I Make Envy on Your Disco, page 17
We continued to get ready for dinner. Eventually, I turned to Daniel. “You know that opening I was invited to? The one in Berlin?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Klaus Beckmann. What about it?”
“I think I’m going to go.”
A Knock on the Door
I can only vaguely recall how I got back to the hotel. The last thing I remember is Jeremy dropping me off. “Just go to bed,” he said, then hugged me and walked away. But Jeremy has no money. I wonder how he got home. It was the middle of the night, the trains probably weren’t running, even the space-age ladies would have disappeared. I’m an idiot. The last time someone brought me home due to inebriation, I was eighteen and home was a dorm room.
I call the Haus 4 Gallery and leave a message for Leopold Koch. I’m sick, I explain, and cancel our meeting. I apologize for the late notice and promise to stop by the gallery before I leave Berlin. Life is a series of white lies. The trick, I suppose, is keeping them simple and not getting caught.
My mouth is dry, my head splitting. I skip the breakfast room and drink an entire liter of Coke from the minibar, which, as always, feels like fuel from the gods after a night of debauchery. The sugar and caffeine pour through me, coloring me in. Thankfully, this hangover seems short lived; perhaps I’m getting used to late nights, little sleep, and variable substances drifting through me. I open the dresser for a change of attire and see the half tablet of ecstasy hidden under a shirt. I cup it in my palm, this tiny yellow thing, like it could fly away.
They say that ecstasy makes you nostalgic for a moment as you’re experiencing it. That’s sad, and even a little cruel—you’re feeling contented and connected but also aware that the feeling will soon disappear. All that’s left is the memory, the residue.
Once upon a time, ecstasy was my pill of choice. It even delivered Daniel to me, as we kissed so suddenly underneath a disco ball. When you share your first kiss under the influence of a pill, you think, was it just the pill? Was it even real? Or maybe it was more real than anything before it, or anything since; perhaps the pill simply opened the door. But in Berlin, the pill can’t do its job. Ostalgie surrounding me, New York haunting me from across the ocean.
I wonder where the rest of the pill could take me. There’s only one way to find out, but nothing good will come of it. The drugs don’t work anymore. So I go to the toilet, lift the lid, throw the pill in the water and flush it down.
I walk to the Tiergarten and head into the park. Endless rows of hulking trees stand like soldiers, amber leaves falling in the breeze. The sky is blue, and the sun warms my cheeks. It’s hard to believe it snowed just a few days ago.
I used to go into Central Park looking for love. When I was single, looking for love was the only reason to leave the apartment. There had to be some possibility that I would find it, and if there wasn’t, then what was the point of going outside? On weekends, I’d walk through the park, trying to lock eyes with a stranger who might hold the key to the rest of my life. Sometimes he jogged past me, or he slept on the grass, his shirt off, his spine twisted toward the sun. Perhaps he zipped past me in a flash, a blur of promise on rollerblades. Or maybe that was him, reading the Times on a bench, looking thoughtful in his glasses, his baseball cap twisted backward. I’d think, he’s happy to be here, in the park, alone. He doesn’t notice me. But maybe, like me, he’s waiting. And then my eyes would return to the pavement, safe in the gray.
I’d return home loveless and defeated. I once called a friend and said, “Every time I look in the mirror I think I look older.” And she said, “You look older because you are. Every day a little more. So stop staring at yourself in the mirror.” She practically rolled her eyes through the phone. “If you look for problems, you’ll find them, Sam. It’s as simple as that.”
But when you look for love, it eludes you. In a big city, you can get lost. And you give up, bracing for a life of one-night-stands and take-out and old friends growing older. Uncle-dom. Everyone drifting away.
Then, of course, it happens, at the end of a harsh winter, one that dumped forty inches of snow on the city and sent winds whipping over the Hudson, right down Horatio Street. For months, the wind rattled your windows so much that you spent days and nights with your windows locked and the shades pulled down. The radiator hisses, the pipes clank. You’ve endured that unique brand of Manhattan dry heat that leaves you headachy and shriveled-up like dried fruit. But suddenly the days are longer, the snow has melted, and out of nowhere, you sense a whiff of possibility in the air.
The sun is out, warm on your face, and it makes you crazy. You always feel this energy shift, when winter turns to spring and it seems like the entire universe is orbiting around the city. Just thinking about it makes your heart beat faster. The sludge in your blood turns to espresso, and you come out of hibernation.
There’s a party, a friend of a friend. You’re lazy, and you hate parties. But this one is three blocks away, and you feel that stirring, so you go. You smoke, you drink. People you barely know hug you like you’re best friends. You’re in Manhattan, so half a dozen strangers ask what you do. At this particular moment, your work is something people find interesting and a little bit hip. You’re lucky, because this is a city that explodes with envy. People want to hear about success, touch it; or talk about failure, the definition of which, in New York, is anything other than great success. But it’s been an hour and you’ve had enough chitchat. It wasn’t worth the three blocks, the shower, the shave, the deciding-what-to-wear. What are you doing at another party? You don’t like drinking, or talking to people, or talking about yourself. You were more at peace in your winter tomb.
