How I Spent My Summer

Well, hello there, stranger! It sure has been a while, hasn’t it? I promise, I have a good excuse for being absent for so long. As you might recall from the spate of tardy posts I made in late May / early June, I had The Never-Ending Stream of Houseguests, which continued right through June (with a weekend jaunt to Berlin, thank you very much). My parents also came into town for two weeks in June to celebrate my birthday, which included dinner at Taillvent! So delicious, and only for the price of one month’s rent! A bargain, really.

Anyway, we had a great time, and even managed to get down to Nantes for a couple of days to visit some friends of the family, where we had some excellent food and wine (of course). After that, I spent about two weeks at the end of June doing an intense set of interviews, which turned into hours and hours and hours of transcription work. I easily spent 8 hours transcribing one hour of interviewing. It didn’t help that I let my interviewees choose the location of the interview and it was summer, which meant that everyone wanted to meet on the patio of a café somewhere, usually facing a noisy street. After the first badly-recorded interview, I switched from my iPod/Griffin iTalk setup to a new Olympus digital Dictaphone, which has served me magnificently ever since.

So I spent 12-14 hours a day working on transcriptions, during some of the hottest days of the summer (35ºC/95ºF), in my tiny attic apartment, with skylight windows and no air-conditioning. I think I lost a few pounds a day just from sweat. I got a break when I went south to visit a friend near Rocamadour, in the Lot region of France (south-west). I would work on transcriptions during the day, and then head out on hikes in the neighboring valleys and fields before dinner. It helped that the days were a bit cooler there and that my friend’s place was an old sheep’s pen, built out of stone and half-embedded into the hillside for natural air-conditioning. Oh, and the food was delicious. Rocamadour is the region that produces Rocamadour cheese, which are these little discs of goat cheese that are just on the border between crumbly and creamy. The south-west in general is the land of everything duck, so there was lots of foie gras and confit de canard (duck cooked in its own fat). And in addition to all of that, it was the tail-end of strawberry season, and the mara des bois type of strawberries were available, which is a variety that resembles Ontario wild strawberries in their sweetness and intensity of flavor. All in all, good times.

I was only in Lot for a few days, then I came back to Paris and kept working away at my transcriptions. For the last two weeks of July, I rented out a room in a flat in Berlin for super-cheap and spent two weeks saying goodbye to my favorite techno paradise. I also treated the trip as a writing retreat, and I have to say that I’m impressed with my self-discipline. I would work on my chapter from 9 or 10am until 5pm, then I’d save everything, close my computer, and head off to meet friends, go for walks, etc. Saturdays and Sundays I did no work and concentrated on just partying hard—to do justice to the Berlin scene.

I came back to Paris at the beginning of August and tried to keep up the same work schedule I had developed in Berlin. Since it was still excruciatingly hot and I had no air-conditioning, I adjusted my schedule a bit. I would get up early and work until noon, then bike over to the Bois de Vincennes and lay out in the sun until the late afternoon, then head back to my apartment and do a bit more work. Sometimes, when I was in a section of my chapter that required less citation and more argumentation, I would bring a notebook with me and just write by hand, later editing and inserting it into the chapter.

By mid-July, I finished a chapter, which was pretty much perfect timing. I sent out the chapter to my committee, partied like a fool over the weekend, and then started planning my return to Chicago. Some things were really simple, like doing a thoroughgoing purge of my wardrobe, cleaning the apartment, and sending some of my books off by mail. Other things were complicated, like arranging the closure of my French bank account when I still needed it to receive my safety deposit from my landlord here.

My friends here gave me a great farewell, including a surprise party at a friend’s place that came with this amazing photo-montage of all of us together made by one of the crew that is a professional graphic designer. I also organized a dinner during my last week here as well as a night out at the clubs that I dubbed “Luis se déchire avant de partir” (Luis gets tore up before leaving). Despite all of my preparations, the final few days were a bit hectic, but I was able to spend my last night in Paris having a pleasant dinner and a bottle of wine with some of my friends. Yay, Paris! As you can imagine, I’m really sad about leaving Paris, even if I’m also thrilled to see my Chicago friends again. Thankfully, the pain was alleviated a bit by the knowledge that I was coming back for a few days later in September. Paris, I don’t know how to quit you.

So you might wonder what I’m going to do with a blog called Luis in Paris, now that I’m no longer in Paris (well, I’m writing this from the airport in Paris, but you see what I mean). I’ve been wondering, too. Much like while I was in Berlin, I’m hoping to keep posting about my nighttime adventures and so on while I’m in Chicago, although the frequency of my party notes will vary according to my teaching workload. Also, once in awhile, I’ll post little anecdotes or short observational essays about France and Paris; little fragments that never made it into my day-to-day postings in Paris.

For example, take these pictures:

These are the little paper bags that most grocers at Paris’s open-air markets and corner shops use to sell you tomatoes, mushrooms, bananas, and pretty much anything that fares better in paper bags than plastic. I’m kinda fascinated by the images that are printed on them. In one, you have this rather simple collection of fruits, vegetables and flowers. On another, you have this basket character with an insane grin on his face, stuffed full of the same groceries. On another, you have a mixture of fruits with a palm tree looming in the background. What’s interesting is that all of these conspicuously present at least one “exotic” fruit—that is, a product that isn’t grown naturally in France. In the first image, the pineapple dominates the image from the center; in the second, the half-kiwi is one of only two items that is not in the basket; in the third, you have both the banana and the pineapple, not to mention the palm tree. Considering that most Parisians (at least the middle-class and bohemiain-bourgeois folks I know) tend to place a lot of value on products in season and grown locally, it’s an odd contrast that the bag designs used by the grocers of Paris features exotic fruit prominently. Anyway, I’m going to miss these bags, which I would re-use to store my garlic, steam-peel peppers, and preserve cut vegetables.

Stay tuned for upcoming stories of Luis’s return to Chicago!

Sunday at Club der Visionaere

When I got home from Berghain, it was about 14h00 or so, and I had plans to meet up with a friend from the Chicago scene (let’s call her Ellen, for ease of reading), so I got to bed and tried to get a few hours of sleep. At around 18h00 or so, I got up to take a shower and found a text message from Ellen, saying that she and a friend were at Bar25 already.

So I took a quick shower to make my body forget what I had done to it, put on a fresh set of clothes, and headed off to Bar25. The line at the door wasn’t very long, which at first felt like a relief, but the line was barely moving at all. This was partially because it was Sunday and, since the bar is open all weekend nonstop, anybody with a stamp from earlier in the weekend has the right to jump the line and enter. So there were lots of people bypassing the line and holding things up, but also the doorpeople were constantly concerned with exceeding capacity (like anybody checks in Berlin).

Anyway, both of the women running the door were clearly cranked up on speed or coke, and thus making little sense. They were cracking jokes, then arbitrarily picking people out of the line and sending them in, sending other people away, and leaving others to just wait and wait in line. At some point, they decided to start asking people that were leaving if the were planning to come back. If they said they were leaving definitively, then the doorperson would count the number of people in the departing group and try to find a group of the same size in the line. Since people were always leaving in groups and I was all alone in the lineup, I ended up spending nearly 30 minutes at the front of the line, waiting for them to let me in. Of course, the doorpeople here are famously fickle, so I couldn’t risk arguing with them.

Eventually, after calling me several times to see what the hell was going on, Ellen and her friend came out and we hopped into a cab toward Club der Visionäre.

When we got there, Matthew Styles was spinning, and the rumor on the dancefloor was that Ricardo Villalobos had arrived on his boat (which was indeed moored at the dock) and he might come spin later that night. How exciting! Villalobos is known for magically appearing at Berlin establishments (especially Club der Visionäre) late on Sunday for one last DJ set before the end of the weekend.

Anyway, Styles was spinning relatively minimal house (but with more frequent vocals) and a bit of techno, which Ellen and her friend preferred to what was playing at Bar25 (and from what I could hear while in the lineup, me too). It was a bit more upbeat and energetic, too.

Shonky, a Parisian DJ now moved to Berlin, is in the corner near Matthew Styles, chatting with another Frenchy guy in a black turtleneck (seriously). After a few minutes, Ellen and her friend and I end up moving near that corner to get a bit more space, and Ellen chats up the Frenchy dude after Shonky leaves (go Ellen!). It turns out that this guy is also a DJ, and that he would be filling in for Mr. Styles when he needed a break from his all-night DJ set to get a drink.

I never got the Frenchy guy’s name, but he put down this amazing track that just got all of us FREAKING OUT, and it turns out that it was that recent release from Masomenos called “Les Trois Petits Cochons” (The Three Little Pigs) [see previous link for sample]. Sometime this coming week, I’ll have to make a post on what Masomenos is up to these days. As Fantômette had described it a week ago, they’re something of a breath of fresh air to the minimal scene.

Anyway, by about 1h00 I realize that I might miss the last train to Florian’s place and that I had a train to catch, so I said goodbye and headed out in a hurry. I obviously had managed to obtain a contact high from all of the pot being smoked around me, because I caught myself spending 10 minutes closely inspecting an U-Bahn system map in the Märkisches Museum station. What was so interesting?!

Snax Club, Berghain, Picnics and Fisting

Yes, all of this and more in today's post!

Having gotten home at the relatively early hour of 8h00 in the morning, I slept until about 13h00, when it was time to start getting ready for the day ahead of me. Florian and I were going to a picnic to celebrate the birthday of a friend of his, and then I was supposed to meet Bob, Donna and Janine at another Frenchy friend’s place for crêpes, and then off to the clubs for a night/morning/day of partying.

