by Christiane F
I said, “Of course I can. You know I've got a talent for it.” We agreed to meet again in two hours at the latest. I'd done a lot of mooching in my days at The Sound. Often just for fun, and it had always worked. But not this time. Not at all. I was in a hurry, but for the art of mooching you need time. You have to watch the guys closely and watch them for a while before you approach them. You have to adapt yourself to their ways of communicating, maybe talk to them for a while, and be cool. You had to enjoy it.
I started going into withdrawal and didn't have my usual touch. After a half-an-hour I only had around seven marks. I thought, You'll never make it. I thought of Detlef, who was at the station now, where there were probably just a bunch of families getting back from a Sunday afternoon at grandma and grandpa's. He was also going into withdrawal. He wouldn't attract any customers while he was in that state anyway. I started to panic.
Without a definite plan in mind, I walked out onto the street. I was still hoping that the pickings might be easier out in front of the club. A flashy Mercedes stopped in front of the entrance. There were often big, fancy cars pulling up or driving slowly past because The Sound was the one place where you were guaranteed to find pretty young boys and girls. There were some girls who didn't even have enough money for the cover charge because their allowance was all gone. They got inside those big fancy cars just for the price of admission and a couple of Cokes.
The guy in the Mercedes waved me over. I recognized him. He was often in front of The Sound, and he'd hit on me before. Did I want to earn a hundred? I'd asked him once before what he wanted for that, and he said, “Nothing really.” I'd laughed at him and walked away.
I don't know exactly what I was thinking. Probably not much. Maybe I just thought I'd go over and find out what he really wanted. Maybe get a few singles off of him. In any case, he was waving like wild, and suddenly I was standing next to the car. He said, “Why don't you get in?” He said he couldn't stay there much longer. I got in.
I knew exactly what was going on. That this was not about mooching anymore.
Johns weren't alien beings to me anymore. From my time at Zoo station, and after hearing all the stories that the guys told over there, I knew how this scene would unfold. I also knew that it wasn't the customer but the hooker who set the price and conditions. I tried to be cool about it. I wasn't trembling, but I kept gasping for air when I was talking and had trouble finishing my sentences in the same tone that I started them. “So, what's up?” I said.
He said: “Not too much. A hundred marks. Do we have a deal?”
“Well, sex or something like that is out of the question for me.”
He asked why, and I was so flustered that nothing came out of my mouth—well, nothing at first, and then the truth: “Listen. I have a boyfriend. And he's the only one I've ever slept with. And I want to keep it that way.”
He said, “That's fine with me. Then give me a blow job.”
I said, “No way; I won't do that either. I'll puke.”
Then I was back to being cool.
He didn't let himself get rattled at all. He said, “Okay, a hand job then.”
I said, “Sure, no problem . . . for a hundred.” I wasn't registering anything right then. Later I realized that this guy must've been really into me. A hundred marks for a hand job—and at the Kurfürstenstrasse, where the cheap baby hookers hung out? That was unheard of. He must have gotten off on my fear, which I couldn't really hide. He knew that I wasn't pretending, the way I sat there, squeezed against the door, my right hand on the door handle.
As he was driving away, I was scared out of my mind. I thought, I'm sure he wants more; he will force me to give him more—a hundred marks' worth. Or maybe he won't pay at all. He stopped at a nearby park. I'd walked through this park a thousand times before, but it was pretty sketchy, with condoms and tissues everywhere.
I was really shaking and starting to feel a little sick. But the guy stayed very calm. And that's when I got up my courage and said what I was supposed to say, according to the old rules: “First the money.” He gave me a hundred-mark note. I was still scared. I'd heard enough stories about customers who took the money back by force, after it was all over. But I knew what I had to do. The boys in our clique had lately exchanged a lot of stories about their experiences with customers because there wasn't much else to talk about.
