Lydia’s Blog

Ever seen a bunch of skinheads?

I have. A few times. It is my family’s nightmare—the worst-case, dead-end, most I-told-you-so-for-going-to-Germany-you-big-Heeby-McJewenstein-jackass scenario mentioned to me occasionally when I visit home.

Like a viciously organized far-right wing is going to take over the organic markets and yoga academies in my neighborhood.

Skinheads are generally men, although there are some pretty impressive skinheadinas out there. The men of the species have, as you might expect, shaved heads, polished boots with white laces, and 3/4 length pants (black) or jeans. They wear either jean jackets or black bombers—with sewn-on patches of their favorite white supremacist bands (I prefer Prussian Blue, check’em out!)

What do skinheads like to do? Well, read and take long walks, I might conjecture. There is, however, one skinhead activity that I have observed on many occasions, and can therefore confirm as a favored neo-Nazi pastime.

They like to sit together in big packs on the subways or trams, singing.

Singing together. Songs. Skinheads singing songs together.

I might be the only one in this boat, but—is there anyone else that finds this a little bit…

Gay?

Say, fellas—know any Tori?

It’s Sunday morning in Prenzlauerberg. Okay. By morning I mean 1:15 pm, but it comes to about the same thing.

On the way here (I usually write from a coffee shop, just to fanatically adhere to a particularly obnoxious stereotype), I was blocked on the street, literally barred completely from passing, by a barricade of young parents and their drooling little sprouts, each dressed more fashionably than I could ever hope for myself. Bugaboos festooned with dingo balls (a la the van in Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke”) and/or meticulously restored vintage prams elevated the appearance of the blockade from mob to military armada.

Un. So un.

Somehow, finally, I managed to wade through the fracas and end up at my coffee shop. It’s called Coffee To Go. I know. It’s so dada. Anyway, it was featured in the documentary “Berlin Digital” (didn’t see it? You’re not alone.) It has old GDR waiting room benches, and plays homegrown music from Berlin DJs and recording artists. Apparently it’s an indispensable stop on any techno pilgrimage to this city.

I come here because it has open WLAN, and the fuckers at Versatel haven’t hooked up my DSL yet. It’s also within spitting distance of my apartment.

For the last several weeks, while work has been slow, I’ve made CTG the first activity of my day. I’ll wake up, take some Excedrin (to rectify any fogginess caused by one thing or the other), put on a hat or bandana (to cover the spectacular greasiness that is actually highly valued in this neighborhood, in an aesthetic context) and whatever sweats or nasty vestidos are lying closest to the bed—and I go. I sit and check the New York Times (and what the fuck is Times Select, anyway), email people, stare into space, etc.

My inattention to appearances functions quite well from Monday to Saturday, however today, Sunday…I’m obviously out of my league.

To describe Prenzlauerberg. Hm. The women look like, well, think of Williamsburg at its most obnoxious, and then picture its style of dress in darker colors and on skinnier people. Boots go over pants. Bangs are long and sideswept, the upper body is obligated to bear at least three layers. Big chains of big beads.

Men fall into two categories: Sporty sensitive or coldly sculptural. The former features any product from Puma, Adidas, Gola, Camper, etc…and is generally accompanied by a generous helping of stubble and your high school biology teacher’s unkempt, layered, long bowl haircut. The latter category is all about grey, black, or chocolate-colored boiled, brushed, or merino wool. Throw in improbably angular foot- and eye-wear (like the ubiquitous Shostakovich glasses), and petrified hair—you’ve got yourself a high-class PoMo.

And they are out in force, today…tell you what. It’s like an officially sanctioned cotillion of nonchalant, yet precisely measured artsiness. They don’t say much, generally just preening silently for the sake of anyone in the room that missed their wicked new belt-buckle or cultivated under-eye bags. I literally watched a guy hold a copy of Italian Vogue upside down for about fifteen minutes, pretending to read while sprawled languidly for the benefit of his fellow Prenzlauerbergian, elegantly feline in his apparent illiteracy. Magnificent

And I’m here in my PJs.