Florian and I had been given the task of making potato salad, and of course we were determined to make it the best potato salad ever. We headed over to Lidl to get some supplies, and then went back to his place to get to work. I made some mayo from scratch, replacing the vinegar with the juice of a lime and adding quite a bit of Dijon mustard. In addition to a finely diced onion, and some yogurt, we also threw in Bärlauch (leaves of Bear’s Garlic or wild garlic), which is a leafy herb that looks like basil but smells and tastes like garlic. By the end of it all, we had some very tasty kartoffelsalat.

By about 17h00 we were heading over to the birthday picnic, which was being held in a park near Zionskirche in Mitte. The birthday girl turned out to be Canadian (from Ottawa), as did her boyfriend (also Ottawa). There were four other friends in attendance, including a couple of Anglophones and two Germans (and some kids, of course).

The spread for the party was great and pretty vast, including piles of sparkling wine, meatballs made by someone’s German grandma, a carrot cake that could bring you to tears (with an icing that tasted like cookie dough with pudding consistency), hummus, tabouleh, and several other savories. At one point, I managed to put my plate on the bench, stand up to help someone with something, and then sit right back down on my plate, tomato sauce and all. I had the pleasure of asking Florian to help me wipe my butt, which prompted jokes about turning into an incontinent old couple. The picnic ended up running a lot longer than I had expected, eventually passing over to candlelight drinking in the park and then drinks at a Frenchy bar nearby (I think it was called “Visite ma Tante” or something).

By about 22h30, I made my move, hoping that I could still make it to my friend’s place in time to join them for crêpes. I was actually too full of carrot cake to eat anything, but I still wanted to hang out with them before heading out.

I had to run by Florian’s place first to change clothes and drop off some stuff, so that made me even more late for the crêpe party. I got to our friend’s place in Neukölln just before midnight, too late to join in the crêpes (not that I was hungry anymore), but in time to get some drinks in me and chat with the Frenchy Krew. Bob & Donna were planning to go home and nap and then hit Panorama Bar later, while Janine was going to go to Watergate to check out Steve Bug. Our host was going to stay in tonight (after having been at an outdoor party all day), but he invited us to join him at another outdoor event Sunday afternoon.

My plan was to spend the night at Berghain, starting with the Snax Club event and then moving up to PanoramaBar to meet my friends when they got there. Snax Club only happens once a year and none of us had ever been to it (indeed, 50% of our group couldn’t go, since it’s “men only”), so we spent a lot of time extrapolating about what it might be like. Here’s everything that we could gather from descriptions and information on the club’s website:

• It happens once a year on Easter weekend
• The doors between the PanoramaBar and Berghain rooms are shut and the ones between Berghain and Lab.Oratory are opened, essentially shrinking the space reserved for “normal” / “straight” clubbing to PanoramaBar, while expanding the sexclub portion of the building to two rooms.
• It’s men-only, and is billed as a “pervy party,” which seems to imply that the sexual play will not be limited to a couple of darkrooms.
• Lab.Oratory is reputed to be the most hard-core (gay) fetish sexclub in Berlin, with every night being devoted to some form of kink, including fisting, piss, scat, s/m, and numerous other fixations.

So with that, we imagined a nightclub space with lots of groping and grabbing on the dancefloor, lots of shirtless and nearly-nude guys, the stench of sweat and poppers, and a fair bit of fucking on the sidelines. Of course, since this is Berlin, this was all a vast underestimation of what was really going to take place there.

We hopped into a cab at about 1h30 to get our nights started, with plans to drop off Janine at Watergate, then me at Berghain, and then Bob&Donna at their hotel nearby. When we stopped at Watergate, Janine saw that the bouncer was one that she knew and so she managed to negotiation a line-pass for all of us. I was still determined to check out Snax Club, but Bob & Donna jumped out of the cab to follow Janine into the club.

Round One: Snax Club @ Berghain/Lab.Oratory

So there was no small amount of confusion about which lineup to take to get into the club tonight. Normally, there’s just one easily-visible lineup that gets you into Berghain/PanoramaBar, and then there’s a side entrance that the clientele of Lab.Oratory use, which never has much of a visible lineup. Add to this the fact that Lab.Oratory usually only has its doors open for a couple of hours between 22h and 24h (to encourage everyone to show up at the same time and get it on), and you can see why most Berghain-loving clubbers are used to just showing up and standing in the first line they see.

So tonight was confusing, because there was a MASSIVE lineup heading towards one door, and then at the same time you have a much shorter line heading towards the door that leads up the staircase to PanoramaBar. When I first got into the Snax Club line, I turned to a girl standing behind me and said, “Am I in the right line, here? I’m pretty sure this is for Snax Club.” It was her first night going to Berghain, so she was totally lost and about to spend an hour waiting to get into the wrong party. Thankfully, a few meters ahead, there was a bouncer checking to make sure that people were in the right line. He said, in a thick German accent, “Hier ist a fetisch partei, dere ist normaler partei.”

I should have been paying closer attention to what the bouncer was saying.

While waiting in line, I befriended a short little Spaniard from Valencia and a couple of statuesque Sicilians (one of which was pretty damn hot) among whom we all chatted in a mongrel mix of Spanish and Italian. One of the Sicilians had lived in Argentina for a while, so conversation quickly turned to “why the rest of the Hispanophone world can’t stand Argentines,” which got pretty boring pretty quickly.

So when we got to the front of the line, a guy in front of us had a brief exchange with the bouncer, and then he dropped his pants to show that he was wearing a jockstrap underneath. I wasn’t paying close attention to the conversation, but that started to set off some red lights in my head. And then, the Sicilian couple in front of me ran into some trouble:

Bouncer: What are you going to wear inside?

Sicilian Dude: What do you mean?

B: This is a fetish party. You can’t go in looking like that. Do you have a jockstrap or something?

SD: No, but we can take off our shirts or something…

B: Where’s the fetish in that? No. Go home and change into something fetish and you won’t have to wait in line; I’ll let you right in. But you’re not getting in like that.

Well fuck. I’m certainly not dressed in anything approaching fetish gear. I let the little Spaniard next to me go ahead of me and keep the bouncer busy while I pondered my options. I had to think fast, as the Spaniard’s military-style cargo pants were apparently getting him in without much comment. I suppose I could just go to PanoramaBar and forget Snax Club, but I should at least try to negotiate with the bouncer here, in the hopes that he might let me jump the Pano line if he turns me away. Also, this is the bouncer with the lip piercing that has let me jump the line twice before, so there’s a chance that he might be lenient with me. Nonetheless, offering to take off my shirt wasn’t likely to work, especially since he just sent away two guys who had offered the same thing. Clearly, I’m going to have to double-down on the nudity.

Me: I’ll go naked.

Bouncer: What?

LMGM: I don’t own any fetish gear, but I can strip naked. A lot of guys are going to do that, anyway.

B: Hm, well, totally naked? Seriously?

LMGM: Totally. I promise. I might keep my shoes on, mind you.

B: Um yeah, you’d best keep those shoes on. Alright, go in.

Phew. I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into, but I (correctly) assumed that the coat check wasn’t within the line of sight of the door, so the bouncer wasn’t likely to check on me to see that I was vollnakt. I asked the guy at the ticket booth whether I could use the same ticket to get into PanoramaBar later, and he said I would get half price. Not ideal, but fair, I suppose.

I checked my jacket and scarf, and also threw in my brightly-coloured t-shirt, leaving just my undershirt, which seemed more appropriate for the evening. Indeed, everyone else was in fetish gear, especially of the sort that was either made of a few straps of leather or had the ass cut out of it. Lots of piercings and tattoos and bare chests and jockstraps and facial hair and hey, is that guy actually fingering his partner in the coat-check line?

So that’s how the evening started. I actually found myself taking off my shirt within an hour or so and stuffing it into my shoulder bag. The vast majority of guys were at least shirtless (if not much more), so I felt a bit out of place with my titties covered. I’m not one for stripping, but I felt like I was completely clothed, compared to the folks around me.

So how to describe the scene at Snax Club? Well, to put it concisely, these folks don’t fuck around. They sure do fuck a lot (and lick, and suck, and fist, and many other things), but they sure don’t do it halfway.

To begin with, the Lab.Oratory floor, which usually serves as a sexclub on regular nights:

• There was grabbing and groping and necking on the small-ish dancefloor in the center of the complex, with the occasional bit of oral sex and fingering at the edges of the crowd.
• Take any one of the hallways leading out from the dance area to hit the darkrooms / orgy spaces, which are massive and labyrinthine.
• To the right of the dancefloor is a hallway with a sort of sling-gallery; there are a alcoves with slings in them, each one filled with a guy taking one or two fists up his ass and/or cock. The air is pretty ripe with the smell of sweat and lube (but to the fistees’ credit, not a whiff of feces).
• Further down the hallway is the famous bathtub. It stands there, alone in an alcove, a testament to the more raunchy practices of this sexclub. The bathtub serves as a place for piss and scat play, from what I understand. Tonight, there’s a guy in a full-body gimp suit lying in the tub, but nobody seems to be doing anything about it. I watch where I step and move on.
• The hallway comes to an end and branches off to the left and the right. The right leads to a dead-end corner where some guys are standing around jerking off and looking at each other. The left branch leads to the massive orgy space behind the dancefloor proper.
• In the large space behind the dancefloor, they’ve put in a “special theme playground,” which is made to look like a construction site. There’s a concession truck parked in the middle being used to sell drinks, and then there’s a sort of tent to the left that has been divided into various cubicles by PVC sheeting to create semi-private spaces. To the right is a labyrinth of netting and plastic sheeting, with a couple of construction-site office trucks parked in the corners and a large plastic kiddie-pool that is currently being used for piss play (at least, that’s what it smells like). Again, I watch out for puddles and push on.
• There are some toilets in one corner of the building (for those who prefer not to do it on someone’s slave).
• Near the entrance, there’s a nondescript stairway that leads up to a gallery space where a couple of “cages” have been set up, so that guys can engage in prison-sex fantasies or maybe show off while assuring that enthusiastic fans won’t grab at them.