I waited for the moment when he was undoing his pants and opening his fly to slip the money into my boot. I knew he wouldn't be paying attention to me then. All of a sudden, he was ready. I was still sitting on the farthest corner of my seat, trying not to move. Without looking at him I groped my way over with my left hand. My arm wasn't long enough, so I did have to slouch over toward him a bit. And I ended up having to glance over once before I had his thing in my hand.
I felt so nauseous I wanted to throw up. It was also freezing. I looked through the windshield and tried to concentrate on something else—on the headlights shining through the bushes, or the one neon advertisement that was lit up and that I could still see. It didn't take very long.
The guy took out his wallet again. He held it so I could see what was in it. There were a bunch of five hundred- and one hundred-mark notes. I guess he wanted to either impress me or bait me for the next time. He gave me another twenty, as a tip.
Once I was out of the car I managed to calm myself down, and took stock of the situation: So that was your second man, I thought to myself. You're fourteen years old. Barely four weeks ago you lost your virginity. And now you're walking the streets as a hooker.
But that being said, I stopped worrying about the john, and what I'd just done. I actually felt pretty good. I mean, I had 120 marks in my boot. I'd never had so much money all at once. I wasn't thinking about Detlef and what he would say. I was already in major withdrawal and was crazy for a fix. I couldn't think of anything except shooting up. I was lucky. I found our regular dealer right away. When he saw the money, he asked,“Hey, where'd you get that? Did you go whoring?”
“Shut the fuck up,” I told him. “Me and whoring? Before I'd do that, I'd stop using. Nope, my dad happened to remember that he's got a daughter. He gave me some spending money.”
For eighty marks I bought two little packets, each containing a quarter. It used to be that a quarter gram was enough for three of us. But these days, Detlef and I could manage on that amount.
I went to the public bathrooms at the Kurfürstenstrasse and shot up. The dope was first-class. The rest of it (along with the leftover forty marks) I stuffed into the plastic cover of my student bus pass.
Doing the job and scoring dope had only taken about fifteen minutes. I'd left the apartment about a half an hour before that, so I was sure that Detlef would still be at the station. I took the subway to the Zoo, and sure enough, there was Detlef. A little pile of misery. It was just like I thought: He hadn't been able to get a customer—not on a Sunday evening, and definitely not while looking so strung out. I went over and said to him, “Come with me, I've got some.”
He didn't ask from where. He didn't say anything at all. He just wanted to get to the apartment, fast. We went straight into the bathroom. I got out my student bus pass. He opened one of the little packets and emptied the stuff onto a spoon. As he was cooking it up, he stared at the plastic cover of my bus pass, whichstill held a quarter and two twenty-mark notes. Then he asked the question: “Where'd you get the money?”
I said, “Mooching didn't work. It was impossible. There was a guy there with tons of cash, so I gave him a hand job. Seriously, just a hand job. What else could I have done? I did it for you.”
Even before I'd finished Detlef started freaking out. He looked like he was going to go insane. He screamed, “You're lying! Nobody pays a hundred for a hand job. You're lying to me. And anyway, what do you mean by ‘only a hand job’?”
That was it—he didn't have any strength left. He was in full-blown withdrawal. His whole body trembled, his shirt was wet with sweat, and his legs were cr
amping up.
He tied off his arm while I sat on the rim of the bathtub, sobbing. I thought that Detlef was entitled to freak out. I waited for his shot to take effect, still crying. I was sure that once he'd recovered himself, he'd punch me in the face. I wouldn't have even tried to defend myself.
Detlef pulled out the syringe and said nothing. He left the bathroom and I followed. Finally he said, “I'll take you to the bus.” I wrapped some of the second quarter for him and gave it to him. He stuck it in his jeans without a word. We walked to the bus stop. Detlef still didn't say anything. I wanted him to yell at me, to hit me, to do anything or make any kind of sound. I said, “Hey, c'mon, say something.” But from him there was nothing: silence.
When the bus arrived at the bus stop, I didn't get on. After it drove away again, I said, “What I told you was the honest-to-God truth. I just gave him a hand job, and it wasn't so bad. You have to believe me. Or don't you trust me anymore?”
