A Red Blooded Killer

I enjoyed riding the S-Bahn as it chained its way across the city.  I liked it when the trains ran parallel with the traffic on the road and you felt, momentarily, at one with the driver behind the wheel – it felt like equality – and then when everything dropped away, thwump, into darkness as you entered a tunnel, and then again when you emerged looking for the sky.  I liked this.  The feeling of movement, of going somewhere.

I was in my early thirties and should have been in my prime.  Instead I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and drank copious amounts of coffee.  I sensed that something was coming for me and could smell its approach in the air.  For months I hadn’t eaten properly and the weight had dropped from me until what was left was a gaunt, bone of a man.

The train clattered into a tunnel.  Across from me an old man with a face like a withered onion and with cadaverous hands rocked in the movement of the train.  By his side was a plastic bag with tatty magazines inside.  As we entered the tunnel a twin of him appeared in the dark glass and bathed in the red of the tunnel the old man regarded his reflection like it was something wholly unfamiliar to him.  I have always been fascinated by the power of tunnels.  The old man seemed to be smirking.

My palms were hot as the S5 sauntered back into daylight and across a bridge and on towards the Zoo station.  Buildings appeared against a blue sky.  I caught sight of mongrel graffiti on walls.  Below me Berliners walked the streets in a cocktail of fashion and attitude, some ungainly, others at peace.  Cars turned at corners, cantered off at speed.  The architecture was magnificent.  Everything glowed in the sun, rays glancing from windows.  The sun was hot on my skin and when I closed my eyes the light flickered on my eyelids.

My mind went back to the night of the accident: a Welsh fog and a country road lit up by headlights – that road coming on and on towards me, flanked by rows of winter trees, on and on, and then being broadsided by another vehicle and the road tumbling from sight.  I broke my nose against the steering wheel and fractured my right wrist but the driver of the other vehicle was killed on impact.  In the orange ambience, with paramedics walking in the fog, I was told by a doctor with tiny spectacles how lucky I was to be alive.  The word “alive” has plagued me ever since and every time I glance into a mirror or catch my reflection in a shop window I see the scar on my face.  It sits blue across the bridge of my nose like a small insect, often mistaken as butterfly having landed on my face, and in certain light it gleams like wet ink, like a wing vibrating and dying.

I had been in Berlin for sixteen days and was crashing at my friend Liana’s place in Neukölln, two minutes walk from both the S and U-Bahn.  Liana lived with six others in a flat like a commune I once saw in New Zealand where the residents shared everything from sex to drugs.  The rooms were large and bright, quite wonderful, and the corridor that linked them split like a two-headed snake.  The doorbell didn’t have a button, it was two open wires you had to put together to make a sound.  In the corridor a plastic leg with a stocking and a high heel jutted out from the brickwork.  As to be expected the apartment was not entirely clean but it was organised, the latter a reflection of Liana’s presence.  I felt, somehow, this flat was the hub for all the creative spinning of Berlin.

But I would discover more than this.

Many years ago I was heading out of Las Vegas in a white camper van.  The fluorescent lights of Vegas were fading behind me and the beat of that sinful town was making way for calm desert and cacti.  At the roadside, covered in dust, was a tramp with a dirty beard and a satchel slung over his shoulder.  He had his thumb stuck out into the road.  I remember thinking this man had probably arrived a millionaire.  Cities can do that to a person.

From my short time here I had already surmised that Berlin was the kind of city I wanted to lose myself in, perhaps die in.  Berlin is a regular city; it has its casinos, bars, nightclubs, strip-joints, brothels, but it’s also pregnant with the unknown, something that impels a person to search for adventure.  Every possible thing opens into everything else.  There are no boundaries, you can do what you like.  A foreigner living in Berlin needs something of a safety word to keep themselves grounded.  It’s dangerous otherwise.  You can lose yourself.  Get arrested.  Catch an STD.  Overdose.

We all have our safety words, I expect, and I don’t mean an actual word.  It could be a thing, a teddy bear, a coin, a book, even a friend – although friends are not always reliable structures.  We’re fallible.  That’s why life is such a red blooded killer.

Forcing the Strings

Louise and her date were waiting for a taxi one night when he turned suddenly and tried to kiss her.  When Louise said she wasn’t interested, the date said, ‘You’ve been playing me all night!’  She didn’t see him again but his remark troubled her.

Soon afterwards she met a man called Karl at a concert she was performing at in St Andrews Hall.  Karl was tall and with cropped hair.  He moved like a retired athlete still keeping in shape but not competing.  Perhaps he lived in an expensive apartment and was separated and with a daughter somewhere?  When he asked her out for dinner he played with his left ear as though jangled by nerves and Louise caught sight of a gold watch on his wrist.