Now, on to Berghain, which is not normally a sexclub, although the gay crowd there still tends to be pretty hot & sleazy on regular nights:

• The dancefloor was unchanged, and the only major difference was that there was much more nudity than usual on the dancefloor.
• They hung sheets in the seating area near the bar (where the swing is) and along the catwalk that goes across the back of the room, creating a series of darkly-lit corners and half-hidden spaces for sexual play. There certainly is some sex going on, but it’s not quite as hard-core as downstairs.
• Every once in a while, somebody gets head or a rim-job while ordering his drink
• The darkrooms are densely packed and full of fucking, especially the darkroom area on the main floor. I tried to walk through and get a good look, but I couldn’t even get through the press of bodies.
• Thanks to the fact that you could have sex pretty much anywhere, the bathrooms were uncharacteristically quiet and free of sex-related detritus.

I kept on moving around from one floor to another, and too often to really keep track of DJ sets, but Ben Klock put in a good (if somewhat overly violent) set in Berghain, followed by an excellent set by nd_baumecker. Boris was spinning for a while in Lab.O, which was pretty unexciting, but I’ll admit that I’m not a huge fan of his work.

I did manage to make the acquaintance of a nice Italian chap, who managed to keep me entertained (along with a dude from Australia) for a substantial portion of the evening. We traded phone numbers and email addresses, and I now have a standing invitation to visit London, England. Yay, intimacy! It was pretty hilarious, explaining the topic of my dissertation to this guy in this context.

Round Two: Panorama Bar

9h00-12h00: Daniel Stefanik

By about 9h00, it was time to head over to Panorama Bar. My friends were planning to get there around then, and I was getting a bit tired of all of the mansex. Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for the hedonist fun, but I was having a hankering for being in a place where I could sit down or lean on something without first checking that I wasn’t about to coat myself in someone else’s genetic material. Call me a prude.

Anyway, as promised, I was able to get into Pano for half price, which came to 5€. And considering the excellent set Daniel Stefanik put on, it was the best 5€ I spent all weekend. His set was pretty much exactly what I like about the PanoramaBar sound, combining a very warm and bright minimal house sound with tooth-rattling bass kicks and (rhythmically, melodically) mobile basslines. At some point in the set, he put down a white label record that sounded awesome. It was in the “tropical minimal” vein that has been emerging in this last year, including almost purely acoustic Afro-Caribbean percussion for the drum patterns and a sample of group singing (again, sounding like a field recording from somewhere in Central Africa) deep and low in the mix, fading in and out like a sonic wash, rather than dominating the track like a typical vocal sample. It’s hard to describe the track in detail, but something about the ensemble of elements struck me as fucking fantastic.

Alas, white labels are thus called because they don’t have identifying labels on them. They are usually test presses of soon-to-be-released tracks that are passed to influential DJs to “test” on the dancefloor before the final mix is pressed and shipped. I tried to get a hold of the guy when his track ended to ask him what that white label was, but he quickly disappeared into the crowd.

Bob & Donna showed up shortly after I did, but alas just after I had heard that excellent white label—so I was left struggling to describe the track to them.

12h00-13h00: Boris

Ya know, this set was better than usual. Yes, this is a prime example of damning with faint praise, but my expectations have become pretty low with this guy, so this was a pleasant surprise. He still managed to have two near-trainwrecks within the first few minutes of the set, but at least his track selection and sequencing felt a bit more coherent. Usually, when I see Boris spin here, he throws a whole jumble of different styles together without much to connect them. Some DJs can pull of very eclectic sets like that, but it takes some serious skills, especially in ordering the tracks in a way that will create something more than a “parade of tracks I like.”

Regardless of my own reservations, the homos of Berlin seem to luuuurrrrve Boris, and turn out in droves for his set. I dunno, maybe Berlin gay guys—however hardcore fetish-y and hypermasculine—still enjoy a bit of “handbag house” from time to time. Either way, Boris’s appearance up here in PanoramaBar prompted a mass migration of guys from Snax Club (which I think was closing up at this point). Not all of these “migrants” changed their outfits before coming upstairs, so there was some amusement in the crowd as a couple hundred men showed up in leather, plastic, and rubber with their asses hanging out. Of course, the sort of hipsters that frequent PanoramaBar/Berghain are already inured to the sleazier aspects of gay nightlife (and value these sorts of things as an index of “open-mindedness”), so the amusement was mostly limited to giggling, some pointing, raised eyebrows, and the occasional curious question (“How do you even put that thing on?”).

Nonetheless, there were certain moments that tested the limits of the regular PanoramaBar partygoers. For example, I was in the smoking area with Bob when this skinny, near-naked guy appeared. I remembered seeing him around in Snax Club, because he was walking around naked and his gargantuan saline-injected balls were hard to miss. Yes, dear reader surprised at your own vanilla-ness, there exists a fetish around injecting saline into your balls and/or cock to make it look like you have a very particular and acute case of elephantitis. If you need to, take a break to wash out your eyes, cuddle a furry animal, and maybe listen to 70s music un-ironically. Feel better? OK, let’s continue.

So the fact of this guy’s massively-inflated balls was pretty visible at this point, because he was only wearing a well-worn jockstrap, the elasticity of which had given way, thus giving the impression that he was smuggling 1kg worth of plums under there. Two other guys that were just hanging out and smoking noticed this, and one of them pointed to his bulge with a smirk on his face and said, “What the fuck’s going on down there?” Obligingly, Mr. Balloon-Balls pulled down his jockstrap.

Both guys were clearly surprised, but that affective jolt went in different directions for each of them. One gave a shocked guffaw, as if he had just witnessed some particularly absurd, Monty-Pythonesque slapstick, while the other one threw his hands in the air and walked out of the room with his eyes wide, as if to say, “Woah. I give up. Let me off this ride.”

A minute or so later, Mr. Balloon-Balls was joined by a guy dressed in a black leather outfit that covered his entire body except for his ass and cock (and balls), which offered some rather impressive piercings. Mr. Balloon-Balls decided to greet him with a blow job, and so he bent over, with his asshole winking at the rest of us, and went to work. A third guy, who just happened to be passing by, took the initiative of spanking him roughly.

Sitting on stools near me and Bob were two girls, smoking, dressed in their Berlin-techno-hipster finest. Oversized 70s secretary glasses, ruff-necked blouses tucked deep into high-waisted skirts, and second-hand pumps. The looked at each other with this searching look, as if palpitating the other’s face to find some hint of what the other would do about this. Should they be shocked or blasé? In the end, they settled for a smirk and raised eyebrows, in a sort of understated “Well, isn’t that something.”

A bit later, Donna finds me on the dancefloor and says, “Hey, there’s a woman walking around in just a g-string and a t-shirt!” A few minutes later, as I’m walking out of the bathroom, I see the woman she was talking about. A quick look at her g-string and her adam’s apple made it clear that any gender classification would be more complicated than just “woman.”

Also, as I was coming out of the bathroom, a tall guy that I recognized from many previous Berlin nights stopped me, saying:

Random Dude: Hey, I bet you like house music.

LMGM: Yep! I sure do.

RD: In fact, I think you love house music.

LMGM: Lemme think about it…yes. Yes I do.

RD: You see, man, I’ve lived here in Berlin for many years and soon I have to move far away and so I am very high tonight and house music has always been so important for me and when I come to Berghain it is so nice to see people who love the music and don’t just do drugs but drugs are sometimes nice and everybody likes to have fun but it makes me happy to see people like you who are here for the music.

LMGM: Yes, totally.

I’ll admit that I didn’t totally follow what he was talking about, but it seemed that all he wanted from me was a sort of approving, reflective presence. I just needed to say yes, smile, put my hand on his back when he draped his arm around my shoulder, look him in the eyes, listen, and nod. In other words, all of the gestures of intimacy. I don’t think it was a fake intimacy, either; even if I wasn’t in the same affective place as he was, there was something about the simple fact of being in one another’s presence and the vagueness of anonymous contact that allows for warmth to pass where understanding and knowledge sometimes can’t.

13h00-??: nd_baumecker

I had only heard a few tracks from this guy (which were great), when my feet told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to go home. Fine. I had already seen nd_baumecker earlier in SnaxClub. I said goodbye to Bob & Donna and started making my way to the exit.

While picking up my jacked from the coat check, there were three guys dressed in fetish gear engaging in blow-jobs and rimming just across the room. Again, nobody was showing any shock or outrage, but there were a lot of smirks and raised eyebrows.

BerlinForEaster: Andy Weatherall & Man-Sandwiches

After our somewhat late night of drinking (with me dragging my luggage behind me), we slept in today and Florian made me a lovely eggy and bagel-y breakfast. After that, I got a message from Janine saying that she wanted to meet me in a patio/biergarten somewhere for drinks and brunch. I told her we had already eaten breakfast, but that we would certainly meet her for some coffee / juice / drinks.

