Originally from California where the seasons glide into one another, here in Berlin I have learned to live with the four. Winter is for writing, this year my writing phase started in December with a five page letter to Marta B. it has since been edited and sent to numerous friends, one I have not seen for 37 years and my brother with whom I have not spoken to in four.
The letter has doubled in size since Marta’s. I soon realized where this was going. I rediscover the art of letter writing and got somewhat romantically into it remembering the days before facebook, what’s app and tiktok.
This letter will give you a glimpse of my experiences in the infamous year of 2020 and being a native Californians, let me start with numerology.The number 2020. 2 plus 2 equals 4. 4 is the equivalent to the forth planet, Mars for the Romans, Ogun for the Yoruba People. The god of war, of technology and science and of masculinity.
Drawing wonton conclusions, this god was in control of the year and he was not happy. His godly force stopped plains from flying, got people to avoid traveling by any means possible, forced us to avoid contact and made many paranoid. On the ambivalent side, we were forced to go further into the web, to use it in ways we would be content to live without.
I experienced heavy P.M.S. in 2020 … Pretty Much the Same.
So in order to make this letter interesting, I have also included some events that occurred in 2019. For example, the stupidest thing I bought in December 2019 was a 2020 year planner.
Believe it or not, I have been busy throughout the lockdowns, especially because of Helmut, my boyfriend of 20 years and his toy store. With the chaos of Covid-19, the Ratzekatz web shop saved the store during the first lockdown in the spring and is helping with the second lockdown currently in place. As of this week in April, only one customer is allowed in the store at a time and must have a negative Covid-19 test less that 24 hours old. Before several will have this opportunity to enter, it will not be until the end of summer.
Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas Dinner and New Year Celebrations, the four yearly events that occur here in my apartment, happened. I made sure that Covid-19 was not going to cancel, only alter my plans. With each event there was circa six people in attendance. My Hungarian friend Meliton was faithful and attended each one, (more about Meliton later).
I spend the entire year 2020 hanging on the news from the USA. Finally on the 10th November, Biden was declared the winner. Unfortunately, Dickhead had kept his reality show stimulated with a dramatic storyline well into the new year. The last week before the inauguration was the exciting finale … with the elections in the state of Georgia and the Electoral Collage votes being counted. the last episode closed with a riotous surprise ending.
It does not surprise me that Trump’s supporters stormed the congress. Nothing surprises me anymore what that man and his enablers say or do. Calling someone a ‚trump‘ will mean. someone who is racist, sexist, lacks empathy, is only interested in his/her well being, was born from a baboon’s ass and will bath in devils piss when he/she dies.
Stupid White Men
One down, nine to go …
Trump
Netanyahu
Lukaschenko
Johnson
Orban
Kaczynski
Erdogan
Duterte
al-Assad
Bolsonaro
Of those wacky Englanders. On the 5th of November an unofficial holiday occurs named Guy Fox Day. The natives celebrate the attempted coup by Guy Fox who in 1605 tried to burn down the English parliament. At dusk on the fifth, they light lots of bonfires and set off fireworks. The USA could do the same thing.
The 6th of January to be named ‚Jake Angeli Day‘. Where an actor dressed as a viking, deranged by Q-Anon Conspiracy theories lead a seething mob to storm the capitol building and attempt to block the counting of the electoral collage and knock down democracy. Five people were killed, yet democracy won and the USA should celebrate with fireworks and bonfires … except in California where it would burn down the state.
I saw how paralyzed Europa had become during the Dickhead years. The transatlantic alliance between the USA and Europe is so important. Sad to write, USA makes the policy and Europe follows. With Biden, no news is good news. Almost 100 days without controversy. What a blessing.
My USA news source is the PBS Newshour and the comedy satire programs of Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah, etc It is so nice to hear intelligent people in government talking policy. Biden has selected his staff well. He knows that he must act boldly in the first months to set his policy in motion … and increase the democrat majority in the congress in the mid-terms ... with the help of Stacey Abrams. This can only be done when the economy is working and people can vote fairly.
In 2019, I was able to save the apartment after spending a year worrying about my existence. I got the eviction notice in October 2018 and over a year later, on the 19. December 2019, the judge decided in my favor. In the building where I am living, the housing authority and the owner have their offices. Double whammy. I have been living here for 15 years and pay half of what this apartment would command if newly rented. They want me out and I have to watch my ass.