Louise had always fantasied about a strong and confident man that wanted her but couldn’t have her.  She would lie awake at night, dreaming.  He would chase her, be on the verge of winning her, but in the same fantasy she would come to realise he was not good enough for her.

On the Saturday morning a few hours before their date Louise went shopping in charity shops for clothes.  She tried on skirts and blouses, new shoes and leggings, trying to find a combination she was comfortable in and also something that Karl might find attractive on her.  Eventually she went with her usual attire, a dress over a pair of jeans that made her look slimmer than she actually was.  She had always been conscious of her weight, of her wide hips and thighs.  

When she got home she put the dress on in front of a mirror and stood smoothing the creases with her palms and posing in various positions.  There wasn’t much light coming into the room and one of her pictures on the wall – the one of Coltrane – was not straight and hadn’t been straight for some weeks.

She was nervous about her date with Karl.  It made her want to pee or go for a run.  On the floor around her were scattered sheets of notation and above the lounge door hung a framed certificate from the Royal Academy of Music, graduate of 2007.  Louise found it difficult to imagine anyone else living here.  Still wearing the dress she went to her violin case in the corner of the room and took out her violin, then pushing her glasses up her nose she placed the rest under her chin, drew the bow across, retuned a string, and then played Lizst’s Allegro moderato.  

Each day after rehearsals Louise would come home and lose herself on the violin, lost in the notations of Bach and Beethoven; the cool wood under her chin, the feel of the bow as it brought to life the nuances of great compositions; it was the only intimacy she had ever really known.  Sometimes the music was more real to her than the people she encountered and she took from this both liberation and sadness.

Putting away her violin Louise unzipped the dress and then hooked it on a curtain rail – she was worried about moths, there was a nest of them somewhere in the building and they were coming up through the floorboards – but when she lifted the dress she caught the hem on a nail and the dress tore.  Swearing, she took the dress to the other side of the room, holding it at arms length as though it was contagious.  What now, she thought?  It struck her suddenly, she was in luck!  Her neighbour Alva, who lived across the hall, was a seamstress.

Alva was a short vibrant old lady who had probably survived a dozen near deaths.  She opened the door and peered at Louise over thick rimmed glasses.  She frowned as though suspicious of the intrusion and then her gaze landed on the dress and the flap of torn material and with a yank of her head she motioned for Louise to follow her inside.

‘Put it on the table,’ she said, without turning.  Alva picked up a bag and a case, presumably with the tools needed to mend the wound, and when she turned she saw that Louise had come to a halt just past the threshold.  Louise had never been in Alva’s apartment before, it was like something out of a fairytale.  The flat smelled of copper and dust and was lit by lamps with tasseled shades.  There were two old cats asleep on the windowsill.  Baskets full of linen and cloth sat on shelves.  In the corner was a dressmakers mannequin with the beginnings of a blue garment in the making.  The flat was more a workshop than a home.

‘I said put it on the table,’ said Alva, irritated for having to repeat herself.

Louise shook herself free of inertia and draped the dress carefully over the table.  

Alva dropped the case and bag beside the dress, popped them open and began to bring out various threads and cloth, carefully examining them against the dress.  

Louise sat on a couch and watched as Alva began her work mending the tear, her leathery hands working the material, piercing it with needles and slowly but surely threading it back together.  The dedication and passion was impressive.

‘You should be more careful next time,’ chastised Alva.

‘I will be,’ said Louise. 

Alva evidently lived alone, there was no sign of a partner, no pictures of loved ones.  Sketch books littered the shelves and tables, some of which were open, their pages revealing pencilled drawings of dresses with measurements.  Through the dedication of a craft Alva had forged a life on her own.  But did she get lonely, wondered Louise?

On occasion and usually after a glass of wine, Louise listened to saccharine love songs that made her cry.  Afterwards, embarrassed by herself, she would listen to something settled; an avant-garde piano piece, something early twentieth-century – Webern perhaps – or a violinist like Paganini who played the instrument like a vessel to some other place, grinding the strings, forcing them to pluck and resonate like the violin itself was alive, the wood alive, the sound alive.  This was why she played.

When Alva had finished mending the dress Louise offered her some money in way of thanks but Alva waved the gesture away.  Money was not enough, she said, to wear it would be its own reward. 

The evening started slow and tentative.  She met Karl at a Bar & Kitchen on York Road and when he arrived he looked rushed and pale.  He was dressed in a smart but casual shirt and was wearing dark jeans.  His shoes were dirty.

‘I’m very tired,’ he told her, as he drew up.  She had trouble hiding her annoyance.  They stood in the lobby exchanging an awkward hug.   ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be this tired,’ he said.  ‘It’s terribly rude of me.  It’s been a long day.  And if I’m honest…’ he said.  ‘I’m quite nervous.’