So we decided to meet in a café on Kastanienallee, and then Florian and I headed out make the trip on foot. The weather was really fantastic and sunny, so we were both thrilled to be getting some sun and walking around outdoors. We eventually got to a café right near Rosenthaler Platz called Yumcha Heroes, which specialized in Asian food and had a nice natural wood deck out front. So we picked a sunny spot and ordered ourselves some fancy fresh juices (mine was a bit over-thick).

Time passed, and passed, and passed. Janine is rather famously late to everything, so we weren’t completely surprised. Nonetheless, she was taking a really long time, so eventually Florian and I parted ways, as he needed to go visit a friend of his in Kreuzberg.

I eventually got a message from Janine, saying that she was on her way up Kastanienallee. I was practically at the bottom of the hill, so I was sure she would come around the corner any minute. After 15 minutes, I get a message from her saying, “Where exactly are you?!” I call her and we figure out that she had skipped the part of the street at the bottom of the hill (where I was waiting) because the street there changes its name to something else. So she had taken the tram halfway up the hill to where Kastanienalle properly starts, and then continued walking up until the street ended at the U-Bahn stop. Anyway, at this point Janine was hungry and tired and a bit frustrated, so I told her to just grab a table at a café near her and I would be over in a few minutes.

When I joined her at the café, I was about to wish her a good Passover, when I noticed that the food she had ordered included leavened bread, dairy products, and pork sausage. So I teased her about being a bad Jew and defended herself by saying that at least she had removed all of the leavened bread from her house last night.

Anyway, we engaged in standard girl-talk for a while (love life, clothes, travel plans, partying), and then we spent a lot of time talking about her job. She’s not happy at her job right now, so she was weighing her options and trying to figure out what to do next.

At around 18h00, I rushed back to Florian’s place to meet up with him and head out to catch a movie. The showing was at 20h00 at Potsdamer Platz, so we really didn’t have time to make any dinner. Instead, it was a mad dash over to the theatre to buy tickets, than a “dinner” in the form of mediocre pastries from a nearby bakery.

The film was called Tropical Malady, by Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. The movie is in two parts; the first part involves a rather quiet and affectionate love story between two men, while the second part recasts the men as a soldier at a rural outpost hunting a shape-shifting tiger shaman. The link between the two sections of the story is that, at the end of the first section, one of the lovers disappears into the jungle. It’s certainly an odd movie, but with a lot of elements that I like, including long scenes documenting daily life without containing plot development, quiet intimacy, and carefully-selected sound that seems to magnify emotion and affect.

Anyway, we wandered out of there in a bit of a daze and started looking for a place to grab a drink. Janine was planning to join us for drinks, but she never answered her phone or called/messaged back. We tried Bar Drei in Mitte, but it was closed (bar observe Good Friday?!) so instead we hit Das Blaues Band on Alter Schönhauser Straße for a couple of drinks before heading back home. Just as I arrived at Florian’s place, I got a message from Janine, saying that she had fallen asleep and would text me again when she woke up. I was confused by what that meant, so I decided to just head out to Watergate, where we had been planning to go, anyway. My friends Bob & Donna (who have been my Berlin companions pretty much every time I’ve been here since the fall) were also planning to be there, so I was eager to get to the club to hang out with them.

Round One: Yes! Night at Watergate

When I got to the club, the lineup already stretched nearly to the door of the next club down the street, so I braced myself for a long wait. As it would turn out, the lineup would take about half an hour to clear.

I was standing behind a group of four Belgian guys, who soon started chatting with three or four Brits ahead of them. They were wondering about how fast the line was moving and what chance they had of getting turned away at the door. Based on the fact that they were two large groups of guys and they were guzzling from beer bottles while in line, I was willing to bet that they would have trouble getting in, but I kept my mouth shut and pretended to be a local. The bouncers keep an eye on the lineup, and I didn’t want them to think that I was attached to the tourist sausage-fest before me.

As expected, the bouncer didn’t let either group in, and he seemed to think that I was part of the group. I stood well away from them as they left, and when the bouncer looked over at me to see why I wasn’t leaving, I said that I was all alone. That seemed to clear things up for him, and then he waved me through with no comment. Phew! Ironically, I would see the Belgian guys again at PanoramaBar a few hours later.

0h00-3h00: Mitja Prinz?

I’m not entirely sure that this was Mitja Prinz or spinning, but whoever he was, he seemed to be doing pretty well for himself. His set was pretty squarely in the “minimal” vein, tending more towards techno than house, with that emphasis on heavy bass kicks that marks Berlin techno. The set itself was good but maybe not fantastic, as the pacing seemed to feel a bit flat. It didn’t feel like it was really going anywhere, but instead going in circles. Nonetheless, I had no trouble getting my dance on.

Bob and Donna seemed to agree, too, when I found them dancing at the front of the main room, near the DJ booth. They were hanging out with a DJ friend from England, with whom I chatted for a little while before he turned in early to pack his bags for a plane he had to catch the next day. Nice guy.

While we were dancing and waiting for the headliner to start, I witnessed some sort of high-school drama unfold around the DJ booth. It seemed to involve two women: one was more femme, with shoulder-length blonde hair styled meticulously and a short plaid sundress; the other was more butch, with her hair in a tight bun, a black tank top, black warm-up pants, and wire-rimmed glasses. The femme gal was yelling at the butch one and getting in her face and generally being aggressive, while the butch girl was staring at her with a mixture of disdain and confusion and holding her hands up in a gesture that said, “Woah, chill out, what’s your deal?”

The femme girl quickly turned to a guy that seemed to know them both and started to yell at him. He yelled back, gesturing to the butch girl and also to the DJ, and then turned away from her as if he wanted to hear nothing more from her. The femme didn’t like what she heard, and stared at her drink miserably, before turning to the butch, yelling something venomously, and then walking off into the crowd.

The butch leaned in and spoke briefly with the guy, turning her palms up in a sign of confusion and exasperation, then punching her palm in a gesture of frustration and anger. For the rest of the night, the femme girl would dance nearby and glower at the butch, and the butch would do her best to ignore her and occasionally roll her eyes.

From what I could gather, the fight seemed to have something to do with being allowed into the DJ booth, or maybe getting too close to / flirting with the DJ. Both of the women seemed to be part of the crew attached to the DJ, so that was certainly possible. Also, when the femme (who was also acting pretty drunk, I might add) walked into the DJ booth and started dancing behind the DJ, the guy that had been involved in the argument earlier dashed into the booth and yelled at her again, sending her back onto the dancefloor. Anyway, it was odd to watch this cold-war fight continue through the rest of the night, while everyone else was dancing and having fun.

3h00-5h00: Andy Weatherall

A few minutes into this set, we discovered that we had a romantic trio developing behind us. Two guys—of the black-leather-jacket-wearing Eurotrash sort that usually doesn’t make it into Watergate—had found a rather drunk girl that wasn’t saying “no” to being felt up by both of them. They both were grinding on her at the same time, forming the sort of “man sandwich” that says, “Later on, we’re going to bang you from both ends.”

I’ve always found this sort of thing interesting among straight guys. On the one hand, the scenario of a woman being fucked in two or three orifices seems to have a strong erotic charge for a lot of straight men, and yet actually making it happen means getting naked and getting physically close to another guy. At the physical level, at least, a hetero gang-bang involves more man-man sexual contact than most hetero guys would be normally comfortable with. Anyway, I spent the next few minutes amusing myself by imagining what would happen if the girl dancing between them suddenly disappeared and the two guys found themselves making out with each other.

Andy Weatherall’s set was pretty fine, although Bob & Donna were very disappointed. They’ve seen him play numerous times at Fabric in London and loved him, but here they found that his set was too abstractly minimal and lacking in the sort of pounding force he usually plays with. We hung in there for a bit longer, but Bob & Donna couldn’t stand the disappointment and suggested we head over to another club.

Round Two: Hotel Club

We jumped into a cab and tried to make our way to a club called Hotel-Club, which was apparently hosting Jan Krüger tonight. I didn’t know the address and Donna only had a vague memory of it being near Berghain, so we hoped the taxi driver might know the place. He didn’t and we had no way of figuring out where to go, so we gave up and went to Panorama Bar.

Round Three: Panorama Bar

3h00-6h00: RNDM

Since we got here at around 5h30 or so, we only caught a short part of RNDM’s set. It was pretty good, very much in keeping with the PanoramaBar sound, but nothing to write home about. Nonetheless, we were all more enthusiastic for the sound here than what we had at Watergate.

6h00-9h00: Daniel Bell

Like the DJ before him, Bell’s set was good but not earth-shattering. He came out with a few tracks that were excellent and really got the crowd going, but between those excellent tracks were long stretches of adequate tracks. His mixing skills are certainly impeccable, but it didn’t feel like he was doing much more than just linking together the tracks with skill. Efficient, efficacious, but not rapturous.

Surprisingly, I have no amusing or interesting stories from PanoramaBar tonight. All three of us danced a lot, had a good time, drank liberally, and commented on the tracks we liked and disliked, but there were no escapades to report.

Bob & Donna really wanted to see Pantha du Prince, who was coming on at 9h00, so they headed home at around 7h00 to take a nap and come back later. I headed out about a half hour later, thinking that I should have at least a bit of sleep before going picnicking with Florian tomorrow.

The Great Gay Migration of 2009

Off to Berlin!

So, on my flight to Berlin (which was AirFrance this time; hooray for in-flight drinks!) I got the impression that it was The Great Gay Migration of 2009. The plane was packed with gay couples and groups heading over to Berlin. Partially, this might’ve been because it’s Easter weekend, and a bittersweet legacy of the rejection many queer folks face upon coming out is that “family” holidays are better spent elsewhere.

