Berlin is a mud pie of sex and stoicism. The winter is bleak. The spring is slow. The leather sofas in techno club basements are sweaty and the sirens drain you. The touch of a stranger’s kneecap with your own is not an enticing nightcap once this stranger points out his wife by the jukebox ten minutes later.
People idle by the canal with ice creams and retell bad dreams that were live-wire nightmares that previous evening. Those evenings that bleed into mornings. Those mornings that feel like mournings. The smiles are sparing. The stares are hardened. The history is palpable. The malls are closed on Sundays and I hear Hallelujahs erupt in the morning across the street from the dorm. Few weeks back I listened to Leonard’s version in the laundry room. I put too much detergent in the washer. The security guard had to come downstairs and assist. “Go out in the hall. You can’t see this.” I complied. Went past the map of Europe in German. I was allowed back in. My washer was unlocked. I wondered if he took something with him as a reward.
In acting class we have some mornings of laying on yoga mats while a partner lifts our limbs. We are expected to breathe loudly to communicate what feels good and what doesn’t. I wonder who the virgins are.
We saw the philharmonic for free. I watched the conductor’s face most of the time. Even with glasses, I couldn’t tell where to look when. “Is there a piano on stage?” I thought of Tar with the accent and Cate Blanchett and mastery of one’s art. I’m still working out what about acting is reverential and what about it is bullshit.
Running into Jeremy Strong on the street in New York last semester. There is no there there. That is a Gertrude Stein quote coming out of his mouth.
Frances McDormand yelling “I have a life” from the side door of The Strand.
The Strand tote bag on Carey Mulligan’s desk in the film She Said. Crying several times in the theater. Forgetting about the German subtitles. Spilling popcorn seconds after asking for a napkin, “What is a napkin?” settling for a paper towel. Feeling the two girls behind me in line assessing me, feeling like Mary in Another Year. Frazzled and trying hard and a chip on my shoulder.
(I’m in the airport about to go to college for the first time. Masked-up. Terminal. How to be an adult. The self-potentialities expand and my body feels the overwhelm first. I knock over my overpriced water. I get to the dorm several hours later and the security guard tells me he likes me because I have personality. I cannot find the quarantine toilet paper supply right in front of my eyes. I FaceTime my mom that evening and order from a restaurant with GrubHub credits. This same restaurant, a teen pop star will be photographed by paparazzi as she walks into it post-pandemic. I will maybe miss the city I tried so hard to leave.)
There are chips in lieu of popcorn in a machine. I will not be able to use my jugendkultur karte. Transferring money from savings to checkings. Notes app reminder to transfer it back, eventually.
Tattoos and self-effacement and getting library books. I go to new places and I bring old habits. I walk by water and I end up enjoying my alone time almost more than my
I learn there is such a thing as stage dad in Germany. You cannot blame the Americans for everything. KStew is the youngest woman Berlinale jury president. I see Martha Coolidge’s Not a Pretty Picture and I remember being in the elevator with x the eve of her book release in Paris. I remember watching the pretty composure. I remember y eyeing the snacks and maybe plucking some fruit. I remember being sick in Paris. Everyone was sick in Paris. I remember.
Seeing one of those famous authors see you in a restaurant, watching him pretend to watch his son. Despairing that guys are the same and being turned on nonetheless.
When I pretended to be more neurotic than I was for the sake of a joke. When I had sake with an accent in the East Village for the first time.
I read an excerpt of David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” to my speech class in Sophomore year of college, in acting training. Someone read a Mary Oliver poem with her Audible.com voice and at the end of the semester this same girl did a scene from The Seagull as Nina and the Harvard-graduate teacher called it masterful and I heard the midtown horns blaring.
My mother and I have references in our collective canon, including but not limited to a line from David Pumpkins, nicknames I gave my cat when I was nine that include the Spanish word for cowboy, a dance move I made up and forced my grandmother to emulate after she swayed to California Dreamin’ by our KozyShack heater with tears in her eyes.
When I lived in Berlin and remembered when.
