people in berlin :: holbein vision

at this point of the year it should be warmer, not warm so that you can lay on the beach and get a tan, because I'm not pushy like that, but warm enough to ride my bicycle for a few hours without getting frostbite and warm enough to walk around the park without ten layers of clothes. i don't want the sun to get burning-bright hot and wash all the colors out of everything, which never happens here, because i don't want this place to be something that it's not.

but if i am flexible, couldn't the weather be flexible back?

in this state of mind nobody is happy, no matter how well their life is going. the subway is a completely silent, unhappy holding pen of tall, thin, pinched-faced people with no love. the christmas gift jackets have become a little messier, dirtier, and the ugliest colors imaginable and the strangest fashions clash up against each other in a row before your eyes.

i was reading a hans holbein art book, and these images were in my head, because the reality of the world did not present anything as pleasing to the eye. i turned and saw this girl with a mona lisa smile, and i thought, "she looks just like a hans holbein painting!" her parka was scary, her roots were showing on her dyed black hair, and who knows what she was listening to: does it matter?

she was pleased with herself, pleased with the world, not quite smiling but grinning enigmatically in contrast to all the dissatisfaction around her. i like these moments when people look like they are posing for paintings: it's so timeless. it makes you want to drench them with tubes of oil paints.

people in berlin :: the best man

a man, the best man, is the kind that is down and out and always broke but finds a way to make ends meet.

he spends his last euro on a bag of oranges to make fresh-squeezed juice because you've been living too long here and only have faint memories of what good orange juice used to taste like. he doesn't talk you about how he's going to have a lot of money in the future and how he has a really nice car, because he's too broke to have a car. maybe the qualities of a good man are determined by what he does not do: there is no hair gel in his bathroom, and he doesn't gossip with other men about women or obsess on being a player. he's too cool for that!

he's got good style and turns women's heads when he walks down the street, but his shoes are falling apart. he plays fussball (soccer), he doesn't watch it. boys like these are showered with love from the ladies, because he doesn't say dorky shit like, "that's a woman thing" because he's so smooth he knows women already. he's an honorary lesbian.

he always has some weird creative thing going on, you walk into his apartment and it's in shambles, you look in his fridge and there's nothing but a bottle of ketchup, even though nobody in Berlin really eats ketchup.

the only thing that sucks about the best man is that it makes all other men out there pale in comparison. it's not that the other guys were lame to begin with, just after seeing the best man, they just aren't the same. just hope that he isn't thinking about the best girl when he's with you!

people in berlin :: stud chick

her look was a little intense. i'm straight, but whoa! she had a girlfriend there too, ready to claw my eyes out, and it was at katya's weird party where there were crazy butch women throwing food at everything and knocking chairs over. you couldn't tell if it was malevolent or not, and all the men hid in the kitchen, hiding in the corner.

it's weird, i've never met a man who has that kind of charisma. it's always women. so many men i know try to be like that, but you can't attempt that kind of gravity. it's gotta be natural. you can't pull in the moon with a rubber band. you're just going to fail.

people in berlin :: phone booth boy

first, it's weird to see a phone booth since cell phones / mobiles / "handys" are so cheap and prevalent everywhere here. using a phone booth is really expensive.

it was sunday at noon, and he was dirty and wearing a fur vest and a kilt, he must have been freezing. his white legs showed between the knee high doc martens and the kilt, goosebumpy? but they were dirty, smudged with club dirt. when you have long, long legs, do they get cold more easily? i guess it's really awkward to go shopping for men's tights, even here in freak city berlin, but he could also have gone for long johns.

he had a very anxious look on his face, and he could have been either arguing or begging with someone on the phone. i mean, it's been so long since i've used a phone booth, but there's something really desperate about begging someone to do something from a phone booth.

these are places in public of last resort. phone booths are asking for it: you're ready to just cry in the middle of the street and push people away when they try to offer you tissues. is it really harder to let yourself cry in public if you are a man? it must be, right?

people in berlin :: asian waitress

usually the waitresses at japanese restaraunts are chinese, but at the thai restaraunt the waitress was japanese.

i like her because at other asian restaraunts they always ask me where i am from, what i am doing here, if i am married, if i am studying, if i want to have a baby, and what i think about German men.

she just gave me the food and a friendly smile. she probably also really has a great record collection, but who am i to guess?

people in berlin :: touf daddi

there's this scene in MAD MAX BEYOND THE THUNDERDOME where there is a midget who is attached to a big muscle guy named MASTER BLASTER. that's how babies are with these snarling hippie mommies and the construction worker daddies who are at home holding bottles of milk where bottles of beer usually go.

these sexy tough daddies are not to be messed with, but they often overbundle their babies, whose eyes are barely visible in the winter, gleaming with mischief. MASTER BLASTER. just pray that the baby is not having a bad day or touf daddi will be out for a beat down on the u bahn platform.

people in berlin :: s-bahn angel

some of the young girls on the train are so pretty in their new clothes and their make-up. she was tiny and bundled up in her pink pimkie jacket and knee-high boots radiating life on a gray day.

i like these small-boned girls that look a lot like all the other sweet girls. there's something comforting about how they all fit in with each other, like variations of a pattern repeating across the city.