Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F.

by Christiane F

  The next morning, Babsi and I were best friends again. It was always the same: After we'd had some sleep and started to come down again, we were usually in a pretty peaceful mood. Babsi and I made a deal to postpone shooting up that morning for as long as possible. We'd tried this out a few times already. It had become a kind of sport, to wait until you couldn't wait any longer to shoot up. However, we couldn't talk about anything else except the awesome high we were about to get, any time we wanted to, with this great, first-class dope. We were like kids on Christmas right before our parents let us open our presents.

  My sister knew that something was up. It didn't take her long to figure out that we had some kind of drug. But she didn't have any idea that we were addicted. She thought we were just experimenting. She sincerely promised not to tell my dad or mom, and to keep her mouth shut if someone from Babsi's family came by unexpectedly. Babsi's family was very strict with her, and neither her grandparents nor her parents had the slightest inkling that she was a heroin junkie and a hooker to boot.

  Babsi reached into her purse and took out her strawberry-flavored powder called Quarkfein. She had a real addiction to this stuff, which is a kind of powdered flavoring you can mix into dairy products like cottage cheese. She pretty much lived on cottage cheese with Quarkfein. My diet wasn't much more varied than that: Besides cottage cheese, I also ate yogurt and pudding and Viennese rings, a pastry you could get in the Kurfürstendamm subway station. By that point my stomach would reject pretty much anything else.

  So Babsi was mixing up her strawberry-flavored cottage cheese in the kitchen, which was like a religious ritual for her. Meanwhile, my sister and I sat and watched her with appropriate reverence, all of us in happy anticipation of our huge, pink, cottage cheese breakfast. But obviously we weren't going to be able to eat until after Babsi and I had shot up.

  When Babsi had whipped the cottage cheese into a really creamy confection, we couldn't stand it anymore. We told my sister that she should go ahead and set the table, and then we went and locked ourselves into the bathroom. We hadn't been there for more than two seconds when the drama started up between us because we were starting to go into withdrawal.

  We only had one useable syringe left, and I said that I wanted to shoot up first, just real quick. But Babsi already had an edge on. “Why do you always get to go first? Today I should start. After all, I was the one who got the dope.”

  That really rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn't stand it when she tried to gain an advantage like that. There were a lot of times when she'd have more dope than the rest of us, and she would always get like this. I said, “Jesus, don't freak out. It just takes you forever!” It was true. This girl needed like half an hour before she was done. She hardly had any veins left. And when she'd get the needle in and couldn't draw any blood, she'd freak out. She'd slam the needle into her skin again and again, getting more frantic by the minute. The only thing that she could hope for then, that would put a stop to her frenzy, was a lucky hit.

  It still went pretty smoothly for me back then. If Detlef didn't do the shot for me—he was the only one I'd let near my veins— then I'd always aim for a spot in the crook of my left arm. That worked well until the day I got a thrombosis there, which ruined that vein for me. But later on, I also got to the point where I didn't know where to stick the needle anymore.

  I got my way though—for that morning anyway. Babsi was totally pissed. I got the syringe, immediately hit a vein, and was done in a little over two minutes. It was a really fucking awesome shot. My blood was rushing like a river through my body. I got really hot. I went to the sink, let water run over my face, and then happily, absentmindedly fussed with my hair and clothes.

  Babsi sat on the rim of the bathtub, plunging the thing into her arm again and again, and freaking out. “Shit!” she screamed. “Why's there's no air in this dump? Open that damn window!”

  I said, “You'll just have to get used to it. Get off my case, will you?” I didn't care at all about what was going on with her. I'd had my shot and everything was okay.

  Babsi was squirting blood everywhere, but she wasn't hitting any veins. She was seriously freaking out now. She screamed, “There's no light in this fucking bathroom! Get me some light. Get that lamp from the kid's room.”

