Some Real Shit.

Friday, January 31, 2020

2:13 am

A bed in Kreuzberg, Berlin

Ok well here we go again.

Another night before a move, and I’m like, “Heart, shut up about it. Not sleeping is the end of the world,” and Heart is like, “No, this is a big deal, new bed, unknown factors, will it be safe, how will you get there, will you forget anything…and by the way, here are 20 things to worry about to make this worse. Also, I have my reasons.”

I think every human has a health or psychosomatic barometer that tells s/t/hey, “Hey! Living your life this way isn’t ok with me! I’m going to throw a fit until you fix it!” Mine, gentle reader, is obviously this nighttime demon.

Want some real shit?

Here’s some real shit. (You know I don’t do fake shit.)

When I was 4 years old, our house burned down in the great Oakland Firestorm of 1991 (the number of people sharing this experience grows exponentially, with every passing year, which slays me). I lost all my stuff—most notably my My Little Pony collection and the bunny curtains and matching duvet that my mother made for me on a particularly memorable birthday. We ran out of the house with a few pairs of sweat pants, my transitional monkey Russy, his toy piano (“So he’ll be distracted and won’t be scared”—I remember saying that clear as day), my mother’s Roladex (if your memory goes back that far), and the clothes on our backs.

We were never in imminent danger. We were told to evacuate long before the fire hit our house; however, worse than the event itself, for a child of 4, was the aftermath.

We spent the next several months (I think it was about 6—I can’t be sure) sleeping at friends’ houses, going from place to place every week or so.

So, today, Heart says: “Pray tell, how is this different?”

I have always hated transitions. I have always in particular lost my shit every time I have to put things in a suitcase (although when I was 4 it was milk crates that we used to transport everything).

This, however, is some next-level shit.

I have concluded my first week in Berlin. I booked an Airbnb for the first week, and then our agreement was, “After that, you have to FFOB*.” (I can’t imagine how my parents coped with this when I was so young, but they fucking figured it out. We also really lucked out in a Blanche-in-A Streetcar [Called] Desire kind of way–“the kindness of strangers.”)

That bit has worked out better than expected. I stumbled into a friend of a student of my mother’s, who is putting me up tomorrow night in god knows what bohemian fashion (I like mattresses and six pillows, please—ug), and then after that I found an incredible sublet in a peaceful, quiet part of Berlin that is affordable and delightful.

However, to wit:

December 21st, Ernestine goes to California, stays 9 nights with family and one with a friend;

January 2nd, Ernestine returns to Massachusetts;

January 10th, Ernestine goes to Vermont for a last hurrah with her sweetie;

January 15th, Ernestine goes to Paris;

January 24th, Ernestine goes to Berlin.

I am not a jet-setter. I don’t acclimate to this many beds without considerable consternation. So Jesus H. Christ.

Anyway. The month-long sublet is on the horizon. I sorted out the month of February, and have a serious, if very “La Vie Bohéme” (read: they still use braziers with coal to heat the place) potential option for the four months after that. This feels akin to Hercules mucking out the stables of 1,000 horses, or however the myth goes—in other words, a few clicks short of miraculous.

And then, onto the approximately 2 billion other things required to restart one’s life and recalibrate one’s existence on foreign soil.

The theme of today was “It’s not possible.”

It began with my iPhone—otherwise known as my navigation device and connection to all the people I care about—going aggressively on the fritz (it’s a 6s. YES, I know, but who has an extra $800 lying around every time there’s a new one), effectively cutting me off from the world. There wasn’t a ton of world left to begin with.

So that’s worrisome.

Then I meditated on a vulnerable day, resulting in a cascade of sheer grief for my ex-ish, which had been building for days. Then I did some yoga. Great. Nice. But hello? I’m in a body? Wow. Then I almost lost a client because of the phone fiasco (it turns out that he and I and his 9-inch strapon had an excellent time with no snafus). THEN I looked at Facebook.

Facebook is fundamentally evil. I don’t really believe in this good-evil binary, but…that guy I don’t have to listen to all day every day here (and BREXIT. TOMORROW, egad). Etc. However, there’s a group for Berlin burlesque performers, Berlin dancers, Berlin house-hunters, Berlin sex workers, and one for how to make Keto edible; and since Ernestine now has her own Facebook page, she subscribes to these things and has been attempting to crowdsource the information necessary and the essential connections with other human beings that is the only way the current lifeplan works. And my questions got answers. And it was the last thing I wanted to hear.

There is no safe harbor for whores. If you find one, let me know, but Berlin seemed like the safest bet, and I’ve been banking—literally and figuratively—on their ho-tolerance since October.

You will of course be SHOKED! to hear that they don’t really want whores here either. The ones with an (oh-my-god-I-would-give-a-kidney-for-one) EU passport are fine. Totally fine. The rest of us? There’s a registry.

Brief history insert here. If you’re a friend, you’ve probably heard my explanation of why sex workers all advocate for decriminalization, not legalization. This is because legalization has caused some of the most fucked up things in whorestory (cute, right). Take, for example, the fact that the speculum was invented so that rapey doctors could carry out weekly health checks on all registered hookers in France and England—and they didn’t clean them between patients. This resulted in a lot of uneccesary syphilis, which in turn flooded “hospitals”—in actual fact, designated whore prisons—where inmates were interned for sometimes years on end, until symptoms disappeared or they died (either from mercury poisoning, or the disease itself).

Once you are registered as a prostitute—historically speaking—that record tends to follow you around for the rest of your life. And registration in Germany—ostensibly to “prevent trafficking”—is very aggressive. So my new Facebook friends have advised against it, which means my bordello paradise plan is either extremely delayed or is not possible.

Ever since I started breaking the law in order to survive by doing sex work (and, actually, way before that), my motto has been:

“The only way through is around.”

I’ve made it this far by sheer force of will, dodging and weaving like an animal fighting for its life against an ungainly predator, doggedly holding fast to a belief that SOMEWHERE there is a place where I can be myself, according to the letter of the law (cue the last beautiful ballad from West Side Story).

I came here to escape the predator. And the demon. However, both have caught up with me yet again, and in my darker moments I wonder if moving here was sensible, or a complete overestimation of humanity.

There’s life in her yet. Stay tuned.

Fondly,

Ernestine

*This is a term I use often in my head and with others who have been explained the history of the acronym; it stands for “fucking figure it out, bitch” and is a relic of my days in the Five College Theater Department. If you’re not a member of the theater world, know that putting on a show—any show, however small or trivial—incurs mass chaos, and the person who stems that chaos is the stage manager and her higher-ups. Therefore, if you’re the stage manager and, 5 minutes to curtain and you can’t find the principal dancer, you ask the head of the theater department, and she replies “FFOB,” she means–with all due respect–activate maximum creative thinking. It is a term of endearment and solidarity. I loved stage managing. I did it when I was too injured to be in the shows.