Hey I'm Back from Berlin!

On Berlin, our failing republic, back pain, and loving yourself

Photo by Jeison Higuita on Unsplash

Hey I’m back. I’m not sure if I said anything about it in previous subbies, but I applied for my first grant last fall and I got it! So for 19 days in January I went to Berlin to do research in two archives—the Audre Lorde Archive at the Free University of Berlin and the queer archive at the LBGTQ Schwules Museum. I also lived by myself there in an Air B and B, wandered a lot, fell in love with rhubarb sodas (Rhabarber or as I like to call her RaBarbara!!! I will love you forever), dated, read books, and wrote in my diary a lot.

I also had a few friends visit (Amy, Rosa, and Sarah thank you for keeping me company and all of the fun we had) and we did some historical things I’ve long wanted to do. And I did some quintesentially Berlin things that I really loved.

I haven’t really figured out what I want to do with the research I did there. I listened to a semester’s worth of Audre Lorde’s Creative Writing workshops that she taught in Berlin, which were intrumental (as I understand it) in bringing together many young Afro German writers and helping build that community. I also read all of her correspondence (spanning ten years) with Dagmar Schultz, the Women’s Studies Professor, filmmaker, and activist who helped bring her to Berlin. There is so much friendship and love in those letters (not romantic as far as I can tell), but lovely all the same.

I spent time with the bisexual files at the Schwules. They were recently created (which both surprised and did not surprise me), and not very big. Interesting stuff in there, though I think in Germany as in the U.S. the understanding of bisexuals followed a similar pattern. In the late 70s and early 80s, the question was “Do bisexuals really exist or are they secretly gay and lesbian people too afraid to fully come out?” In the late 80s and early 90s bisexuals were targeted as spreaders of HIV, especially bisexual men, and in the mid to late 90s, bisexuals became sexy and there was a lot of porn about threesomes, especially FFM(s). The last stuff I looked at was in the 90s (there wasn’t too much more and I ran out of time) and was about bisexuals becoming more politically engaged and fighting for their place within queer orgs and spaces. There was a Bisexual Action Network in Berlin formed in 1992 I want to learn more about.

I also did some random deep dives into toilet and subway cruising. I was hoping to find out if there was crusing in the abandoned subway stations (called ghost stations) that were created when the wall began to go up. I spent one amazing afternoon reading and looking at a book about the history of toilets and gay sex in Paris and Berlin.

I learned about “soupers,” but I’m not going to tell you what those are yet. You get a free year long subscription if you know or guess right in the comments. No fair cheating if I already told you.

I’m sure the current Republican administration wouldn’t fund my research. I’m thankful NYU did, but I also used some of my own research money to make the trip possible.

Again, I don’t know if I’ll fold all of this into essays, articles, or a novel. No matter what happens, I remembered how much I love archives. The immediacy of primary documents like letters, recordings, and newspaper clippings…I can’t explain how happy it makes me.

Photo by Erik Müller on Unsplash

I made an archive friend!

Some other quintessentially Berlin things I did:

I went to sex club!

I had some dates with a person who organizes consensual gang bangs!

I had some dates with someone I met in August and wanted to see again!

I had some dates with a new person who I kinda fell in love with a little!

I went to the naked fancy spa and the optionally naked techno spa!

I got lost when my phone died!

I went to the Nan Goldin show which is so good I hope it comes here!

I walked more than I have maybe ever walked!

I learned how to take the trams and U and S Bahn. Heaven!

I found the earlier translation of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the one that I read in my late twenties (sorry Lydia David I adore your fiction but I’m too attached to that old translation) and started reading it again.

Eileen Myles gave me the idea to return to Proust this summer when we visited in Marfa for the SLUTS Anthology tour. How wildly different it is to read this book at 52 than at 28! I have lots of new thoughts, but everybody gets mad if you get too heavy into Proust love, so I’ll keep them to myself for now. But Proust is connected to the toilet mystery I mentioned above.