  I was too lazy to go out and get the lamp for Babsi. But eventually, after she kept going on about it, yelling and generally making a racket, I got worried that my sister would notice and went out to grab the stupid lamp. Then, finally, Babsi did it. She immediately calmed down. She cleaned the syringe and wiped the blood out of the bathtub and off the floor. She didn't say another word.

  We went into the kitchen, and by that point, I was really looking forward to the Quarkfein. But Babsi grabbed the bowl, wrapped one arm tightly around it, and started to shovel it in. She actually forced down the entire bowlful of cottage cheese. The only time she even looked up was to say, “You know why.”

  We'd both really looked forward to those days together in my dad's apartment, and the first morning had started with the fight of the century. And all of it over nothing. But we were heroin addicts, after all. And all heroin addicts turned out like this sooner or later. Dope destroys relationships among people—even with us. Despite how young we were, and how close we'd been. Despite the fact that, even then, I still believed that no one could ever be as close as we had been.

  My fights with Detlef got nastier also. Both of us had physically deteriorated a lot already. I was about 5′5″, but I was down to under a hundred pounds, and Detlef, who was 5′9″, was down to 119 pounds. We felt sick all the time, and then everything got on our nerves, and we were deliberately vicious to one another. When we insulted each other, we always went for the jugular and tried to say whatever would hit the other person at the deepest level. Since we were both so ashamed of what we did with our bodies (and even though we both pretended that hooking was just a part-time thing), prostitution was usually the topic that we focused on.

  Detlef would say something like, “Do you really think I want to sleep with someone who sleeps with such nasty scumbags all the time?” And then I'd respond with something like, “I'm not the one who gets buttfucked.” And so on.

  Most of the time, one or both of us would end up crying. And when one of us was going into withdrawal, then the other could really tear him or her down—until there was almost nothing left. It didn't make things any better that at some point we'd inevitably huddle together, clinging to one another like two little kids. Things had gotten so bad, between us girls and now also between Detlef and me, that we could see our own miserable, shitty selves reflected in the other. Each one of us hated the rotten mess he or she had become, and therefore attacked that same rotten mess in everyone else. It was all part of a feeble attempt to prove that we weren't as bad off yet as everybody else.

  This aggressiveness would of course also get vented on strangers. I already lost my mind whenever I walked onto a subway platform. They were packed full of old ladies holding onto their shopping bags. To start things off, I'd usually get into a nonsmoking car with a lit cigarette. When the old ladies started muttering under their breath, I told them to switch to another compartment if they didn't like it in this one. I especially enjoyed stealing a seat right out from under one of their noses. The stunts that I pulled would sometimes set off pandemonium in the entire train compartment, and occasionally wound up with me being removed from the train and forced to get some “fresh air.” The way I behaved even got on my own nerves. It also got on my nerves when Babsi and Stella behaved like that. I didn't want to have anything to do with those drab, tedious old people. I didn't even want to be fighting with them. But I couldn't help myself and kept doing it.

  I didn't give a shit what strangers thought of me. When I got the itch, when it was bad and I itched all over, then I scratched the itch—no matter where I was at that moment. It didn't matter whether it was under tight clothes or even beneath my makeup: I got at it. It didn't bother me to take
my boots off in the subway or lift my skirt up to my belly button if I needed to scratch myself. The only people whose opinion mattered were the people in our clique.

  There comes a time when junkies don't care about anything anymore. That's when they start to turn solitary. I knew a few of the old junkies who'd been shooting up for five years or longer and had somehow survived. We had a mixed relationship with the old veterans. To us, these loner types were almost celebrities—but not in a good way. Everybody knew them though, and it made an impression on other people when you could tell them that you knew one of those guys. On the other hand, I despised them because they were all totally wrecked, ruined, fucked up. Above all, all of us kids were absolutely terrified of them because they didn't have any morals, conscience, or compassion left. They would hit their best friend over the head with a rock if he was standing in the way of a fix. The most infamous one of them all was Rip-Off Man. Everybody called him that because he was the absolute worst and was always on the hunt. When the dealers saw him coming, they scattered quicker than during a police raid. When he got hold of a small-time dealer, he took everything— all of his dope. Nobody dared put up a fight. Least of all some young junkie.

