Sugar On His Tongue – Fags In My Throat

How fondly do we remember the moments when a certain piece of music was the perfect soundtrack for a special event, or period in life. Listening to that song is often enough to make you taste a beautiful kiss, smell the scent of a velvet night that felt eternal, hear the nocturnal echoes of laughter and broken glass… But have you ever thought about the people surrounding you in that very moment, listening to the same song, just to let it go completely unnoticed? Have you ever thought of the people listening to the same piece of music without building a lovely and lasting memory? Or even worse- being left with a completely bad and twisted memory by it?

The song I’m talking about here is Sugar On My Tongue by the Talking Heads.

My friend Sandra had invited to a Saturday party in her parents’ house. Just a get together of a few friends, but everybody wanted to go there since her parents were the most liberal ones: we could smoke and drink there with just 15 years, and her parents never bothered us. I think I saw them 2 times in 6 years, it was as if Sandra and her two older sisters were controlling the house. Their mansion was hip and sophisticated like from a ’70s Woody Allen movie, and we would lay around on a huge flokati with cushions that was covering half of the living room, replacing the bourgeois couches we were used to. The chief-doctor and lawyer status of her parents convinced mine of the good influences I was exposed there, so they allowed me to go there occasionally, while for other parties I would have to sneak out of my window or bite on wood.

Sandra’s two slightly older sisters Tatjana and Nicole were cool and we always listened to their music. Both went into the Goth direction. With amateurish dyed hair and surrounded by a dark and miserable mood, they provided us with tapes of The Cure, Sisters of Mercy, Doors, Siouxsie and more. They would sometimes tell us younger kids to fuck off, but most of the time we could hang around with their friends, which was of course thrilling. I remember being very enamoured with one older guy from their grade back then, but I condemned myself to love him from a distance in a twist of teenage fatalism. Nevertheless, all the more interesting older boys could be encountered at Sandra’s place, which was always a reason for excitement.

I had started smoking one year ago with 14 years, around the same time when I had my very wonderful first kiss, pressed against a church wall. I don’t know how the one thing is connected to the other, kissing and smoking, but it would stay that way for the night I’m talking about, and its next day. My father drove me there and I talked him into picking me up at midnight instead of dinner time, and armed with a pack of red Gauloises and a Dead Boys record I entered my friends house. I remember The Cure’s Jumping Someone Else’s Train playing, wonderful, and a mixed crowd was gathered in the living room. I said ‘Hi’, grabbed myself a beer and went over to Nicole to inspect her records for the evening. I sat down on the flokati, more Cure was playing, and I thought of the boy who got my first kiss by making me a Cure tape.

I must had already gotten into some romantic mood when Thomas entered the room, with his most prominent feature being curly blonde hair, for which I have no weakness. I never had seen him before although apparently he went to the same school, two grades above me. And it wouldn’t have been a loss if I had never seen him, because honestly he was just a stranger walking in and who triggered neither good nor bad vibes inside of me. But Thomas knew me very well as I learned later- he had a crush on me for quite a while already. I had been his selected object of romantic fatalism and loving-from-a-schoolyard-distance, but now his moment had come.

Oh, oh, Oh, oh, she’s my neighbour
Fill my cup, I’ll bet you baby
She’ll fill it up
She’ll drop the sugar on my tongue
Will she gimme gimme gimme some?

Whenever our eyes met, he smiled at me. But no, it was no beautiful or special smile for me, so I thought to myself that he must be a really positive person and nodded back friendly. After a while he walked towards me and said ‘Hi’, with a smile again, and offered me a drink. The drink was a bottle of Blue Curacao that he had brought with him, a horribly carnevalesque party-drink. Here I was, watching all these films noir with melancholic men handling pure vodka or whiskey in their tumblers, when reality hit me hard. Thomas mixed it with orange juice and it became green. He tried to start interesting conversations, only it was not interesting, just very forced and luke-warm. I felt the affection he had for me but had nothing to give back. Not even a genuine laughter. But Thomas didn’t leave the place next to me, he kept pouring me drinks and asking questions in order to get to know me better. Who my teachers were.

She’s gonna put sugar on my tongue
She’s gonna gimme gimme gimme some
She’ll put it right there on my tongue
Put it right there on my tongue

I’m not sure why I kissed Thomas. Partly because I was still chasing my first kiss earlier that night maybe. And to dissolve the boring situation and turn it into something enjoyable I think. Isn’t it always better to kiss than to not kiss? I had also drunk half of the bottle of Blue Curacao.

The Talking Heads were playing with Sugar on My Tongue. It could be such a perfect song in the right moment that never came for me. The kiss was absolutely horrible, I can’t describe it. I don’t know what he did, but he managed to wet my entire face with his spit and the whole experience was just disgusting. I was shell-shocked and didn’t move, neither body nor mouth, but that was okay for him, he seemed very happy. Occasionaly, he would stop and look at me with a big, tender smile on his face until he focused back to my paralyzed, half-open lips. That went on for five minutes, but felt like an eternity of surreal confusion. Finally I came back to senses and did the only accurate thing – I stepped out to throw up in the bushes.

