Sexless Berlin

Hysterical

2012-01-30T19:31:00.002+01:00

It's always nice to be able to blog my two favorite topics in tandem (film and sex), so I'm happy to report I recently saw one of the top films of 2011: Hysteria. It's an account of the London doctor who, tiring of servicing so many Victorian matrons by hand (and I do mean hand), invented the first electrical vibrator. I saw it at the Kino Central in Berlin, in a packed house of about three-quarters women. Of my five years on and off in Berlin, I can solemnly swear this is the very first time I've sat in the middle of German women literally screaming with laughter. I honestly can't remember the last time I enjoyed a movie-going experience as much!

Well, then, psychoanalysis in the 19th and early 20th centuries had a ball with women, didn't it? If they weren't being accused of frigidity, it would seem, they were being diagnosed with hysteria. Even now, in the 21st century, how often have you heard someone use the term "frigid" to describe a woman? Now how about "nymphomaniac"? For heaven's sake, ours is one of the few species where females are designed to desire as much or more sex than males. Let's just review the image of the man snoring in a heap where he's fallen after finishing his business as meanwhile the woman fantasizes about crooking her finger to summon the next one...

Let me recount a second story as a counterpoint. A week or so ago I met up with a new prospect and went through the usual routine of dispensing with the preliminaries (tell me about yourself, where you're from, what you're doing in Berlin, etc.) in order to get down to the important topic at hand. I'm watching for a certain spark in a man's eyes, an indication that he "gets" that a smart-as-hell, experienced, no-nonsense woman can be sexy. My faithful readers (some of whom have experienced this first-hand) can certainly imagine that a woman like me doesn't exactly mince words on the first date. It's guaranteed that I will bring up my favorite topic if I like the man at all. This one seemed to be flying wingtip-to-wingtip with me and so I consented to continue the conversation over a second drink with him at a cool little French café in a Kreuzberg Keller. I asked him about that moment I'd observed in his eyes a short time before, the one I've come to think of as the Pornographic Images Moment, which my frankness almost invariably tends to invoke. From what I've previously deduced (see here), such images are a rather constant part of life for men [mental note to self: more detailed questioning about this is needed]. So I told him, "I could see at one point that you felt like reaching across the table, grabbing me and ripping my clothes off right there in the middle of the restaurant. What stopped you?" He smiled ruefully and said, "Training, constant training."

Later I was chatting with the man I think of as Chocolate Guy, responsible for by far the most creative Craigslist M4W personals action this previous year in Berlin. He'd describe it more as some sort of reverse Pavlovian conditioning: in his words, "the bell rings and everyone pretends it never happened." Finally, here's what a casual acquaintance had to say: "Islam has something going for it with those burkas, you know, to cover up those curves."

It's depressing, isn't it? We can't blame our societal ills on another species that mercilessly whittles away at our natural habitat or shuts us up in metal cages in the interests of science. No, the concrete jungles which we inhabit, with their endless rules designed to beat us down into sedate, asexual, obedient little creatures, are entirely of our own making.

Well this wild animal, for one, doesn't take kindly to captivity. And so she's launching a new campaign, to find out what this pathetic species of ours is doing to escape from the zoo. How we post-modern humans are rediscovering our true natures. And where the unapologetically sexual are hanging out in Berlin. So, readers in the know, come on now, help me out, post a comment on how/what/where/when you get out of the zoo -- and remember, it's completely anonymous.

Trivial Pursuit

2012-01-19T14:00:00.005+01:00

A catchy headline yesterday informed me that a Glamour survey provides us with more "wisdom" in the Battle to Understand the Opposite Sex. Here are the two questions that most amused me.

Keep in mind that this is what we call close-ended questioning: the respondent can only choose from the options given. So for the first question, for example, this option was sadly missing: to go on national television to explain that men don't really mean to be pigs, it's just the testosterone. Joking aside, the fact that half the men have recognized the mystical importance of the feminine orgasm is, in my mind, a very good sign.

If you could borrow a woman's body for a day, you would most want to:
Play with your boobs all day long: 15%
Find out what a female orgasm feels like: 48%
Eat and drink for free at ladies' nights: 12%
Hang out in a women's bathroom and get every secret possible: 7%
Hang out in a women's locker room and just watch—duh!: 18%

The magazine also observed that "some things never change!" Despite ample evidence that tall men are the ones that get the girls, two-thirds of men would rather give it all away for a longer penis. Notably missing, as usual, is the issue of girth...

Which would you rather be: 5'2" tall with a seven-inch penis or 6'2" with a three-inch penis?
1995: 62% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.
2012: 67% said 5'2" with a seven-inch penis.

Never my go-to source for anything at all, women's magazines serve only as embarrassing evidence of how actively we trivialize ourselves. Sigh.

Ship - Wrecked

2012-01-13T11:36:00.000+01:00

Relationship, friendship, partnership... So many of the -ships can be so fraught with so many expectations and implicit (or explicit) demands, wouldn't you agree? Simple acquaintanceship is the first level for any sort of bond, and I've always been fond of playing with the idea of the point at which it becomes something more. But acquaintanceship itself is more than anything a product of modern human life and the anonymity that comes with overpopulation. When we, as early humans, were functioning at the tribal level, we would have been intimately tied to our fellow tribal members from birth.

