Lydia’s Blog

I have recently quit my job. Well. Not quit so much as just made it really clear that I don’t want to stay. And by really clear I do mean submitting a letter asking them not to bother renewing any sort of contract binding me to to the culture plantation in whose fields I’ve been laboring these last few years.

So there’s that. And then there’s the apartment…the one where rats scuttle out of the toilet if I don’t close it at night, three minutes of hot water in the morning qualifies as luxurious and the remnants of an erstwhile basement sweatshop remain to be removed by the previous tenant.

My deliciously dysfunctional family will break bread and more importantly try to provide fodder for future therapists tomorrow and Friday, celebrating a feast commemorating a fictitious meeting during which shoe-buckles and decorative corn husks took center stage. My baby Jesus sister. My great sick Dad. This sweet feat of emotional terrorism will occur some six hours in the past for me…in a far away land called Connecticut.

I feel like I remember ideas like grace, charm and optimism the way a hardcore alcoholic must remember things like waking up clear-headed. It must have happened once…but fuck if we can remember what it felt like.

Shit in’t so bad though…as I do have my secret weapon here in this vast wasteland of southern German unremarkableness…my silver bullet, my kill button…

It’s called Jenseits. In German it roughly means eternity. It’s my neighborhood gay bar and I love it. There is just nothing some juicy beats, cheap wine and free internet can’t fix–especially after cranking some seventy people through a three-hour rehearsal.

Emil is the bar tender. If there is one thing more fabulous than normal bar sisters, it’s a turkish bar sister with a tidy homo-hawk. Considering what members of the immigrated Turkish community go through just to reach thirty without being pressed into some odd forced marriage, I find homosexual Turks to be an absolute phenomenon. And he makes a great wine spritzer.

Yeah. It’s an old lady drink. Build yourself a bridge.

I grew up watching Cheers with my dad. While he watched, I’d crawl into bed with him as a little kid, trying to escape from the sound of the filling bathtub, which terrified me. The idea of a place where you’re always welcome and everyone knows your name…it seemed the stuff of miracles. And to be sure it is. Aw, where are you Sam…

A buouy made out of candy, diamonds and featherdust is doomed, when placed in the middle of a sea of bullshit. I don’t mean this figuratively…I mean the fecal byproduct of adult male cattle….collected in some sea-like arrangement. The buouy doesn’t stand a chance.

But fuck is it fun to sit here for a while…getting drunk alone where everybody knows your name.

And the number for a taxi.

Happy Thanksgiving.