Thomas followed me, wanting to care and help, I kept telling him that I wanted to be alone. He blamed it on me being embarrased because I had thrown up, and he gave me a tender and understanding smile. Fuck! I was not rude since he had not been either, and in his terms he had done nothing wrong, but I wanted to get rid off him and out of there badly. I walked inside and called my father to pick me up. Thomas tried to make sure to see me again, I don’t know what I mumbled back before I vanished into the night, I just told him that I don’t want my father to see me with a guy when he arrived. That always worked with the German boys, it was unkown and intimidating territory for them, but it was also the truth.

I blended the kiss from hell out the moment I sat down in the car, because now I had to focus on acting sober in the company of my dad. Fortunately, it was just a ten minute drive. Later in bed I focused on sleeping, the taste of Blue Curacao and vomit helped.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t even have time to reflect on the incident. My mom told me to clean the windows. I grabbed the glas cleaner and cloth and opened my window, it was on the first floor and I could watch the bus stop right across the street. The 453 line arrived and let a few passengers out. „You fucking lunatic idiot“ is all I thought when the bus drove away and I saw Thomas standing there and looking at me. There comes trouble. How did he find out where I lived, and when? And how dare he walk up to my father’s house the very next day after a first kiss, repulsing or not? He’d kill him, and then me. This fucking idiot with no honor! Something had to be done.

Thomas walked across the street and towards my window, smiling of course. I was starting to sweat, looking anxiously at my door, expecting my mom or dad to open it any moment, only to see a pale German boy at my window. The end of the world! When Thomas arrived at my window I stared at him in disbelief, but he was visibly ‘over the moon’ and first thing he wanted to do was to give me a kiss. Oh my fucking god. I wanted to go on a rant right there, but I had no time and had to be silent, afraid to get caught by my parents. „Who’s she talking to?“. I put on a nervous smile and told Thomas to wait for me in front of the nearby school. He insisted and begged to get a kiss before he left, more time passing, and I started shaking already, so I gave him a quick kiss on the cheek before I closed the window. My heart was beating hard, but not as one with his- I was nervous and terryfied as if I just had escaped the police. I quickly cleaned the windows and told my mom that I had to step out.

Outside I composed myself. Thomas was obviously thinking that we were together after last night’s events, but I had no time to get my head around this delusion. He had my address and turned up in front of my parents’ house = he was a major threat that was not knowing what he was doing. I couldn’t even think about what my father would do with him, and that was not so important, since I was more concerned about what my father was going to do with me*. No way that I could let this happen for a repulsive kiss, I had to solve this elegantly. Only problem is that I had no time to make a plan. I had no plan and I’m not good in hurting people.

I smoked a cigarette on my way. I saw Thomas sitting on a bench in front of the school, and passed him and his open arms by while telling him to follow me- I didn’t want to be seen with him and directed him to a more secret spot in the school yard.

Thomas sat next to me on a bench and took my hand. Oh my fucking God. I took my hand away, but to not seem impolite I made it seem as if I did it to grab my pack of cigarettes. Of course that meant that I had to grab my pack and smoke a cigarette although I had just finished one. I was 15 and by no means a chain-smoker ususally. After I finished that cigarette, Thomas wanted a kiss and I coughed and grabbed myself another cigarette, and smoked that one too nervously. Thomas started to talk about the night before, how much he liked me, how beautiful I and everything was. I kept on smoking one after the other, every once in a while letting out a short, tortured answer of nothingness. Thomas tried to kiss me again, I lit up another cigarette. Thomas tried to hold my hand, I started searching my lighter. „You smoke a lot“ he said, not aware that I was just keeping my mouth locked and save from kissing.

When I grabbed my 11^th or 12^th cigarette, it exploded. Much later I found out that a friend had prepared it with a banger at the party the night before. It was the only moment where the mood and atmosphere eased up. But the moment it exploded, I threw it away in a slapstick move. Which meant that I had no cigarette in my hands, so I grabbed another one and lit it up, and that one exploded, too. My friend had prepared two of these, and their most surreal moment had come. It was then when I realized that this insanity had to stop, and reluctantly I gave Thomas his heartbreak. It’s never easy, no matter how bad it feels and how much of a nothing it all was. I tried to make it better by telling him that I just can’t be with him, whatever that means. I walked away with one cigarette left in my pack.

The story ends here. Suddenly, I started to notice Thomas in school. After a few weeks he stopped searching my eyes. But whenever I hear Sugar on My Tongue, I ask myself of what he feels when he hears it, and think about the strange and smoky proximity we shared that afternoon on the bench.

by Saliha Enzenauer

*a few years later a boy was caught serenading The Yardbirds’ For Your Love under Saliha’s window, he got chased away by her mom with flying plates. Rumor has it that she had a nervous and amused smoke, but also fell in love for the first time.