Layover in Munich

I’m in Munich, a twelve hour delay out of Yerevan forcing me to spend the night. Alone, pissed off, and anxious to get back to Los Angeles, I watch a lightning storm light up the fields outside my hotel window. After a restless sleep, I pack my things and get on the shuttle back to Munich International Airport.

A few years earlier, I was in a karaoke bar in Koreatown. I was with my friend Sammy and a woman named Kathy. Kathy was having a bad day and wanting to momentarily forget her woes, insisted on singing songs from the 80’s.

I had met Kathy through a friend’s girlfriend, and became fond of her very quickly. I was drawn to Kathy’s personality. She was mean, sarcastic, funny, confident, and intelligent. She was several years older than myself, a fact she pointed out with frequency.

We often hung out at a coffee shop on Vermont Avenue, where she would complain about her day, her friends, her work, and so on as I played chess with the locals. This was a common occurrence, before the ubiquity of cellphones, where people would just meet at a place because that was the place to meet.

Stefane was another of the regulars at the coffee shop. A Bulgarian transplant to Los Angeles, a somewhat smarmy, if not well meaning man who also enjoyed playing chess. I was neither fond of Stefane, nor did I dislike the man.

Not at first anyway.

A short time passed, and after some encouragement from Sammy, I finally screwed up the courage to ask her out, an act I have always had difficulty doing. She kindly told me no, that she was seeing someone and that I was too young for her.

So we remained friends. And now we were in Koreatown singing Duran Duran, because something had happened, and Kathy did not want to talk about it, and being the sap that I am, wanted to be there for her.

Eventually the music stopped and reality set in. We were back at our cars, Sammy calling it a night, leaving us alone in the parking lot.

Finally she opened up. She had been seeing Stefane, but in secret, because he did not want to acknowledge their relationship. He didn’t think she was pretty enough to be with her in public.

I asked her why she would tolerate that. The answer was unexpected.

Apparently Stefane had a very large penis. Or she had a very small vagina. Or both. Whatever the case was, apparently when he would fuck her it felt like she was being torn apart. That feeling, she claimed, was worth the humiliation.

Now Stefane was publicly dating someone else, but he still wanted to sleep with Kathy. The conundrum, it seemed, was whether or not to continue.

I gave it a lot of thought, offered my opinion, then parted ways.

I never saw Kathy again.

I’m seated at the terminal waiting for my plane. People are coming and going. I wonder to myself what the chances would be to run into a familiar face on a random summer day, at the Munich International Airport.

A hand taps me on the shoulder. I turn around. There’s a hand holding a miniature chess board. I look up and see Stefane smiling. I punched him in the face.

Or, at least that's how I like to remember it.