His admission of nerves did nothing to ease her own.  A waitress led them across the restaurant towards a table.  Louise followed closely behind Karl; a slight swagger to his walk, she thought.  The walk across the restaurant seemed to take forever and Louise was pleased she’d decided against wearing an outfit with high heels.  The restaurant was a large open area with a mahogany bar and beside the bar saloon doors leading to a kitchen.  The familiar noise of heat and pans vented from behind it.

When they were seated Karl ordered wine and after the waitress had gone they were mostly silent.  The sound of diners eating and talking on the tables around them only made their silence more intense.  Karl kept glancing over at the bar.  He checked his watch twice.  Louise stirred back her annoyance and was relieved when the wine arrived.  Louise ordered venison pie and Karl went with steak, medium to rare.

Karl took a good glug of wine and then leant forward over the table as though trying to capture her in his gaze.

‘So,’ he said, at last.  ‘Tell me about yourself.’

And so the evening began, with Karl doing much of the talking.  He wanted to know things about her, how she had come to live in the city.  Louise did not tell him much, opting for caution than honesty.

Before she came to the capital, wonderful dreams had come to her of a life that should have been hers, a life of vision and sensibility.  It was in the city that a person could make something of themselves.  As a teenager she had seen in magazines metropolitan women and had been so enamoured that she too wanted to dress like this, to be that person.  

She did not tell Karl any of this.  Nor did she tell him what she loved about the city.

There was much about the city she loved; how it changed with the seasons.  She loved the autumnal showers with people as pale as ghosts.  She loved the pang of joy she felt when she pumped an umbrella dry before walking into a gallery, or caught the smell of fresh coffee from a nearby cafe.  It was these moments that she associated with her favourite literature, of confident heroines in the rain. 

Sometimes when the rain was coming down the windowpane at home she would find herself crying, and when she cried the rain became tears and her tears became the rain.

A Strange and Beautiful Beast

For a time I felt as if nothing had come before me, that I had simply risen from the Vltava river, drenched in water, and had crossed the muddy banks to be close to the city.  

I had been in Prague for two months and was renting a room in a shared building that was once a post office.  The toilets, labelled by gender, still had hand-dryers on the walls, and the kitchen, which was burnt and filthy and smelled of oil, was in the strip of corridor that linked our rooms.  There was six of us in total, a Brazilian, two Turks, an Irishman, a Macedonian, and myself.  We lived harmoniously with few disputes.  We gambled over cards until the early hours of the morning.  We listened to techno and had film nights.  We bought a pet snake and let it loose from its tank so it could explore the building and eat the mice.  Sometimes it would sit on the table amongst the playing cards and glasses of gin.

At night I haunted strip joints and brothels.  I drank beer and vodka and watched as the world around me vanished.  Mostly I kept to myself, strolling the baroque streets with a cigarette hanging from my mouth.

I met Bethany at a bar on a street I no longer remember the name of.  It was somewhere in the old town.  Bethany was a podgy American who had the look of a chique-geek at a time when the style was in.  She was attractive and wore thick rimmed glasses and had short dyed hair.  We met once a week for coffee and she taught me how to knit.  Sometimes she would let the strap of her dress slip down her arm to reveal the skin of her shoulder.  Every time she did this she would meet my gaze but I always feigned ignorance.  Whenever we finished our little get-togethers I walked with her to the tram stop and I always sensed she was waiting for me to go home with her.  As a red blooded male I wanted to almost as much as I didn’t.  The spark was not there and the cadence of her voice had begun to irritate me.  This was confounded by the ridiculous things she often said.

‘I would make such a terrible mother,’ she told me.

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Because!  It’s true!’  Everything was such a drama.  ‘Haven’t you ever imagined yourself several steps ahead?  Like in two or three years?  Being a father?  It’s like some kind of – oh my god.’  We were in a cafe that was situated at the back of a bookshop.  A waitress came past with a tray of crockery.  Bethany leant across and said, ‘She is such a porn star.  Have you eaten?  I haven’t really eaten.’

I declined the offer of food.  The thought of eating made me feel sick.  Bethany had no such problem.  ‘Do you think I should have cake?’  She was looking for approval but she didn’t need it.  She was a woman who had taken her baby fat with her into adult life.

I wanted to like Bethany but her clumsy facade made it near impossible.  Occasionally I would find nuggets of thought and opinions that corresponded with my own worldview, but it was never enough to turn the tide.  After awhile I did the unthinkable and began to phase her out, taking too long to return her calls or respond to a text.  Eventually I ignored her.

