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“Hand aufs Herz” recap: Under the Covers

Guten tag! I am abject, pleading apologies for the time it has taken me to get another Hand aufs Herz recap to you. Would you forgive me if I promise you a little of this?

No? OK, how about this instead?

Yeah, I thought you’d forget to think if I flashed Lucy Scherer‘s half-nakedness at you. And I was right, huh? 

When last we left our favorite German lezzers, they’d decided to start cuddling and stop miscommunicating, and it was happy day for everyone, except for me – because I almost hyperventilated from my incessant swooning. Of course, as soon as Jenny and Emma properly kindled their flame, they had to contend with an actual ball of fire because the STAG bus exploded. But Jenny made even mayhem better, because that’s what she does.

Jenny has Emma pressed up against some lockers – because now that Emma has finally given in to kissing Jenny, she literally cannot stop herself. I’m pretty sure this is happening between classes because there’s no one in the hallway, which probably means they’ve been snogging and caressing each other’s faces for an hour. I’m not sure how they’re still standing, to be honest; I’m getting light-headed from just this 30 seconds.

There’s a KATHUNK! in the distance, and Emma pulls away, and then goes to war with herself: “You make me so happy I feel like the only thing keeping me from going everywhere at once is my skin, but I’m kind of afraid of letting my head explode in public, but you deserve to be with someone who doesn’t mind letting her brain melt right in the middle of the mall, but then if that happened we wouldn’t be able to make out anymore, which is, frankly, all the best parts of my day combined into one glorious canoodle, but then also -“

Jenny’s like, “As usual, you are fighting with yourself in a valid and thorough way, but another idea is: We can keep kissing.”

Point Hartmann.

At STAG rehearsal, Bea has the revolutionary idea of letting the group perform in front of the whole school. Emma Emmas about, “But if we perform in front of the whole school, the whole school will hear us performing!” Jenny hops into action before Emma gets lost again in her hyper-active imagination. She’s like, “We’ll be great, of course! It’s not like we’re staging a coming out party or anything; just a simple song and dance!”

Oh ho, but Emma has something else in mind! Well, no. She has Jenny on her mind. Like always. As they perform “Lovefool,” every lyric wraps Emma up in a flashback of kissing Jenny or holding Jenny or stalking Jenny across the cafeteria like some kind of jackal, and maybe Emma is hypnotized because the giraffe jeggings have made a comeback, or maybe it’s how Jenny is crooning “Love me, love me, say that you love me” over and over, or maybe “Lovefool” makes her think about how Jane Austen says we are all fools in love. Whatever the cocktail of memory and emotion, when the song is over, Emma pulls Jenny to her and kisses her right in front of the whole entire school.

Jenny doesn’t flinch, doesn’t hesitate for even a second. She just weaves her magic around Emma in such a way that it takes Emma several long moments to remember that they’re in public. She’s finally pulls away dazed, all, “Oh, er, is anyone looking at us?” And Jenny’s like, “Um, yes. Everyone is looking at us. Because WE ARE AWESOME.”

And everyone is looking at them. Caro is like, “Good Lord, what next? A clown riding a pony through a ring of fire across a tightrope?” And the dudes in the crowd are like, “More kissing! More kissing! More kissing!” And the teachers are all, “Awww.” And every lesbian on earth is hitting rewind for like the 700th time.

This is my favorite Jemma scene coming up. The way Kasia lets herself go, just lets her whole face tell a perfect story. This show might be in German, but no one needs a translator for this:

Emma apologizes for not asking first if she could kiss Jenny in front of everyone, and so Jenny reaches over and kisses her, all, “Oh, I’m sorry; did I need permission?” I love when Emma calms down long enough to use her words. She says that being with Jenny is like being caught up in a giant wave, that she’s powerless to fight her feelings and all the things her feelings compel her to do. Jenny mocks indignation about being compared to a natural disaster, but she gets it. She’s caught up in it too.

And did you guys know Love Waves are a real thing? For serious. In the early 1900s, a guy named A.E.H. Love wrote a book about geodynamics, and in it, he explained about the kind of waves that cause earthquakes.

Love waves are seismic surface waves in which particles move with a side-to-side motion perpendicular to the main propagation of the earthquake. The amplitude of this increases depth. Love waves cause the rocks they pass through to change in shape.

