In her new novel “Getting Clear”, Ilona Hartmann describes the desperate attempt to leave the province behind.
The great thing about being young is all the first times. Drink tetra pack sangria for the first time until your teeth and tongue turn blood red. Having sex for the first time means awkwardly enduring your own embarrassment and then talking about it with pink cheeks so that others can attest to your step into adulthood. For the first time, tricking the closet doorman with a false ID card, scurrying past him proudly and relieved, as if you had just outsmarted a ticket inspector.
Then finally go down into this stuffy basement where it’s humming and finally experience this “legendary” club that everyone is raving about. Finally belong.
But what if these first times just don’t happen? If they only sparkle in the imagination: as a promising ideal from films – and as a painful contrast to one’s own uneventful youth?