Something a lover said recently prompted me to think about how ridiculously broad the term friendship can be. I turned to my trusty Internet search engine to see what more orderly thinkers than I might have come up with. Let's consider, then, contemporary Internet wisdom on friendship. It would seem that we are to visualize a three-point scale: something akin to casual friend followed by steady or good friend and topped by dear or best friend. I suppose a similar scale could be applied to lovers. The casual lover, the steady lover, the dear love. Shall we call these, then, sexualships? I have casual sexualships with various men, but good, steady sexualships become rather more tricky, don't they?

Sigh. What a hierarchy of -ships we've created; there seems to be no end to our scales and rules. But despite it, we're always searching for more terms. "Significant other", "longtime companion", "compañero". And then the sadly sexist terms of bygone years: "better half" or, the worst of all, "ball and chain". After all this, I think I want to forget about the term relationship entirely!

Partnership is the only -ship that is flexible and broad enough to interest me. Its root is the Latin partitio (portion), by which we are to understand a shared endeavor. It applies as well to how ancient humans functioned in tribes as it does to a business endeavor or to my relationship with the mother of my goddaughter. And what is a partner to me? That person's gender matters not, nor whether we are sleeping together, and certainly not whether one of us has said those three silly words that seem to cause so much grief in our modern world. [I'm referring to "I love you."] My dear ones are my partners. Their woes are my woes. Their joys are my joys. Their homes are my home. And my home and woes and joys are just as much, always and eternally, theirs, no matter how much time and space may separate us.

In contrast, those of you poor souls whose mothers never taught you how to share will soon enough be asked to disembark from the Good Ship Katchita. Because this skipper's seen more than enough *ship*wrecks in her career sailing the high seas.

Sex Tip #6

2012-01-06T18:13:00.003+01:00

Having been chastised by the same fan for the second time in a year regarding my appallingly low productivity, I really have to get back to Sexless Berlin. With the New Year, I resolve to start with tying up some loose ends. First is my promise two years ago (here) to provide screening tools for the overly well-endowed, whose attributes are sadly, in our society, constantly cloaked. I discovered a couple of years ago that, for the ballsy (pun intended) woman, this is extremely easy.

It turns out that men see their special friends as the center of the universe, and it's the easiest thing in the world to get them started on the subject. A woman need only ask, "Could I, ahem, ask you a delicate/sensitive/personal question? What can you tell me about your endowment?" They will light up with joy, as you will likely be the first person to have ever asked them this enchanting question. And womyn, remember, they are all comparing themselves to porn stars so any description you are given will almost assuredly be a significant underestimation. That's why it's especially important to steer completely clear of any man who, despite porn-related skewing, still, God save us, considers himself large.

Now that we've covered verbal descriptions, I simply have to take up men's peculiar love affair with cock shots. They are just itching to send them out and seem not to have the least idea when, or if, that is appropriate. As an extreme, I've even recently had a man send unsolicited videos (could it be the latest trend?)! I have, of course, investigated this peculiar behavior by asking various lovers about it. Their answer makes sense; they would like their center of the universe, their special endowment, to be admired, ideally as much as they themselves admire it.

Now then, you men, let me tell you, heterosexual women who love sex also love what penile-bearing creatures are packing, in all their varied shapes and sizes. So a cock-shot is not the worst thing in the world to pop out at us when opening an Email. But as men so often subject us to inappropriate sexual energy, that can at times be quite off-putting, timing is all-important. Surely your mothers taught you that asking is the polite thing to do? As with everything to do with sex, ask Ask ASK. [This brings me to another loose end which I'll have to take up later -- the issue of when it's alright to not ask.]

When exchanging Emails with a new prospect, then, ask her if she would like pictures. Be flirty about it -- tell her you are have some pictures to share with her, some of which are "special", but only if she says the word. She may not want them at all, because don't forget, pictures take away that agreeable anticipation that comes with finally unwrapping that special package. Some of us prefer the build-up to premature tell-all exposés. To head off a blizzard of pornographic images in my inbox, then, I sometimes instead opt to ask men to write me about their special friend. It's fun to throw it wide open by saying, "telling me all about it [him?] and what it [he?] means to you". The replies I get can range from shy [so cute!] to bold and sexy.

Now then, womyn readers, if you've established that the member in question is rather on the unwieldy side, it's up to you to decide whether you wish to follow my all-important advice on the well-endowed (carefully review point two/rule two again here). But whatever you do, when you find one of those big ones out there who thinks he's just average (per comparisons with the porn star du jour), do the rest of us a favor. PLEASE DON'T edify him. The smaller they think they are, grrrrls, the better they tend to treat us. Take it from me: I could plot it on a curve.

Who ARE You People Anyway?

2011-12-27T00:21:00.000+01:00

Blogspot now collects all sorts of interesting statistics for its bloggers. On Christmas Eve, Sexless Berlin reached exactly ten thousand hits since the count began.

That's an average of some 500 to 600 hits per month! Germany and Spain each account for 24%; the U.S. for only 15%. The top post by far is Live Sex at Berghain with 17%; the next, Wooing by SMS and Penis Envy, don't even come close, at 5% each. What do we think this might be? Penis Envy is probably a pretty common search term, but Wooing by SMS? It can only be that I refer to my bra size as being the same as Demi Moore's, am I right?