You go into the bathroom and lock the door. You look in the mirror and realize you’re slightly drunk. And you wonder if you’ll wind up going home with someone. After all, you’re still in your twenties, reasonably good-looking, with a beer in your hand; it just seems to happen. You run the faucet, splash some water on your face, then lower your mouth to the spout and drink. You always do this when you’re out, because you hate hangovers almost as much as you hate parties. And you stand there, wondering how long you can just stay inside. You wonder how many hours you’ve spent in strangers’ bathrooms, head against the door, feeling alone and separate.
The radiator hisses. A knock on the door.
You look around the bathroom and feel your cheeks flush, staring at some stranger’s scented candle, their carefully curated reading material displayed like art at a museum, their mismatched hand towels (charming or self-conscious depending on your mood), and the view from their tiny bathroom window of a Spanish restaurant on Jane Street. You hear the chatter and laughter of New Yorkers seeping through the door, all of them strangely wanting to be among each other after a depleting week of doing who-the-fuck-knows-what. What are they even talking about? Silverware and plates clanking at a dinner party, that’s what they all sound like, Portishead and Tricky playing in the background. Then you open the door, and there he is.
When I first saw Daniel, I actually gasped.
Now I walk through parks and all I see are young people; bodies twisted into each other like pipe cleaners, couples engaged in conversation or lying next to each other with eyes closed, connected by the spaghetti strands of headphones. It doesn’t matter what they’re listening to, it’s the white wires linking them that get me. The way they’re connected. And though I’m coupled now too, it still feels the same when I’m in the park. I’m alone, disconnected, feeling uncertain. Because I will always be looking for that stranger. I will always be looking for love.
And now, I stand at the edge of the Tiergarten. Where the Wall once stood. Right here in front of the gate.
I think about Jeremy and our walk in the park. I’ve become scared that I’m not seeing the real Berlin. “You and the tourists,” that’s what Kaspar said. I wonder if such a thing as the “real” Berlin even exists. Because how do you experience a city, or a person, or anything, fully and definitively? You’re always the variable, the wild card, just a piece of the set and setting. And my mind right now, I don’t know if it’s the drugs, this city, the people I’ve met, or my own reaching into the past. I’m enveloped by Ostalgie which is invisible but everywhere and totally contagious. I’m stuck inside my head, which feels like it might implode.
In New York, tourists pour through Times Square, invading my city, blocking traffic so much that there are now barriers herding them like sheep. They take pictures of places New Yorkers never go, things we don’t want to see. That’s not New York, I want to say. But maybe I’m wrong. It is the city on postcards, in pictures, in movies. Who am I to say it’s not real?
But if there is no definitive version of anything, I wonder which version of Berlin I’m experiencing, and how my heavy brain is impacting my stay. Before last night it was filtering the city like a cup of coffee, too dark, too strong. And now, on a crisp Berlin morning, so clear and blue that I can only assume it is random and as special as a holiday, the faint white wisp of a moon lingers in the sky, hovering next to the TV Tower. I wonder if this same moon is visible in New York, and where it lives back home, if it hangs above Broadway or over the Hudson. But then I realize it’s not even dawn in Manhattan. Daniel and Harry are, I hope, tucked away, oblivious to me and the sky a few time zones away. The moon, perhaps, floats above the river, while my boyfriend and my dog sleep.
I remember riding down in the elevator after I picked up Daniel’s cell phone, thinking: I need to find something new. Find another place with a new history and throw myself into it so I can disappear. But it wasn’t a real thought, it was a fantasy. And I didn’t really know this until I was in Berlin, where I would find the doppelgänger’s building with the trees and the candles and the wayward staircase, the lonely American boy, the cat named Blitz, a man named Kaspar, the painted streets, the exploding city.
* * *
The phone rings as I’m showering. I grab a towel and run, dripping wet, to answer it, wondering if it’s Magda. The television is muted, and the opening credits for the afternoon rerun of Ost und West have just come on: the TV Tower, a slab of the Wall, cafés and coffee cups and a succession of graffiti-stained buildings, a sun-dappled street.
“Hallo,” I say.
“Who’s this?” a woman’s voice asks.
“It’s Sam Singer. Who’s this?”
“This is your mother, Samuel. What is this, Ha-llo?”
“Sorry. I guess I’m talking like a Berliner.”
“Don’t do that. And by the way, that receptionist is rude.”
“Man or woman?”
“A snippy man.”
“Oh, that’s Frankie. He’s harmless.”
“Well I don’t appreciate his tone.”
I stare at the TV. I watch Sabine in the credits, tossing her hair back, beaming. The show’s title Ost und West is spray-painted on the side of a building. “Is everything okay?” I ask. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s out with Herman. Your father is such a lady now that he’s retired, going to the opera and museums and these silly lectures and lunches. I can’t imagine what on earth they talk about.”
“They probably talk about museums and opera and being retired.”
“I’d rather die. So how was the opening?”
“It’s not until the weekend.”
“Then what about the galleries?”
“They’ve been good. I’ve only been to four or five so far.”
“That’s nothing, Samuel. Isn’t that the whole reason you’re there?”