During the year long wait, I wrote a book entitled ‚Deutschland hass Sozialist‘. I combined four previous stories about bad roommates into one. One of which was about Jughead, (named changed to describe him better). Apparently, only changing his name in the story was not enough and Jughead sought an injunction against the book and managed to get the publisher to discontinue printing … i.e. Cease and Desist. The book writing was a cathartic reaction to the wait. I am glad I did it and I will do something with it in the future.
I had purchased my ticket to the San Francisco nine months in advance. I flew directly from Gatwick England to San Francisco on the 4. March 2020, after visiting for a few days Carol in her stable cottage on Plumpton Lane. She got me to the airport on time and off I flew, masked on a half empty plane.
Our good-byes were short because we knew we would been seeing each other soon when I would return on the first of April. It was to be a mighty reunion because Helmut would arrive the next day and celebrate his birthday together with friends arriving from Berlin, Melbourne and France. As well as completing the building of the garden house that has been four years in the making.
After a long flight and 24 hours of traveling, i was sitting with my friend Ethan Aronson in his apartment which is stuffed with American memorabilia watching the film Beach Blanket Bingo (highly recommended) on TV and eating Mexican take-away. Back in the USA and I landed just right. In San Francisco, we were was able to visit a bar on the 5th. 0n the 6th, San Francisco locked down. The new normality started.
On the 11th, Ethan drove me to Sacramento and dropped me off at Theresa Keyser and her husband Peter Petty’s house where I stayed for the next three weeks. We went to a bar on the 12th and on Friday the 13th of March. Sacramento as well as half the world went into lockdown.
At her home with Theresa who is a teacher at a Steiner School, I watched as she received messages from the Sacramento School Board about the precautions being put into place when she would return to teaching the following Monday. Within hours it went from stage one, wearing masks in the classroom to stage four, no school, total lockdown. I have spoken to her a few weeks ago and she is still furloughed. School is out forever.
The lockdown provided an opportunity, The people I did want to see in California had more time with which to visit. My good friends, a circle of circa six people, I saw frequently, my family only once and it was distanced. Their fears of the then new virus was understandable.
I saw my older brother Richard and his wife Helena. We made the effort to arrange a meeting in front of the Sacramento zoo. I found out that Helene suffers from a neurological disorder which is hereditary, her father was also effected. That is why she has trouble walking and talking. She did walk with a stroller as we chatted.
I saw my older sister Linda, and younger Lisa with her partner Dawn at a Mexican restaurant in Carmichael. It was here that I received some of my mom’s jewelry, old photos of relatives and greetings cards which Linda had saved for me. I had not been back since the death of my mother six years ago.
Afterwards, I spend a night with Lisa and Dawn in Placerville. In addition to a large suburban house the also have large one on wheels. It is bigger than single apartments here in Berlin. This is their form of traveling. Driving to a camping site and hangin’ for a few day with friends.
They fulfilled my request for take away pizza and we watch TV. All of which was fine for me, for this is how I understand the USA. I watched a program called ‚Horders’. A reality show about those who live in squalor, are anal and mentally ill. The program was a precursor to what would occur shortly thereafter.
I experienced real squalor when I sacrificed a part of my California visit to Vella Schwarzmann. a fabulous artist with a bi-polar disorder. A woman who I have known for 33 years. Who has taught me a lot about art and what it means to live it. I practiced intensive cleaning rituals in her kitchen but was only able to disinfect half of it. I dared not open the refrigerator for fear of unleashing toxicity. I never went into the bathroom for fear of confronting absolute squalor. After three days my social duty was accomplished, I had gone further with my karma.
Much of the time was centered in and around Freeman way, where Theresa and Peter have rented a house build in 1950’s for over 20 years. It surrounded by the freeway I-5 and a Lite Rail stop on 42street. That is a lot of white noise to be living around. Yet because these houses are in the Fabulous 40’s district of Sacramento, they go for a million.
I enjoyed their company, slept, ate, and drank well. I rode my bike all over town, Checked out downtown and the government buildings and pictured the city as bustling, albeit from the then lock.downed status. I rediscover tortilla chips during my stay and have not stopped eating them since. They remain a stable in my Berliner kitchen.
I went through the last of my Sacramento stuff that was saved in Theresa’s garage. I sent to Berlin 40 pounds for 250 dollars. I now have my cub scout shirt, letters I sent to mom and dad and my high school year books with those fabulous comments. All of which, I could have lived without but was unable to throw away.
I was coasting along with my California visit. While watching the news on my laptop, I spilt liquid on the keyboard and learned that an apple and beer to not mix. I switched to my newly acquired smartphone quickly learned, albeit amongst wild frustration, how to video conference with Helmut frequently and saw how he and my friends lives were effected by the pandemic, but nothing seemed to phase me.