Over the past year or two, feeling that it's time for a change after so many years, I've contemplated closing this blog entirely and starting a new one. But the thought of losing all my readership is a serious deterrent. I've also thought of making Sexless Berlin more explicit, which gets me into all sorts of possible issues regarding adult content.

So I've decided to open it up to you, my readers. There are many more of you than I ever imagined. Why do you read Sexless Berlin? Is it to find good restaurants here? For the in-the-streets (and the ticket lines) coverage of the Berlinale? For the wry analysis of where we've gone wrong as men and women? For the sarcastic Sex Tips?

What would you like to see on Sexless Berlin in the next year or two? Would you like it to continue as the eclectic but sexually inexplicit mix that it is? Or would you like something completely new where I am more open about the meaning and mechanics of human sex? The thought running through my head at this time is a chronicle of my own journey, taking Sex at Dawn to a logical second step. Sex at High Noon, if you will.

I invite you all to comment; if you haven't ever filled in a comment form on Blogspot, now's the time. You can do so completely anonymously. I have no ability to see anything about where you have commented from, nor your Email address or ISP. But if you're so inclined, it would be nice to know if you're reading from Istanbul or St. Peterburg (yes I have readers in Turkey and Russia) as well as what your interest might be: Berlin culture, film, or sex, Sex, SEX!

Besetzerin meines Körpers

2011-12-05T13:46:00.001+01:00

The Lively German and I were conversing the other day when I, as occasionally happens, produced something notable in German. Although he questioned my meaning, I wasn't sure it was an error. The large amount of schnapps we had consumed had, as usual, loosened up my mind quite a bit. I don't remember the exact context but I do remember using Besetzerin (from besetzen, to occupy) as opposed to Besizterin (from besitzen, to own), in reference to my own body.

English has of course neither the ability to play with gender (in German I'm using the female form of the word), nor such an intriguing single-letter difference. This is what etymonline.com, my favorite etymology dictionary, has to say: *Occupy, Latin occupare "take over, seize, possess, occupy," from ob "over" + intensive form of capere "to grasp, seize". *Own, Old English agen "one's own," lit. "possessed by," from Proto-Germanic, aigana- "possessed, owned".Interestingly, in my schizophrenic mother tongue [shall we be Latin-based or shall we be Germanic?], the words don't even come from the same roots.

The following day, it struck me that most people probably feel much more a part of, or even wedded to, their bodies than I. My family is phenotypically quite odd; many of my relatives are physically unattractive people, but then on occasion there is one who seems to have stolen the entire allotment of good-looking genes for an entire generation. I'm one of them. I've written before about the uneasy relationship I have with this body of mine (see here). With every year that passes, as I experience only a fraction of the aging that I by all rights should be going through, I feel less and less comfortable with it. Perhaps this explains why I feel like I occupy this body instead of owning it.

Although I've been the longest and most present occupier (the one who holds the keys), many others have roamed its labyrinths. I try to be selective about the visitors, but tend toward egalitarian and hospitable impulses. And so the visitors span nearly all social classes and numerous nationalities. Even I have the feeling that I haven't seen the whole of it; I roam endlessly as if in a dream, poking around among bricked-up dead-end passageways, wringing my hands over the rooms where the keys have long ago gone missing.

Human Nature

2011-11-10T18:58:00.000+01:00

My father, having neither the talent of a theoretical physicist, nor the inclination to contribute to a field that brought us the atom bomb, ended up a college physics teacher and film reviewer. He started with physics teaching films, and I have happy pre-adolescent memories of putting up the screen as my father threaded the 35 mm film projector in our living room. As I approached puberty, he shifted focus to films on war and peace, producing two definitive guides during the Reagan years. I started blogging about four years ago, at the same age as when he produced the first guide; his second came at my current age. It was a time fraught with nuclear terror: the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists' famous doomsday clock marking the imminent danger of world annihilation.

How the world has changed in the single generation between him and me! Our doomsday of the decade is global warming, a challenge we may find much less easy to disarm. The disaster of the post-agricultural human animal shadows our every move: strife and destruction define our hugely overpopulated societies. The post-agricultural population boom and its attendant loss of tribe and ever-dwindling sense of personal accountability and responsibility, well, it's enough to drive me to despair. How did we come so quickly to this end, after only a few paltry thousand years of development?

Humans, being simplistic creatures, look for simplistic explanations. But the topic I've chosen for today, our capacity for evil, is anything but simple. We can all agree on the evilness of the usual genocidal maniacs that are always trotted out, mostly likely due to the sheer numbers of people they disposed of. But it's not quite that simple, is it, because my ex, with his usual perception, quotes Stalin: "one man's murder is a tragedy but one hundred thousand is a statistic." Many say Stalin killed even more than Hitler but thoughts of Stalin just don't seem to make the blood of the average detached observer boil. Political exiles slowly starving in a place most of us find impossible to picture, the Russian Gulag, well, it's just not as visceral as the images we all carry with us, of truckloads of skin and bones during the Holocaust, or the piles of skulls from Idi Amin's Uganda.