Last night I went to a Thanksgiving party, hosted by a set designer I sort of alienated, and attended by yet another. I thought it would be a blowout…you know, tons of people, little groups between which one is meant to flit. It wasn’t. It was a dinner party…only very close friends. At first I was cursing myself for steamrolling Tommy into taking me along. Still, thanks to the magic of grappa and pumpkin crème brulée (and hospitality I’d not known to exist in this day and age), it turned out to be a fantastic evening—any burned bridges blissfully ignored, if not actually repaired. Very, very nice.

It sort of inspires me to finally buy that fondue set and start entertaining.

And speaking of entertaining—I was several hours late to the Thanksgiving party for having attended the performance/exhibition of a few good acquaintances.

I won’t suck up any more of your procrastination time with ultra-specific details, but suffice it to say that it was the most moved, disturbed, effected, provoked, disgusted, and titillated I’ve been with any theatrical (or general media) experience in a long, long time.

The atmosphere constructed between two rooms by three performers, a stack of CDs, several paintings depicting any variety of dismemberment, torture, murder or rape and all possible combinations thereof, and a few simple household objects…it was overwhelming. Brilliant.

To all those people who stood around saying that kind of performance was done and done better in the seventies, I say nothing…but I wish I could fart on command. In your faces.

Affectionately, of course.

You know, if you were to give me the choice of watching a man dressed as blond Hitler pull his pants down to his ankles, kneel down on the ground, shove a paintbrush up his ass, and then crawl around in circles, thereby painting a white ring around himself—or watching this tragically fashionable case who’s been sitting across from me at the coffee shop for the last hour…looking more tragically misunderstood by the moment—you’d better believe I’d take the paint brush.

Who knows, though, maybe I could have the best of both worlds. Maybe I can convince this guy to kneel down and spread’em. It would be so post.

When I was in Cologne, my hotel had a very bright bathroom. My apartment’s bathroom is particularly dark (leading to occasionally embarrassing makeup mishaps), so I was duly appreciative of the change.

The hotel bathroom had a magnifying mirror that I used to tame the overgrown jungle my eyebrows (at that point, technically eyebrow) had become.

I had apparently been walking around in public, looking like Michael Dukakis for weeks.

Anyway, I was pluck, pluck, plucking—CNN blasting in the background—when I saw it. An age spot. AN AGE SPOT. Unmistakable. I nearly started retching and did an Elvis right there and then.

It’s on the right side of my chest, the décolletage, as they say.

Maybe it’s a mole…you ask? Maybe it’s always been there?

Oh no, children. Of all places on my body, THAT is one of the most familiar to me, having gone from totally barren to huge/saggy/distended to compact and somewhat numb within the course of five years.

I had a reduction, did you know that? Now you do. For the sake of my poor mother, I should also mention that I’m very happy with the results. At least she won’t wonder. She might however wonder why in the Sam Hell I’m mentioning my tits online.

No idea.

I used to have a very cute mole on my right nipple (itself very large and totally white), which ended up in a biowaste bin squished beneath four pounds of skin and fat. I used to have a direct nerve line from my nipples straight up to my jaw, which could be overwhelming to the point of being unpleasant.

That’s gone, too.

Perhaps this loss of gland tissue cut down my estrogen levels, creating the odd post-surgical emergence of…shall we say…fuzzies?

Do you remember that scene in Teen Wolf when Mikey finds that first six-inch hair in the middle of his chest?

I’ve been there. I’ve since become a fucking tweezer ninja.

Still, I digress. There is an age spot on my chest. Not a mole, not a scab, but a real life liver spot. I think it was a picture of Ginger Rogers at age 90 that I saw once—her over-tat skin looking like a weather dispersal map of sub-Saharan Africa.

Hello Ginger.

I could deal with the crows-feet. I thought it was a fair exchange for not having laugh lines or wicked forehead creases yet. The sallow, thinning skin? I guess I had convinced myself that I’d brought it on myself by smoking too much and never sleeping…like it’s not age when it’s self-imposed. I could almost even forgive the grey hairs that stick out like crinkly weeds. At least picking them out gives me something to do.

And salt and pepper seems to look so good on men. Bullshit, a load of. Well, they’ll get ear hair, won’t they.

In any case, I was talking to Tommy about this stuff last night and he said, in so many words, that I’m being ridiculous. We’re twenty-seven!

And, lo—an argument—?