The guilt was short-lived because by then I was sleeping with my Macedonian flatmate.  Mateja was a wholesome girl from a rural village in east Macedonia.  She was naive and inexperienced, much like myself.  Recently she had had a bad experience with a man who had turned out to be married.  Mateja worked in a call-centre.  She had a talent for talking to strangers and she saw herself one day running the German wing of the department.  She spoke German and English to a high level and she was evidently intelligent. 

But as with Bethany there lacked the attraction.  Despite this getting into bed together had been so easy that neither of us were able to stop it from happening.  Mateja had cute breasts, large thighs, and a smile that didn’t sit right on her face.  Her lips were thin and she had beautiful eyes and beautiful hands.  The first time we fooled around I went down on her but she pushed me away at the point of climax.  It was a sin in her family, she told me.  The next time we got together she awkwardly returned the favour until I came.  Embarrassed and uncertain she said, ‘You tasted nice.’  I was disgusted with myself.  I knew she was putting me somewhere in her heart but already I had an eye on leaving the country.  

Mateja insisted on spending whole days with me walking along the river and across the many bridges and into the old town of Prague with its romance and style, a connotation of which Mateja affixed to us.  My days of brooding silently in bars were over.  It seemed she was only happy when we held hands.  Our walks were long and unforgiving.  She was especially content when observing the architecture of the countless churches and monasteries and she would spend ages looking upon them as though in silent commune.  

One afternoon as we made our way back to the courtyard we stopped at a pedestrian crossing and as we stood waiting for the lights to change a man behind us pinched her arse.  It upset her greatly.  The man was somewhere north of his fifties with a frayed and wild grin.  Without thinking I punched him in the face.  At the time I barely weighed nine stone due to the copius amounts of amphetamine I was taking but my punch landed well.  He tried to right himself but his body told him otherwise, a flickering between states, and down he went.  Nearby two tough-looking men drinking beer outside a bar laughed and pointed.

‘You scared me,’ said Mateja later.

‘I didn’t mean to.  I’m sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’  She had mixed feelings.  ‘You didn’t need to do that.’

I took my gaze to the window.  ‘Yes,’ I said.  ‘I did.’

The altercation had happened only a few meters from where I was staying and I was half-expecting the police to turn up and arrest me.  I was scared of the Czech police.  

That night a growing anxiety led me to a bottle of Jack Daniels.  Sometimes the police would turn up in our courtyard to arrest one of the Romany Gypsies.  The apartment buildings that overlooked the courtyard were housed by several generations of Gypsy families.  At night they drank wine and played loud music from their cars but they always turned the music off at ten o’clock on the dot.  Whenever the police came the Gypsies would be manhandled into cars, often getting a knuckle in the ribs or a hard slap over the head, slammed against cars.  I had never seen a tougher-looking police force than the Czech police.  Many of them were ex-military with facial scars and with grim expressions.  They didn’t ask questions.

The thought of the police turning up to arrest me turned my piss yellow.  As I sat on the balcony with a JD on my lap and a cigarette in my mouth, I watched the gate, terrified that it might swing open to flashing blue lights.  Instead all night a steady stream of Gypsy family members came and went under the cover of midnight with TVs and stereos under their arms; items they had taxed from the city.  The goods they brought in were taken to flat twenty-seven on the fourth floor in the building directly opposite to mine.  

I did not know who lived in that flat but once a week the iron gates creaked open and a black BMW would crawl in, slow and purposeful, its tyres cracking on the cobbles.  The car would come a stop and a beast of a man who was both beautiful and frightening would step out, observe his surroundings, and then make his way to flat twenty-seven.  A half hour later he we would emerge from the flat and make his way back down to the car.  

There was a steadiness about this man, the look of someone not prone to neurotic behaviour.  He dressed like a person in finance.  His head was shaven to the quick and he wore polished shoes that caught the light and a double-breasted suit that hugged his huge figure.  One time I noticed a Rolex on his wrist.  There was no doubt in my mind this man was a killer.  I watched him leave through the iron gates, the BMW crawling back into the city, back towards the Vltava river.   

I lit another cigarette and came to the conclusion that the police would not be coming for me.  In the morning I would end my relationship with Mateja.  As long as I lived in this city I would not be able to make commitments to anyone. 

Prague is home to those who unwittingly are witness to their own degeneration.  

Automotions

We caught the U-Bahn.  I didn’t know which part of Berlin we were heading to, only that I was being taken to a nightclub called Zenzoride. Liana and her friends talked excitedly.  The carriage lights flickered.  At the station platforms trains hummed and whirled like metal beasts.  We made our way up concrete steps and onto a barren street with dilapidated buildings and warehouses and other industrial strongholds.  Ahead were floodlights where people congregated and queued outside a huge gothic building cordoned off with high wire fencing.  Things began to heat up.