The images of victims of various genocides, napalm, carpet bombings and the A-bomb form for me an endless collage of adolescent memory. But the most crystal clear of all is my image of a teenaged Katchita sitting in a darkened living room with her beloved father, a mature man of 40-plus, tears running down his face, as he screens the episode of The Ascent of Man where Bronowski, a Polish-German-American Jew who lost many of his relatives at Auschwitz, visits the camp. Nicely dressed in a dark suit and dress shoes, he slowly wades into one of the ponds at Auschwitz where his relatives were gassed. As he reflects on the abuse of power, he crouches down, thrusts his hands into the water and brings up the muck from the bottom, rich humic matter fed by all those ashes from all those ovens. In the 30-some years since, I have never seen a grown man come so close to being reduced to sobbing.

My friend Bob probably suffered about as much as one can, but, I hope, no longer than a few short hours. His children are still suffering, and their suffering is substantial and probably will be prolonged. And Bob's friends are suffering though our suffering is certainly not at the same level nor will it be as prolonged as his children's. I can ask myself, do I feel as sick at heart about what was done to Bob as I do about what was done by Pol Pot? It's a tough question, because the face of my friend is there with me when I start awake in the middle of the night but the rest are images from a past that largely predates me. During the second Iraq war, however, I remember the same night terrors, the waking, knowing my government was murdering innocent civilians and there was nothing I could do about it. It was Al-Jeezera that gave us the images of the wounded and dying children that humanized the evil we were committing. In contrast, such images were absent from Rwanda, the first genocide of my adult life, probably the most rapid and occult in history.

If evil is, definitionally, the intentional infliction of prolonged and intense human suffering, then I believe our concept of evil is primarily about the images rather than the numbers. It's about fates that we can viscerally imagine at the personal level, that we feel in our entrails. Torture. Violent rape. Cruel abuse of the weak and defenseless. Humiliation and powerlessness coupled with stark fear. Perhaps evil has more than anything to do with the imagination of the survivors and their need to tell the tale. It is, quite simply, something so vivid and so visceral that they, and those who hear them, can never be free of it.

Día de los Muertos

2011-11-01T21:04:00.000+01:00

Today was the Day of the Dead, which is an important day in all of Latinamerica and of course Spain. People in Mexico create elaborate shrines, in Nicaragua flock to the cemeteries to beautify the graves of their departed, and in Spain, party all night long (not that that's particularly different than any other holiday in Spain, of course). I happen to be in Berlin, with its paucity of Catholic churches. But the historic Marienkirche in Alexanderplatz, which somehow survived both World War II and the DDR, has real votive candles for the public to light and that's where I ended up today.

I lit a candle for Bob who was brutally murdered in Ensenada two weeks ago; I think he would have appreciated the gesture. The tourists, in contrast, didn't seem to understand what the nice-looking middle-aged woman was doing kneeling in one of the pews off to the side, crying into her hands on a Tuesday afternoon. I attributed it to their lack of culture, don't you know.

Since losing Bob, it's been difficult to think about much more than the question of evil. It's a debate in which I've long engaged: trying to pin down the thin line between true evil (so intangible and difficult to define) and personal weakness (that I often think, in its tired banality, causes as much harm to others). There's no doubt that what was done to Bob was truly evil, but it was evil on a pedestrian scale, without meaning or significance. In Germany of course one always and forever thinks about the quintessential evil of Hitler, and then the German people and their collaboration. A book that strongly affected me, again recommended by my ex, is Hans Fallada's Jeder Stirbt Fur Sich Allein (Every Man Dies Alone). There is always some way to resist evil, however small.

Tonight I remember two imperfect men who resisted as best they could, consistently, clear-headedly and actively. My father who died at home twenty years ago, with my mother and me at his side. And Bob whose cruel death will never supplant the example he set for the rest of us. Rest in peace, queridos míos.

The Waiting Game

2011-10-01T18:31:00.012+02:00

I've already described how I use this blog as a screening tool; any man that I meet who speaks English (and most that I meet on-line do) immediately receives this link. It allows me to weed out the ones who are afraid of my sort of alpha female. What it and every other screening tool cannot, of course, do, is screen for those who are sorely mistaken about themselves. Meaning I still get men who swear they are attracted to strong, smart women but then can't ever seem to follow through. The older I get, of course, more I up my estimate of the percentage of humans out there who are, indeed, sorely mistaken about themselves. But as I so optimistically concluded this spring, it's really not their fault. [After all, they haven't read Sex at Dawn (during my recent trip back to the U.S., I simply had to pick up another couple of copies to pass around).] It's my job, then, to screen out the seriously deluded (see here for some more important tips). And I have to say, energy level is almost an infallible indicator.

Think back, if you will, on all the times someone seemed to show interest in you and then things just didn't work out. That let's-meet-for-coffee date somehow never materialized or the person sort of dropped out of sight via Email or you had a date or two then never quite got back together. It's not necessarily that you were mistaken about an initial spark, it's just that one side or the other just didn't provide sufficient oxygen or fuel for that spark to catch flame. I get that a lot with Latino and Mediterranean men, particularly in Europe, which is the opposite of how things were in Latinamerica (super-charged energy firing constantly at me). In Spain, well, I'll never be bajita y morenita, which is really the only way a woman can be; women who are tall and fair like me might just as well be extraterrestrials. We're good for one date ("hey, guys, you'll never believe what I met, face-to-face"), but then it's just really best for the natives that our spaceships fly on to the next star system. On the other hand, we have Germany, where Latin men face such a glut of women dying to be with them that they, poor dears, have no incentive whatsoever to behave decently. And sadly, they just don't.

