Oh My God, It's a Greek Tragedy!

Something green and blue is glittering at me from the sidewalk. I kneel down in order to peer, half in love with it already, only to discover to my horror that the regal glow belongs to a dead bird, one of those painfully beautiful ones with the metallic feathers.

When I was little I used to see them swoop by flowers, maybe they were getting their nectar jones out then, I don’t know. I used to have this craving to sneak up on them in order to see them from close up, but they being birds, were smart enough to flee before I ever had the chance.

Now, here was my big day. The poor thing was fucking glued straight to the pavement, as if it had tried to smash directly through it. The metallic green and blue feathers and sleek black beak were laced with little droplets of blood, and I was reminded of my nail polish bottles.

The bugs hadn’t yet gotten to the now-expired specimen, clearly. Must have not been dead for long. I looked and looked until finally I sighed loudly, stating mainly to myself that this was a sad, sad day.

No one gives a shit about a dead pigeon, but this...This was the goddamn pageant queen of birds, not that I knew it by name.

Beautiful things have no staying power.

For some reason this makes me think of The Clarinet Player and the sad, beautiful music he makes. Such hard work it makes his teeth shift in their place, he says. He has the most beautiful hands I have ever seen on a man, with crescent shaped white parts and everything. Smooth, without a ridge. Some women would be quite envious.

The saddest thing is I know we will never work out.

All signs point to yes, but my intuition is screaming no.

Our first big night out, I convince him to skip out on picking up his elderly father from the airport. "Come spend the night with me instead," I say. "Let him take a cab."

I sometimes don’t know if I say things because I really want them to happen, or I am simply checking just how far certain individuals are willing to go for me.

Wait, that’s not entirely true in this case. I want to go home with him. Not to any particular home, really, it’s more of a conceptual thing. I want to fuck like crazy. With him, yes. I don’t know if I could ever explain it, but with some people I just feel this insane, almost animal chemical compatibility, like all my systems are sounding off, MATE IMMEDIATELY. It all boils down to our immune systems and genetic baggage and what his genes have to offer mine, I know, but it’s in the goddamn air.

I convince him quite easily, obviously.
4 AM and in the arrivals terminal at Ben Gurion, a stranger landing from Budapest has to hitch a taxi home because I am holding his son captive.

A few nights afterwards, I sweep him home to my place. I was out earlier, with Little T., who handed me a see-through rock. We were doing lines in public bathrooms and plowing the city with jittery teeth.

He is so sweet, so simple, so pure. Much like the rock I slid into my Cover Girl compact. I don’t use foundation or powders, so it only seemed natural to dump out the original contents of the package and turn it into an easy, breezy parcel for the occasional lump, bud, rock, stamp, powder or pill. Inside I glued a picture from Coney Island, circa 1949. Post-war optimism. The New Look. Coiffed hairdos. A group of people is on an amusement ride of some kind. The women are throwing their hands upwards in exhilaration. Whee! What a fitting image for all that this compact has been through. On the other side, there is the mirror that came with it, adhered to the interior. $2.89 at Rite-Aid, somewhere in Maryland. Cheap thrills.

I am driving in a progressive state of lockjaw. I pick him up even though I suppose I shouldn’t even be driving. We are seated on my bed, and I dig out the compact from my purse.

No one ever says, hey baby, I’m bored and you seem sweet, wanna get lost?

Instead I crush the rock with my Wells Fargo card and offer him a neat line. It’s a little bit like in elementary school, where there are those kids who will go along with nearly anything you pitch them. It’s how we convinced Arthur to accompany us through the woods to the Hook Graveyard in fifth grade, even though he was an only child and was to be grounded for life.

It's how Nash and I always played hooky in summer camp and pocketed silver nail polish and went to smoke in the woods, and Molly was the tag-along. Elaborate plans require scapegoats. People will do almost anything to be accepted. I feel kinda bad thinking all of this about him, but no one makes choices for you. It all boils down to what kind of person you are.