At a kiosk we parted with cash to gain entry.  I slid fifteen euros across the counter and received a stamp of a scorpion on my hand.  We walked through a wire meshed tunnel towards a security area where we lined up to be checked for drugs and weapons.  The security consisted mainly of large German men with black attire and hard grimaces.  I was patted down and searched and then waved on.  There was a buzz in the air.   I glanced up, above us were metal girders and attached to these were massive power cords encased in rubber tubing.  Ahead of us was a concrete archway with large metal doors.  Before stepping through I glanced back and saw an industrial complex of buildings and warehouses and people queuing in a blanket of floodlight.  The sensation of an abandoned TV network still on air.

Following a group of people we made our way down a corridor towards a door at the far end.  I could hear a thump from beyond that grew louder as I got closer.  My heart began to race.  When I stepped through the door the thump turned into a beat and I was greeted by a nightclub pumping out techno.

It took me a moment to adjust.  Berlin, I had been told, was the place for clubbing in Europe and this spectacle did nothing to refute that claim.  In the middle of the floor was a crowd of people dancing in the smoke and lights.  Lasers scanned the crowd and around the dance floor people moved on balconies, arms and bodies flowing in the air.  

Dave threw me a wink.  ‘Come on, man.’

Metal stairs led to other levels of the building and on every floor there were booths for seating.  Everywhere were offshoot rooms with a variety of DJs mixing techno through huge speakers.  Emergency lights lined the walkways.  The floor vibrated.  The club had a raw and circular appearance, a harmony of industrial and contemporary stimuli. 

On the second level we bought drinks from a bar and commandeered a booth.  The music was so loud it got into everything, brick, flesh, lungs.  To hear one another we had to lean into each other and shout over the beat.  Within half an hour we  amassed a collection of beer and cigarettes.  Liana and the gang were in their element, laughing and talking excitedly, but I was unable to settle.

Dave reached across the table and took both of my hands with his.  ‘Are you serious?’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Are you serious or do you want to have some fun?’  He brought my hands together and I felt him slip something into my palm before he slinked back across the table with a grin.

‘What is it?’

Liana leaned into me.  ‘MDMA.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.  ‘It’s been a long time.’

‘You don’t have to,’ Liana said.

I watched as in turn my companions popped something into their mouths before washing it down with beer.  I examined the package in my palm.  It was a cigarette paper tightly wrapped and concealing what I imagined was the white powder of MDMA.  Glancing around I saw everyone in the club happy and in love with life.   It struck me that I had not felt like that since before the accident.  In a moment of hardpan emotion I said, ‘Fuck it,’ and put the package onto my tongue.  I took a swig of beer and swallowed.  Almost instantly I felt a rush of anxiety and doubt.  It was too late now, I thought.

The club lights strobed around us, our conversations strange and disjointed.  In the back of my mind I couldn’t shake the fear that I was about to get high and it frightened me to the point that my hands were shaking.

It took forty minutes for the drug to take effect.  At first I felt an absence from the club, a discordant view of everything around me.  Suddenly I wanted to shit.  And then with the flick of a switch the high hit me and my brain switched on.  It was as though throughout my entire life I had been viewing everything through a letterbox and now the door to that letterbox had opened.  The anxiety I previously had vanished in the click of a finger and a surge of euphoria travelled down to my toes and then back up to the crown of my head like an electrical current.  The music changed.

‘Jesus Christ.’

Dave laughed.  His teeth were fluorescent in the light.  Demonic.  He shouted over the music, ‘It’s good, yeah? Good shit, right mate?’

‘Jesus Christ.’   The club had entered my brain and central to it all was the music, so tribal, so fierce.  ‘Holy shit!’  I was grinning like a freak.

‘Drink some water,’ said Liana.

I glanced at her.  Her eyes were black, her face slender and beautiful.  ‘Water,’ she said again and pointed to the glass on the table.  I reached for it, but in the light my hand flickered in and out of existence, and then the glass it held disappeared and reappeared.  I drank the water, the most beautiful thing I had ever tasted.  ‘I fucking love water,’ I said.

Dave was laughing.  ‘I love this guy.  Where did you find him?’

Liana shrugged.  Hedy and Reena were holding each other like lovers in the corner, watching my high unfold.  ‘We’re so glad you came to Berlin,’ said Hedy. ‘It’s a real trip.’

The beat of the techno cut out and a subwoofer rattled the room.  The table and the glasses on top of it vibrated.  The beat kicked back in sending everything into overdrive.