It's now time to introduce a brief walk-on in my blog's cast of characters. We'll call him Wheelchair Guy as I found him on Berlin's CL looking for just that, a wheelchair-bound woman. As this was one of the weirdest kinks I'd found yet (and I do like to collect kinks), I just had to write him. Turns out he's well attuned to the value of the older woman, as are so many of the younger men I seem to run into these days. But it would seem that he hasn't grasped that we're not exactly inclined to play the waiting game...

After energetically writing me long well-thought-out Emails for several weeks back in May, presumably as a prelude to meeting up in June in Berlin, Wheelchair Guy dropped out of sight for four months, including not answering two Email inquiries from me as to whether he'd lost interest. He just got back to Berlin after all this time, or so he says, but still can't seem to organize himself to see me. He's just so, well, you know, BUSYYYYYY. Uggghhh. There is no doubt in my mind that I'm much happier blogging the case of Wheelchair Guy here in the comfort of the Lair where I don't have to interact with anyone at all.

I asked my ex, who is always a font of odd bits of knowledge and can be counted on to spout a helpful statistic when a woman most needs it, what is up with this game of making people wait? It always seems like such a power trip to me (and sadly I think women may engage in it even more than men). His response: you have to consider that one quarter of women have been sexually abused or mistreated; reticence and indecision is perfectly understandable. Fine, but what's so many men's excuse? To which he replied, "they're not that into you", about which, of course, he's perfectly right.

I prefer to express it in terms of energy; when the energy's there, everything just flows. The first date quickly becomes a second and possibly a third and the energy's so good that you just do what, as the Spanish say, happens naturally between a man and a woman. The only problem here is that (sigh) good energy at my advanced age is so, so hard to find. I have to admit that it just occurred to this odd mind of mine to wonder where one might rent a wheelchair in Berlin. But of course I'm just not that desperate.

The Heartland

2011-09-21T15:53:00.018+02:00

This month saw a reprise of the Travel Hell 2010, on a lightning-quick trip back to the U.S. due to family illness, which I combined with a slight detour to Oklahoma. Leaving Germany I was scheduled on two Lufthansa flights, which managed not one but two equipment failures, meaning I got to wait an extra four hours in Düsseldorf. Not an auspicious start, but a cakewalk compared to my return, where it turned out Lufthansa had managed a take-over (as in hostile) of my original ticket with United, apparently turning it into a one-way, meaning they canceled my return. Which of course I didn't discover until the night before I was due to fly back. I had to wait 8 extra hours in Denver after I finally got everything straightened out (which entailed some additional 3 hours on the phone plus an extra half-hour in the airport getting sent around to various partner airlines who refused me boarding). Do you suppose Lufthansa did anything? Like offer me business class? Or even a lousy meal? Why no.

These big airline partnerships such as Star Alliance or SkyTeam are a great way to evade all accountability toward clients -- it's always the other airline's fault. So what did I do during those 8 hours I spent waiting for my flight? I called my credit card to initiate a dispute of the original ticket charge, which cost me a cool $1400. They call it non-delivery of service. After setting out to the airport at 7 AM Denver time, I finally got home in Berlin at the equivalent of 8 AM the next day. This on a routing that should have taken only 14 hours (DEN to BER). Unadulterated travel hell.

Well now, then there's the matter of what I was doing in Oklahoma. A special someone asked me twice if I wanted to go; he later claimed it was a dare. But as a prelude to visiting my family in Colorado I decided to stop by to see him (and raise him one)... Oklahoma City was interesting in a one-of-the-worst-hell-holes-I've-ever-been sort of way. No stranger to the South, having studied in North Carolina, I have to wonder if anyone does racist redneck better than Okies. There seems to be a special added Wild-West component; one gets the impression lynchin' would be far too much effort when there's always a rifle within easy reach... Meeting the family, however, simply did not match up to meeting my ex's (picture methadone-nodding evangelical nudists, well, it defies description but his sister's blackened necrotic veins are something I'll never forget). The big pow-wow of the main part of the clan in a tiny town just short of the panhandle involved vehicles peeling into the parking lot of the local diner from all directions virtually simultaneously; word had gotten out right quick about who was back in town. If it hadn't been for the jet-lag dragging my eyelids down, with the clock ticking past 7 then 7:30 PM as I was regaled with the news that Billy Joe was playing down at the local fairgrounds and the Avon catalog had some great sales on lip gloss, well, I think I'd have given myself an A+. As it was I have to say it was at least an A-. I'd gone prepared to spread layers of nice like thick Crisco frosting, and it appears that I was said to be the most normal of all the women he'd taken "home". He and I both know that I'm probably the most abnormal, but of course I decided early on in life not to reveal outward signs to mere mortals.