  I'd once seen Rip-Off Man in full action. I'd just locked myself into a public toilet stall and was about to shoot up when somebody leaped over the dividing wall and landed right on top of me. It was him. I knew from the stories the others told that this was his M O: He'd wait in a bathroom until a girl with H came in, and then he'd pounce. And I knew how brutal he could be. So without any resistance, I gave him my syringe and my dope. He walked right out of the stall and stopped in front of the mirror. He wasn't afraid of anything or anybody anymore. He slammed the shot right into his neck. He didn't have a single spot left on his body that he could shoot into. He bled like a stuck pig. I thought maybe he'd hit the main artery. But he wouldn't have cared if he did. He just said, “Thanks a lot,” and left.

  I was sure that I'd never get to that point at least. In order to survive as long as Rip-Off Man had, you had to be a really tough, ruthless character. And I just wasn't. I couldn't even get myself to swipe some old ladies' handbags in the department store bathroom.

  The world of our clique revolved more and more around our shared profession. The boys had the same problems that the girls had. We still had mutual interests and could help each other out by exchanging information. We girls swapped stories about our experiences with customers. The field of customers that we had contact with was very limited. So when a customer was new to me, it was still likely that Stella or Babsi had already been with him. And then it was to my advantage to know what their experiences had been like.

  There were recommended customers, less recommended customers, and then there were the problem clients. We never bothered with personal feelings. We also didn't care about his job or if he was married, etcetera. We never talked about the personal nonsense the customers unloaded on us. All we cared about was what they were able to pay.

  A customer was considered advantageous if he was terrified of STDs and wouldn't do anything without a condom. Unfortunately, those guys were few and far between, despite the fact that most girls working the streets caught a disease sooner or later, and even then they were afraid to go to a doctor, especially if they were drug addicts.

  Another advantage was if you found a guy who knew what he wanted and asked for it, right from the start (especially if he only wanted a blow job). Then you didn't have to spend hours haggling over everything. We also gave points to a customer who was relatively young and not disgustingly fat, and also of course if he didn't treat you like a piece of meat but like an actual human being and remained somewhat friendly, possibly even invited you to an occasional meal.

  The most important criterion in determining the quality of a customer was, of course, how much money he paid and for which services. The ones to be avoided were the guys who didn't keep up their end of the agreement or who suddenly tried to threaten or bribe you into doing more stuff with them.

  What we really kept an eye out for though, and warned each other about, was the kind of sleazy guy who would ask for his money back afterward, or sometimes even force us to give it back, because he supposedly wasn't satisfied with us. The boys, though, had more trouble with scumbags like that than we did.

  Somehow or other, the year 1977 finally rolled around. Time didn't seem to compute in my brain anymore. Whether it was winter or summer, whether the rest of the world was celebrating Christmas or New Year's, to me one day was just like the next. The only good thing about Christmas was that I got some money, and so I didn't have to do as many customers. That was especially important over the holidays, when business was slow. I was totally numb in this phase. I didn't think about anything. Nothing at all. I didn't feel anything and didn't notice anything around me. I was totally preoccupied with myself. But I didn't know who I was. Sometimes I didn't even know if I was still alive or not.

  I can hardly remember any specific details from that period. There probably wasn't anything worth remembering anyway— that is, until one Sunday at the end of January. I came home sometime in the early morning hours. I was feeling pretty good, actually. I lay in my bed and drifted off, imagining that I was a young girl who'd just gotten home from a dance. At this dance, my alter ego had just met a super-cute boy, and she already had a huge crush on him. I only felt good when I was dreaming, and in my dreams I became a completely different person. My favorite dream was one in which I was just a happy, carefree teenager. The teenager in that dream reminded me of someone in a Coca-Cola advertisement.