Following Liana’s lead I was drawn from the booth and onto the dance floor where I began to dance among a throng of bodies, sweat and heat and smoke pressing down upon me.  Liana, Dave, Hedy and Reena danced alongside me.  We were lovers now, comrades of the exceptional.  The music stopped and we cried and whooped.  I glanced up and saw the DJ, a figure bathed in smoke and light and with his arms in the air like a preacher.  He brought his arms down and we were met with a subwoofer that cut the room into layers.  Slowly a beat built up around it, smooth synthetic pads cushioning the kick drum and hat.  As the beat become solid and the tune began to take shape, I found I was surrounded by people who were experiencing the same measureless harmony as myself.  My body was at one with the music, total connection, total muscle control.  I felt a love for my friends that was pure and undiluted.  

I checked to see if Liana was okay.  She was hugging herself and running her hands over her body as though being fucked by the music.  It was devouring us.  Liana moved into me and we embraced.  I could smell the sweat on her.

‘I love being your friend,’ she shouted over the beat.  ‘I’ve never felt judged by you.’

The night stretched on endlessly and beautiful.  At some point in the evening I met another of Liana’s friends, Raphael.  He was a tall and quiet man whose presence seemed to put everyone at ease.

‘Are you having a good time?’ he asked me.

‘Yes.  Most definitely.’  Beads of sweat dropped from my brow.

He offered me a joint.  ‘Here, take this.’

Raphael smoked a lot of weed and when he passed a joint it was a slow and purposeful movement.  He seemed to observe everything from far away as though the world was slowing down for him.  I took the joint he was offering and Liana and I went to another room where more techno poured onto a dance floor.  I stood by the side and watched the dancers.  I inhaled another drag of the joint but by now I had forgotten what I was smoking, drawing it into my lungs like a cigarette.  Eventually, when it was gone, I ground it into an ashtray and then filled with intense energy I again joined the fray.

As I danced inside the core the music grew with vigour, flashes and bangs, bodies sweating around me.  I had moments of connection followed by confusion.  Something wasn’t right.  I could feel myself shifting.  I was finding it difficult to dance, made harder when all of a sudden the bass and the beat dropped out and a range of high-pitched 101s assaulted us, cutting through everything.  The floor seemed to rise and fall.  People were getting crazy.  The 101s were building up into a crescendo and we all knew something was coming.  I remember thinking, ‘Jesus, when is this going to stop?’  But it kept going, the crescendo rising and rising.  The club was spinning past in a blur of lasers and smoke, bodies suspended all around me, arms up like worshippers waiting for a payload.  It was an ungainly feeling and I struggled to sync myself.  The club was heading towards something I had no power to overturn.  The atmosphere rose up and up until finally the bass and the beat kicked back in and the club went nuts.  I heard my voice say ‘Fucking hell’.  And with that, my brain folded like a pancake.

For the briefest of moments I had no idea where I was.  Glancing around I no longer saw bodies of people but machines dancing in the strobe light; mechanical and spindly, organic and retro things washing over the floor like a tide of water, dancing as one great component, one network rotating around me, as though I were the bionic eye of the storm.  Flashes and bangs of music compounded me, threw me out of sync with the swarm; but the swarm was at one with it, following it, worshipping the great sound.  This is it, I thought.  Humanity is heading to this.

Another flash and the machines were replaced with people once again.  I had stopped dancing and was stood in the middle of the floor like a moron, heart pounding, clothes drenched in sweat.  Somehow in the chaos I located Liana.  She was still dancing, oblivious to my headfuck.

‘I have to go home!’ I shouted.  ‘I have to get out of here!’

‘What? What is it?’

‘I have to get out of here!’

She took my hand and led me from the dance floor and towards the exit, keeping an arm around me to keep me steady.  I felt like a psychiatric patient.  When we reached a quiet area in an adjoining room, she hugged me and spoke into my ear.

‘It’s okay,’ she was saying.  ‘You’re fine.  It’s okay.’  Her voice was coming to me from inside a cave.

With trembling hands I sat and chain-smoked while Liana talked me back to reality.  I clung to her words.

As I calmed I took in my surroundings.  We sat on a red couch.  Across from us was a vending machine.  Our senses had taken leave and we were convinced it was selling silver spoons of different shapes and sizes.  It wasn’t until closer inspection that we discovered they were cigarette packets.

When the world at last took shape, we decided to leave, two wired individuals navigating their way across Berlin on the U-Bahn. At the station platforms trains juddered and roared in the early morning glare.  They sounded like intros to songs.  Every now and then I felt the presence of machines, and searching for them was unable to locate them.  Everything ticked.  Nearby commuters hid behind mobile phones and tablets.  Time moved impossibly slow.  And everything ticked.  We are close to bionic ejaculation.  We are close to spawning our future.

