it was two winters ago, a girl friend was staying with me. it was during that time where my spare bed was rarely spare. she was between flats. that typical berlin harsh winter meant it had been weeks where we rarely went outdoors. but she was restless, she was always restless. but now she was enought to make me restless. she convinced me we needed to get out of the flat. at least for drinks. it could be any bar, it could be near, and so she coaxes me out into the night.
we go to the bar that opened across the street from my atelier. it was kind of “the place” at the time. usually chill, but always cool cute looking people. a few heads turned as we walked through the door. the windows were steamed up. i think we just about found a couple seats together, i don’t remember what we talked about, but the turning point was when i noticed a stream of people walking through the back .
there were three rooms, the third room had few seats and a kicker table. i like kicker but my girl friend wasn’t so keen. i said i’d go check out the crowd and come back to get her, but i noticed something strange when i walked through the third door. it looked like, it looked like people were dissapearing behind the wall by the kicker table, and they weren’t people who worked there, so it wasn’t some kind of store room. i’d been in berlin long enough to know back rooms and kellars were often open at random, and so i followed the next line of people who went through that "secret" door.
it was the kind of place that felt like sweat must of been dripping down the walls. so so crowded, unapologetically a fire hazard. the room was larger than any of the three that were generally open. there was another bar and a blaring pa. and the dj, a guy with glasses, maybe hair falling into his face, and some kind of ironic t-shirt, had total control of the floor. everyone was dancing. everyone was going crazy, it was that we’ve survived this winter and fuck it we’re going out vibe. once you’[ve made the effort to be out i guess you want go for it a whole lot more.
i went back and grabbed my friend, she was skeptical but then she’s generally dubious about most things. when we finally walked into that back room, even she was taken back by all of the crowd on the floor. it took no convincing then. we wanted to get dancing. the beat was building. and then my flashback meets my flashforward, because now i think of how my friend will add her bag to a towering pile against the wall, because of course there’s no cloakroom. and sometime between the first and third boy she dances with, before she goes for her wallet to buy another drink, she’ll realise someone’s been into her bag, and she doesn’t have a camera anymore.
and the track playing, kid cudi day n’ nite.
Kid Cudi - Day 'N' Nite [Crookers remix] (Directed by BBGUN) from bbgun on Vimeo.
will become massive in the charts eventually. the mc will be hailed as the new hip hop great hope. but back to the moment. i’m deeply into all of it. I hadn’t danced in months. a friend of a friend will arrive, alone. i dont’ know him that well. we’ve never been out dancing before. and as we start dancing close and then closer, in the frenzy of everyone pumping hands in the air and grinding, we’ll start kissing, kissing like mad, even though i never found him attractive before. but then it will start to feel awkward, or i’ll start to feel pressured, and i’ll start to feel like i don’t want to dance anymore.i think then, he may try to go home with another one of my friends, and fail. i think i’ll try to find my girl friend and fail. she’ll have found another guy she’s dancing with against the door, but i don’t see her, so i decide to leave, without saying goodbye.the next track playing is even better than the last. i really want to see this dj play again, so i go up to him to get his name, but he’s too deep in the mix ,so i ask his friend. he tells me, but its too loud to make out what he’s saying. finally after the third time, i’ll think i heard him say “whiskey” and be disipointed when i go home and look it up and see i must have heard wrong. a year later, this dj will become my friend. only, he won’t be a dj anymore.
i will then try to leave, no less than five times. running into person after person i know, arriving, who will convince me to stay. and then i’ll be stopped by boys i don’t know, who like the look of me, who try to convince me to stay. until i finally get to that front room and a guy at the bar offers to buy me a shot, and i relent saying, as long as he understands i’m going home. i knock it back. he takes my hand and asks why i’m leaving. he orders a glass of wine and asks if i could stay for just a little bit more. and we talk about music i think, and its interesting enough but i’m tired now. and when he says we could continue the conversation in his flat i’m just irritated, so finally i walk out the front door.
my friend will also try to leave unsuccessfuly. she will be stopped by the bar manager who fancies her and buys her a drink. who is chatty enough, until she’s distracted by another, with who she will finally leave with and walk out the front door. and when they reach his flat, she’ll have a little panic. because he lives across the street from me . and for weeks after ,hoping to never run into him, she’s cautious entering my front door. and from time to time i’ll look out my window at the flat on the other side ,and wonder if he looks across from time to time, trying to figure out what happened to the girl from that night. i know after he definitely called her more than a few times. but she will never answer. because after that night she won’t want to see him anymore.
and that backroom, the secret back club will close. in less than three months. and then the bar itself will close, at the height of its hype, and no one will know why. hanging from the front door a sign saying “off on holiday” but it won’t open again until half a year, or more. but it won’t bother me so much because i’ll move from the atelier across the street. a rich young couple will take over the contract, all six studio spaces. and i won’t have to as much of a reason to walk up that way. soon i won’t think of it anymore.
eventually that bar will reopen. only that b
ackroom will never reopen. and it will never feel the way it did that night.years later, i will find myself there alone on an early sunday evening. myself the bartender and one couple in the back. watching them sit together silently with her head in his lap. as i’m sitting with my glass of red wine writing and writing and writing, writing all this, writing everything i can remember, and more .
then i’ll stop. sit back and listen to chet baker, ask the bartender to to turn it up, and wonder why the friend I texted never turned up. and i’ll think back to that night that winter and think, i don’t even want nights like that anymore.
sometimes you act and don’t know why or what you want. sometimes the actions lead you to something, and sometimes in getting that thing, you start to want something else. i don’t know what made me think of all of this. i don’t know why i had to write it down. other than it was a moment i wanted to capture for some reason. like a dream you wake up from so vivid you have to describe it. i can’t explain it anymore.. ing that time where my spare bed was rarely spare.
she w
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