Oh, le allemande! How earnest in their practicality!
The web banner declares, in all caps, "FOR SUCCESSFUL CRUISING".
Because if one cannot be efficient about it, one cannot be German.
It was past midnight one muggy summer night. I missed the last train at 5 pm from the Zoologischer Garten Berlin because I was entranced by the red baboon asses and lost track of time. My hostel welcome having run out, I had to find a place to sleep and fast, as it was a Sunday.
And by place I mean a man. And by man I mean a seedy cruise bar that wouldn't mind me snozzing in the corner.
For some reason the urgency did not strike me until whole families started vanishing from the streets. I panicked and started thinking of dinner immediately.
As I sat on an empty train platform with a tarte flambe sliding down my lap, I wondered if my fate would be to slump over in that position right there for the next 11 hours That was when the next train would arrive, after all. I remembered I read in my guidebook that Club Metropol was the most famous club in all of Europe, at that the Bacchanalian party would go all night. I tried my chances there.
Did I enter through the wrong door? I only saw about 5 people in the single room, 3 of whom were waitstaff. I hunkered down on a sofa in the back, and watched a 7-foot-tall woman in white fur, blond dredlocks, and a fanny pack do the conga by her lonesome, sideways through a beaded curtain.
A few hours later, I woke up to the nudge of a cocktail waitress telling me that it was 4 am, time for the club to close. I tipped my imaginary hat at the giantess in white on my way out the door.
What to do for two more hours? I stumbled down the street in a sleep-deprived stupor, and found myself at the threshold of Tom's.
The place was rolling, at 4 am, no less. The stereotype of the German swisher in leather chaps, restraints, and a bobby cap are TRUE. Several times over.
I believe I only had my camera bag, a spider bite on my cheek from sleeping in a Czech gymnasium a few nights before, raindrops on my glasses, and a wet t-shirt on. I sat on a wine barrel and watched the porn projected on the brick wall for a while.
I needed to employ the loo.
Stumbling my way to the corner where a gent was standing with his fingers in his belt loops nodding and approving at every man who walked by to said loo, suddenly a dark gap in the brick caused me to clutch the wall.
I was like Audrey Hepburn in that damn movie "Wait for Dark". Tap tap tapping my way along the wall.
Until suddenly, a hairy chest. Oh wait, an arm in leather. ... a rusty girder ... ouch my foot just hit a pipe ... what's this, a sit-up bench? Oh, there's a man lying on the sit-up bench! Sucking ... sucking ... schwanz, that's it!
And in that humid pre-dawn hour of my life, dear diary, I learned the definition of a darkroom.
However, I still had to use the loo. So I kept feeling my way along the perimeter. At one point someone grabbed my wrist and I yanked it away.
Finally, I found light. But not before a stranger ran his finger down my chest. I took the zipper of his jacket and unzipped it, then saw the sign for the men's room, and scuttled away.
There was a guy with deep, worried, soulful eyes standing against the wall of the main bar looking at guys walking in and out of the dark. He was the most handsome man there - he kind of looked like an anime character.
I decided to write him a note. I'd slip it in to his pocket and leave for the station. The only paper I had was a small short story I wrote and illustrated, folded in to a little pamphlet. I wrote, "This is not the place for us."
Just as I was about to go find him, slip the note in to his jacket pocket, and run out the door, someone walked up the barkeep and asked for something in German.
It was that man ... and the barkeep gave him a pen and paper. I figured he found a man with whom to canoodle (I learned that term in the states), and they were about to exchange digits (the states as well). Deflated, I walked back to the wine barrel and sat down, scratching my spider bite as I stared at the porn projected on to the brick wall.
A tap on the shoulder.
"Excuse me, this is for you."
I opened up the piece of paper, and in very forcibly written capital English, it read, "THIS IS NOT THE PLACE FOR US."
Three days later I caught the train home.
(Epilogue: I have since found out that he's a clinical psychologist who specialises in hyponotherapy for smokers and adults repressing memories of childhood abuse. He could not stand my long letters from the UK, so I never saw him again.) read more