At Liana’s we took a couple of sleeping pills and I went into Danny’s room to sleep.  He was away in Switzerland.  I stretched out on the mattress on the floor, my body still twitching, and Liana took the bed.  When I started to drift the MDMA would ripple me awake again.  It was an unpleasant and dirty feeling.  At some point I made it back to my room and slept all day and woke at sunset.  I was tired.  Confused.  The world was beating some distant song.  Then I smoked a cigarette.

Modern Life Suits

At ten-thirty Liana shook me awake and dragged me from bed.  A dream that I couldn’t remember was already fading away.  I had slept hard, the kind of hard that takes awhile to soften, and I had slept in my clothes and sweated so much that my clothes stuck to my skin.  Liana showed me how to work the shower – don’t turn the knob too far to the right otherwise you’ll get scolded and not too far to the left as you’ll freeze.  As I played tentatively with the tap, trying to find a moderate temperature, Liana unbuttoned her jeans and then sat on the toilet and peed.  I pretended not to notice and spent an unrealistic amount of time with the shower controls.  

‘Tonight will enlighten you,’ said Liana.  ‘It’s going to be fun.  I have some friends who you really must meet.’

I could hear her peeing in the toilet.  

‘Sounds great,’ I replied.  ‘But I’m not sure about the whole “enlightened” thing.’

‘God, you’re predictable.’

‘Life is meaningless,’ I said with a smile.

‘Rubbish,’ she said, grabbing wads of loo roll.   ‘You better not say that shit to my friends,’ she warned.  She stood and pulled up her jeans.  ‘I mean it.  We’re supposed to be having fun, remember?’

‘Oh yes.  I’m having fun.’

‘Take a shower.  Be ready in ten minutes.’  

Twenty minutes later and we were on our way out the door.  Her friends were expecting us half an hour ago.  Through the landing windows all I could see was the black of the city and the occasional orange light.  At night cities reclaim their virginity; virgin lungs and brain, virgin heart reborn and ready for conquering.  I glanced over the banisters.  Below us the lobby floor pulsed and vibrated.  

As we descended the stairs we heard techno coming up towards us.  A young man with dark skin and dreads and wearing thick-rimmed glasses was dancing on the third floor landing.  The music came from small speakers hung from his belt.  Despite being late Liana stopped to dance with him for a couple of beats before continuing on our way.  The music faded above us.  Liana jumped the last two steps into the lobby and threw herself at the large double doors and smashed her way into the street.

‘Come on!’

We caught a tram packed with people revelling in the evening.  The tram stopped to let passengers on and off and three rogue-like men stepped on and set up hand drums at the rear and started playing.  The music filled the carriage and people danced and drank.  Someone sparked up a joint.  The beat of the drums hammered into my chest.   When we reached ***** Liana and I jumped off and watched the “dance-tram” turn the corner.  

The river ran parallel to a cobbled street lined with bars and cafes where groups of people enjoyed beer and conversation.  The sound of chatter echoed around us.  We made our way along the river edge.  It was lined with lights, beautiful reflections balancing on the water.  The cafes and bars glowed in neon.

Liana was one step ahead of me, leading me through the evening revellers.  Again she ducked and dived, agile like an animal, and again I struggled to keep up.  Eventually we arrived at a bar called ****** and I followed her in and into a bright space of contemporary furniture and soft couches.  The walls were bare brick with artwork and murals.  Delicately placed floor lamps leant over from corners.  Towards the rear was a wooden bar embedded with fairy lights.  Music played in the background.  I followed Liana up a spiral staircase to a mezzanine with low coffee tables and teak couches.  There were shelves rammed with books.  In the corner was a man and two women, all three in their mid-twenties, sitting with bottles of beer.  When they saw us approach a huge fuss was made as they stood and in turn hugged and kissed Liana.  I shook hands with all three.  The man, Dave, was English, and the two women, Reena and Hedy, were German.  The five of us sat.

Dave pushed his glasses up his nose.  His glasses were large, thick-rimmed, and tinted blue.  ‘This place is like home,’ he said to me, smiling.  He had a great smile.  ‘It’s my diving board into Berlin.’  

‘Cool artwork,’ I said, looking around.  

‘It’s very cool,’ said Hedy.  Hedy was a slim frantic-looking woman with frizzy black hair and a nose stud.  Her skin was dark and she had red lipstick.  She wore a faux leather jacket the colour of cognac, with zips that she couldn’t stop playing with.  

Rolling a cigarette Reena said to me, ‘What is that?’ 

‘What is what?’

‘On your nose?  Is that a tattoo?’

I laughed.  ‘It’s not a tattoo.  I was in an accident.  It’s a scar.’

‘It looks like a moth?’ said Hedy.

Liana felt compelled to change the subject.  ‘Does anyone want another drink?’

Dave held up his beer and shook it to show it was almost done.  ‘Yes.  Definitely.’  I opted for a coke.  Dave said, ‘Go order at the bar, they’ll bring it up.’