But I also noticed that they were mostly guys that “looked the part” for the kinkier “poppers and backrooms” demographic of Berghain. There’s a “special” night at Berghain this Saturday called “Snax” that involves connecting the sexclub Lab.Oratory to the main Berghain room, and separating PanoramaBar from Berghain proper. The Labo/Berghain section becomes a men-only “pervy party”, while PanoramaBar remains the usual same. Anyway, it’s apparently a big yearly event, so I’m guessing that this has managed to elicit a mass migration of pervy men from Paris. Go figure.

Upon arriving in Berlin, I heard from Florian (my impeccable host) that he was at an art exhibit at the Temporäre Kunsthalle over near the Berliner Dom. Thankfully, the TXL bus runs right down Unter den Linden, so I rode my way over in comfort. Alas, I misjudged the stops and ended up getting down at Marienkirche and walking back, but it was fine.

After hanging out at the party/art opening with a few former co-workers of Florian’s, we started heading over to the tram stop at Hackescher Markt. On the way, Florian mentioned that there was a gay bar/lounge nearby called “The Sharon Stonewall Bar,” which clearly required a visit—if only because of the name. The bar was trying almost too hard to be gay, what with the pink lighting and décor, the 70s disco background music (Donna Summer!), and a silent screening of The Wizard of Oz (seriously). Anyway, we had a couple of drinks, realized that we hadn’t eaten much that evening, felt a bit trashed, and finally hobbled our way over to the tram stop and headed home. Yay, Berlin!

Lattice by Marcel Dettman

There was a feature on Marcel Dettman on Resident Advisor which is well worth reading. Not only does it give some insight into how he structures his 8+-hour closing sets at Berghain, it also provides some great photos of the interior of Berghain itself, which is usually a completely camera-free zone.

So here's a track called Lattice (Beatport link) from a release he put out on his own record label, Marcel Dettman Records (natch). I thought this would be a good one to post because it almost perfectly encapsulates the sound of the Berghain room, as opposed to the Panorama Bar room. So when you read my posts and you see phrases like "the techno was a bit too hard and pounding, better suited for the Berghain room," you'll know what I mean. I don't dislike this track, but it's the sort of thing that I tire of relatively quickly. A lot of the tracks I've posted in the past couple of days, on the other hand, would be PanoramaBar material.

Bingo Bongo by Paul Kalkbrenner

So Paul Kalkbrenner has been getting a lot of mainstream attention recently as the star of the film Berlin Calling..., a film about a Berlin DJ who finds himself overwhelmed by the the Berlin techno scene. I haven't seen it yet, as it's mostly doing just the film festival circuit at the moment, but I'm hoping to catch it soon. In the meanwhile, he's released the soundtrack for the album, which was pretty much entirely produced by him. Instead of giving you a track from the soundtrack (which I'm still trying to decide if I really like), here's a release of his from earlier in 2008.

The track is called Bingo Bongo, and it was released on an EP of the same name on the record label Bpitchcontrol last april (click here to see the release at Beatport). I like this track for it's dense but light use of accoustic drum samples, most of which sit at the middle-ground of the mix and don't overwhelm the sound. I like that he's managed to place the different samples in different places in the stereo field (i.e., pan right/left), without losing the feeling that there's a spatial centre to the whole thing. The track takes some time to build, but there's a nice breakdown at around 3:00, followed by a great return of the bass at 3:49. Good stuff.

Radio Silence for a few days

Well, I have a draft of a paper (which will eventually become Chapter 3) due this Sunday and I have little more than a few sketches to show for it. So I'll be quiet on the blog front for the next few days. I still owe a friend my arroz chaufa recipe (finally!), so I might take a moment to post that, and there's an exciting Akufen / Cabanne back-to-back party coming up this Friday, so I might post a few things about that as well. Anyway, enjoy the quiet! I might replicate what I did last November by putting up favourite tracks of mine. In fact, here's the remixes of "O Superman" (original by Laurie Anderson) that I mentioned in last weekend's post. The third one ("Reboot 20 Cubans mix") is the one Monika Kruse played.

The Solemn March Home

Well, thanks to the fact that I actually got to bed at a “decent” hour last night (despite the lack of sleep the night before), I popped out of bed at about 10h00 this morning. I spent a bit of time preparing my blog notes and putting my stuff together in preparation for my flight this evening, and then got a message from Fantômette, saying that she was going out for breakfast. I headed out to join her, although a took a detour at a couple of stores on the way over. The night before, I had washed my new jeans in Florian’s washing machine, and the vibration from the spin cycle sent one of his glasses crashing into the kitchen sink. Thankfully, I managed to secure the rest of his kitchenware before there was any more damage, but I still felt bad about the glass. So off I went today to pick up a kitschy and set of replacements. Florian reads this blog, so I’m not going to tell you what I got him. It’s a surprise!

Anyway, Fantômette had some trouble finding the original breakfast spot she had wanted to go to in Kreuzberg, but she eventually ended up in a little lunch nook on Schlesisches Straße, near where the Watergate club is located. The food was decent, although my lunch item took ages to prepare. I had a baguette smeared with chives and cheese, but I could tell that the baguette had been pulled out of the freezer and cooked at the last minute. I mean, there are bakeries all over the place here. You can’t just walk down the street and buy a baguette or something similar?

Anyway, after our meal I left Fantômette to wander Kreuzberg and I headed back to Florian’s place to clean up, do the dishes, pack my bags and head out. We had a date with Janine for a coffee after her work and before our flight (Fantômette was on the same flight as I). The coffee was great and it was wonderful to spend a bit more time with Janine (who complained that I didn’t spend enough time with her on Sunday), but we took a bit too long to get back from the café and we nearly missed our train to the airport. Thankfully, Janine managed to sweet-talk our way to the front of the line at the Deutsche-Bahn ticket office.

The check-in desks for EasyJet at the airport were a mess (again), but we eventually got checked in and headed down to our gate. The trip back was uneventful, although we were both feeling pretty groggy after the athletic weekend we had just lived through.

The Two-Day, Four-Party Marathon

Daytime

Well, considering that I had gotten home at 10h00 this morning, you’ll forgive me if I got up at 16h00. That’s just six hours of sleep, so it’s not really “sleeping in,” per se. Anyway, the rest of the “daytime” portion of my day was unexceptional. I fixed myself some eggs and tea, took care of some correspondence, and then started to catch up on my blog posts. Three hours later, it was already time for me to make my way out for the beginning of the night…a night that would last until tomorrow night, I might add.

Apéros

My friend Janine (French gal living in Berlin) had invited me, Fantô + her crew, Bob & Donna + their Franco-Berliner friend and a few other people over to her place for an “apéro” (i.e., drinks and snacks) at around 21h00. But first, Fantômette had invited me to the apartment, where she was staying with her girlfriend and another friend of ours, for a few drinks there. So I headed over to this massive industrial Hof (warehouse) on Ritterstraße in Kreuzberg (near the Moritzplatz U-Bahn station, U-8) to find them. Apparently, some smart person had bought the whole top floor of the building on one side and turned it into a suite of studio apartments to be rented like hotel suites. It was kind of brilliant, really. It’s exactly what a tourist would want of Berlin: an über-modern apartment in a red-brick warehouse in a shabby-but-up-and-coming neighborhood.

Anyway, we hung out there for a while, had some drinks, retold stories of parties past and filled each other in on the details of the night before (we had parted ways at Golden Gate). By about 21h00, we started walking our way over to Janine’s place. It took us a bit of time to find the right street, but eventually we got there and met up with the rest of the crew. Bob & Donna were there along with their Franco-Berliner friend (let’s call him Foster), a German girl who was a close friends of Janine, two British guys that Janine knew, a woman from North Carolina that lives in Berlin now, and the girls whose birthday it was the last time I was in town and I hung out with Janine.

Janine’s “apéro” spread was actually close to a full dinner made of finger-foods, including piles of crackers, dips, olives cheeses and so on. After a while, she emerged with pieces of cheese and salmon-spinach quiches, and later she materialized with cake and ice cream. And all the time, of course, she was plying us with wine and/or liquor. I managed to restrain myself from overeating, since I’ve learned from experience that eating just before a big night out tends to weigh me down and sap my energy.

I had a great time hanging out and talking to the folks at the party, although I’ll admit that I ended up speaking almost exclusively with the two british guys and the American girl, since they were the only people I hadn’t met before. I can’t remember all of the conversation, but I do recall that I gave the most lucid summary of my dissertation project so far; now if only I could remember what I said…

12h30: The False Start

At around 12h30, we began moving. Janine’s German girlfriend was going to Arena club to see a friend, Foster was heading to bed to meet us later at Berghain, everyone else was going to check out the “Champagnerama” party going on at the old Kindl brewery, and I was going to meet a friend from the Chicago scene at Kinski’s (and then meeting up with the rest of the crew at the Kindl brewery).

I headed over to Kinski’s, which was only two blocks away from Janine’s place, but I didn’t see my friend. I gave her a call to see if she was still coming, but I didn’t get an answer. Kinski’s is a sort of art space / café / club / whatever, and it’s pretty small and the crowd seems to all know each other. So it was a bit awkward for me to walk into this small, socially-connected space, walk around and conspicuously look for someone who’s not there, and then leave. Anyway, I wrote off that part of the night and headed off to meet the rest of the crew.

