. If Renée was as eager as he was, if she knew how to go about—the thought was strange but exciting—having him, then… Her kiss was hard, teasing him with the directness of her intentions.

Frozen by desire, he held Renée almost gingerly, returning the kiss, and wished he knew what the next move should be. Her spangled dark cloud of a dress didn’t seem to have any obvious fastenings. Even in flaming arousal, Klaus knew that tearing it off would strain most girls’ ardor. He wasn’t sure Renée was like most girls. It didn’t seem necessary to remove most girls’ clothes with any haste. But, he hardly wanted to risk stopping this before it started.

While he hesitated, Renée tugged at his suit jacket, plucked at his shirt, and began undressing him. It was shocking, delightful, and easily the best thing that could have happened at this moment. It progressed rather rapidly, between more kissing and Renee’s expressions of interest in the whole of his person.

They got as far as the edge of the bed, half his clothes discarded on the floor in Renée’s abandon, before Klaus recovered enough initiative to grasp her shoulders, to hold her still for a moment, and try to kiss her again himself. "You’re wonderful," he told her, when he’d finished.

Her dark, gamine brews wiggled enticingly at him. "I know. But you’re going to be wonderful, too, handsome. I can just tell." She reached for his trousers, pushed the opening wide—somehow it was already unfastened—and began performing unspeakable rites of lust with her gold-dusted fingernails. Delicately.

He gasped in surprise and more. "But—" he began.

She looked up at him, let one hand travel admiringly up his stomach to push him into a seat on the bed. Her very red lips parted to say, "I know what I want." Then, she bent to use them on his erect penis.

Klaus, unprepared for this event in his wildest dreams, could do nothing but absorb the sensation. Wet-hot assurance took over all possible avenues of thought; he leaned back on his hands to keep from falling and let his legs relax, apart as far as his half-dressed state permitted, so that Renée could go on doing anything she wanted. He heard himself moan, between gasps.

Her mouth took him, faster and harder than he’d ever known was possible; no permutations of the sex he’d ever experienced could be anything like this. He was peaking, pushing for more, being held down by amazingly strong hands… and that, too, was part of the excitement. After a long moment he held himself back, shuddering, and let her bring him to the climax.

It was totally improper and certainly sinful. It was the most important thing in the world.

He realized, slowly, that it was over, mostly. Renée’s auburn head was still buried in his crotch, and when he looked, he could see her red-stained lips around his shaft, slowly pulling upward to release it as it softened. Mouth still on him she looked up, and Klaus felt himself blush, face as heated as his body had been moments before.

She released him at last and grinned like a gargoyle. "Tasty," she said huskily. "I knew you’d be good, Klaus Heinz." She gave his unresisting body a tiny push, and he lay back at last, vaguely aware that she was taking off his shoes and socks and, finally, the trousers and few underclothes left to him. Even more vaguely it occurred to him that she was still fully dressed, or had been at his last clear sight of her, sometime just before that incredible, all-encompassing climax.

* * * * *

The memory of that first climax burned in Klaus’s thoughts as he walked unseeing through gray Lenten quiet in the Tiergarten. How could it have happened? How could he have let it happen? And yet, he knew that if he were offered the same experience again with full knowledge of the aftermath, he would still have taken it in the heat of arousal. Oh, yes, he could be sure of that.

He had never considered himself weak-minded, poorly self-disciplined, or unable to control his desires. Proof to the contrary left him shaken, unsure of his world. Nothing could have stopped him, in those moments under Renée’s mouth. He couldn’t think of anything that might have stopped him from going on afterward. He was glad, in fact, even now, that Renée had gone on with it, glad he knew the extremes of pleasure that he could never again admit to, or repeat.

He did not think his frame of mind could be called repentant. He wasn’t sorry for the night. Not yet. He was merely aware that it should never have happened, and mustn’t happen again. He’d have given nearly anything to know that it hadn’t happened—anything except the fiery memory that was his only warning that it was possible, and therefore a danger.

It had not seemed important, before today, that the Church called lust a deadly and treacherous sin. He had not believed any fleshly pursuit, before last night’s, would ever trouble his soul.

He could not have stopped himself; worse, he would not have. He’d known enough at the time to be aware of his worst transgression, and he’d gone on regardless. And the remembering itself was guiltily pleasurable. He could hardly declare himself ready to atone for it, yet.

* * * * *

Sounds of cloth and then of bare skin occurred outside Klaus’s range of vision, until he considered, muzzily, that it might be appropriate to look at Renée while he had the chance. He raised his head, but before he could find her in the room, the lamp was turned out.