I was visiting and the new normality seemed like a curious phase, until I found out that my my return flight on the 1st April was canceled and I was not going to be seeing Carol, Helmut, Caroline, the garden house construction manager Franck and Friends Finally I also was effected of the pandemic. The word cancelled first to appeared in my year planer. Within weeks, there was nothing more to write.
I rebooked one way with Helmut’s help to purchase a ticket and flew back to Berlin on the 30th March on empty planes via the deserted airports of Dallas-Fort/Worth and Heathrow. Spooky.
Helmut picked me up at the airport with mask. He was nervous to hug. We avoided contact. He dropped me off at my apartment and drove off to work. A few hours later, after riding my bike through the vacant city of Berlin, i was at his toy store. Helmut was scattered. He had fired four employees when the lockdown took effect, so that they could collect unemployment insurance. He was over-worked because the Ratzekatz web shop boomed. He had little stress red dots all over his body.
It was also Friday the 13th when Germany went into lockdown. ‚Klick und Collect’ became the new shopping experience when the toy store opened the following Monday. Customers stood outside the toy store, ordered on-line from their smart phones from the Ratzekatz web shop and called to pick up. Helmut had to print the order, collect the item from the shop, answer the telephone and used the back door, under law the front door had to remained locked, and delivered the package to the waiting customer.
I am responsible for the content management for the Ratzekatz website. It took me four year to put over 9000 items onto the site. Before the lockdown, sales mounted to a couple a day to be shipped. Helmut did not reckon that the web shop would be so well appreciated by the locals. Unfortunately, he was alone because he had immediately fired four employees in order for them to collect unemployment insurance.
When I arrived at Ratzekatz, Helmut was scattered. He had little red stress dots all over his body. The sound of the desktop printer and the telephone ringing were constant. As with toilet paper at grocery stores, it was puzzles at toy stores that were the first to sell out. Lego and handcrafts for kids and of course, board games. Anything to keep the kids at busy while confined to home. The Netflix serial ‚The Queens Gambit‘ help to recreate interest in chess boards.
As with the rest of the world’s population, everyone had to restructure their daily activities making sure to get through each day physically and mentally healthy. We oxymoronically distanced socially, wore masks and avoided superfluous gatherings. Instead of washing my hands frequently, I washed the dishes. I have gone through bottles of moisturizers to keep my hands from drying and splitting.
It was over year ago when governments locked down their nations and threw pearls to the fold to keep them contained. I applied for my amount and it was dumped into my bank account two days later. I used the money to buy a new apple computer. One that sits on my desk. I am done with lapping my external memory wherever I go, for this purpose I now have a smart phone that fits nicely into my pocket.
Whenever we did have an opportunity to talk to a friend, the first questions we asked were whether they applied for their rescue money, how much money did they request and did they receive it? A year later, it has become hush money. It was an enormous world wide social economic experiment that will have enormous.
Stuck at home, with little chance of personal contact with friends, I spend the year making my art-cards and putting them on eBay. I have had a minor success. More people, I guess, had more time to masturbate in front of their computers and buy on-line.
As I sit writing with this letter, Big Fat Kitty is on my lap. In winter, he earns his cat name. My Hungarian friend Meliton visits me every day. I decided to include him in the same paragraph as B.F.K. Both are inseparable from my apartment and my life.
Meliton Sugar. A short biography. Given up at birth, raised in a socialist Hungarian orphanage then released into the world in 1988, A year later the Berlin Wall came down and so ended the eastern European socialist experiment. With the new freedoms. he was able to attend the Hungarian parliament procedures where he made a name for himself calling out corruption by posting his comments as flyers on lamp posts throughout Budapest. He came to the attention of these corrupt officials and they made his life difficult.
He moved to Berlin in 1995 where I met him and he has become a stable part of my life ever since. I call him my sputnik. Always orbiting around, sometimes moving in closer, sometimes distanced as when he travels to southern Europe for the winter. But he always returns. He is a gentle giant, cleans up after himself, is generous and has his ticks.
Here is a typical Meliton antidote which will help to explain. Acorns. Whatever is on the ground belongs to Meliton. His time in Berlin from 1995 to today is spend, collecting bottles for their deposit and he is able to make his living. In Germany, it is 9 cents for glass and 25 cents for a plastic bottle.
He finds lots of other things and I have to be careful expressing a wish when he is around. I learned my lesson when i desired a a desktop printer and received several in various degrees of functionality.
