The pink Addidas training pants were skintight and I especially noticed the young lady’s crunchy bottom as she walked past me next to her boyfriend or brother. They both looked so poorly in their Addidas dresses and it seemed strange to me that such a pretty young girl with such well-groomed hair and obviously well-groomed make-up was wearing such cheap and from my point of view embarrassing clothes. I somehow couldn’t avert my eyes, as if from an accident, and I looked for stains on her clothes, because it seemed only logical to me that someone who chose such ridiculous clothes would perhaps also not wash his clothes in an absurd way. Unwashed, unkempt. It would have been only logical, but I could only detect a sluggishness and apathy in their walk. But the young lady was somehow sympathetic to me without me being able to say exactly why. Maybe she did it out of solidarity with her apparently dumb companion, to whom this outfit seemed to fit obviously, even though his three-day beard and hairstyle were cut in a workmanlike jagged fashion. I couldn’t deny that this strange indecency with which a young lady defaced herself like that made me somehow horny. I let these thoughts circulate for a while and thought about the life she had to lead and whether she dressed in such an adapted way to not be the centre of attention. Probably she lived in a family whose mediocrity was advised to her. I suddenly arrived at my apartment and smiled slightly when I noticed children laughing. I saw a father sitting on the bench. He looked straight at me as I walked past and I felt embarrassingly retarded, with my rather youthful appearance. Like a young man, or a single man. I remembered that I felt more worthless, less worth than other men my age I compared myself to and who already had a family and children. Cleaning up and maintaining my everyday life and my home also often seemed to me to be a waste of time. Taking care of myself seemed senseless, as if I had already missed a goal that is normal for everyone in our society. And those who can’t achieve it have fallen out of their role or out of the world in a strange way. I now realized that I perhaps had more in common with the girl than I had first suspected. The role of the stupidly faithful descendant, who despite his own sense and better knowledge, holds on to what he has learned from his origins, what he has lived by. How sad that I would never get along with this girl in the sweatpants, although we have a similar fate.