That placed her for him. "Are you—"

"I’m here." She was back at the bedside, a pale blur in the darkness. Klaus squinted at it. The shape was a bit… spare? No matter. The slim-muscled arms closest to him as she leaned onto the bed could go with the small-bosomed type of girl he seemed to like. And he knew he liked Renée. Whatever she had, he liked it…

She leaned closer and the chest seemed really flatter than was necessary, but he wouldn’t let it trouble him. He half-turned and reached for her, to pull her against him in the bed for what he couldn’t quite believe was a second round. It had been so… so fast, so unreal, with none of the tedious effort needed, in his few past experiences, to build up to proper sex with a girl. Renée in his arms, her pointed tongue invading his mouth again, was incitement enough to make a second, perhaps more normal, bout of sex imminent. It would not be tedious, he felt sure. Not this time.

Their bodies molded together, Renée’s arms going around him, hands moving on his back… she was downright thin, but wiry. Very wiry for a girl… A leg slid between his, and something wasn’t right there… Renée’s mouth was back on his, busy and distracting, and Klaus almost ignored the strangeness in his new arousal, as their bodies pressed and shifted together.

The busy mouth swooped down to his neck and began working down his chest, but Klaus knew something was wrong. Or at least, unaccounted for. "Renée? You’re You’re not … What are you?"

An unerring hand found his groin and coaxed him further into hardness. Klaus remembered the gold fingernails, the red mouth. The husky, throaty voice. From the dark that same voice—how he not known what it meant?—said, "I’m Tiresias, tonight. What do you want me to be?"

Klaus, still very aroused, let that confuse him for long enough that the soft warm lips could fasten on his and swallow his next question, and the knowing hand on his erection could make all questions seem unnecessary. He’d never felt like this in his life, and if the proper reaction was to stop, Klaus was not sure he wanted to do the proper thing. Not yet. Not at all.

The other tongue pulled back from trying to devour his and the slim, hard body pressed against him, half on top of him, for an intoxicating moment. Klaus gasped; he didn’t speak, couldn’t speak.

"Good," whispered the voice from the dark, and the mouth went roaming down his chest, playing with his senses to keep him from thinking.

Klaus didn’t want to think. Careful to think of nothing, he let his hands explore the stranger in his bed, feeling the lithe flow of limbs as René turned to reach for Klaus’s erection with an irresistible mouth. Klaus, sightless, delirious with sensation, stroked whipcord thighs, bony knees… smelled a half-familiar, male-scented musk.

He had no intention of thinking, but he was curious. Not thinking, Klaus let his fingers wander up René’s legs, let them feel the flesh that grew there. Rene moaned, and the tongue caressing Klaus paused for a moment.

Klaus wanted… he wouldn’t think it. He set his hands around the invisible but very tangible evidence of just what René was and found it in the dark with his tongue. Kissed it, as though he were kissing René’s mouth, and pushed deeper to feel more of it, surround it. He felt René’s mouth surround him in turn and knew the joining of body to desire, desire to action, that wiped away all reality.

He was aware—mouth and hands, groin and racing pulse—of what he did. He was dimly aware of giving pleasure as well as taking it, and more concretely aware of a strange, intimate taste and a very full mouth. The double involvement multiplied his excitement, and René’s moan vibrating up his spine multiplied it again. Whatever he tasted then had no description, and neither did the intensity of the orgasm that, moments later, drained him empty and nearly unconscious.

He regained awareness only to know that he was close to sleep, and that sleep was the only possible course for him.

* * * * *

The Siegessäule, commemorating a Prussian victory a century old, thrust its awesome sixty-odd meters into the sky. Klaus remembered that his great-grandfather had helped win that victory, and wondered what he hoped for his own life. He had never wanted to avoid the path of school, army, honorable public service, laid out for him by generations of his family. He knew it would not include or permit any Renés.

The Church, too, did not permit such a thing. Klaus was a Catholic and intended to remain one. Confession and atonement was the only path away from sin, the only possible course for the immediate future. Klaus’s previous disinterest in worldly pleasure left him unable to estimate what penance could remedy his current state of ill grace, but he was sure it would be severe. Sex like that was wrong. It was unnatural and forbidden.

It had made every other sexual experience he’d ever had—not that the list was extensive—completely trivial.