He is nervous and excited, in this adorable way.

What’s it like? He asks. I mean, what does it do to you?

Not a fucking thing, it's what you do to you.

I give a quick presentation on the difference between uppers and downers. In case anything screws up too badly, I am armed with Diazepam, to knock us out for a bit. I shouldn’t be here doing lines with the classical clarinet player, I should be trying to land a new job. I am too smart to wait tables, indicates common Ashkenazi logic. I shouldn’t be out corrupting innocents, I should get my ass back to University and hurry the bloody fuck up with getting a real degree.

I shouldn’t be here with someone who I can already tell is pretty much infatuated with me, when I can’t feel anything for them. I am haunted by thoughts that have nothing to do with me. I am thinking of a difference in class, in upbringing, in our histories. How different we are, how I was raised by bigots and elitists to believe that I am much better than he is. How different we are, and yet here we are doing the exact same thing.

It’s my fault, I know.
We stay up for two days, talking. We only leave the bed for the occasional trip to the washroom, to splash our faces with water, or to the kitchen, to bring some tea. A big pot of tea reminds me of Husky Eyes and Berlin and talking to Claudi until I fell asleep.

He can’t stop talking; he is on the upper wave. He weaves his entire family history spanning four generations back, and this is the most fascinating stuff I’ve ever heard. World Wars, the Holocaust, gypsies, affairs, alcoholism, deception and trickery, insanity and uprooting. It’s like an Amir Kostariza movie, and I tell him I think he should write it all down.

It saddens me to think that he comes from all this. But the most interesting stories are usually the painful ones. Eventually we are coming down, and we fuck. It’s the first time I drag him past the hurdle that always seemed to exist there, Shiri. He emerges with his back marked almost entirely by my nails, little pink half-moons turning dark red as the minutes drag on. I had clawed at him. When it was all over, he was panting so hard it sounded almost like muffled weeping.

Afterwards, he finally crumpled into sleep, but my body was still reeling from the lines. Try as I did I couldn’t fall asleep. My hear rate was shot. I could hear the pulsating beats inside my head, right above my eyes. I tossed and turned and tried to find things to think about in order to avoid thinking of other things.

I am thinking of how Husky Eyes bought a ticket to Israel and how he will be here in a month. I’m thinking of what misconceptions he probably has regarding me and what went on between us. I am thinking of the clarinet player sleeping next to me, in love and unaware. I am thinking of how my grandmother is in the hospital and the doctors can’t seem to pinpoint what’s wrong. I am thinking of how I don’t have cash for gas or parking at the hospital, and how she must feel like she is rotting away and no one gives a shit. No one is coming to visit, and I am a shitty grandchild. I am thinking of how I just got fired, so any thought of leaving my second job at Café Hell is now moot. The things we do for money.

I am also thinking of R. and how I pretty much disappeared on him. Not that I owe him any explanations, really. It’s just that he was so kind to me and withstood a massive amount of unnecessary bullshit on my part. And more than that, worst than that, I miss him, even if only in the most physical of ways.

I never know what I want. And I didn’t know that there was so much to take that I didn’t, until I tried to take the same things from The Clarinet Player, only to encounter a naïve wall of resistance.

Children of the Lenbach Platz

The next day, I go with Lori to pay a visit to the Lenbach Straße crew.

Everyone is at Noam's flat - the Germans I mostly remember from last time, a seemingly mute new roommate, and the Israeli technival contingent, consisting of Ehud, his broter Nir, Eitan the Invisible Officer, Tom and Lola.

I am trying to figure out how to get to Kreuzberg to Frederic's studio to pick up a set of keys to the flat. I am motivated to set forth on my own, but by the time I leave Noam's flat I am so disoriented thanks to local weed, that I am a tad afraid of finding myself passed out on a bench in the Turkish quarter.