Going against the grain. Deeper depth. A change in shape. That’s all Emma is saying, really.

Jenny is like, “I don’t care what metaphor you use to describe how we’re together; I just want to be together.”

Almost everyone at school is happy for them. Everyone except the 12-year-old boy who got his hands on some markers and decided to draw a mural on Emma’s locker of some naked stick figure ladies holding hands. Jenny says they’ll cover it up with a photo of them. I’d just leave it. It’s pretty awesome. 

Ben drops Emma off at work the next day, and gets lovely about how proud he is of her for coming out. He’s all about how love is love, no matter what shape it’s in, and Emma is trying really hard not to let her pride show on her face. ‘Cause she’s proud of herself too.

After an altercation with Ronnie, Emma tells Jenny that she needs a bodyguard – Jenny literally goes, “You’re cute” – but it turns out that Emma is the one who needs the bodyguard. After coming out, she gets attacked by a gang of thugs, who email the video of the attack to Jenny. (Dumb move, thugs! Have you met Jenny Hartmann? She’s going to burn you all to the ground and do pizza ballet on your graves!)

Emma is really shaken up by the attack. She won’t let Jenny touch her anymore in public, because she’s afraid both of them will get attacked. Of course she doesn’t explain that to Jenny, so Jenny’s just left wondering why Emma keeps flinching every time she tries to kiss her or hug her or do that thing she does where she pushes her hair out of her face and caresses her cheek. (These two, the way they touch each other’s faces. Siiiiigh.)

Jenny comes to SAAL1 to escort Emma home from work like her own personal bodyguard. She suggests they go out to the club, but Emma would rather go home and cuddle up on the couch in private and watch TV. (Me and you both, Ems.) Finally, Jenny gets Emma to sit still long enough to explain to her that she needs to report the attack. Because she’s THE BEST GIRLFRIEND IN THE WORLD, Jenny says she’ll even pretend it happened to her so that Emma doesn’t have to talk to the cops. (Also maybe she’s trying to keep Emma from going off like a firecracker that way she does when she gets worked up.)

After all the stress, Jenny and Emma finally get some alone time in the STAG rehearsal room.

Hilariously, Bodo busts up their makeout session again, and I kind of thought/wished Jenny was going to maim him and bury his dead body under the piano. Look how testy her face is. 

Maybe it is the near-death experience, I don’t know, but when Emma finally recovers from the shock of being attacked, she decides she can’t wait another second to get Jenny out of her jeggings. Well, no. That’s not true. It’s Emma, isn’t it? It’s got to be an ordeal. Jenny and Emma are cuddling in the STAG rehearsal room, kissing and talking about their feelings about kissing while they’re kissing, like a couple of professional lesbians, when Emma says, “You know how happy we are right now? How much happier would we be if we were doing this naked?”

For some reason, Jenny doesn’t just scoop her up and cart her home right that second. She’s a lady, I guess. She says that yes, she is more than ready to take the next step (and the next one and the next one and the next one) with Emma, but that Emma shouldn’t panic about it; it’ll happen when it happens.

The next morning, Emma shows up at Jenny’s place, all, “So now, then? It’ll happen now?”

Just kidding. She dropped by to say she can’t sleep because of tossing and turning and thinking about all the ways it could go right and all the ways it could go wrong when she and Jenny finally make all the love. Jenny just smirks, ’cause she knows it’s only going to be right, right, right, no matter what, no matter where, no matter when. 

Emma, though, makes elaborate plans involving some kind of run down shed that doesn’t even have running water. She’s most interested in their privacy; Jenny’s like, “Whatever you want, darling. Even if our first time happens on a splintered floor in a cloud of bug repellent.”

It would ruin it, I think, to spill my words all over their first time. But it’s sweet and silly and awkward and warm and perfect, perfect, perfect. Just like them.

Emma is kind of afraid. 

And Jenny is kind of afraid.

But once Emma pulls the covers over them and the wind machine revs up, everything is better than OK.

Afterward, they goof off in the kitchen, feeding each other fruit and getting into a yogurt brawl. 

Ben interrupts to tell them how lucky they are.

They’re like, “Yeah, we know.”

And you know what? I know too. And so do you. It may be ending too soon, but damn, we’re lucky to have these two. 

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