Just as I’m getting to the U-Bahn station, I get a call from Donna saying that the lineup is 200m long and looks to be about 3 hours of wait. It’s fucking cold, so they decide to head to Maria am Ostbahnhof instead. Janine, meanwhile, decides to head home and sleep instead, with the promise of joining us later at Berghain. And so I hop on the U-Bahn and head towards our new destination.

1h30: Spreepiraten @ Maria am Ostbahnhof

After a rather long and cold walk from the Jannowitzbrücke U-Bahn station to the club, wait in line for about 20 minutes and then pay the excessive cover (12€) to get in. 12€ for Berghain? Sure. For Maria am Ostbahnhof? Well, it better be on par with Berghain…

OK, so the club wasn’t as magical as the Berghain/PanoramaBar complex, but it was still a pretty cool club. Before the emergence of OstGut (which would eventually become Berghain) and Watergate, Maria am Ostbahnhof was apparently the central spot in Berlin for techno connoisseurs. The music programming had gone in an odd direction by the time I got to Berlin this past summer, with mostly electro-rock events and b-list local DJs, so I was never really tempted to visit the place. So it was high time I check this place out.

The space itself is pretty nice, especially in the back room, which has a pattern of diagonal cubes stuck to the wall behind the DJ in a way that casts really lovely shadows but also absorbs some of the sound and prevents slap-echoes. All around the club, they made good use of light projections to give the interior a unified theme; the theme for tonight: black-and-white silhouettes of unmarked playing cards.

The sound system itself was pretty good, especially in the main room. From the side near the main bar, the sound was loud but not uncomfortable. From the center of the dancefloor, the sound was impressively strong but not overwhelming. In the second room, on the other hand, the treble tended to be a bit too shrill. Thank goodness for earplugs!

The crowd was pretty mixed, mostly a combination of the late-twenties/thirties crowd that you see at Berghain & Watergate along with a late-teen / early-twenties crowd that seemed more like “casual partygoers” than avid fans of a particular DJ or scene. Of course, I’m generalizing here; when I was 17 and raving in Ontario, I already had pretty specific tastes; but nonetheless I had the feeling that the younger folks in the crowd were there to party first and see a specific DJ second, while the older folks acted more like they were attending a concert of a particular artist. Interestingly enough, at Berghain the crowd is almost entirely late-twenties and older, and yet you can still play this same game of “why did you come here tonight?” with the crowd: some are there for a particular DJ, some are there because it’s Berghain and they couldn’t imagine going anywhere else, and some are there because they want to party and this is the place to do it with a great deal of intensity.

Anyway, I wasn’t there for very long, but I caught the opening set by Larsson, which was pretty solid, and the first half of Alexander Kowalski’s live set, which was pretty strong and made great use of melodic fragments to suture his live set together.

So by 3h30 Bob and Donna have headed off to sleep and get ready for Berghain later that morning, while Fantômette and her crew disappear at around the same time. Another friend of mine (a close friend of a roommate from last summer) was going out with her crew to that party at the Kindl brewery later in the morning and I was determined to finally see her (after several near-misses since last summer), so I stayed at Maria for a couple more hours.

”Nice Guy!”:On the dancefloor, I run into a guy on the dancefloor who seems to be having a great time. At a particular high-point of the music, we both start pumping our fists in the air and then make eye contact. From there he offers me his beer and we exchange some brief remarks on the music. I tell him I’m from Canada and he says he’s from Rostock, in the north of Germany. He’s clearly high as a kite on a 200km lead, as his face is making pronounced contortions that I would associate with some very strong, “mashy” ecstasy.

I go away and come back a few minutes later and he appears next to me again. He offers me more of his beer, and then we dance some more and share more of those wordless glances that both check to see if the other person is in the same affective place as you are, and also prompt the other person to somehow respond. The current title of my dissertation starts with “Can You Feel It, Too?”, and this is sort of the look and the encounter that I’m thinking of when I quote that phrase; these are glances that ask questions but also answer them: “Did you just hear that?” “Yes I did!” “Isn’t this amazing?” “It sure is!” “Are you feeling this right now?” “Totally!”

Anyway, the crowd is packed and we’re being squeezed, but suddenly he sees a pocket of space in the crowd and gestures for me to follow him and dance next to him. When I reach him, he smiles and puts an arm around my shoulders as I put an arm around his waist, and we dance like that for a while.

For the next few minutes, he’ll find another spot on the dancefloor that he deems somehow better, then pull me over to it, and then continue to exchange gestures of affection, including offering beer and cigarettes, asking how I’m feeling, making ‘small talk’ about where we’re both from, hugging me, draping his arm across my shoulders and clutching me to his chest (he’s much taller than me), and even occasionally trying to engage me in hip-bumping and ass-slapping (we weren’t very co-ordinated in that regard).

By the time we had migrated to the front of the crowd, he had introduced me to most of his other 5 friends, none of them by name but rather always, “This is my best friend!” Then he would tell them I was from Canada and then we’d have a short conversation about Canada over the din of the music. Invariably, they would immediately offer me their drinks or their cigarettes.

At several points during this encounter, as my new buddy and I would look over at each other at the same time during a particularly exciting moment in the music, he would yell in my ear, “You’re a nice guy! I like you very much!” Now, this was in his somewhat-rusty English, so I’m guessing that he meant this in a more platonic way, but regardless: he was expressing feelings of warmth and attachment to a guy that he just met half an hour ago.

Just as I was thinking of leaving to catch up with my friend at the brewery party, he leans into me and says, “If some guy…gives you…any problems, you tell me.” Charmed but also a bit disturbed by the implications of this gesture of protectiveness, I said, “Thanks, but I’m not the sort of person to have problems with guys in clubs.” He immediately answers, “Of course! You’re a nice guy. I don’t think you would ever hurt anybody. I like you.” And then a hug. It’s not necessarily true that I don’t have problems with other people on the dancefloor (see 2 Fridays ago in Paris LINK), but I took this to be a sort of compliment and thanked him. The topic of discussion was uncomfortably serious and violent for me, but he seemed to be wanting to articulate intimacy to me in an idiom of protectiveness that I just wasn’t used to. Most of my friends are jokingly referential when they say, “I got yo’ back.” They’re not about to beat up a stranger for crossing me.

Anyway, it was past 4h30 and it seemed like the right time to head over to the Kindl Brauerei party. I might’ve been tempted to let the party slide and go directly to Berghain (or sleep), but I was really determined to see this friend of mine. I told my new buddy that I would be “right back.” It was a lie, but it was simpler and smoother than explaining my itinerary for tonight, and then resisting as he tried to convince me to stay with him. It’s pretty common to have these moments of passing, glancing contact, so I figured that he wouldn’t be too distressed if I just disappeared.

So I headed out and made my way towards Ostbahnhof, only to remember that the S-Bahn doesn’t run between Ostbahnhof and Jannowitzbrücke at this hour. I walked to Jannowitzbrücke and realized that the southbound platform for the U8 is out over service for renovations, so I walked down to Heinrich-Heine Straße. There was a lot of walking involved.

5h30: Champagnerama @ Kindl Brauerei

On the way down on the U-8, a group of very drunk and rowdy guys (and one gal) get on at Kottbusser Tor, clutching large bottles of beer in their hands. They shout-sing some song loudly every few minutes, and otherwise engage in some loud and slurred conversation that I could barely make out. Standing near me is another young German, quietly watching the goings-on. Every few minutes, we’ll exchange glances and eyebrow-waggles and then go back to watching them nearly make fools of themselves and annoy everyone in the train car. At a moment when the other guys aren’t paying attention, he says (in English), “Sorry.” I shrug my shoulders and say, “Normal,” implying that this was par for the course on a Saturday night (this word has a slightly different meaning in German). He shakes his head, saying, “No, it’s never normal.”

I get off at Boddinstraße and try to surreptitiously follow some folks who look like party people, since I don’t know exactly where the brewery is. They lead me to their apartment instead. Yay! So much for that strategy. I ask some random guy walking down the street and thankfully he gives me directions.

As I’m approaching the Alte Kindl Brauerei, a guy coming in the other direction stops and tells me that it’s not worth trying to get in, the building’s already at capacity. Well, great. I wasn’t about to give up without laying eyes on the situation, but I thanked him for the warning.

When I got in front of the building, there was a small lineup of 30-40 people, but it was barely moving. There was something like a “one in, one out” policy in effect, but it was even slower, since they had to worry about people coming back into the party. The system at most clubs in Berlin is that once you’ve paid the entry, you have the right to return and skip the line as long as the club is open.

So I send a text message to my friend to see if she’s still coming and get in line. I had hoped that she might say, “Screw it! Let’s just all go to Berghain.” But instead, she just told me she’d be getting there an hour or two later. Dammit.

While in line, I made friends with two Irish boys standing next to me. One of them thought that I was American, and when I corrected him, he apologized profusely and said, “Well, now you can call us British and we can’t get mad.” Fair enough, although I don’t think there’s quite the same animosity between Canada and the US.

After a while, two kids coming out of the club offered to give their admission bracelets to the Irish guys, so that they could skip the line. They gave it a try, but the bouncer actually pulled on their bracelets to see if they had been removed before. When they easily came apart, they were sent back to the line.

I got some amusement while waiting in line by watching the Irish boys get increasingly incensed with the rampant queue-jumping going on. On both the British and Irish isles, there’s a great degree of respect for the etiquette of lining up, and violating it is often treated as a grave ethical breach. You can seriously get your ass kicked in the UK over jumping the lineup.

