There is something about the staircases in Berlin that can make you feel like you are in a short story by Borges. Maybe it’s the general fact that, dictated by the Hausführer, all exterior doors must be painted the same colour, often a kind of dingy brown.
This, combined with alcohol or tea and hash can lead to the perception of endless ascents or descents often accomplished in the dark as the bulb-timer gives up the ghost, can lead also to keys not fitting the front door and to sudden shifts of perspective, small revelations and love affairs.
At 3am the bar across the road always seems more tempting than bed, the night here holds so many adventures but as I light another, noch eine uder, cigarette I find myself standing in front of the undertakers, located conveniently right next to Konrad Tönz.
Last night, uber die Brücke at Lux, I spent a happy two hours at 4am dancing with Michelle, who got steadily drunk and flirted with all the girls. I chatted away happily in my worst Dinglish – vieliecht der mussen eine besser wort. Going round in circles but gentle, not vicious, ones, nicht eine Teuffels Kreuz.
The language like the staircases can lead you to interesting places – sudden disclosures of intimacy, bizarre propositions, misunderstandings, trouble and sex.
Last night it led me from a discussion about the ‘crocodile brain’ (essen, trinken, ficken) via Slomo and David Copenhagen’s wistful songs, to a commitment to play football, a fleeting encounter with Momus and a very long one-sided conversation with a stunningly beautiful woman who studied analytical philosophy and linguistics.
I feel like a helium balloon, giddy on all that hot air, that Berliner schnauzer, the fact that no one here wants to talk about house prices, the weather, last nights TV. There is everything and nothing at stake, but the air of possibility is palpable.
Back then to X-berg. O.K, vielicht noch eine uder beer, and somehow one is not enough and I head out into the park with a stolen bottle of Amoretti and a student of psychology who picked me up at Lux and whose name was an Islamic glyph (at least from the perception of the morning).
Soon abandoned to the sun I make my way to Oranienstr and Roses, Aaah Roses alles die letses bar, and there, sleeping curled in a chair, is Volke, perfect in powder and bee stung lips. A sleeping queen, which in my personal tarot of this town is a lucky card, and in whose bed I awoke, bathed and sucked and fucked and briefly, loved - or at least would have done were not the both of us too drunk to fuck.
Sonnabend 10/3/07 3.23am.
Silence.