Detlef said, “Okay, I believe you.”
I added, “You know, I really only did it for you.”
Detlef's voice went up a notch. “Stop kidding yourself. You did it for yourself. You had the itch, and you found a way to scratch it. Congratulations. You would've done it even if I hadn't been in the picture. Wake up and smell the coffee—you're a junkie now. You're totally addicted. At this point, anything you do, you do for yourself.”
I said, “Okay, you're right. But listen: This is the way we have to handle it from now on. You can't do it all by yourself anymore. We need too much dope. And I don't want you to be the only one who works the street. From now on, we'll do it the other way around. I can probably make a pile of cash, especially at first. And I can do it without having real sex. I promise you that I won't be fucking any of the customers.”
Detlef didn't say anything. He put his arm around my shoulder. It had started to rain, and I didn't know if the drops running down his face came from the rain or were tears. Another bus came by. I said, “There doesn't seem to be any way out of this mess. Do you remember when we were still just taking pills and smoking pot? We were free. We were totally independent. We didn't need anybody or anything. That's how we felt. I guess things have changed.”
Another three or four buses passed while we just talked. It was all sad stuff. I cried and Detlef held me. Finally he said, “It's going to get better. Someday soon we'll just quit. We'll be able to do it together. I'll get us some methadone. First thing tomorrow morning, I'll ask someone about methadone. We'll be together when we quit.”
Another bus came and Detlef pushed me up the steps.
At home I did what I did every evening, as if I was on autopilot. I went into the kitchen and got myself a yogurt out of the fridge. I only took the yogurt into my room when I went to bed, so that it wouldn't look weird that I was also taking a spoon. I needed that in the morning to cook up my dope. Then I also got a glass of water out of the bathroom. I could use that to clean the syringe the next morning.
When I woke up, everything was the same as ever. My mom woke me at a quarter to seven. I stayed in bed and pretended I didn't hear her. But she popped in every five minutes or so until I finally said, “Fine, yes, I'm up, I'm up!” She came back in and nagged me, and I counted the minutes till quarter after seven. That's when she needed to leave the house for work if she didn't want to miss her subway. (And she never missed her subway.) Actually, I should have left the house at a quarter after seven, too, if I wanted to get to school on time.
When I finally heard the front door slam shut, I sprang into action almost automatically. I fished the foil packet out of my jeans (which lay in a heap at the foot of the bed) and then grabbed the plastic bag that lay beside them. Inside the plastic bag was my makeup, a pack of Roth-Händle cigarettes, a small bottle of lemon juice, and a syringe wrapped up in toilet paper. The syringe was almost always clogged, and this time was no different: The damn cigarette tobacco had gotten loose in the bag and plugged up the syringe. I cleaned the needle in the water glass, put the dope on the yogurt spoon, dribbled some lemon juice on it, cooked it up, tied off my arm, and so on. For me, all of this was as natural as a morning cigarette is to other people. After that first shot, I usually fell asleep again and didn't get to school until the second or third class of the day. I was always late when I shot up at home.
Sometimes my mom was able to drag me out of bed in time to take me to the subway with her. Then I had to shoot up in the public bathrooms at the Moritz Square subway station. That was pretty unpleasant since the bathrooms there were especially dark and disgusting. The walls had all these little peepholes in them, and on the other side of the wall, there were all these bums and other perverts crouched down, hoping to catch a glimpse of some girl peeing. They got off on it. I was always afraid that they'd call the cops on me—just out of spite because all I ever did was shoot up.
I almost always brought the syringe to school with me, too. Just in case. In case someday we had to stay longer for some reason—like maybe for some last-minute event in the auditorium—or if I wasn't able to go home right after school. Occasionally I had to shoot up in the school bathrooms, but the doors to the stalls were all broken. My girlfriend Renate had to hold the door shut for me while I shot up. Renate knew what was going on with me. Most of the kids in my class knew, I think. But they weren't bothered by it. In Gropiusstadt, it wasn't a big deal if you got hooked on drugs. Not anymore.