This just got more amusing when a really large group of Greek partygoers showed up and just walked up to where we were standing. They lamely struck up conversation with a few people standing in front of us, and then acted as if they belonged there. Apparently, one of the Irish boys used to date a Greek guy and the relationship ended very badly, and so he was suddenly projecting all of his resentment onto the hapless ringleader of these partygoers.

Of course, rather than yell and hurl insults, the Irish lads decide to be passive-aggressive. One of them introduces himself to the ringleader and asks, “So where are you guys from?” Then the other pipes in, “Do you come from a country where you don’t usually wait in lines? Because the line starts back there, not here. I understand that might be hard to grasp.” It had no effect, but it amused me.

Lots of pushing and crowding. The two Irish boys get in before me as the lineup/crowd converges. I’m getting squeezed in by a group of annoying Spaniards behind me.

The bouncers change shifts just as I’m at the front of the line. The new bouncer asks me if I’m alone and then asks me where I’ve been before this. I tell him Maria am Ostbahnhof, and he looks me up and down, and then lets me in. WTF? The previous bouncer hadn’t been refusing anybody at the door and then suddenly I get to the front of the line and he’s replaced by Mr. Door Policy. Anyway, I don’t know if saying “Maria am Ostbahnhof” rather than Berghain or Wateragte helped me or hindered me, but I got in.

Well, the location was definitely cool. I mean, it’s a dilapidated beer factory turned into a massive party complex. Almost the entire event takes place downstairs in a series of underground rooms. In most cases, the original fixtures of the rooms are left intact, including massive brass vats poking up through the floor, piping going every which way, tiled drains and so on. Nonetheless, they did include some nice touches of décor, including cylindrical lights hanging behind the DJ booth in one of the main rooms, and a sort of multi-colored tic-tac-toe board hanging behind the DJ in the other big room. The sound was pretty good in the lower two rooms, while the upper room seems to be more devoted to chill-out music or something like that. I’m pretty sure Jens Bond was spinning in the larger room, but I could be wrong.

Upstairs, the coat-check is full and so I have the dubious pleasure of spending the next few hours with my jacket on and my scarf still wrapped around me. Great. At least the drinks are relatively cheap.

While dancing, some guy asks me if I have any rolling papers. I say no, sorry. He asks for tobacco. I say no, sorry. Then he looks at me for a moment, and says “Ja, ja” sarcastically, as if I was clearly lying and then stalks off angrily. Lay off the speed, buddy.

I sit down on the ledge of what I must presume used to be some sort of drainage pit. I’m pretty sure that it’s nastily dirty, but I’m tired and I tell myself that jeans were made for these sorts of conditions. A moment later, a guy taps my shoulder and says, “What are you doing, sitting in all this crap?! Here, I have a bunch of those plastic bags you use to collect dog shit. Sit on one of them the way I am.” And he handed me one and pointed to how he had laid one out for himself. I smiled, thanked him, and sat back down.

He was a friendly chap, so we chatted for a bit. When he heard that I was from Canada, he suddenly got very enthusiastic. Apparently, he had once wanted to become a hockey player in the NHL, and his favourite team was Les Canadiens. I couldn’t follow everything he said, but he was certainly happy to have met a Canadian, it seemed.

At that moment, I get a text message from my friend. She’s here! And she wants to know where to meet. I tell her in the hallway between the two main rooms, say goodbye to the would-be hockey player and make my way over. A few minutes later, I’m reunited with my friend and she drags me over to where most of the rest of her friends are.

Her ex-boyfriend was there and clearly out of his gourd, because he greeted me as if we were long lost buddies, rather than just guys who happened to know the same two women. He was never this affectionate last summer, perhaps because of the tension between him, his ex-girlfriend and my former roommate, but voilà: he hugged me tightly, cupped my jaw in his hands, made lingering eye contact, and then promptly presented me with a bottle of poppers. Yech, but thanks, I suppose. One tentative sniff of that crap reminded me of why I hate that stuff.

Before I could talk to her any more, my friend disappeared and I couldn’t find her for an hour. Instead, I hung around with her ex-bf as we migrated from one room to another, dancing and drinking. Eventually, I texted her and asked her where she was and she said she was behind the “DJ pult” (DJ booth). Really? I ran into one of her other friends and we both wandered through both rooms, trying to find her. There was no ‘behind’ the DJ booth in the second room, and the first room had only a small backstage area that was clearly closed off. Once I saw her ex-bf wander out from behind the stage, though, I put two and two together. This chick is well-connected.

I eventually found her, distributing lines of speed to all of her friends. Yay! Sorta. I finally managed to chat with her, but not without the bouncer trying to bounce me out of the area. He wasn’t at all concerned that people were doing lines, but he didn’t want random strangers backstage. Once he saw that I was with her, he backed off but then started harassing her about leaving. Feh.

Once we were finally shooed out onto the dancefloor near the bar, I hung around with my friend for a while as she talked about some very difficult and complicated romantic conflicts she had had last summer. This exchange happened as we stood next to the bar near the front of the main room, surrounded by her friends who were all dancing and chatting happily. I was really glad to be able to talk to her and give her some support, but it all seemed really incongruous to the context. On the other hand, if there’s ever a place where you can talk about personal stuff and not be overheard / noticed, it’s at a loud, crowded club.

My friend and her party disappeared into another corner to do more lines of speed, and I eventually caught up with them. When I did, I told her that I would be gone for a short while to find my friends and convince them to come back to the brewery party with me. Again, I was lying to make a departure that would otherwise involve lots of cajoling and pressure.

This time, on my way out, I treat myself to a cab. I’ve had enough walking for a while, thank you.

9h30: Berghain

I got to Berghain at about 9h30 and there was (thankfully) no lineup to be seen. The bouncer let me in without so much as a blink, and I was upstairs and dancing in no time. Bob and Donna were already there, along with Foster and the German galpal of Janine. Janine herself wasn’t due to come by until 13h00 or so (she didn’t actually show up until 16h00 or 17h00, but she’s perennially late). Fantômette and her crew never showed up, though, despite my frequent text messages. At some point around noon, I realize that I’m the only person that hasn’t slept tonight. Everyone else I knew had gone home and taken a substantial nap before coming to Berghain. Meanwhile, I had been at that brewery party.

So as I got there, a DJ called I:Cube was still spinning. His set was OK, mostly minimal techno with very little house influences, but it tended to be a bit same-y. That is, the tracks all tended to run together and yet the set also lacked continuity. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t complain; if I had heard that set any place other than Panorama Bar, I would’ve been thrilled.

Prosumer and Steffi were listed to do a long back-to-back set from 13h00 to 20h00, but that was complicated a bit by the fact that Steffi appeared to be drunk and/or very high. She still managed to beatmatch occasionally and she was certainly able to manipulate the mixer to play with the levels, but in the end Prosumer did the lion’s share of the mixing. Their set started off a bit too mellow and heavy on the vocal-house, but by about 14h00 or so things started to get pretty good and for at least a couple of hours I was having a fantastic time. I appreciated that there was a bit of alternation between more housey minimal tracks and straight-ahead techno-minimal tracks. But also, I think I was impressed by skill of both Prosumer and Steffi to manipulate the EQ levels to create climaxes and breakdowns and to otherwise give shape to the set.

Meanwhile, down in the Berghain room since about 9h00, Monika Kruse was giving a marathon, 8-hour set. I would head down every once in a while to check it out, but I rarely stuck around for longer than 20 or 30 minutes. Her mixing was flawless, her demeanor was always very self-controlled and professional, and her selection was definitely appropriate for the Berghain room, but I find the typical sound of that room a bit too heavy-handed and pounding, and so I was having the same problem’s with Kruse’s set. Very well done, but just not as fun for me as the sound in Panorama Bar.

Nonetheless, Kruse gets major props from me for dropping that remix of Laurie Anderson’s “O Superman,” which came out relatively recently. It was remixed first by Booka Shade and M.A.N.D.Y., and then re-remixed by various other DJs on the release (on Get Physical Music). The remix I heard that night was the Reboot 20 Cubans remix, methinks. Anyway, it was great.

So by 20h00, nd_baumecker started his set up in Panorama Bar. Bob and Donna had just left, and Janine and her friend were about to leave as well. Nonetheless, I kept going for a little while longer to hear the first hour of his set (which was excellent but just a bit harder than I normally like) and then threw in the towel at 21h00. Considering that I had started my night with drinks at Fantômette’s place at 20h00 the previous day, I was feeling pretty proud of my marathon partying. I didn’t quite make it to the closing of Berghain (which can run as late as midnight Sunday), but I did pretty well for myself.

The ride back home on transit felt very long and just a bit painful (24 hours of dancing will do that to you), but it just made things feel all the better when I finally got home. I took a shower before even approaching the bed, and I also made myself a few eggs and a bit of tea. Essen ist wichtig! And so, at about 22h00 Sunday night, I went to bed at a “normal” hour, having not slept at all the night before.

Shopping, Won-Tons, Golden Gate, PanoramaBar

After a pretty crazy week, the most delicious luxury of today was sleeping in. Mmm, slumber-gasmic!

So Florian was actually planning to leave Berlin for Holland early Saturday morning, so he had a few errands to run today. As he dashed off to take care of that, I showered, changed, “read the Internet” (a phrase I’m borrowing from Florian) and caught up a bit on correspondence and blogging. At around 13h30 or 14h00, Florian called to say that he was done with his errands, and we arranged to meet at a café called Ciao di Berlino, at the corner of Wichertstraße and Greifhagener Straße. The food was pretty decent, involving standard “healthy” German soups and pesto-heavy Italian sandwiches. I had the “organic red beet soup,” which was tasty, but it also terrified me with its clothes-staining qualities.

