by Christiane F
I took my T-shirt off, and he gave me the whip. It was like in a movie. I was someone else, not myself. At first I didn't hit him very hard. But he whined and whimpered and begged for more. So at a certain point I just let it rip. He screamed, “Mommy!” and God only knows what else. I didn't listen. I tried not to even look. But I saw how the welts swelled up more and more on his body, and then the skin even split open in some spots. It was so, so gross—and it lasted for almost an hour.
When he finally came, I threw on my T-shirt and ran. I ran out of the apartment door and down the stairs and just barely made it. Once in front of the house, I couldn't control my damn stomach any longer and puked. It was all over after I'd vomited. I'd stopped crying and feeling sorry for myself. It had become crystal clear to me that I was the one who had gotten myself into this situation— that I'd fucked up, and now I was stuck in this shit. I went to the station. Detlef was there. I didn't say much. Just that I'd done the job with Stutter Max by myself. I showed him the 150 marks. He fished a hundred-mark note out of his jeans, too—the compensation from his customer. We walked arm in arm to the corner where we were usually able to score first-class stuff from our regular dealer. It was turning into a pretty good day.
From that point on, I usually earned the cash for my dope on my own. I was a big hit at the Zoo with almost all the customers, and could pick and choose the guys I went with, and also decide on the terms of the agreement. Everyone stayed away from the foreigners because we thought they were pretty sketchy and would cheat you if you weren't paying attention. A lot of the time, they would only pay twenty or thirty marks, but they still wanted to have actual intercourse, and without condoms, too. Like all of the other girls at the station, I stayed away from the foreigners, as a general rule.
Fucking the customers was still out of the question for me. That was the thing that I hung onto—that I reserved for Detlef. I stuck to hand jobs and blow jobs. It didn't make me feel too upset, as long as they didn't do anything to me. Under no circumstances were they allowed to put their hands on me. If they did, I would freak out on them.
I always tried to negotiate the conditions right there at the station. Guys who pissed me off, right off the bat, didn't even get a chance to negotiate. Preserving my last bit of pride, however, cost me a lot of time. It often took all afternoon to find a customer who'd agree to all my conditions. And we hardly ever had as much money again as we did on that day when I was with Stutter Max for the first time.
Max became the first regular customer for Detlef and me as a team. Sometimes we both went to see him, and other times it was just one of us. Max was actually a pretty okay guy. He loved both of us. Of course, he couldn't keep on paying 150 marks on his worker's wages. But forty marks—enough for one shot—was an amount that he could always scrape together. Once he even smashed his piggy bank, fished some change out of a bowl, and counted out exactly forty marks for me. When I was in a hurry, I could stop by at his place and get twenty marks on loan. I told him that I'd be back the next day at a certain time and do it to him for twenty. If he still had a twenty, he was game.
Max was always game, always expecting us. He always kept some of my favorite drink, a kind of peach juice, on hand for me. And for Detlef he maintained a steady supply of tapioca pudding. Max made the pudding himself. In addition to that, he always prepared a selection of yogurt and chocolates for me because he knew that I liked to eat those after a job. The whippings had become totally routine, and afterward I'd hang out for a while, just eating, drinking, and talking with Max.
He was getting skinnier and skinnier. He really spent his every last cent on us, to the point where he couldn't buy himself enough to eat anymore. He'd gotten so used to us and was so happy that he hardly stuttered at all when we were with him. He bought himself a couple of newspapers first thing every morning, just to check if there was another notice about someone having died from heroin. Once, when I stopped by his place to borrow another twenty from him, he was stuttering like crazy and pale as a ghost. The newspapers had reported that someone named Detlef W. had become the umpteenth victim of heroin that year. He pretty much cried with joy when I told him that I'd just seen my Detlef, and he was very much alive. He blubbered at me (not for the first time) that Detlef and I should quit heroin, or we'd follow all the other kids to the grave. But I told him, cold as ice, that if we quit heroin, then we wouldn't have any reason to come and see him anymore. After that he let it drop.