Was that why it was forbidden? Klaus stared eastwards down the straight, broad avenue that led again to the Wall. Because, for however brief a time, it overrode all aspects of human civilization and spiritual awareness? Klaus supposed the world would collapse rather quickly if everyone were too busy in bed to do any work. He’d thought of nothing else since this morning. Would he ever be able to stop remembering, in groin-pulsing detail, the precise delineation of this justly forbidden sin?

Klaus hunched into his jacket and walked on, heading for a thicker patch of the leafless woods. Which direction was he going? The sun was more than half down, and he should find his way back to Kreuzberg and the hotel before night. He’d think of something to tell Manfred and the others, some excuse not to go out with them tonight.

Perhaps he could find a church on the way, to sit in and think for a while. All the walking just sent his mind in circles, from René to himself, from himself as he was to himself as he should be, from the irresistible heat of arousal to the unbearable heat of shame, from yesterday to today.

René had caused it, and René was a malicious little prankster at best—and perverted, of course—but it hadn’t been René’s fault. Klaus was quite aware of that. His own actions were what damned him.

* * * * *

Klaus woke to the awareness of warmth beside him, weight against him; he was sharing the bed. With the girl from Club Lulu, yes… but…

Klaus whipped over and began a long, cold, morning look at his partner of the night before. René, apparently unruffled at being wakened so suddenly—if he’d been asleep—looked back through the dark smudges of makeup remaining around his eyes.

Klaus pulled back the blanket and sheet, to make quite sure. He couldn’t think. René was definitely male. Young and thin, but…

It just wasn’t possible. Klaus looked around the room and saw a swathe of misty gray-black gauze shot with sparks of gold covering the nearer chair. It had to be a dress, the dress Renée had worn… René… He looked back down at the person who had worn the dress.

Flat on his back, 20 centimeters shorter and tens of kilos lighter than Klaus, René returned the look with equanimity. He seemed neither frightened nor repulsed, and under the cool, neutral gaze, Klaus did not know how to begin. At last he thought of a question. "Who’s Tiresias?"

"Ahhh…" René sat up and let the mattress throw him toward Klaus, where he clung for support and pulled Klaus into a slow kiss. After that, there was no avoiding the slide into a long, body-to-body embrace that suggested more pleasures to come. Klaus had no ability to resist. Not yet. The feel of wiry slimness against him and under his hands spurred him on, and even the odor of previous passion did not deter him; the weight that pressed and rubbed at his crotch, stirring new fire and recent, heated memories, could not be ignored.

It built without Klaus’s volition, drifting from easy arousal to uneasy search for release. Klaus remembered what he wanted to feel, but didn’t know how to ask for it.

René’s voice sounded in a throaty, genderless whisper: "Want to fuck me?"

Klaus’s penis leapt, suddenly twice as hard and twice as hungry. He was shocked speechless, and he could think of nothing but the promise in René’s words.

"Okay," husked the voice. Lips and teeth played over Klaus’s ear. "Here’s what we do …"

Klaus, dazed, let himself be directed to new depths of depravity, where embarrassingly explicit instructions and endearments became customary, necessary for their goal. He discovered in himself a frightening ability, even willingness, to take pleasure in René’s body, as he never had in a woman’s, without regard for the consequences. René urged him on, never asked for ease or gentleness, but Klaus knew he could not have given either, could not have stopped for any reason.

Knowing he was out of control, shuddering with horror and relentless desire, he drove himself to oblivion in René’s body, heeding neither René’s cries nor his own. It was not something he could ever have done with a woman.

Afterwards he didn’t open his eyes, and only moved to let René free himself. René’s warmth and weight disappeared, and noises sounded from the bathroom. Klaus wondered how long he could refrain from thinking about any of this. And what he would feel like when he did start to think.

* * * * *

Klaus sat and stared at the distant altar in its subdued Lenten dress, at the crucifix and all the medieval panoply of religion. He didn’t know what he was. Was he sorry for last night? And this morning? He knew, with great certainty, that he shouldn’t do it again. He intended to make sure no circumstance would ever give him the opportunity to repeat it. That would be the only safety.

And with that sincere determination, he decided, he was ready to give the sin over to God. He knew, without wanting to think about it, that repentance of the act did not prevent him desiring it; but he would not act on that desire. For the good of his soul. For all of his life. It was a bleak prospect, but it was the only one he could imagine living with.

He got up and looked for the confessionals. In all but Christian name, he was truly anonymous here; it was something to be grateful for. The patient, anonymous ear of God was his only chance of salvation.