This autumn, he started collecting acorns which is pig food to you and me. He learned from the web that the price pro kilo is ten euros and he decided to make some additional coins by collecting these nuts. During Meliton’s daily visits in autumn, acorns became his topic of discussion. I learned that there are four types of Oak trees that grow in Berlin. The most cherished variety is the acorn from the Water Oak. Before selling, the acorns must be washed and air dried. He convinced me to put a few kilos on eBay. Within weeks, I was storing 40 kilos of acorns in four varieties in the apartment.
After 25 years of being in Berlin, Meliton has recently moved into his own apartment. Jughead (yes, the art-annihilator mentioned above) encouraged Meliton to go to the welfare office. He qualified for social aid, got an apartment and a language course to learn german. In 2020, he was to complete the course, but then came Covid and learning went on-line or did not occur at all. Which is fine for Meliton. He gets his money and had more time to collect acorns.
Apparently his social apartment in deep-Berlin, has become an acorn factory, where they were washed and air dried. He says he has about 100 kilos stored at his apartment. After several attempts on eBay, no one bought the acorns, even with the starting price of one euro. I have returned the acorns to Meliton and have not asked what he has done with the rest of his supply.
Which brings me to Doris my upstairs neighbor. A mess, with a capital M. At least she does’t make a mess around me. She is coasting through Berlin on an alcohol buzz until she is 60. at which time she will move back to Oldenburg Germany, to the house that she will inherit. She has been there for a two months already and will stay there until the end of March. She has giving Meliton the keys to her apartment, where he lives. Obviously at his acorn factory, there is no room for Meliton to sleep. So Meliton is currently commutes between two apartments, gets money from the government and has become even more generous. Everyday he brings me something. I have received 30 tubes of tooth paste, kitchen knives, day old pastries and bread, butternut squash, fruits, soap, hand creme, conditioner, incense and even hash to smoke. Everyday, I have to process these gifts, otherwise there would be no room to move around.
We went from lockdown to shutdown in summer. We could leave our apartments and eat outside at restaurants. We could drink cocktails in the streets and congregated in parks as an alternative to bars that were still forbidden to reopen. I even managed to escape to England to participate in the 4th. Why I Hate England or W.I.H.E Literary Festival in Plumpton, theme Re-Member.
Once again, there was this idea of completing the garden house but that was dashed with the absence of the construction manager who was stuck in France. With the generous help of the festival producer Carol, we did manage to pull off a quarantined get-together in her garden. As we congregated, we first decorated an Ook for the ceremonial cleansing by fire later that evening. Participants brought deliscious pot-luck contributions which we ate together, mingling in two meter parameters. At dusk, we read our texts around a burning bonfire.
We proceeded to parade the Ook to a neighbors garden where an another bonfire was prepared. We sacrificed an Ook to the flames. The explosions of latex attached to the Ook and the crackling of consumption by fire, cleansed our spirits for another year.
I missed my plane back to Berlin, after rebooking for the next day, I had breakfast with a horse. We decided that the theme of the next literary festival would be ‚Stiff Upper Pussy Footing’. When she removing her mask, I showed my breakfast partner Caroline how to give ultimate ear pleasure to a feline. While we were waiting for Carol. I wetted the knuckle of my index finger and wedged it into the ear of her cat which responded affirmatively. Kitty pleasured, I allowed it to lick my knuckle. I was her best friend. Next time I will show her how to give a cat a bath and why laundry baskets, sturdy cardboard boxes and fur coats are important elements of pussy husbandry.
Finally Carol was ready and off we we went to view the majestic chalk cliffs of southern England. I had a religious experience walking between cliffs and sea. No one was selling sea shells by the sea shore that day and there were no fish and chips either, so I stole a couple of white rocks instead.
Still drunk and on four hours of sleep, they drove me to the airport to catch my six o’clock flight to Berlin. Big Fat Kitty was happy to see me, throwing himself on the ground and meowing a chatter of demands until I petted him. Doorbell rang, Meliton and in with a chatter about his apartment renovations at Doris’s. A bathroom lamp had come unhinged and it became the topic of conversation for a week until I fixed it.
I did not see my roommates who are in their 30’s and sleep until one. Oskar is a music student and Cihan is gay economist who escaped Ankara. Oskar just completed writing and submitting his masters theses in music. ‚Post melancholy and it’s influence on American Rock music of the 1990’s‘ … i.e. Grunge.
Cihan has a masters in economy and only studied the subject because of family and social pressures. He came to Berlin to be gay, get a working permit, to study and or work in a field outside of what he learned. Not so easy for a man who’s country is not in the European Union. His way to stay is to get married, not for love but for the papers. Luckily he found someone. With the pandemic, it has been hard to get a marriage date from the town hall. His student visa runs out in April. Due to Covid, all student visas have been extended temporarily. He is in limbo.