Thanks to some heavy explaining, complete with drawings and internet maps, I safely make it through a couple of trams and find myself in front of Hard Wax studios. Frederic gives me a tour of the place and explains how records are mastered and cut. I stay for a joint and then head back to Noam's place, where I am congratulated on having survived the journey and treated to bonghits, a-la-Tel Aviv. I am so baked I spend the night on the floor, curled up like a dead kitten.

The next day, I manage to make initial contact with The Mute, who is of the female variety and goes by the name of Christina. Having heard of my extensive sewing skills, she excitedly shows me her sewing machine, and then points to a patch she designed on some footer material, and then motions towards a tank-top she would like to adhere it to.

With all this movement, it is a bit like communicating with a mime, or an airline stewardess going over the safety instructions.

She then solemnly directs her gaze towards the sewing machine.

"You want to learn how to thread it, then?" I ask.

She nods her head excitedly.

I can't even wrestle a Ja out of this girl.

"Okay," I say, "I'll be back in a few hours and we will master the machine."

Noam is content, hoping that perhaps this creative bonding will aid The Mute in emerging out of her shell. However, all hope to help the socially challenged goes out the window as soon as I go to the park with one of the other roommates, as our casual walk in the park eventually lands us on the other side of town, over the bridge in Kreuzberg.

We are at Claudi's house, drinking tea and betting on when the rain will start pounding down on us. There was talk of going to the Botanischer Gardens, but the prospect of rain took the punch out of the idea. So instead, we sit around smoking joint after joint, while my eyes wander off to survey Claudi's bookshelves.

I like her very much, and have since the first time I met her, when she visited Israel. There is something very brave about her, as quiet as she appears to be. We are joined by Ben of Jagermeister fame, and by Joni, Claudi's adorable boytoy from France.

I soon find myself tired from doing nothing but smoking.

Part of me is afraid of returning to the flat and facing the disappointed doe eyes of The Mute.

Ahhh, good old Berlin.

Minimal Music, Maximum Drugging

I am still very much in shell shock just from being away from the Levant and its unbearable heat and lack of manners. Nearly 24 hours have passed, and not one hungry stare of an ape-like man tossed my way, not a single hiss or paralyzing catcall. The people here seem to fear initiating direct eye contact of the flirtaatious variety, and I am having a lot of fun with this. I have enough sexual aggression thrown at me back home. Here, I am the mistress of my own gender role playground. Leaving the spoils of our consumer outing at Lori's place, we head for Warschauer Straße to meet Frederic in order to go to the party at the Panoramabar. He's informed me that he is also bringing along a "ladyfriend", and through our brief but intense acquaintence, I can only imagine what kind of naughty ideas he's entertaining.


Killing time until Frederic's estimated time of arrival, Lori leads me to a pizza place near the station, where sometimes reggae parties are held unerground, past some sort of cartoonish passage. No reggae party here tonight, but we do make a brief dash to an EBM night across the street, where I spot many a fashion faux pas I find quite upsetting. To make matters worse, it starts raining, and I am wearing flip flops, since everyone had informed me that this was the most hellish summer Europe has seen in over 50 years.

Thank you, global warming. Fuck you, global warming.

Not much seems warm about tonight as I am freezing like a puppy soaked to the bone, wading through Berlin's puddles in frail summer footwear. We seek refuge in a Lebanese pizzaria, where the employees are nervously watching a live news broadcast on the escalating situation on the Israeli-Lebanese border. I try to appear disinterested, but I am carefully absorbing evry word and thinking of my brother. My grandmother must be heartbroken. She has to live through yet another war, her eldest grandson drafted for reserve duty in quicksand territory we'd supposedly abandoned long ago, and her granddaughter fleeing to the one country she'd vowed she'd never set foot in again. Until my grandfather passed away, not even Kinder chocolates were allowed in their home.

My American accent and New England mannerisms come to my rescue every time. I guess it isn't really a lie when the Lebanese clerk asks me where I'm from and I carelessly reply "D.C.". I'm not really from anywhere. I don't entertain those fantasies anymore.