Liana glanced at me.  ‘Are you coming?’

‘Do you need me to?’

‘He’s alright here with us,’ said Dave, leaning back.  He smoothed out his shirt with his palms.  ‘We’ll take care of him.’

I chuckled.  ‘You see.  Your friends are going to take care of me.’   

Liana shot me a worried glance and then disappeared down the stairwell to the bar below.  

‘It’s beautiful,’ said Reena.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The moth.  It’s beautiful.’

‘It kind of suits him, don’t you think?’ said Dave, peering over his glasses.

Hedy put a finger to her lips and frowned like someone in a museum.  ‘It’s like someone painted on you.’

‘I love your face,’ said Reena.  ‘I love your scar.  It looks like a moth.  Why is it blue?’

Dave said, ‘I think we’re freaking him out now.  Are we freaking you out?’

‘It turned blue within a matter of days.  I don’t know why.’

‘It looks like a tattoo.’

‘How did you get it?’ Dave asked.

‘Car accident.’  I shuffled uncomfortably on my seat and cleared my throat.  There was a pause.

‘Far out,’ said Hedy. 

‘To be honest, I don’t like to think about it,’ I told them.  ‘If you think about something for too long you start to become it.’

Dave shrugged.  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with becoming a moth,’ said Reena.  ‘You’ll always fly towards the light.’

‘Mate, fucking go with it,’ said Dave.  He swirled the beer in his bottle and then tipped his head back.  I watched the beer drain from the bottle.

Liana came back to the table.  ‘What did I miss?’

Dave smiled.  ‘Everything.’

We settled into the couches and drank and talked.  Liana’s friends were a mash of opinions and ideals that at times felt contradictory and destabilising.  Perhaps they knew this.  Perhaps not.  

Reena rolled another cigarette from a pack of tobacco on the table.  She was a small and robust young lady.  As she rolled the cigarette her fingers I noticed were coppery with dirt and I wondered if she had been tending to soil.  All three of Liana’s friends, I would discover, were students of ecology and environmental health.  Reena was undertaking a PhD and was due to leave for Scotland in a few weeks where her latest field work was occurring.  

Liana turned to Hedy.  ‘So Heds, are you working on anything lately?’

Hedy put her feet up on the edge of the coffee table.  She had leather boots.  ‘I have a couple of projects on the go,’ she said.  She shrugged and started working her teeth on a finger nail.

‘What is it that you do?’ I asked.

‘Hedy is an amazing sculptor,’ said Liana.  ‘She works with metals.’

‘Glass too,’ said Hedy.  ‘Mostly I forage for metal at the city dump or at the reclaimers.  I take things and remould them into something new.’

‘You should work with wood,’ said Dave.  He reached for the pack of cigarettes on the table and absently worked a cigarette from the packet.  ‘I know everything there is to know about wood,’ he said.  ‘Lacewood Pine, Pearwood, Maple, Cherry, Cedar, Ash, Birch.  Afromosia, Bubinga, Sapele, Teak.  There’s hundreds.  We should work on something together.  That would be awesome.’  He squeezed an eye shut and lit the cigarette.  ‘Definitely we should work together.’

‘My latest project is with glass,’ said Hedy.  ‘Very different, very finite.  Interesting material but hard to work with.’

‘What are you making?’ asked Reena.

‘A bust of my mother.  It’s hollow.’

‘You need to fill it with things,’ said Reena.  ‘Otherwise it’s just hollow.’

‘That’s the point,’ said Hedy.   

‘Don’t you like your mother?’ I asked.

‘Of course I do,’ said Hedy.  ‘But the reality of the world is whatever she chooses it to be.  The number one problem with getting older is that you drag the world away from new perspectives.’

Liana said, ‘I can’t live in the confines of other people’s expectations.’

‘Fucking aye,’ said Dave, raising his beer.  

These people had no qualms about transcending reality as long as they brought back with them the spiritual tools needed to improve themselves and the world around them.  To this aim Liana had surrounded herself with an array of friends and acquaintances who all knew something about, and had varying levels of education within ecology and the environment, social sciences and economic development.  They were the internet generation, connected, self-aware, hedonistic.  Metropolitan hipster.  They were surviving through a mix of capitalist individualism and socialist ideals.  As a collective they understood the need for modernity and change.  They wanted change.  They craved balance and power over ones endeavours and over the institutions that governed them.  They were sexually liberated and fearless in the face of criticism.  

As we stood to leave Liana pointed a finger aggressively across the table.  ‘The only power we have,’ she said, ‘is the ability to write our own stories and hope they inspire others into action.  I like this life.  Modern life suits me.  I don’t want it to end.’