  My mom woke me up around noon and brought me some lunch. When I was home on Sundays—that is, on the Sundays when I wasn't with Detlef—my mom always brought me lunch in bed. I choked down a couple of bites. It was almost impossible for me to get anything down anymore, except for yogurt, cottage cheese, and pudding. Then I grabbed my white handbag. It was already pretty shredded: no handles anymore and with holes everywhere. That shouldn't have been a surprise, though, because in addition to syringes and cigarettes, I'd also stuff my jacket in there. It didn't even occur to me to get a new handbag; that's how little I cared about everything. I was so far past caring that I didn't even think twice about shuffling past my mom to the bathroom, shredded bag in hand. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Nobody in our family locked the bathroom door. I looked in the mirror, just like I did every day. A totally strange sunken face stared back at me. It had been a long time since I'd been able to recognize myself in the mirror. That face wasn't mine. Neither was this emaciated body. It was a body that was totally foreign to me. I couldn't even feel it when I was sick. It just went its own way. The heroin made me numb to any pain or hunger, even to a high fever. The body only registered one thing: withdrawal.

  I stood in front of the mirror and prepared the shot. I was pretty anxious about it because I had M-powder. In contrast to the white or tan dope that you usually got on the market, this was a gray-green speckled powder. It's generally very impure,27 but it gives you an incredible kick—it's supposed to be like a flash. It goes right to the heart, and you have to be really careful with the dosage. Too much of it, and you're a goner. I knew the danger, but I still wanted it. I needed it. I was dead set on experiencing that kick from this M-powder.

  I pushed the needle into the vein, pulled back, and immediately drew blood. I had filtered the M-powder a couple of times, but it was still extremely impure. And then it happened. The needle clogged. That's about the worst thing that can happen, if the needle gets plugged up right at that moment. Because then there's nothing else for you to do. You have to throw away the dope.

  So I couldn't pull out anymore. I pushed as hard as I could to get this shit through the needle. And I was lucky. I got the shot to go in. I drew back once more in order to get the rest of it into the vein, but then the needle clogged again. I was furious. I only had eight or ten seconds before it hit me. So I pushed with all my strength. The syringe popped out of my hand and
blood squirted everywhere.

  The flash was insane. I had to hold onto my head. I felt an unbelievable cramp in my chest, right where my heart was. There was a roaring in my head, as if someone had hit it with a sledgehammer, and my scalp tingled as if pricked by a million needles. My left arm was virtually paralyzed.

  When I could move again, I grabbed some Kleenex to wipe up the blood. It was everywhere—in the sink, on the mirror, and all over the walls. Luckily our whole bathroom was covered with an oil-based paint, so the blood came off pretty easily. While I was still wiping up the blood, my mom banged on the door. She immediately started in on me: “Open the door! Let me in! Why'd you lock the door, anyway? That's unacceptable, Christiane.”

  “Shut up,” I called back. “I'm almost finished.”

  I was super pissed that she was bugging me now, of all times, while I was wiping frantically at the walls with the tissues. In my panic, I missed a few bloody spots and even left a bloody tissue in the sink. I unlocked the door and my mom burst past me into the bathroom. I was totally unsuspecting and just thought she had to pee. I went into my room with my handbag, lay down on my bed, and lit a cigarette.

  No sooner had I lit it than my mom came running into the room. “You're taking narcotics!” she screamed at me.

  I said, “What? What gave you that idea?”

  She then practically threw herself on top of me and forced my arms straight. I didn't put up any resistance. She saw the fresh needle marks immediately. She took my handbag and dumped everything out onto the bed. Out came the syringe, some loose tobacco from the Roth-Händle cigarettes, and a whole pile of small foil squares—which used to contain my heroin. When I'd go into withdrawal and didn't have any dope, I'd use a nail file to scrape the last bits of dust from the paper to get one more shot out of it.