During the classes that I still attended, I daydreamed my time away, staring into space. Sometimes I was even able to fall into a deep sleep, with my head on the desk. If I'd had a lot of dope in the morning, I could barely get a few words out. The teachers must've noticed what was going on with me. But only one of them addressed the topic of narcotics with me and asked me about my problems. The others just treated me like a lazy, narcoleptic student and failed me. We had so many teachers—and they had so many students—that most of them were happy just to know our names. There was hardly any personal interaction. They didn't even bring up the fact that I never did homework anymore. And the only time they took out their grading ledger was when during exams all I'd write was, “Can't do it.” (After that, I'd hand in the blank exam and then just sit there doodling.) I think most of the teachers weren't any more interested in school than I was. Like me, they'd become totally resigned. Their only goal was to just get through each class period without provoking a riot.
After that first night with the guy in the car, everything went back to normal. At least for a while.
Every day I bugged Detlef to let me help him bring in some more cash. I wanted to have access to more than just the few odd marks I could scramble together by “borrowing.” Detlef was jealous, and it showed. But he'd realized a while ago that we couldn't keep going on that way and suggested that we do it together, as a team.
He'd gotten to know the regular Zoo Station clients pretty well and knew that there were a few bisexuals and even some homosexual guys who would want to try it with a girl for a change, as long as a guy was there also, just in case. Detlef said he'd pick out some customers who wouldn't need to touch me and who definitely wouldn't want to have sex with me. In other words, customers who had a kink—who wanted something done to them. Those were the ones Detlef liked best, anyway. He thought we could make about a hundred marks a pop working together.
The first customer that Detlef settled on for us was this guy Max—who we called Stutter Max. He was a regular customer of Detlef's, and I'd gotten to know him pretty well, too. Detlef said that all he wanted to do was have someone whip him. I just had to take my top off. That was fine with me. I even thought the whipping was a good idea because it would give me a chance to release some of the anger that I felt in general for Detlef's customers. Stutter Max was totally into the idea of me coming along when Detlef suggested it. Of course, it would cost him twice as much. We made a date for Monday at 3 p.m. at the Zoo.
I was late, as always, and Stutter Max was already there. Detlef wasn't, but that was no surprise. Li
ke all junkies, he was totally unreliable. I had a suspicion that he'd gone off with another customer before our appointment at the Zoo, and that turned out to be exactly what had happened. This other guy apparently paid well, and so he had to spend some extra time with him. Stutter Max and I waited for almost half an hour, but Detlef still didn't show up. I was terrified. But Stutter Max was even more scared than I was, and it showed. He explained that for more than ten years he hadn't done anything with a girl. He could barely get a word out, but that didn't keep him from trying. He normally stuttered pretty badly, but now he was almost unintelligible.
I couldn't stand going over all this right there at the station. Somehow I had to put an end to it. And anyway, I was out of dope and worried about going into withdrawal before this thing with Stutter Max was over. The more nervous he got, the more self-confident I became. I realized that I had a better handle on the situation than he did. Finally I just said to him flatly, “Let's get out of here. Detlef stood us up. You'll be happy with just me alone. But the price is still the same: a 150 marks.”
He stuttered out a yes. His willpower was just gone. I hooked my arm through his and actually had to lead him away.
I'd heard all about Stutter Max's sad story from Detlef. He was originally from Hamburg, and now he was in his late thirties and employed as an unskilled laborer. His mom was a prostitute, and he'd been bullied and beaten up a lot as a kid. By his mom and her pimps, and then later on in all the various foster homes in which he'd been placed. They battered him so badly that he developed a stutter, and now he also needed to be beaten to be able to satisfy himself sexually.
We went to his apartment. I asked for the money up front, even though he was a regular, so you didn't really have to take those precautions. He gave me the 150 marks, just like he'd said he would, and it made me feel almost proud—proud of the fact that I was worth that much money to him.