In a stunning double-header, I picked up 2 new states to match my obsessive, travel-by-list mother (who maintains that Mallorca is a separate country she's visited in Europe). While at her house I crossed it off the post-it tally on her world map; she literally had a fit. The spike in her blood pressure practically did her in right then and there as I told her that I believe I'm qualified to say, as a RESIDENT OF THE VERY COUNTRY she's trying to divide in two, that MALLORCA simply does not count! Anyway, she had tallied 49 U.S. states for herself and counted 47 for me; Oklahoma was one and since I found myself 14 miles from the Kansas border, I convinced that special someone to drive me up to knock out another one. I think I'm only missing Arkansas now...and I certainly hope it stays that way.

The Moviegoer (Reprise)

2011-08-21T21:49:00.009+02:00

Here in Berlin I'm house-sitting for the Pirate during part of his extended visit back "home". In browsing his bookshelf in detail, I found Querelle, which set off an entire cascade of nostalgia. I remember seeing that film as I first went off on my own (to live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) at the tender age of 17. It was a hot-bed of resistance to the racist conservatism of the state that, election-after-election, returned the racist rabid anti-communist Jesse Holmes to the U.S. Senate. Chapel Hill was filled with punks, communists, queers and activists of all colors. Never much of a joiner, but rather an enthusiastic and energetic participant, I bounced eclectically between campaigns and crusades, whose breadth and diversity helped me define the kind-and-gentle anarchy that came to characterize my socio-political outlook. I spent as much of the rest of my time in the U.S. that I could in such enclaves: Ithaca, New York, West Los Angeles, Berkeley/Oakland, avoiding the vast American mid-section like a plague.

But let me get back to waxing nostalgic about film. Chapel Hill had an art film theater, called the Carolina Theater, that I haunted that first summer when I knew next to no one there. Coming from a shit town in northern Pennsylvania with a single-screen theater whose most memorable fare was the Bad News Bears, I was, quite simply, enchanted. The Carolina seems, sadly, to have closed in 2005; this report indicates it's been replaced by that bastion of mediocre homogeneity, The Gap store. It's been nearly 30 years now, and the movies I remember from then, according to IMDB, are scattered through the period of a year, such that I couldn't have seen them in just one summer. But memory is like that, it distills and intensifies, such that in my mind, in the summer of 1983, I saw Fassbinder's Querelle, Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay in The Dresser.

Walking into The Carolina for an afternoon matinee anytime I damn well pleased was the purest expression of my new-found adult-hood, hundreds of miles away from my overbearing mother. It was freedom personified. To this day, leaving a theater and walking into the light of day with a foreign film still playing in my head, gives me a feeling nearly as delicious as that beautiful Carolina summer when I was so fresh and young and there was everything to discover.

Girlfriend Material

2011-07-24T23:05:00.008+02:00

Are you aware, dear readers, that not only is there research aplenty showing that we women are measurably more attractive when we are ovulating (see this fascinating article) -- breasts firm and lift, waists narrow and faces glow -- but we also engage in behaviors that range from dressing more provocatively to being careless about safe sex? At this very moment, I'm contemplating a careful scientific study to measure the likelihood a woman ends up in a nightclub the two or three days she's ovulating as opposed to spending her period eating ice cream and watching Desperate Housewives reruns.

Last year a lover of mine told me women could be divided into girlfriend material or something that I understood to be the opposite (shall we say, ahem, boffing material?) . . . ! I asked him exactly how he could tell and he said, "just look at how she's dressed." To a woman (or at least this woman), that sounds so patently absurd that I can almost feel a rant coming on.

But I'm going to suppress the urge and finally introduce a book, Sex at Dawn, that I first gobbled up when back in the Bay Area last October. It may very well be one of the most important books of the century, although it's dangerous to say so only 11 years into a new one. It's important to emphasis that I'm basing this judgment on the authors' ideas alone, as it's sadly written in a hyped American vernacular style that makes me shudder to think about what form translation into any other language/culture would take.

If you take my recommendation, then, please do your best to filter out all the unfortunate references to American pop culture and think about the real meat of the message. It's important, so important that I finally feel like there's a book out there that does what The Ethical Slut and Open Marriage just didn't do for me. It emphasizes that we humans actually don't really have a choice; that it's not just some of us choosing to be bounders or cads, loose or slutty. On the contrary, we as humans are designed to be unapologetically non-monogamous, promiscuously sharing everything we have, including our bodies.

When I despair of how far off-track we have gotten (girlfriend material, indeed!), I now have an intellectual space to which I can repair. I can remind myself that it's not only a good thing to want sex, but it's an important way for me to build bonds of mutual support with the people who matter to me, who represent my community. And when These Men don't understand that I am happy to give freely but that in return I expect them to behave as responsible members of this community, it helps to remind myself that I'm part of an exclusive group of intellectuals who realize that this species has apocalyptically, irredeemably lost its way. We've evolved ourselves straight into our own private hell.

Well I, for one, intend to spend the rest of my time in this hell of ours fighting to be the minx, harridan, Jezebel, temptress and vixen, as well as the paragon, madonna and goddess that millions of years of human evolution intended me to be. The paperback version of Sex at Dawn is hot off the presses with newly added material, my ex informs me. As both of my hardback copies seem to be perpetually loaned out, I'm putting in my order for the paperback, and it's staying on my bedside table, to be consulted and quoted whenever one of These Men tries to make me feel bad about my (and Mother) Nature.