* * * * *

One couldn’t call it thinking, precisely, but Klaus was more in possession of his usual mind by the time the bathroom door opened and René finally returned, clean and naked. Klaus had pulled the bed into some kind of order, covering the worst of mess they had made in the night. He sat on the rumpled, but clean, spread.

René looked very young without the disguising glamour of make-up. Tabling everything else, Klaus asked, "How old are you?"

"Does it matter? I’m eighteen." A touch defensive, for the first time.

The claim might be exaggerated—probably it was—but Klaus only cared that René understood what he’d been doing. The question was ludicrous; without Rene none of it would have happened.

"Why did you do it?" Klaus asked him, tense with misery.

"Do what? Come back here with you? You asked me. Screw with you? You weren’t about to stop."

"But why did you?"

"I wanted to," said René. His froth of dark-red hair was a damp tangle; he sat on the floor beside his purse and dug out a miniature hairbrush. "Didn’t you?" He glanced, coquettishly, at Klaus from behind an errant lock.

"I don’t know," said Klaus. "I didn’t know that you were… a boy."

René raised one untidy eyebrow, clear now of hair. "You didn’t? When?"

"Not at first," said Klaus, doggedly. "I wouldn’t have…"

"No?" asked René, smiling. "Knowing didn’t seem to stop you. Rather the reverse, hmm?" He let his dark eyes slide over Klaus. "You’re a fast learner, then. A natural. You certainly didn’t leave me cold."

"I shouldn’t have done it. It was wrong."

The mouth—moist and still close to true red, even now—opened wide as René laughed. "Wrong? What’s that?" He put down the hairbrush and rose to his feet to come over to the bed. "Is this wrong, Klaus Heinz?" He sat next to Klaus and pulled one of Klaus’s hands to his waist, leaned in to kiss him.

It was terribly seductive. René, stripped of all mystery and art, still called to Klaus’s senses with desire, with a siren pleasure no woman s embrace had ever hinted was possible. The leap in his exhausted groin did not catch fire, but Klaus knew it would only be a matter of time. He pushed René away, relishing the chance to touch even as he tried to put it beyond reach. "No. It’s not something I should do." He’d used that argument once already. "It’s not something you should do."

René pulled away at last. "You’re a fine one to talk. Don’t tell me what to do."

"Just stay away from me. Don’t make me…"

"Oh, but I did, sweetheart, didn’t I?" purred René. Nevertheless, he started picking up unfamiliar garments from the chair and floor. "There was nothing wrong, believe me. It was marvelous for you, wasn’t it?"

Klaus said nothing. Watching René dress made him far more uncomfortable than seeing René naked.

"Wasn’t it? I was there, remember. You—"

"You were the most desirable girl I’d ever met," said Klaus flatly.

"Ah-ha!" René paused, the black-and-gold dress trailing from one hand.

"And you were… the most…"

"I was the best you’ve ever had," said René. It was true. "What’s the problem? Would you like me better as a girl? I can put the dress back on, you know. Then you could take it off me… any way you like…"

Klaus closed his eyes. "Please go away," he said. "Get dressed and go."

René’s voice came closer. "Why? We both liked it. Where’s the harm?"

Klaus couldn’t think. It was wrong. It had been wrong. He didn’t know what he’d do now, but René could have no part in it. "René…"

"Good, I hoped you’d remember my name."

"…we shouldn’t have done it. Never. You shouldn’t have… been dressed like that at all."

"You liked it."

Klaus opened his eyes and stared at him in desperate anger. "Please. Go."

"Why?" He’d put the dress on, and looked very much like a girl again.

"Away. Before I forget you’re a girl."

"Oh, threats is it? Just remember who started it, and went on with it, and," René said with a certain satisfaction, "who finished it."

"Yes, I know," said Klaus. "Remembering is my problem. Please just leave." He bowed his head and looked down at his hands.

"Klaus Heinz." The voice, still Renés, suddenly was definitely a boy’s.

"What?"

"Do you really mean you’re upset because I’m a boy and you’re a boy and you didn’t know until last night that two boys can make it? And make it good?"

Klaus, stunned, merely repeated, "Can make it… good…" He couldn’t look up.

"I am leaving. And I’m not sorry just because you are. But…" He hesitated a second, "if you stop being sorry, come find me again. I’m always at the hottest club in Kreuzberg." The voice had retreated to the door. "Oh, and I really am eighteen now. Today’s my birthday."

The door clicked and clicked shut again on emptiness.

END