Think about it. Do you remember ten years ago, when a headache after a night of partying ONLY occurred had you also managed to fall down three flights of stairs during the festivities? When a double all-nighter didn’t cause you two weeks of jet-lag? When perfectly-applied eyeliner didn’t immediately turn into mountain tributaries crackling down your puffy violet bags? When wearing rubber-soles out in the evening seemed unthinkable? When regular pooping seemed more a right than a privilege?

Okay, sure, there are plenty of things I don’t miss about ten years ago. Culottes, for example. Bulimia. Ace of Base. Colleen McTigue. Boone’s.

Still, at an age where my freckles are finally fading, I’m just not sure I’m ready for them to relocate.

When I was in Barcelona, I saw a pair of boots. I see a lot of pairs of boots. I love them, although they are usually too expensive for me to take home and adore properly.

I mean, I have a few pairs. Two pairs of black knee highs, one black midcalf, then two pairs of cowboy boots…one that’s sort of super-pointy and punky (with nasty gold studs on top, so they’re only useful under long pants) and one traditional pair, with bullet strap spurs I bought at a western store in Berlin, Connecticut…which almost got me arrested going through LaGuardia airport once.

The black ones are very specific in terms of use. One knee-high pair has super-pointy toes and very, very high, slim heels. It’s quite obvious that no human testicle could withstand the wrath of those babies. The heels however, prove problematic—not necessarily just in terms of comfort, of which there is really very little to speak of, but rather in terms of aesthetics.

I am, by nature, curvy. Or voluptuous, or statuesque, or womanly, or husky, or healthy, or doughy, or just plain jiggly, if you prefer. Placing such an indelicate object upon such a slight structure, no matter how stable, creates a strange and incongruous form…like putting a wad of mom’s greasy meatloaf into a Venetian wine glass. Like Michael Moore reciting John Dunne.

The second pair has a square toe and no heel. These boots allow me to streamline my “artsy lesbian” routine. I put on a black turtleneck, roll-up my jeans and slap those bitches on my feet and voila…even my most arbitrary criticism seems somehow eloquent. I walk with a clack clack clack that says “this angry vagina has no patience for any dead white man.” I eat a lot of tofu in those suckers.

The half-calf pair is from Aerosoles, I bought them with a gift certificate Abe got me for my birthday. Suede with a silver buckle. They’re my “how the fuck are you pulling that off and looking so good” boots. I wear them everywhere, where most high-heels pinch and ache…where lesser mortals revert to sneakers and flats. During the end rehearsals of a production, when everyone else looks like moldy dinner-rolls, I like to wear them with biznass skirts and tons of eye makeup, making people wonder how I haven’t, like the others, been defeated. The sound of the footfalls has two syllables: “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you”.

I tried on these boots in Barcelona, at a store called Casas. From what I could tell, it was a chain much like our own Aldo, with professional escorts browsing alongside pale, pudgy career-girls—who tend to try on their boots deep in the corners of the store, so as to curse their meaty, prohibitive calves in private.

Lots of trash.

After examining rows of unnecessary leather fringe captoes and multicolored stackheel slouchers, I found it, standing alone and souvereigne in its simple radiance. One gorgeous silhouette stark against so much expensive cheapness.

With trembling hand, I touched it, lifted it, turned it over. My heart melted. A thirty-nine, and only EU 148, a full hundred less that its vastly inferior siblings, both in Spain and in Germany.

I slid my hand over the perfectly curved toe, examining the minimalized wingtip overlay, a perfect heart beaming up at me, letting me know that my desperate, needful feelings were held in reciprocation. My fingers traced the seam where upper meets heel, feeling the proudly pouting backedge, my touch following down the sturdy, yet delicate bow until met with the rough delight of sole.

My breathing was shallow, possibly stopped altogether as I moved my knuckles up and down the shaft, tickling the zipper. I slowly tugged it open, exposing the supple brown within.

I sat down. My mid-calf Aerosole looked crumpled and rejected next to the bench, where I’d thrown it absently…removing it with one hand so as not to break touch with this smooth dream.

The toes of my right foot slipped in first, filling the ankle of the upper. I tugged gently on the splayed leather, and my heel slid into the footbed with a light, timid thud. Soft brown gave way to muted, cracked black as I slowly worked the zipper up my leg, feeling it resist slightly the more leather met leather.