I felt free in a way that I haven’t felt maybe ever in my life. I realized I haven’t really traveled alone ever. I’ve always had friends or partners or my kid with me. I didn’t know how much I needed this freedom. I’m not sure women, moms, femmes, caregivers (probably lots of other folks too) realize how unfree we really are until something like this happens. To exist without anyone making demands on your time. To do whatever the fuck you want to do for nineteen days. I had my research to attend to, but everything else was decided by me and only me.

I also realize that it’s only from being medicated for anxiety and doing a shit ton of therapy that I feel safe enough to have this solitude. I’m not afraid to be alone. I truly love my own company. Maybe this trip was my Valentine to myself.

I was really anxious at first.

I learned to play along for as long as I could with my non-German.

I decided that sex and dating are better in Berlin than in New York. Goddess knows I’ve done my research in NYC, and I’m gathering a lot of new evidence in Berlin. But yeah, the sex is better IMHO, more communicative, more consensual, and more romantic. Messaging on the Feeld app (this is the only app I can tolerate anymore) was kind and straightforward. People said goodbye and what they genuinely wanted. No one ghosted me or disappeared in the middle of a chat or made sexual demands before saying hello.

Not surprisingly (given what I was returning to politically), I didn’t want to come home. The Joni Mitchell lyric comes to mind here, “I was a free man in Paris, I felt unfettered and alive/There was nobody calling me up for favors/and no one’s future to decide.”

Some bad things:

Our failing republic. Like a lot of us I guess I spiral in and out of rage and hope. My friend M and I had dinner last night and M said they feel like they’re living two lives—what’s happending in NYC which is very regular, day to day, working and living, and then what’s happening with the government, which is completely evil, illegal, and chaos sowing.

I hurt my back and hip. Honestly, I think this started from doing something too hard in Pilates a few months ago, and it never really healed. All the walking in Berlin was both good and bad for it I think. The plane ride back did me in, and so now I’ve found out I have some small bits of arthritis in my left lip and have to do PT to help with the muscles and strengthining. Ofc, no doctors give you anything for pain anymore. I was eating of lot of pot gummies and feeling too high sometimes since I returned from Berlin, but they were the only thing that stopped the pain. Last night I bought plain CBD gummies which are making it possible to for me to sit in my desk chair and write this.

But the universe is telling me I can’t sit and write like this anymore. Maybe I need a stand up desk or a better chair for sure.

I missed my friends and my kid and I missed Substack too, though I realized I want to have a calmer relationship to this platfrom as well. I do get very obsessed with gaining followers and paid subscribers (you make it possible for me to keep writing! thank you!) and also the chart which shows you how many people are reading, well that gets me very wound up. I guess I did not miss trying hard to make everyone love me all of the time on here and on Instagram, which I hope to leave one day maybe, but I do like the photos I’m sorry.

I like Substack a lot because I love blogging.

I honestly don’t have the energy for Bluesky and I hate a feed. I left Twitter many years ago. Facebook is a bizarro world where nothing I post or any of my friends post is every visible to me, so I’d like to leave there too, but gosh as writers it does take a long time to build these followings, and they are hard to walk away from. For me anyway.

Speaking of walking away, I’ve got to go get groceries and some Valentine Card making supplies for my teen and her friends who are coming over soon.

Love to you on this totally wretched or totally romantic corporate holiday! It’s not bothering me this year which is weird. I reminded my teen the other day how we used to make 30 homemade valentines every Valentine’s Eve when she was in elementary school. It was fun and also so stressful, getting the supplies and the candy and then the assembly line of it and not forgetting any kids. But we had nostalgia for it!

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

As RuPaul says at the end of every episode of Drag Race, “If you can’t love yourself, then how the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an Amen?!”

Easier said than done ofc. But I do love myself. I really do. I hope you do too, and if you don’t it’s okay, but you still should have a little treat today, dontcha think?

Enjoy the typos!

xoxoxo

Carley