Owney

I was 29, a media designer in Dresden, and I’d stopped pretending to be the guy type. Football didn’t move me, cars were just transportation, and I was done with all that other stuff. What I wanted instead was romance tangled up with silliness—depth and realism and jokes all mixed together.

I listened to Kings of Convenience, William Fitzsimmons, Anna Ternheim. Beautiful music, completely useless for dancing. But I loved dancing. Give me a good club, a good DJ, and I’d stay on the floor for hours without stopping.

I wanted children. Two of them. Not someday—soon. I thought about full diapers and sleepless nights and the moment one of them called me Dad, and I was genuinely excited. Not resigned, not accepting it as part of the deal. Excited.

I was into women in sneakers. Red hair, green eyes, freckles—pick one or get all three. Someone who preferred *Brüder Löwenherz* to Dostoyevsky. Someone who agreed sex was underrated. Someone who’d fill the apartment with handmade things and play in the sandbox.

I bathed almost every day. I believed in magic. I had opinions about gummy bears and a multicolored right eye. At 29, I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t interested in being anything else.