The décor, however, was adorable. The main seating area had a silhouette of a green landscape running around the room at eye level, with little details like lakes with ships, bridges, and so on. On the far wall, around the doorway that led to the next seating area, was a massive print of a snowy mountain peak descending into grassy hills. All of the seats had pillows with silhouettes of forest animals silk-screened onto the corner. Anyway, it was cute.

Shopping!

*girlish squeal*

After lunch, we hit the nearby Asian market to buy the ingredients for Vietnamese summer rolls to take to a won-ton potluck party tonight. My knowledge of Asian cuisine can be pretty spotty, but one thing I’ve come to make with some skill are those delicious non-fried rice-paper rolls. Mmm.

From there I left Florian to return home and pack his bags, while I headed out for a bit of shopping. Well actually, we both stopped in a trashy dollar-store near the U-Bahn stop first, where we found these awesome felt coasters with silhouettes of teapots and apples and wine bottles. So cute! And only 0.65€.

My plan was to just do some window-shopping, but that didn’t last. The fashion in designer shops here is a lot more modern and brightly-coloured than what I find in Paris, and the prices are generally lower (although not cheap). Anyway, I apparently left my self-control at home. I think I also managed to rationalize the minor spending spree with the fact that I’ve barely done any shopping in Paris in these past 6 months or so.

I bought a pair of jeans at Hummel that were dark denim with bright violet contrast stitching. They were the display pair, so I managed to get a 10% discount. Yay!

In the store 2 doors down, I picked up this adorable sweater that had three stripes in a V-shape across the chest. The sweater itself was powder blue, and the stripes were violet, blue and turquoise. Very hott.

Finally, I stopped in this store called O.K. that sells odd and brightly-coloured items often made from recycled materials and from developing countries (i.e., coin purses woven from candy wrappers). I got a couple of gifts for people back home (no details! They might be reading) and then decided that I better head home before I do any more damage to my financial situation.

Dinner: Won-Ton Hoedown in Charlottenburg

After getting home and showing off my stuff to Florian (who was kind enough to my approving noises) I assembled the summer rolls and we got ready to head out for the won-ton party.

We headed over to the apartment of these friends of Florian, a couple that live in a MASSIVE apartment in Charlottenburg for 400€ / month. Seriously. They had this beautiful apartment with high ceilings, an office, a parlor and a bedroom, along with a massive bathroom and a similarly large kitchen. I swear, this thing was easily 1000 sq.ft (92m2) As is usual, all of my time in Berlin is spent in rabid jealously of people’s apartments. Sigh.

Anyway, the meal was great. We fried up the wontons right there at the table, gorged ourselves on all the other dishes that people had brought, and drank a lot of wine. There was some discussion of ceviche recipes, Paris, and what goes on in darkrooms at Berghain. I plead innocence to introducing the last topic, which was actually brought up by a straight guy (or, at least, heterosexually-partnered) who had a surprisingly intimate knowledge of the sleazier side of Berghain. Hooray for Berlin.

Things a got a bit blurrier as the meal went on (there was a fair bit of wine), but I do recall that at some point someone had the great idea of making wontons filled with Nutella and bananas. Then someone tried the same thing with nectarines and blue cheese. They were pretty damn good, I must say. Well worth a try at my place one of these days…

By 1h00 or so, almost everyone else had left and I was getting messages from my Frenchy crew (Fantômette and the rest) saying that they were done dinner and heading off to a club in their area. So I made my goodbyes and wandered my way back to the S-Bahn stop to head into Kreuzberg.

André Crom @ Golden Gate (club)

On the train over to the first club, I get a call from Fantô saying that they couldn’t find the club, so instead they were going to go to Golden Gate, which just happened to be near where my train was at the moment.

So I got off and headed over to the club, which is under the S-Bahn tracks near Jannowitzbrücke. It’s actually literally built in under the tracks, which is kind of neat; I imagine that it had been a storage area or something before. The club itself was sort of small, dark, almost entirely of brick and a bit grimy. Just like I like it. It was almost like someone’s apartment, with the first room (dancefloor) sort of the size of a salon, the second room (bar) the size of a bedroom, and then some bathrooms upstairs.

There was an outdoor area for smoking and chilling out, which involved a bunch of beat-up couches and armchairs with blankets, covered by a series of tents. It was nice out there, but a bit too cold. There were a number of DJs playing that night, but the one spinning while we were there was André Crom. Good, solid techno, although also not very exciting. Fantô pointed out that the tracks that he releases are very minimal and finely wrought, while what he was doing tonight was a heavy-handed pounding techno set.

The crowd was almost exclusively local Germans, which was cool as well. It was nice to discover a new location, after many weekends of visiting the same 2 or 3 clubs recently. Even this summer, I tended to go to a certain circuit of clubs, including especially Berghain/Panorama, Watergate, Club der Visionäre and Bar25.

By approx 4h00, Fantô and crew had had enough and they split. Although they were heading home to crash, I still had plans to meet my London-based Frenchy friends, Bob and Donna over at Panorama Bar. I hung around for a little while longer, and then got my jacket and headed off. Panorama Bar isn’t too far from Golden Gate, so I headed over on foot and stopped at a gas station on the way for a bag of chips to soak up some of the alcohol.

Get Perlonized night @ Panorama Bar

I got to Panorama Bar at around 5h or 5h30, so I apparently missed the Half Hawaii (the collaborative project of Sammy Dee and Bruno Pronsato) live set. I’m fine with that, since I heard a bit of them at mutek last year and wasn’t impressed.

There wasn’t much of a line at the door and I got in pretty quickly. The American bouncer, Mike, was checking bags and he gave me a full soul handshake, including that whole shoulder-to-shoulder half-hug thing. Yay! Nobody does soul shakes in Europe, so it sort of reminded me of home in a nostalgic way. Later that night, a French girl I had just met would gush at the fact that I did the bise ritual (air kisses on both cheeks) with her before leaving. “Je me sens chez moi!” (I feel at home!) she said, complaining that Germans never do the kissy-kissy thing (not true, in my experience, but they certainly do it less).

I found Bob & Donna and we spent some time catching up and chatting. Vincent Lemieux was spinning (apparently a Canuck) whose set involved some nice minimal house, but with some vocal-house tracks that I liked less. Later in the morning, around 8 or so, Sammy Dee got on the decks for a while and kicked out an excellent series of punchy, dry and yet bass-heavy tracks.

Sometime at around 8h00 or so, I had this massive wave of nausea and I had to sit in a corner and fan myself out of a cold sweat. I’m not one to feel nauseous for nothing, so I took it seriously and got off the dance floor. Bob was nice enough to come check on me, but there wasn’t much to do other than wait for it to pass. Once it passed, I was feeling much better, but tired and with a bit of a headache.

They had finished with the renovations of the bathrooms at Pano (mentioned briefly in my last visit), which were pretty neat. They had one big set of bathrooms with plenty of stalls and new, clean-looking tiles and metal toilets and so on (of course, it didn’t stay clean very long, but the design was pretty hygiene-oriented). They lowered the ceilings on the toilets (which had been two stories, like the rest of the club) and then put in a mezzanine above it with couches for sitting around. It was a really nice idea, although Bob was right to point out that it was a mistake to break through the wall into the dance floor and put a little balcony there. While it gave a great view over the crowd, it allowed the sound to spill into the next room, which made it harder to talk there. Also, on Saturday night, I would discover that the mezzanine allows drunk/high people to spray the crowd below with their drinks.

At some point near the smoking area, I make friends with another very friendly German dude (this is something of a pattern: I walk through the Berghain smoking area, some talkative German guy makes friends with me). He starts by asking me if I have any cigarettes, and then we spend the next few minutes chatting about where we’re from, how hard it is to learn a new language, and so on. At some point, two other guys that he doesn’t seem to know pass by and ask for a lighter. In return, one of the guys passes out some Menthos candies, which made me think of those absurd “Menthos, full of life!” commercials, and that made me chuckle. I bet they weren’t thinking of Berghain at 8am when they made those commercials. Anyway, they got talking and I wanted to go dance, so I said goodbye and disappeared.

Later that evening, Bob introduced me a German friend of his, who told me that he works in music. He’s a sound engineer, but he also makes music. When I asked what kind, he told me that, although he’s straight, he’s developed a gay rapper persona that raps about gay sex in clubs in German-inflected English. I would’ve thought he was joking, if he hadn’t started freestyling for me right there. That shit cracked me the fuck up. In response, all I could say was, “Geil” (sexy). I’ll have to ask Bob for his website, because his work needs to be exposed to the world.

At around 8h30 or so, I finally decided to throw in the towel and head home. On the way out, Mike gave me another soul shake, so I felt like a bouncer-knowing, club-getting-into badass. w00t!

I stopped at the kebab place near the Ostbahnhof station and forced myself to eat a kebab, thinking that a bit of food might settle my stomach, although I was already feeling better.

The train ride home was a bit complicated, mostly due to the fact that I thought I would catch the M1 tram from Hackescher Markt, which would bring me a few blocks closer to home than the U2. However, the northbound stop for the M1 at Hackescher Markt is in a rather non-obvious place, which required walking around the neighborhood for a bit and following the tram tracks. Anyway, I got home, peeled off my clothes, and got into bed.

Oh, by the way: I was breaking in my new jeans tonight and I totally forgot that dark-wash jeans have a lot of indigo dye in them when you first buy them. Every couple of hours, I had to wash the blue dye off my hands. Hah.