Both Oskar and Cihan are great roommates. Intelligent and introverted, like myself. In their free time, they stay in their rooms and among other programs, Oskar’s interests are World Wide Wresting and Cihan’s, the sitcom ‚Modern Families‘.
Both are direct and indirect recommendations from Zaher, a Syrian refugee that I brought into the apartment from 2015 to 2018. He is a success story. Since his arrival, he has learned German and has completed his masters thesis in music. He is now allowed to travel to other European countries and the U.K.
Drama occurred with a woman named Karin. I was her gay husband and she was my muse. But a couple of incidences occurred which made me recalculate the marriage. For her 71st birthday in July, i offered to celebrated it at my apartment. She accepted and invited four male friends. Being my kooky self, I invited a mystery guest … a woman! Zaher, one of the four men she invited and a former roommate of mine, also brought a woman, his current girlfriend from Bangladesch. That was too much for her to handle. She flipped out and started shouting at me in the kitchen as the others sat in the garden not knowing what to do. (I live in a three room apartment ground floor with garden) That was a side of my straight wife that I did not know. One cannot be a feminist whilst disdaining women.
The second incident occurred when Oskar got Covid-19 in October 2020 Until then, I did not know one person who had contracted the virus. He was the first and he was my roommate. By the time he found out, he was already two weeks into the illness. Niether Cihan nor myself, had symptoms. Oskar did a good job of quarantining himself in the back room of the apartment. By the third week he got himself tested and was positive yet had no more symptoms, He was out and about and not contagious. Oskar had told his close contacts; his roommates, fellow students at the university. Since neither Cihan nor I had any symptoms, I found no need to to spread the information further.
Follow this chain … Oscar told Zaher, who studies music at the university with Oskar. Zaher told Karin and Karin told Julien (Helmuts french friend who worked at his toy store). Julien send Oliver (Helmuts former lover before me) an SMS writing that he has important news and for him to call. Oliver who had absolutely no contact with Julien wondered why he was being asked to make discrete contact. When he did, the shit hit the fan. Oliver informed Helmut and Helmut went ballistic. I had to defend my position for not telling him. I made an informed decision not to disclose and stuck by it.
Within a couple of days and after I had gotten tested, Helmut realized that Karin and Julien had denounced me. Because of Germany’s history, denouncing someone leaves a brown nazi smear and Helmut was furious. He broke with Karin and Julien and only recently has Julien made contact with him. I have not heard from the two since that birthday party … My-My-My-My-Corona!
Which brings me to 2021. After a few days in late winter I realized that a pain on the right side of my lower gut was intensifying. During these days, I remember those stories Theresa Keyser recently told me about her internal bleeding, kidney failure and appendices. On Friday, I decided to go to the hospital.
Ooops. I should of realized something was fishy when upon entering the ambulanten care. Upon entering, I was asked if I had pain and if I wanted a pill. So easy to get painkillers. In short, in the six hours that I was there, they found a polyp in my intestine. What happened during was spooky.
When asked to be released, they became suspicious. Two of the doctors from the ambulant care unit convinced me to check in by threatening me with possible colon cancer and a delayed colonoscope appointment, I was being railroaded into staying at the hospital over the weekend in order to fill a bed for three nights to supply their income.
They managed to convince me to go to station number 5, Trapped in room 51, sun shining outdoors. The doctor entered to take bottles of my blood and administer antibiotics. I leaped forward and demanded to be released. Luckily, i did not have a fever and i had regular bowl movements, two questions responded to positively before she went to fetch the release form. Stroke of the pen, I was out.
That very night, I dreamed of drinking coca-cola at the bar where I used to work. The next day, I fulfilled my dream. A few days later, the pain subsided. I still have to go in for a colonoscopy. What worries me most is this stuff called ‚Fleet’ which I have to take 24 hours before the colonoscope. It will rinse my intestines. destroying the good bacteria which took me years to develop.
So here I sit, writing and waiting for a the lockdown to be rescinded. The German government is being such a nanny, telling us constantly what to do and not to do. The European Commission failed to order enough vaccines and the roll out is painfully slow. The German parliament keeps on extending the lockdown which started on the 15th December and is still in place, albeit, they are easing some restrictions. The natives are getting restless, spring is in the air. Time to riot. Hair salons opened on the first of March, go figure. They want us to look beautiful when the lockdown ends. I have not had a hair cut since November 2019.
Berlin Januar 2021
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