Nightmares I Thought I Left Behind & A Walk Through the Woods

Note: I am publishing old blog posts every few days, trying to get you caught up, dear reader; however, a blog is a blog, so I'll be posting contemporaneously from time to time as well. Everything is dated to avoid confusion.

Easter

Home

Neukölln

No, you can’t have a bareback appointment, pandemic or not, blue sky or green, upside-down or downside-up, stop asking.

As I attempt to quell the vibrations of my nervous system after yet another idiot, god when will they stop making those, I turned to our private Berlin sex work group to report same asshat. (Germany privacy laws make a formal blacklist site impossible.)

And there it is: Another report.

A sex worker, practicing independently from a private apartment, was fined 5,000 euros for working during the pandemic sex work ban.

Friends, I am back in the cauldron of criminalization.

The skillset I honed meticulously over my 6 years in the shitshow nightmare US sex work scene that I put in a drawer then got on a plane are suddenly once again relevant. The same fears, the same white blood cell count, the same spontaneous releases of adrenaline, the same devastation that stems from the cognitive dissonance of not doing anything wrong but breaking the law. (Yes, #stayhome; yes, do everything in your control to prevent spreading Covid-19, but yes, also eat.)

I simply cannot believe it. Law enforcement stings on sex workers in Germany. My supposed haven.

Simultaneously, Trump donor PayPal has shut down every one of my several accounts, cutting off a lifeline from not only well-wishers and clients concerned about me, but also family and friends offering help.

In other news…

My new Berlin family, the housemates who have, without hesitation, built me a social safety net within our tiny community, planned an elaborate Ostern celebration, the byproduct of which was the most peaceful day that I have experienced since leaving the US.

It began with a brunch–a feast, really–that included handmade special German Easter bread and one flatmate waking up super early to hide chocolate bunnies that we later made utter, childlike fools of ourselves trying to find.

Next: A bike ride to the woods.

Note first: Ever since I got my charmingly ancient, rickety, 80-euro bicycle up and running last week, I have been coasting around this marvelously flat city, taking in the fresh air, the canal breeze, the signs of spring emerging all around us, and the general joie de vivre of the thing. Part of the joie is that, it seems apparent, one cannot be a true Berliner without putting in serious facetime (or–rather–booty time; yes, be jealous) with one’s bicycle. So, was it setting foot onto Maybachufer that first morning that made me feel like I really live in Berlin? No. Signing my first sublet? No. Finding family and community with the humans in my new home? No. Getting my housing anmeldung officially stamped and signed? No. Getting my visa? No. Riding my bike along the canal and filling my lungs with fresh air? Yes.

Note second: Berlin is an unbelievably marvelous city for many reasons, but foremost among them is the fact that, from any given spot in Berlin, one can take a bus or bike for 10 minutes and be somewhere fully green. Enclosed in green. Bathed in green. After the war, re-planting of trees was a verdant, systematic, top priority for the new government: (1) Concede defeat. (2) Remove the rubble (a rather stunning effort, mostly done by women, stone by stone). (3) Plant trees.

And so, we cycled off. Not without trepidation on my part. You see, elegant as I am in pointe shoes, I never properly learned how to ride a bicycle as a child, leaving me awkward as fuck with these contraptions, and the fact that, not only did I keep up with them, I also managed to not compromise my dignity by falling the fuck over or crashing. This was somewhat of a miracle.

Half an hour later (these people also talk as they cycle, as if nothing else strenuous is occurring, cycling two astride, snuggled into the clearly demarcated Fahrradwege), we were in a forest.

Then we took a walk through said forest, because biking is not for exercise, it’s for transportation, so the need for further physical activity was obvious.

Then drinks at a roadside imbiss.

Then, another gorgeous ride home, feeling free as a bird.

I’m going to go back to that feeling. That feeling was a mind-state apart. That, friends, was sheer pleasure for its own sake.

I had forgotten what that felt like.

With continuing wishes for the health of all those you hold dear,

Fondly,

Ernestine