It was on. I stood up. If the fallen Aerosole could’ve crawled under the bench of its own volition it would have, in defeated tribute to the unmitigated magnificence coating the right side of my person from toe to knee.

I took off the boot and replaced it on the shelf. We stared at each other guiltily as I vacantly tugged the suede half-calf back on. Then I grabbed my things, stood, and left.

A day later, a few hours before I was due to fly back to Berlin, I sat with a good friend Rebecca, drinking coffee in a shady square. She saw that something was on my mind.

“You’re sad to go?” Well yes, of course I was, but that was unavoidable.

“You’re worried about work?” Sort of, I mean, that anxiety stays with me like some half-witted yet snarky Siamese twin with Tourette’s Syndrome.

“You’re not feeling well?” I stared at her. I had to tell someone. I couldn’t let it end like this.

I told her about the boot. She nodded slowly, asked for the check, told me it’d be okay.

We went back to Casas.

At first I couldn’t find it. A horrid metallic taste washed over my tongue and my eyes started to burn. Then I saw it, moved to a different shelf, sandwiched between several particularly ugly models of Clarks (the continuing popularity of which will never cease to perplex me). It seemed an odd place to display such a sublime object. The salespeople at Casas were obviously philistines.

My chest tightened with another thought. What if someone else had put it there? What if someone else had tried on my boot—my perfect, slick, delicious boot, and then dumped it there amidst the Clarks as some kind of symbol of malicious scorn.

My next thought made me lightheaded…what if someone buried the boot in the tacky Clarks not out of ignorance or spite, but out of slyness. Some stuttering, lazy-eyed Spanish chica was probably on her way back to Casas at that very moment, fresh from the cash machine. It was too much.

During my private (and some might rightfully say psychotic) mental pageant, Rebecca had asked a salesgirl with a spectacularly unfortunate dye-job (think radioactive hay) for the second boot.

I sat heavily, overwhelmed. The second was even more beautiful than the first.

“You have to buy these,” Rebecca said to me. Echoes of Mr. Miyagi.

I couldn’t. I told her about my financial situation. About my unfortunate addiction to spending 3 Euros several times a day for mixtures of milk and espresso in varying degrees of strength and foulness. About the new glasses I’d had to buy to the tune of EU 300, not realizing they made me look like Scooter from the Muppet Show as a result of the fact I’d been functionally blind at the time of purchase. The GEZ guy, the Telecom bills, the trip to Barcelona purely on credit, the pants, jacket and scarf I’d bought earlier in the day…

“You have to buy these boots, Lydia. That way you’ll go back to Berlin, and if anyone ever gives you shit about anything, you’ll know you have these. These are special. These will be your Spanish boots.”

The idea of protection and beatification through footwear was both completely absurd and unspeakably attractive. I knew that she was feeding me a line of absolute bullshit, and she knew it was exactly what I needed to hear. That’s friendship.

I could’ve sworn I heard my American Express card groan as I slapped it into the fleshy palm of the patiently observing salesgirl. She’s undoubtedly seen many such scenes during that one workday alone. Maybe it was just my eyes finally adjusting to her hair, but I distinctly remember the room growing lighter—blessing the exchange.

Here in the Berlin apartment, the left boot stands on the kitchen table, the right on a stool in the hall. That way, from basically anywhere I stand or sit, I can see one. I’m not sure that I can wear them out in public, for fear of blinding the masses with their deadly hotness.

But sometime, someday when I really need them, I know where they’ll be. My Spanish boots.

I have just boarded a train on its way back to Berlin from Cologne. For the last few hours, I’ve been getting off on unlimited CNN and BBC in the hotel room. TV is so, so nice, but it’s probably good I don’t have one.

A baroque group from Freiburg (not the big one, for whoever would know or care) did two guest performances at the Komische Oper last week/weekend. They needed a light bitch and because, as some of you know, I’ve had just NOTHING to do at the opera since getting back from NYC Nov. 1st, I decided to do it (for a decent chunk of poppy). Part of the deal was going to Cologne for their final performance, at the city’s Philharmonic.

So the concert happened. Well concert. I guess one would call it a dramatic pastiche, with accompanying costumes and dead-guy makeup (that I liked, I liked).