Einmal ist Keinmal

2011-05-29T10:02:00.014+02:00

My ex recently pointed out to me that I'd never read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, although of course I saw the film long ago. I picked it up at East of Eden the last time I was in Berlin. Perhaps the most famous quote is Kundera's interpretation of this German proverb, Einmal ist Keinmal. He wrote, “[w]hat happens but once, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”

I suddenly realized that this perfectly describes my longing for the fourth dimension. In a couple of short months I'll mark the twentieth anniversary of my father's death. These have been two decades of relentless change, a tireless quest to cheat time. There are many ways to do so, of course, by changing countries, whole continents, languages or even entire identities.

Time travelers like myself mark our true ages only internally. To all outward appearances we are years younger. In the two decades I've spent doing this, I've only apparently aged one. It's exhausting, though, and at times I have the sense that I will soon come face-to-face with the washed-up, wrinkled old woman who I should, by all rights, be well on my way to becoming. For now, though, I'm ovulating, and the mirror reflects a glow of beauty from years past, that sometimes still takes me by surprise. The necrotic cynicism that is so apparent to me there inside my head, falls away for an instant and I think, hey, Katchita, sometimes you really do somehow manage to pull it off.

Berlin, dahling, I will be back in your arms in a few short days, and together we will be the forever young, the forever beautiful, of those who never stop reinventing ourselves.

All Woman

2011-05-23T21:20:00.008+02:00

My dears, I am relieved to report that I saw the most spectacular female ass in the world again in the shower two weeks later and can declare that I have returned definitively to female-dom! That means I looked at it appraisingly, thinking, not bad, definitely superior to mine, but wait, isn't that a bit of cellulite I see there...? I guarantee that the previous time I did not see anything but perfection -- I was as close as I will ever be to penile-bearing.

My conclusion? It's really a horror sometimes, to have been socialized as a woman -- think of how terribly critical we are of our bodies. But could it be, in stark contrast, that men really do see us, at least at the beginning, as perfectly compelling, seductive creatures? Wouldn't that just be fab?!? I've spoken twice since the testosterone affair to she who possesses the greatest female ass and she is really a sweetie. Even still, I would have no idea whatsoever how to approach her... and at least for the time being, I have discarded that idea completely.

At any rate, given that my hormones were back in line with reality but my brain was in its customary state of bitingly sharp wittiness, I'll share with you the greatest hits of my recent Craigslist post (in Madrid), my first, I'd say, in at least two years. I'd rather given it up, and only occasionally respond to top-notch ads in Berlin, of which, surprisingly, there were THREE this spring. Three, imagine that.

I'm quite frankly looking for someone capable of sustaining a primarily sexual relationship for more than the 20 minutes it takes a typical indigenous specimen, drunk off his ass, to complete his business during his monthly (as finances permit) one-night stand. Implicit in this is your ability to please a woman, to open yourself up sexually, to not run away after a handful of encounters when you see that I have a great deal of psychological and intellectual depth, am at least as experienced as you and am dangerously good at pleasing men who are good at pleasing me. PLEASE abstain: Spaniards, smokers, cheaters, little boys who still need their mamas, premature ejaculators, misogynists, anyone who doesn't live within Madrid Capital or anyone whose first impulse would be to send a cock-shot.

Unbelievably, I received about 10 responses before taking down the ad, only one of which was negative. And one of them has, shall we say, already (ahem) clicked. Testosterone, endorphins and ocytocin are once again coursing through my bloodstream. Life has resumed its Technicolor cast, and I'm back on course, cheating society.

Penis Envy

2011-05-20T10:33:00.013+02:00

There has been no doubt in my mind since my early thirties that I suffer from a serious case of Freud's most famous malaise. One of my favorite performances (most of which are given to an audience of one), is to lament that I was not born a man. Masculine audience members, nearly without fail, look at me sideways as if I've just expressed a desire to grow gills and live under the sea. And then they tell me I'm crazy, I'm far too much woman. But of course the point is I'd much rather be far too much man, and be able to operate in this world with the impunity of the penile-bearing. To always have a point of reference, a built-in compass showing me the way. Something I could give a pet name to, and fondle and check on the whole day long. It seems like heaven.
Further reflection, of course, leads me to the problem that if I were a heterosexual male, I'd have to deal with women: possibly even stooping to wheedling to try to convince them (baby, baby, please, baby, baby) -- HORRORS! That's just not something I'd want to engage in. So undoubtedly if I had my choice, I'd be a homosexual man. That has the huge ancillary advantage of not having to cede the moral advantage that comes with being a member of an oppressed group, which I would find to be the strongest down-side of a change in gender.

Please, past, present and future lovers, do not be alarmed! I'm definitely not saying I'm on the verge of a sex-change operation, although it is something I do find quite interesting (inquiring minds and all). I'm not a homosexual man trapped in the body of a woman, no. I'm a woman who's sick of all our tired old gender roles.