"You American girls are so beautiful," he tells me.

I make a mental note to pass on the compliment to all the Alisons, Jessicas and Ashleys of the New World. Meanwhile, I indulge in Hawaiin pizza, trying to ignore the familiar names spewed out from the television set. They are bitig their nails to the quick, staring at the newscastor with anxiety. We are mixing MDMA into our bottled water in preparation for tonight.

Talk about escapism.

We down it on the train, trying to put on a brave front while battling the horrid metallic aftertaste. Thank goodness some of the Cinnaburst gum Roy sent me had made it with me to Berlin, otherwise my face would have been permanently screwed into that awful expression I take on after gulping a shot of cheap tequila.


We wait for Frederic at the station, and he punctually arrives with his friend, Katja. She looks barely 15 and a bit too fragile for anything remotely resembling Frederic's lifestyle of choice, but is nice and friendly enough. We hitch a taxi to the Panorama, a mega techno palace.

At the entrance, we are thoroughlyseached and patted down by some massive Brunhilda-esque amazona, before we are granted permission to proceed. The Panorama is usually home to massive gay parties on most nights, and a general Soddom & Gomorra vibe is quite apparent. I feel good about this, though. This means most of the sleaze tonight will not be directed at us ladies but rather at the bare-chested male populace who makes up roughly 80% of the club.

The place is huge, decorated in a stren and precise manner, and is packed with hot, toned male bodies writhing against each other. Normally I would feel a little out of place in such a merry orgy scene not geared towards my uterus and other anatomical favorites, but I'm just smiling like an idiot and looking on. The MDMA is starting to kick in, and I feel those floaty tingles normally associated with the ultimate love potion. Frederic finds us again and invites us upstairs to take some E, which he passes to me with a kiss, then proceeds to do the same for Lorca. I hope she isn't too taken aback by him, because it is quite obvious to me that by the end of the night he will probably invite her to take part in a threesome with us. Right now I am too focused on the fuzzy vibrations to stop and ponder if this is cheeky behavior on his part.

The music is very minimal techno. I can't dance to this shit, but I can certainly lean back and enjoy the chemical reactions battling like a pillow fight in my brain. I spill the beans to Lori about my wild night with my new friend, and she declares me a slag. Clearly, one of the signs of the coming apocalypse, along with Paris Hilton vowing to go celibate for an entire year. The MD seems to be doing the trick, as I find myself almost uncontainably happy and stroking the ledge of the sofa. Lori rises and throws up in the most elegant way I have ever seen, but says she feels much better now.

My body temperature is going schizo on me, and every few minutes there is a decision to either disrobe or pack on the layers once more. We are briefly pestered by a loud British fellow, clearly hopped up on something, and painfully unaware of the dominant sexual orientation in this particular club. We escape and take an enchanted tour of the premises, complete with cells for sex.

Fuck-cages.

No wonder cameras are not allowed in here, not that it mattered to yours truly. The place looks like what a Village People video might haved looked, had they been immensely popular in the early 90's and heavily into BDSM.

As the sun rises, Frederic and Katja meet us in the downstairs lobby, and we split a cab home. Surely enough, Frederic had indeed pitched the threesome idea to Lori, who politely declined the invitation but congratulated him on having the balls to ask.

He and I go home, where he draws a hot bath for us. Aside from the obvious hygenics routine, there is also the fucking, very far from standard "vanilla sex". For his age, the fellow certainly has stamina.

We later stage a "Six Feet Under" marathon. I find it amusing just how annoyed Frederic gets with Brenda's promiscuous behavior on the show.

"So what is it that peeves you so much about Brenda," I ask as she fucks yet another stranger behind Nate's back. "The sex or the dishonesty?"

Frederic explains to me that he himself has a steady girlfriend, but he told her about my being a special guest in his home. "The bitch's dishonesty, of course," he smiles.

Of course.

We both cheer on Claire as she stumbles to find her own identity, and eventually drift off to sleep.