The longer version and me

My German really improved that summer, and so did my desire to get away from myself, to stop riding the U-bahn in rain thruogh the outskirts of the former war torn city.

The structures around me were new in one sense but ancient in another, there were the impressive parade streets with a whiff of Communist glory glaring at me, and there was the few houses that outlived the RAF furious bombs. It fascinated me, I went to all the well-known clubs and danced myself away, I drank too much, I smoked too much, and to drink more I popped tiny pills that made my feet move faster. I fell into a world that lived hastily during the nights and in slow motion during the days. I hid my eyes behind sunglasses, I learned the lesson, if you go out in the night, and you still need the sunglasses for the morning.
It was what it was, that summer I found myself outside the same club every weekend and sometimes during the weekdays. The building was huge, a block of cement, probably build as a factory a long time ago, it was situated real close to the former wall that had parted the city. The line to the place was always long, and I heard stories about how others been turned around at the door, it had never happened to me, it would never happen to me. My svelte blond appearance was just right, and the gray walls of cement were calling my name, I knew it just as much as the bouncer knew it. I stood in the line, already a little high, I wasn't one of those who would try to score drugs inside the walls, I knew better than to put the tiny pills in my pocket. I knew that cameras would be confiscated and so would any drugs. The masters of the waiting building knew better than to allow a to large amount of drugs to flow in, still we all knew that there was everywhere and at one point of the night we all would breath it and so be it. I had two little Mitsubishis neatly tucked into a hole that I had cut in my bra, the only reason I would ever wear a bra. Complete strip searches were not going to happen, it never did. I still felt the adrenalin heighten in my system when a thoroughly pierced man felt my little gay Asian up, and a woman of short statue patted my pockets down. I giggled to myself, this was the closest I had come to any sort of physical touching in a long time, if the nights I spent sleeping next to the Gaysian didn’t count. The lady and the man seemed pleased and I gave a third person my money and entered.
The rooms were darker than the summer night outside and music filled our ears, heads and bodies when we walked up the narrow staircase into a gigantic room of people dancing. The floors were cold, dirty, cement and the walls bounced the music around, bounced it into my eardrums and out again, it let me twirl my finger. I was nervy as always, I wanted something more, I grabbed Cookies arm and dragged her to the bar. Sweaty bodies pressed themselves closer to us, my feet followed the monotone rhythm, and after a few minutes I reached the bar. Cookie was lost, but I had a feeling she would show up by the time I had gotten us drinks, she would never miss an opportunity for a free drink. Cookie was ten years my seniors and grew up in East Germany, she had glorious stories about her first blue jeans and climbing the Berlin wall when it fall! I think Cookie might have worked as a real estate agent, but I was not really sure, she was gone during weekdays, and in the weekends she would dance the nights always with me, she seemed to know half of the city and she would drag younger men to the apartment and take baths with them in the bathtub. I would long for something, but most of the time I would spend with gay boys, because they had the drugs, they had the connections and they always knew where the party where. I think I might have impressed people, I don’t know if it was my long legs, my bleached hair or my constant smile. But I never got turned away and I had a thousand numbers in my phone, numbers I did not remember how they gotten there, numbers I never called.
Standing in the bar I felt a pang of loneliness, surrounded by thousand, knowing that they wanted me, I still wanted nothing of it. To stop the slowly occurring panic attack I lit a cigarette, the harsh smoke of a filtered Camel soothed my lungs, thoughts, body and the swift high of nicotine brought me back and forth to reality and the panic faded away. I leaned over the bar and shouted to a feminine male bartender that I wanted two glasses of 'Sekt auf Eis'. The bartender ignored me for a microsecond, until he decided that I was worth his time, served me my drinks and I gave him a cigarette and paid in cash. Cash was king at this place, nights in this city cash ruled everything, and in the end of the night we always stuck our hands deep in the pockets to find the last heavy coins to pay the last drinks before we had to head into the sun, put our sunglasses on that currently were tucked away in Cookies purse.
- Sonnenbrillen! Essentials! my roommate Cookie told me the first weekend in the city and fill my glass up with more cheap Sekt. When we couldn't afford Sekt, we would just drink wine with sparkling water, secretly I prefered that. We would first order "Sekt auf Eis" just to switch over to "Weineschorle" as the night progressed.