Anyway. It ended. Now, in my experience, when a performance ends, especially if it’s the first or last, everyone gets shitfaced and says and does a whole bunch of shit which is by tradition obliged to be forgotten the next day. Certainly in New York that’s the case. Champagne is daintily sipped over the table, as the prima donna goes down on the hunky-yet-walleyed stagehand just below. Dramaturge becomes DJ. People pass out and almost freeze to death in unheated stairwells. All attendant fingertips smell like cigarettes, pussy, or vomit.

Or at least people dance.

Or have tolerably entertaining conversations, if not outright lively ones. Even the KO represents itself fairly well in this area.

I walked backstage afterwards, expecting champagne and trays of mediocre party food, groups of people kissing air while surreptitiously squeezing buttocks. Private jokes explained to uncomprehending strangers, grandiose compliments paid to completely undeserving performers, tight-necked commiseration between musicians for some section that “totally wasn’t together”.

What I got: a bunch of strangers standing in sedate, unsmiling groups, drinking ear-waxy tasting Cologne beer. The performers were already ducking out the exit doors with short, compact waves to this colleague or that.

Normally a good way to get into a conversation is to find a performer, or a group with an odd number of people. One should then comment specifically on an aspect of the performance, or particular influence it had (in a complimentary sense, it goes without saying). I tried once. Twice. When I flash the choppers, I can usually get it done. I tried yet again. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing.

I got a series of polite but empty smiles. After a while I grew very earnestly concerned that there might have been a carbon monoxide leak in the backstage of the Philharmonic. It became apparent that many people though I was a straggler from the audience, one of those with no personal connection to any performer, who figures out how to get backstage while an usher’s back is turned.

I have put in about 35 hours with these people over the course of four days.

Shitty beer in hand, I went back to my dressing room, grabbed my belongings, gave my signed contract to the production manager, and headed back to the hotel.

She gave me a huge bouquet. I think it was a table centerpiece earlier in the evening. It was still a really nice one. Smelly like real flowers.

Cologne seems pretty nice, at least in the four blocks surrounding the train station. German postwar architecture is fucking ugly, though. The buildings–looking all like one of those playmate coolers your mom used to give you to take to summer day-camp…but with windows.

I got some shitty take out and watched some movie about the allied persecution of Furtwaengler with Harvey Keitel in it. Dubbed into German.

It was a particularly lonely experience, thankfully very short.

It made me think about other things. If I were to get an offer to work in my same job (house assistant director) in another, maybe better opera house somewhere else in Germany, I’m not sure if I’d do it.

I mean, Berlin is definitely not home. Neither is New York for that matter. Joolz and Tommy helped to settle some connection to the former, and if Abe weren’t in New York—I’d basically just ever be visiting.

And home, home is not home. West Hartford is a place where the general response to what I do for a living generally mentions that unmentionable Andrew Lloyd Webber epic at least once.

Maybe it’s really about people.

Then again, if the Liceo or Covent Garden or San Francisco came a-calling, all bets’d be off.

As for the production in Cologne (and also Berlin), it was middling. Good ideas—even great ones, but clearly directed by a conductor. Very square, missing necessary bits of dramatic and/or visual style.

But seriously, a baroque pastiche? That used to be my sweet thing. I would’ve taken that little animal, broken its neck, twisted it’s shattered spine into a bizarre, unnatural shape, attached the poor, reordered creature to a vintage erector set (with staples and tape), and then used a remote to make it walk around on its own again. Dripping, cruel, and totally unfamiliar. A deliciously macabre toy.

Yesterday I saw a guy jerking off on my way to work.

The tram came and I got in at the front. From my house until Hackischer Markt I had to stand (it gets pretty packed in the mornings…it turns out that in reality, some people DO have jobs in Berlin). After the Hackischer Markt dump-out, I decided to move to the back where there were more seats, and so I’d be closer to the cash machine at Friedrichstrasse. Then I’d hit the Dunkin’ Donuts.

I was sitting at the very back of the Tram on the right side. It was before eight in the morning, as I had to be at the opera for lighting the entire day. My brain was still swimming in morning coma (not induced but, say, assisted by a Palast der Republik stumble with Tomz the night before)…annoyed at the fact I didn’t have enough cash on me to buy coffee before I got on the Straßenbahn.

