Snaxx

I'm eventually going to discern a constellation or two out of more than just my first day in Berlin. But there is one further detail from that day that might help me make them out. In the bus on the way from the airport to the apartment where T and I have rented a room enough times at this point to know the route by heart, I felt that heart of mine drop out of its cage into my belly. Something about the open sky. And the architecture and its wide streets. The different colors of the buildings. And my anticipation. And the fact that we've been watching episodes of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz. And the different typefaces you see everywhere and only there. "Oh my God, I love this city." I said to T. Or something just as banal and inarticulate. Things get a little more complicated once we move into the next days. I think it might have something to do with that little ache I felt on my way in. Or the fact that the days between now and then are accumulating. And I've been great about gaping wide-eyed at the constellations as they emerge when I write them down for you. But. I started all this by talking about "Moments of Pleasure." "Just being alive/ It can really hurt." Sing it, Kate. Or Kiki. Or you or me. "They're in the same framework," you say Allen said Dylan had said to him. We do know these things. But I, at least, sometimes forget them. It's nice when you're able to wake up to them again. How long can I keep on waking?

So after Perverts. And D and T and V and I on the couch. And the cab. After sleeping in. Big German breakfast. With C and L. Our hosts. Cold-cuts, croissants, ham, weird sausage meat wrapped in plastic that's yummy when you mix it with spicy mustard on a piece of bread covered with grains and seeds and things. Quartz. You know that? Sorta like a cream cheese, but not so thick. Yummy. Jam. And chatty chatty chat. L is very chatty. In German! Lot to deal with early in the morning after a party. But nice. More resting. Going out. Walking around the leather shops looking for a hood. No hood. Too expensive. Or not right on my nose. And you don't want a hood that doesn't show off your nose. A coffee. Cruising. There's some good pictures of me and my haircut. A really good one of me reflected in a Tillmans violet at the exhibit on Tuesday. But I'm getting distracted. Bus back to the pad to rest a little bit before gussying up to go cruise some more. Chatting with the Frenchies. Like J-M and G. Members of BLUF club. Very nice men. Playpals of mine. On recent occasion. G starting new job. Independent. Free-lance. But French. And therefore nervous. Sweet nervousness in the midst of all his get-up. Cap and breeches and jacket all shined high. And J-M. Happy about his visit to a Schloss to see Watteau. Well worth the trip. Also lovely tense coexistence. Loving Watteau in a Muir-cap. Crazier things have been seen. Crazier people, too. Like the sexy skinhead whose dick I've sucked before and who, I didn't know, is a sous-chef and a disappointed Sarko-dolâtre and admirer of Mitterrand. T talked to him for a long time. The question on everyone's lips was: so what are you doing tonight? And, in general, the answer was: Snaxx. It was ours for sure.

We went early again. There were lots of stories about waiting hours in line. Previous years. And it was cold! out. So we didn't want to do that. So we took the U-bahn. And then the S-bahn for one stop. With lots of other men. Without advanced tickets. And we started standing in line at 10:40p.m. Doors supposedly opening at 11, but they were already open. Watched some little boys get turned away for looking too pretty. Not trashy enough. Without an identifiable fetish. It was cold. But it felt like every time the wind would blow, we'd move a couple of steps forward. Which says something about German efficiency. Big crowd in front of a former East Berlin factory. Waiting in line. Moving forward efficiently. "Maybe this is like the other side of the camps," I mumbled to T at some point. He didn't hear me. And I did repeat it. Made you feel weird. Also? Like you're getting ready to go into an Egyptian temple. Or Ancient place of worship of some sort. It's intense. The cold and the masses of men and the expectation and the memory of the space from our other visit. Some people leave saying it's too much. Like the couple we met while we were there. Later on in the night. More about them soon. "We thought the party in the Berghain was almost too big," one of them wrote me once I was back in Paris. "But I like it big!" I wrote back. With a ;.)-

But it sure is big. You should have seen the mass of recently closer to or further from naked people at the coat check. I stood in line first. While off to one side T changed into the chaps J had sold him. Somehow T found me in the mass of muscle and flesh. So I stepped off to one side to take off everything that wasn't my leather vest and leather pants with the zipper that opens all the way up to over my hiney and leather boots. Took T another half hour to maneuver his way to the counter. I ran off to go pee. And when I came back I made out his little bald spot amongst all the other little bald spots and occasional heads of hair. But it took him forever to check our bag and coats. "Some jerk who cut in front of me and proceeded to check the things of nine or ten of his friends," he said.

Meanwhile I'd bought two really big glass bottles of water. We'd already had some beer. I'm not sure I can describe the space of the Berghain to you. Did I mention it's huge? Walk in. Bar immediately on left. Behind that bar, lots of dark hallways. Straight ahead past the bar, a big double door, another little bar surrounded by playspace, and one of the two dancefloors with a big bar on the other side of it. Happy music. Not the dark electronic stuff on the main dancefloor upstairs. And there's lots of circuitous routes through the dark hallways to get from any one of these places to another downstairs. Including, this year, a whole lot of much wider open space that they hadn't opened last year. Which made things less crowded. If still big. And maybe a little dangerous. A skinhead I shared an airplane and metro ride with on the way back said he'd seen somebody giving a blowjob who ended up with a brick falling on his head. He said he saw him lift his hand up to his head. Saw the blood. And kept sucking. That is too much. One is often led to use that expression about this place. Upstairs--big, wide, regal feeling stairs that make you feel small, with a landing you round that brings you to emerge immediately onto the dancefloor. Great lights. Really high ceiling. This year they'd added bleachers so you could get a better view of the crowd. And a view from the dancefloor onto the men in the bleachers. Bars on either side of the dance floor. One sorta intimate way on the other side in relation to the stairs. The other stretches all along the dancefloor, is separated from it by high windows, and the ceiling stretches up just as high. Factory windows. Beautifully lit.