I slammed my bubbly bevarage and joined the people on the floor, my feet danced, my mind slowly drifting away with the beat, I existed, and that was all I asked for. As always the reality knocked me back and I went over to the bar, hastily got a beer and took off to find someone I knew, feeling alone again.
The bass was constant, the building buzzing with music, a relentless beat, an electronic shadow that made it through the night into the early morning passing noon. The motto of the city was not to let the sun go down on them and then they ignored that it went up.
I turned around, and there he was, my little Gaysian, making out with a pale boy who did not seem gay at all, except for that tiny fact that he made out with another boy. I lost my interest and scanned the room, I saw a girl, looking so classy in the rough environment. Skinny to the bone, with black clothes that showed a little more style and concern than most. Right when she was about to pass me, I tapped her on the shoulder and she turned her hazel eyes to me.
- Hallo, was los? I smiled at her
- Party machen, she responded, making party, a genius way of Germans expressing that they are partying.
- Klar, viel Spass, my German sort of sucked and I was slightly intoxicated at this point, I actually did not feel like carrying on a conversation in a language I barely spoke sober.
- Where are you from, the girl probably had gotten the hint that my German sucked so she nicely switched over to English.
- Oh, I am currently living in America; you know that big country with big burgers and bad music, I joked back, studying her body.
- Hot, she scanned my face and asked if I came here often. I laughed at the cliché question.
- Well, depending who you ask, I might come here to often, at least that is what my mother would say, I took a swig of my beer and noticed that my Gaysian had pinned the little scrawny boy against the wall, and was grouping him. The girl followed my gaze.
- Is that your boyfriend? I could tell she was mocking me
- Well, he is a boy and he is my friend, so yeah, we can call him my boyfriend, I smiled back at her and then retorted with asking her if she was jealous.
- Oh, well, not jealous, but a little disappointed…
I felt how my legs were getting antsy, and I felt that it was time to get back to the dance floor, and I really thought this girl was cute, straight or not. So I took her hand and winked in an overexaggerated way while bowing my head .
- Could I escort milady to the dance floor? My question made the girl laugh, but she followed me out onto the cement floor, already full of sweaty bodies dancing, moving, jumping to a beat that could be considered as monotone, if it wasn’t the fact that it broke off into little musical whimsical side beats over and over again. We danced for hours, maybe minutes; time didn’t really matter, and couldn’t really be trusted. She grabbed my hand and dragged me off into one of the many nucks of the building, I turned my head away from three men fondling each other, not that I minded to glance at a penis at times, but it was just to graphic. The girl told me her name was Julia; she was Israeli but had lived in the city for a long time. We leaned against the cold cement wall and shared a crushed cigarette that I had fished out of my sweaty backpocket, blowing smoke rings into nothingness and tapping our feet to the beat. She laid her arms around me, first shyly and then she stepped closer.
She smelled just the way I had imagined, her arms strong around me, embracing me, holding me tightly, as if she was trying to save me from the world I was already lost to. She whispered into my ear, it tickled and I felt how I unwilling smiled, how my tense face turned soft for a minute. I pulled her closer. My hands found the gap between her shirt and slim jeans and I let them edge under, to reach the warm and soft skin on her skinny back. She bent her head back, tilted it and gazed up on me. I felt reality hit me, the drugs pumping thru my veins was overpowered by an intense feeling that I belonged, belonged in her arms, in this minute, that my world could be her world, or rather her world to be mine.
Her t-shirt was washed-out-black, and the smell of detergent lingered in the fabric that hung off her shoulders. My eyes locked with hers and she saw me, at least she tried. My eyes as blue as Mälaren in the summer, black make-up artfully smeared around eyes that were dry even when I wanted to cry. She leaned over and kissed me gently, I felt her lips so soft it sent shocks down my spine, I could taste the salt on them, my body pressed itself a little closer to hers, she reacted by intensifying the kiss, slowly letting her tongue tenderly exploring the inside of my mouth. Like an insect stuck to a cling, I was plastered to her body, wanting to get away but paralyzed by desire and shock. Saying she had me at hello would be a lie, but I was hers for this moment and hours to come. I reached into my bra and got the two little pills out, gave her one and together we did let go of the world.