About the creepy thrill of spending the night
As a child, my greatest fear was also my greatest joy: spending the night at a friend's house. I was often so excited that I would get a stomach ache the night before and my mum would call my parents to cancel. My body rebelled, just as wild animals restlessly leave their nesting places before strong earthquakes. And at the same time, I longed for what frightened me: the foreign, the uncertain, the different.
Spending the night in someone else's house was like travelling to a foreign country. I wonder what it's like to have parents who love each other? (Mine were divorced.) Living with four people in a two-bedroom flat? Or three in a villa?
People, I learnt, can pretend to you for the duration of a night out, but if you stay overnight, you gain insight into something mysterious: the emotional lives of other families. Because it's hard to keep mood swings under control for long periods of time. It was often the fathers or older brothers whose moods I was afraid of, but the mothers could also be strange: indifferent, depressed, flighty.
Some parents argued unrestrainedly in front of us, others moaned at night, some ran a strict regime reminiscent of North Korean re-education camps, others let us watch adult films and brought us cartons of ice cream.
Overnight stays give you an insight into the weak points of other families. They make the others more human and therefore you too.
The otherness made me feel safe at home, but sometimes I was also struck by the terrible thought that other people's families seemed a little happier and more boisterous than my own.
I moved through the family like an explorer. Everywhere there were traces of habits, signs of sensitivities, hints of quirks. I rummaged through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom in search of strange medications. What did it mean that some of them hadn't unrolled the toilet paper from the front to the back?
I was particularly surprised when I discovered the television under a pink cloth in a Rudolf Steiner household. The bedroom in particular aroused our interest. The shamelessly opened issue of Penthouse next to the parents' marital bed, the torn open condom packet on the bedside table in another household. «How do these people live?» I asked myself with a pounding heart.
But I wasn't just a voyeur; I was also a survivor. Because when darkness fell and I heard my friend's steady breathing, fear crept up inside me. I lay in bed wide awake, overwhelmed by my new surroundings, helplessly at the mercy of my own imagination. The night without sleep is a magnifying glass. A loose thought develops the suction of a black hole, the smallest worry becomes an eight-headed monster, the slightest plan an unbearable burden.
I learnt at that moment that even a stranger can comfort you.
At one point, the door opened and my boyfriend's mum came in. She squatted down next to my mattress, stroked my head and spoke to me in a foreign language. I learnt at that moment that even a stranger can comfort you.
Overnight stays give you an insight into the weak points of other families. They make the others more human and therefore you too.