Detlef and I had a funny relationship with Max. We hated all the johns, without exception, so we also hated Max. But if we really thought about it, we couldn't deny that, all in all, he was an okay guy. Our response to him probably did have a lot to do with the fact that he was always good for forty marks. But then again, I'm also positive that we really did feel sorry for him. He was using us for his own sexual satisfaction, but he was also worse off than we were. He was so lonely. We were the only people with whom he had any kind of relationship. But we didn't care enough to really think that deeply about him at the time. It wasn't going to be the only time that we ruined one of our customers.
Sometimes we'd get comfortable watching TV in Max's apartment and then wind up staying the night. He let us use his bed and slept on the floor himself. One night we got a little wild. Max put on some crazy music that he liked, and pulled on a long wig and a ridiculous fur coat. Then he danced like a crazy person, which made us all laugh hysterically. But then, out of nowhere, he tripped, fell, and hit his head on his sewing machine. For a few minutes, he was out cold. We were scared to death and called a doctor. It turned out that Max had a concussion and had to stay in bed for two weeks.
Shortly after that, he was fired from his job. He was a wreck—completely devastated and hopeless. Without his having ever tried dope, it had still ruined him. We had ruined him. He begged us to visit him at least sometimes, just as friends. But friendly visits like that just weren't possible. Not for us.
At this point, Detlef was incapable of caring about anyone else. That was the first thing. But also, he was busy all day trying to scrape together enough cash for his next fix and didn't really have any time for that sort of sentimental stuff. Detlef laid this out for Max in pretty stark terms after Max promised to give us plenty of cash as soon as he had some again. “A junkie's like a businessman,” Detlef said. “Every day he has to take care of his bottom line so that he doesn't end up in the red. He just can't afford to extend credit out of friendship or sympathy.”
Shortly after I started working the street, I had a nice little reunion. It happened at the station. I was waiting for some customers, and suddenly Babsi was right next to me. Babsi, my friend—and that same little girl who had hit me up for some acid just a few months earlier. Babsi, just twelve years old back then and already on the run because of some trouble back in school. The same girl who'd tried a few quick snorts of H before she was picked up and taken back to her grandparents' place.
We looked at each other, recognized immediately what was up, fell into each other's arms, and kissed. She was overjoyed and so was I. Babsi had gotten crazy skinny. No boobs and no butt. But she almost looked more beautiful. Her shoulder-length, blond hair was healthy and sleek, and her clothes were chic and polished. I knew from first glance that she was also an addict. I didn't even have to look into her pin-size pupils. But I could still believe that, if you didn't know what heroin did to people, you would've never in a million years guessed that this pretty girl was already an addict, already a junkie.
Babsi was almost unbelievably calm. She wasn't at all like the other junkies—hectic people like me, who chased after money and dope all day. And right away, she told me that I didn't need to do a customer right then, that she'd buy me a shot and something to eat.
We went upstairs to the Zoo station café. We didn't bother talking about how we were both doped up all the time or what our lives were like now, as prostitutes. But at the same time, I was really curious about how Babsi got so much cash and dope—and she wouldn't te
ll me. She only said that ever since she'd been brought home again she'd been under a strict watch. She had to be home before eight every night and also go to school regularly. Her grandmother kept an eagle eye on her.
I finally asked her about her money more directly, and she said, “Yeah, I have a regular customer. He's kind of old but very cool. I take the taxi to him in the afternoons. He pays me in dope, not cash. I get three quarters from him each day. He's got other girls, too, and they also get their dope directly from him. But for the moment he only likes me. I'm done in an hour. No sex, of course. Only stripping and talking. I let him take pictures of me, we talk, and, well, blow jobs. But sex is out of the question for me.”