That's the short of the space. Not the long of it. Because there'd be a lot to say about any nook and cranny you end up in. I'll spare you all but the most important. The happy dancefloor was of course always crowded. But so was the big one for that matter. The DJ was perched on a landing under which you could stand. Like the guy with the really huge Schlange that T and I ended up with later. He had hair. Impeccably slicked back. And was wearing motorcycle pants. And was really beautiful. With beautiful tattoos all over his shoulders and arms. He became a little legendary amongst the people I ended up chatting with the next night. I'm getting ahead of myself again. But I found him on line the next day after T left. "Unbelievable. I've found you again," I wrote auf Deutsch. And proceeded to say to him that it was too bad that only my boyfriend got a go at his grosse Schlange. I sure hope I didn't just make up that word, which literally means "chain," as slang for what I want it to be. He sent me back a pic of his grosse Schlange, which would tend to make you believe that if I did make it up, it was perfectly understandable, and said that he'd had fun and was staying in for the night after Snaxx. Before doing an about-face and saying we could meet up at the Mutschmann's. So a good portion of Sunday night, anyone I'd end up talking to or playing with would be treated to my "I'm supposed to be meeting up with a German with a grosse Schlange" line. Turns out he was too tired to go out. And didn't show up. But it was fun looking for him now that I was alone and in memory of the moment T and I spent with him. I'd first spotted him at Snaxx under the landing on top of which the DJ was spinning. And then later T and I passed by him in the dark extra space that was not too much for me since a brick didn't fall on my head and since we ended up playing around with him there. There was a Frenchie we finally met after having seen him around a lot in Paris and on line. I ran into him at the Mutschmann's where he giggled and smiled and said something like "He sure was delicious that guy you were with at the Snaxx." "Which one?" I asked him. He laughed. But I knew who he was talking about. The sexy guy with the tattoos and motorcycle pants and the grosse Schlange that I watched with amazement as T knew just what to do with it. Meanwhile I just kissed him every once in a while.

T did a lot of his thing taking care of mine. As a matter of fact, that was pretty much the rhythm of our evening. Dark corner for T to do his thing taking care of mine. Which is sorta new for us. At least that it be so clearly defined. In that particular configuration. Then dancing together. Enjoying looking at each other. Looking elsewhere. Looking at each other again. Pointing every once in a while. A little identifying. Some friends that B has done photos of that I recognized who were there. It was while we were in one of the dark corners, though, that I saw the couple from Stuttgart. The ones who later said they thought the Berghain was almost too big. We'd actually seen them earlier in the day when we were having our coffee. I'd pointed them out to T because I'd seen them on line before. And they're marked as being friends with this couple I tricked with once. And they're sexy. And a couple on the prowl. There are some of those around but not tons. And I guess T and I are becoming one of them. And starting to know how to manage it a little better. Guess what? The letters for the couple's names are T and W. Funny, huh? So I guess we have to go all kind of elemental and call them T² and W². Since I is W. T pointed it out immediately. That we were the same letters. They've been together 19 years. And are a little older than T and me. Which means they must have met at around the same age. Like we're on parallel lines or something. Except that we met them. Like parallel lines never would. W² told me in one of our chats since then that he felt like we'd known each other for a long time. I told him that I might be an American, but that I felt like I had an old soul, or something like that. I mean that's exactly what I told him. "I feel like I have an old soul, oder so. Or something like that." Because it is true that something clicked. Parallel lines coming together is geometrically impossible, I think. So they're bound to make a click when it happens. They were there and so were we and then the next day I was there and they were, too. It turned into some kind of a settled configuration.

We had lots of long sex with them. In a couple of places. As it all was winding down around 5 or 5:30, I think, my zipper got unzipped all the way around. Not even in a very dark corner. I'm pretty sure it was all lit up. T² did me good. While T and W² watched. I was leaning into W² for this whole thing. And then we all went to the bar for water. And chatted. Found out then, I think, that they'd been together for 19 years. It was comfy. Part of the reason T was so sad to leave the next day. They left Snaxx at around 6. T and I stayed some more. The dark corners emptying out. It was hard because I wasn't totally, hard I mean, but T stretched out on one of the bazillion slings and I did him good. And we left around 8. But not before T got cruised by another Frenchie we'd had yet to see. At the coatcheck on the way out. Outside, snow had fallen. The sky was white. It was cold. And there was an apparently endless line of taxis waiting to take loonies like us home, lordy was it muddy. We went home. Caressing each other's knees and smiling. Evaluating. Kindly. Shower and ins Bett.