The Tram stopped at U-Bahn Orianienburger Tor. My absent staring was molested, literally, by an oddly familar rhythm somewhere up and to the left. There, in the lower right window of the Velvet Hotel Alcatel (1st floor in Germany, 2nd floor a la Americaine) was a guy, totally naked, laid out on his bed jerking off his cock.

For some reason that I can only blame on God’s hatred of jews, the Tram stopped there for about 5 minutes.

Plainly visible from the chest down, the guy’s head was behind some curtains. They looked to be at least partially sheer…so maybe he knew and liked that people were watching. Sheer or not, purposefully displayed or not, the man picked possibly one of the most busy and conspicuous beat-off locations in all of Berlin.

At first I was totally giddy at the discovery, like dumb-kid style. Like when the most mature of your girlfriends wears a tank top, displaying her first armpit pube and you spend all day in class waiting for a glimpse of it…privately willing her to get ambitious and try to answer more questions. Raise your hand, bitch, raise it…

I even said, after confirming what I was seeing, "Hey, check it out, there’s a naked guy masturbating over there!" to the girl sitting across from me. She looked to be about my age, or just older, with office-y clothes. She gave me a glare such as if I myself had started fisting myself right there on the Tram. "No, really-" I offered weakly, pointing in the direction of the rhythmic motion.

Perhaps such things are better experienced privately…which, coincidentally, is exactly what I would have said to the guy, if I’d had the chance.

Maybe I’ll use a guy in my next production, frantically beating his cock. It could be a very useful and provocative device. In the first minute, titillating. Then moving swiftly through tasteless, assaultive, and pathological in rapid succession–before arriving at sad. If we’re using yesterday morning for inspiration, we shouldn’t forget tiny and generally soft.

I mention this only because the remainder of my day yesterday is, in comparison, hardly worth mentioning. 

I spent the four days before yesterday in Barcelona.

Just a beautiful, gorgeous, accidental four days. It was one of those rare times when I can sit back and look at my life here…and realize how spectactularly, unspeakably lucky I am.

Rebecca, Rechi, Alberto, Calixto, Alfons, Pablo…are the Spanish wing of the small army of fabulous and brillian people that pepper my life.

I have no money. My job can be boring and spirit-crushing. Still, I’m here, surrounded by beautiful things, people, music and ideas.

Sometimes I can see that.

Sometimes.

Okay.

I can’t believe I’m doing one of these things…after heaping so much righteous scorn on those who did.

They say these are like diaries. I’ve seen some that are super-masturbatory (not sexually intended). Let’s hope this doen’t end up in that pile.

So I’m in Berlin. I live here. I got busted today for having a clock radio. Now see, sometimes I go and start to like living in Germany, and then at that very moment I get smacked in the face by…let’s call it Deutschtardation.

It was at about 3:30…a knock comes at my door (and I’ve been instructed by the girl from whom I’m subletting NEVER to open the door but who knows, maybe it was a candy-bearing wizard or something, which would have been way sweeter than what happened). As per usual, the BBC world service was BLARING from both radios, the one in the bedroom and the one in the kitchen…to achieve the surround sound britishness that I so crave.

Let me explain, briefly about GEZ. It’s this bullshit scheme by which you are required to register every machine that recieves AM/FM/UHF, etc, etc waves…and then pay for the ever-fucking privelege. A TV…just to have it in your home…costs EU 17 a month. A radio, regardless of if it’s sole purpose is to wake your ass up in the morning in order to go to your job for which you pay over half of your salary in taxes to support the lazy German underclasses (and artists), costs EU 6 a month.

So. I bought my radio, as it were for EU 2 at a flea market. According to this system, I need to now pay EU 72 a year for the honor of keeping it in my house.

I fought with the GEZ guy for a while. He saw Cathrin’s TV and wanted to charge for that too. I dared him to even get the fucker to work. He tried, tried, failed, and then said he’d be fine just charging for my radio. I said I’d throw it out the window right in front of him if he’d like.

He said there’s also a penalty for throwing a working radio out a window in Germany. I asked him if that were still true should it coincidentally fall from a window while lodged in the throat of a GEZ guy.

Deutschland, Deutschland über alles…

Laters y’all,

Lydia