The name of her regular was Heinz. He owned a stationery store. I'd heard of him before. He was cool because he paid directly with H, so that you could save yourself the trouble of running around, finding a dealer, and buying the dope. I was jealous of Babsi, who was home by eight at the latest, always got a good night's sleep, and lived without all this stressful, hectic running around.
Babsi had everything. Even a stash of syringes. Although syringes were actually supposed to be thrown away after one use, back then they were so hard to get that you had to hold onto them. Mine had become so dull that I had to constantly sharpen it on the rough surface of a matchbox so that it was still possible to slam the thing into my vein. Babsi had plenty of syringes. Without a second thought she promised me three of them.
Then a few days later, I ran into Stella—Babsi's girlfriend and old couch-surfing buddy. She'd started using H even before Babsi did. Hugs, kisses, and another round of real happiness. Stella was also hooked, of course. But she wasn't doing as well as Babsi. Her mom had opened a bar together with her Italian boyfriend and started drinking. Stella had always swiped cash from the bar for her dope. Then when she stole fifty marks directly out of her mom's boyfriend's wallet, it all came out. She couldn't go home anymore and had started just bumming around the city again.
In the station café again, it didn't take long before we started talking about customers. Stella first of all enlightened me about Babsi. She was already scraping the dregs and was in a pretty fucked-up situation. This guy Heinz turned out to be a real scumbag. A filthy, mean, old, fat, sweaty guy, whom she was definitely having sex with. Stella said, “That would be the absolute worst for me. To let someone like that actually fuck you. To let any customer fuck you. I mean, at that point you've got no standards: You'll go away with anyone. A blow job here and there—well, okay. But sex for pay is the final frontier—that's when you know you're at the end of the line.”
I was really shocked to hear how bad things had gotten with Babsi. At the time, I didn't really think to ask why Stella knew all these details and why she was telling me. But later on, Babsi told me that Heinz used to be Stella's regular. That's why Stella knew exactly what he demanded in return for those three quarters. I'd eventually learn that for myself, too, later on.
Stella then told me how disgusting she thought it was to be a hooker at Zoo Station: “That's only for the real fuckups. I'd never want to deal with those assholes over there.”
Stella worked the Kurfürstenstrasse, where cars passed by slowly and picked up child prostitutes. Most of the girls who waited around there were thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, all hooked on heroin. I had an overwhelming fear of getting picked up via car because then you couldn't really check out beforehand who your client was. “Now that's where things are really bad. That's where the girls do it for twenty marks. Two customers for one shot? No way.”
We kept at each other for almost an hour, arguing about whether it was worse to be a child prostitute at Zoo Station or on Kurfürstenstrasse. In the meantime, we did at least agree that if Babsi was really fucking that filthy old man, then she was in a very bad way.
So our reunion began with a fight over our honor as hookers. This was a fight that Babsi, Stella, and I continued to have almost every day over the next few months. The central question was always which one of us had it the worst. And none of us could ever admit—either to ourselves or the others—how low we were sitting on the food chain. When only two of us were together, we always talked shit about the third.
The best thing to do, of course, would be to find a way to get by without having to deal with the customers at all. On the first day of our reunion, Stella and I convinced ourselves that we could do just that. We'd get the cash we needed by begging, borrowing, and stealing. Stella had a whole arsenal of tricks up her sleeve.
We went straight to the Department Store of the West26 to try out her new trick. It involved the women's restroom. To pull this off, you had to wait until a couple of old ladies disappeared into the stalls. After they went in, they'd usually hang their handbags on the inside door handles. Then, once they'd peeled themselves out of their corsets and pantyhose and plopped down onto the toilet seat, you'd yank down the outside door handles. The handbags would drop down and then you could easily pull them out through the gap beneath the door. The old ladies wouldn't dare come out with their pants down, so to speak. And by the time they'd reassembled all their clothes and put everything back on, you'd be long gone.
