soundgirl check

people in berlin :: sleepyhead

alcohol is an amazing drug... it's legal and accessible, and people drink unhealthy quantities of it when they are trying to do things like dance in clubs. most people throw up or look really stupid when they pass out, but this guy reminded me of a child, maybe because he was so big and tough and curled up into a little ball.

maybe there is something wrong when you are so wasted that you can fall asleep against a gigantic speaker on an uncomfortable dirty clubbing bench covered spilled beer. but somehow he made it seem ok.

his girlfriend and i tried to bunch up someone's expensive jacket and give his head a pillow, but the expensive jacket belonged to another guy who didn't want to be a good samaritan. he snatched it away, but was maybe a little nicer about it since we were two chicks.

i can understand that, though, because hair gel mixed with sweat is really hard to wash off.

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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!