“I’m here to meet with Klaus Beckmann. Which I’ve done, by the way. I’ve been here for less than a week.”
“Well, it feels like forever.” My mother tells a story about a cat on a leash that scratched her on the elevator as I watch Sabine on TV. Her character visits a doctor, who examines her pregnant belly. Together, they look at the baby’s beating heart on the sonogram. The doctor smiles, but she turns away and begins to cry. “So tell me about Berlin,” my mother says. “Is there a Starbucks?”
“Down the street from the hotel. And I passed another one by the Brandenburg Gate.”
“Oh good.”
“Good?”
“It’s cold in New York but I still need my iced latte. Your father switches to hot drinks in October, but not me. Too obvious.”
“Mom, why are we talking about Starbucks?”
“I don’t know, Samuel. You clearly don’t want to talk about work. And so what if Starbucks makes me happy?”
“That makes me sad.”
“What makes me happy makes you sad? What a cruel thing to say.”
“Well, Mom, sorry, but there’s other stuff going on in Berlin.”
“I bet.”
“And in the world. Besides lattes.”
“I read the newspaper, Samuel. I stay informed.”
“Mom, I have a meeting.” And a TV show to watch. In a flashback of the Wall falling, Sabine’s character walks through the rubble. She is greeted by friends and relatives but looks beyond them for something else. Someone is missing.
“You never talk to me anymore,” my mother says. “If your brother was there he’d call me every day. Probably twice a day. But then, he wouldn’t be in Germany.”
“I’m going to get off the phone now.”
“How’s Daniel?”
“He’s . . . fine. We haven’t spoken in a few days.”
“What? Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m busy, he’s busy.”
“We’re all busy. You must miss him. When your father traveled, I’d stare into my Grape-Nuts and sink into the most horrible depression. I couldn’t wait to have him back home. I love your Daniel. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You should marry that man.”
“As if that’s even possible.”
“I remember that first dinner when he walked into my kitchen and did all the dishes. All of them.”
“Even the egg slicer,” I add, because she tells this story so often.
“And I thought, who is this beautiful blond man in my Sweeney Todd apron, so charming, so adept at housekeeping? I loved him instantly. Don’t let him go.”
“Mom, you’re so dramatic.”
“I hear something in your voice. I’ve been sensing something.”
I push my head into the pillow. Maternal premonitions, however accurate, are exhausting. “I don’t like you retired, Mom. You have too much time to think.”
“Daniel takes care of you, you know.”
“Look, this is not a productive conversation. And it’s probably costing a fortune.”
“I’m calling you through the computer, Samuel. The guys downstairs showed me how when they took out the air conditioners. I can call Egypt if I want. For free.”
I can’t get online to check my email, but my sixty-five-year-old mother has figured out how to make illegal phone calls on her seventy-pound Dell.
I watch the TV. Sabine’s character, Anna, walks into her office in a wrath, pregnant and sexy in a black business suit. She sucks in her stomach, and the baby bump disappears. She throws papers off drafting tables as she stomps toward her office. She swings open the door, and there they are—her husband kissing another coworker. A man. She twists her lips into a knot before the scene fades to a commercial.
“So what about Berlin?” my mother asks. “I bet it’s grim.”
“Actually, it’s beautiful.”
“Berlin is not beautiful.”
I could tell her about the cobblestone streets of Prenzlauer Berg, the lovers feeding each other cake, the ephemeral blanket of snow. But she wouldn’t understand. “Well, Mom, I’m the one who’s here. And it’s kind of amazing.”
“It’s Germany.”
“So what?”
“Samuel, you romanticize everything. It’s always been your Achilles’ heel.”
“Whatever that means.”
“It means you have the artist’s temperament. So, how are those Germans?”
“They can be a little cool at first.”
“I bet.”
“It takes a while. But then they crack. I think a lot of it is the Bush thing.”
“Samuel, you know I hate our president so much I could slit his throat with my own fingernails. But that doesn’t give any German the right to judge us. Bush is not our fault.”
“That’s not what’s happening, Mom.”
“Look, I understand you’re there for work, but that doesn’t mean you can have a good time. We’re Jewish, Samuel.”
“This is ridiculous. You raised us with a menorah one year and a Christmas tree the next.”
“Sometimes we had both.”
“Exactly. You served pork chops at Passover and now you’re pulling this?”
“I’m not pulling anything. You’re in Germany. Germany! And you were bar mitzvah’d.”
“I was bar mitzvah’d to alleviate your guilt. We had a party. They played Duran Duran. I got money and bought a VCR. It didn’t mean anything to anyone.”
“Well, maybe I feel badly about that.”
“Maybe you should. And I think you and Dad should come here sometime. My experience of Berlin is that it’s very thoughtful about its past. There are reminders everywhere.”
“I’m sure.”
“They’re building a Holocaust memorial by the Brandenburg Gate.”
“What took them so long?”
“Whatever, Mom. Berlin has this energy—it reminds me of New York, back when I was a kid.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Remember what it was like, when everything was gritty but sort of glamorous? It was dangerous, but there were sparks in the air.”