So, there we were, hanging out in the ladies' room at the department store. But every time Stella whispered, “Now!” I got scared. It wasn't something that she wanted to do on her own. And besides, you really needed four hands for this job. So the great ladies' bathroom robbery was off. I was pretty anxious about stealing from the outset, and the longer it dragged on, the worse my nerves got.
After a few more misadventures in petty larceny (with supplemental small-time loans), Stella and I decided to go back to working the street, but this time around we were going to be a team. I insisted that we work Zoo Station—but we'd only go with a customer if he agreed to take on both of us. That had several advantages: Although we'd never admit it, this arrangement provided us with a sense of security because we'd be able to see exactly how far the other was willing to go—and stop ourselves short accordingly. We'd always be at the same level. But we also felt safer. With two of us involved, it was harder to rip us off, and we could defend ourselves better if a customer didn't want to stick to the agreement. And it was quicker with two. One of us kept the guy busy up top, the other down below, and the whole thing was over and done much faster.
On the other hand, it was way harder to find customers who could afford to pay for two girls. And there were also all the experienced johns who were simply afraid to deal with two junkie brides at once because it was also easier for us to rip off a customer if we were double-teaming him. While one of us kept him busy, the other could get at his wallet. Stella was the one who liked the arrangement the best—whether it was with Babsi or me. She had more trouble attracting customers by herself because she didn't look as young as we did anymore.
It was the easiest for Babsi. Even when she still had Heinz, she earned some money on the side just to be able to treat us to dope. She never put makeup on her innocent baby face. Without a butt or boobs, and just barely thirteen, she was just the kind of “baby prostitute” the customers were looking for. Incredibly (to us), she once made two hundred marks in just a single hour, with five different customers.
Babsi and Stella blended right into our social group, which of course still included Detlef, Axel, and Bernd. So now we were three girls and three boys. When we went out together, I went arm-in-arm with Detlef, and the other two boys each grabbed one of the girls. There was nothing going on between them. We just all really liked each other. Each of us could still talk about his or her life and problems with any of the others—despite the many fights we had over little things, just like any other group of heroin friends. During this phase of our lives, heroin simultaneously caused all our problems but also kept us all together. I'm not sure that this sort of friendship, the kind we had in our little group, could exist among kids who weren't addicted to drugs. And in all honesty, that kind of desperate closeness seemed like it impressed a lot of other young
people. People looked up to us.
My relationship with Detlef started to get rocky when the two girls joined our group. We still loved each other, but we got into a lot more fights. Detlef was often irritable, so I spent a lot of time with Babsi and Stella, and he didn't really like that. But what really pissed him off was the fact that he didn't have any control over which customers I was going with anymore. I was now picking them on my own, or together with Stella or Babsi. Detlef started to accuse me of having sex with the customers. He was really jealous.
I now had a more relaxed view of my relationship with Detlef. I loved him, of course, and would always love him. On the other hand, I wasn't dependent on him anymore. I didn't need his dope or his protection. Actually, our relationship had become similar to a modern marriage—with no one holding power over the other. We were equals. We girls got used to treating each other to dope when one of us had a little extra, and the guys did the same thing.
But our friendships were still entirely dependent on heroin, when it really came down to it. We all became more and more aggressive from one week to the next. The dope and our frantic lifestyle, the daily struggle for money and H, the constant stress at home, the cover-ups and the lies that we used to fool our parents—it all wreaked havoc on our nerves. It was also getting harder and harder to manage all the little grudges that we'd developed toward one another over time.
I got along best with Babsi, who was still the calmest one of us. We worked together a lot. We bought ourselves the same tight black skirts, with long slits in them. Underneath we wore black nylon stockings with black lace garters. That really turned the customers on.
Shortly before Christmas 1976, my dad went on vacation, and he let Babsi and me sleep in his apartment, along with my little sister. On the first night there, we got into a huge fight. Babsi and I were so nasty to each other that my sister, who was only a year younger than me, started to cry. We really had that street talk down, and it came out in a fight. And my sister of course had no clue about our double lives.