When I rolled out this performance one more time over drinks at the Rote Harfe on my last visit to Berlin, The Director, typical of him, didn't respond in anything like the usual way. He instead asked me, "But Katchita, isn't that what you do, after all? Take what you want from both genders?" He was well into the giggly phase that comes with his second half-liter of beer, but I'd only had one ouzo and was sufficiently possessed of my senses that my jaw dropped in admiring wonder. He'd hit the nail completely on the head; it's true, I refuse to be railroaded into anything approaching a traditional female role and I'm damned if I'm going to forgo most of the power men get to enjoy. But the penis, that tangible talisman of virility, that center of the universe, well, it's just sadly, acutely, absent.

Now What Do I Do??

2011-05-15T09:50:00.011+02:00

So much sniggering about what happens to men in their mid-forties does become tiresome, doesn't it, my pretties? They are, after all, going through the XY equivalent of the hormonal roller-coaster that we women face on the downward slope toward 50. They need the luscious seductive curves of young fertile women (or red convertibles, as the case may be) to give their flagging testosterone levels a momentary lift. And if testosterone is indeed the hormone of desire, then who can blame them for their search for some way, any way, to pump it up? Because as I can personally testify, during the harrowing downs of my current roller-coaster ride, life can seem flat and dull in a way that I've never before experienced.

I really have no other explanation for my experience the other day (see below), than that it triggered a palpable release of testosterone. It seemed like I could feel it pulsing through my bloodstream. Could testosterone be the ultimate high? I doubt it. But no one ever accused me a being a slacker in the intrepid category. So as of this month I'll be launching my newest campaign: to find a way, somehow, to have regular sex, here in the wilds of macho-landia. Because I can't be constantly running off to "sexless" Berlin for sex, now can I? That's just not in keeping with the nature of this blog... not to mention how bad it is for the environment.

So hmmm, what will it be? Regular sessions with the Ice Prince, he who is always hard and never talks back, do tend to lose their appeal after several months straight. I suppose I could do my best to eschew heterosexuality at this advanced age (back in school we called them political lesbians), but how would the real lesbians feel about that?? Bisexuality was the "in" thing in the Bay Area in the 00's; better late than never, I suppose. To maintain some penile presence, I could become the hot-bi-babe for some bored couple afflicted with the seven-year itch.

But I think the best would be to arrange something like my friend L. has -- a same-time-next-week sort of thing where she knows next to nothing about his life nor he about hers -- purely sex, no complications. Sounds sort of like heaven, doesn't it? I had a friend once who would always lament that she wished she could duct tape their mouths shut. But really, with my new-found sympathy for men, I no longer have any need for such overly generalized misandrous musings. And I cannot allow myself to give up; if *I* exist, then somewhere out there must be a handful of equally smart iconoclastic men who would be my match, right?

In the meantime I'll hold off on hitting the testosterone pills when the world becomes too gray and unappealing to bear. I shudder to think of the disconcerting side effects they could cause...

I Finally Figured Out What's Wrong

2011-05-07T14:11:00.008+02:00

Odd, unpredictable things happen to women my age, things that feel like some sort of special torture designed for those of us cursed with belonging to the "fairer" sex (as if the previous 30+ years of monthly anguish we've already had to undergo hasn't been sufficient). In a flash today, while writing to one of my newest Craigslist Berlin prospects, it all came to me. First you have to listen to this episode of This American Life (starting at about 15:20) from nearly ten years ago.

Just as the woman-to-man points out, my own experience as a woman had previously been that the narrative of sexuality is largely verbal (ranging from him whispering sweet nothings in my ear to enjoying literotica). In contrast, I've always known men's is visual, and in the interest of my extensive social research into the penile-bearing, I've sampled a wide range of porn. Why the difference? Well, it's testosterone, my darlings. I'm very fond of quoting the line from this interview where the W2M describes how testosterone injections changed everyday life into a series of vivid streaming pornographic images. It's fun to ask lovers to describe them every now and then.

For the last two or three years, I've experienced a notable increase in said images: triple-X flashes that suddenly and unpredictably seem to suffuse my entire brain. But Tuesday was special because an ordinary weekly occurrence suddenly exploded into something completely orthogonal to my normal sexual sensibility. I was showering at the pool when across the shower room I spotted the most perfect female ass I have ever seen, or so it seemed at the time, and I'm no stranger to women's locker rooms! She was taking her own sweet time applying shampoo to her long wavy dark hair and slowly and sensually sudsing it, moving her hands through it, working the suds around. It seemed suddenly like I was jolted into a time warp of sheer lust without beginning or end. I had the clearest vision of spreading those perfect half moons apart and (ahem)... [the rest of this image, being completely incompatible with the non-pornographic nature of my writing, is left to your imagination].

She turned around to rinse out the soap and I was brought up short by the lamentably all-too-common pubic landing strip she sported. But then she rotated once again and there were those perfect lobes and a wave of lust crashed through me and I thought I would just die if I couldn't drop to my knees under the water flowing over her and [remainder strictly censored]...

In a moment of clear-headed analysis, I googled testosterone and pre-menopause and found, unsurprisingly, that testosterone levels can become unpredictable or even rise in some women. Although for over three years I've ascribed my heightened sexuality to the fact that I have so much less opportunity here than I did back in the good old New World, in truth I can't say this whole thing wouldn't have happened anyway, courtesy of testosterone.

So, my dears, this week, I found out with perfect certainty what it is to be male. . . And my guess is that that changes everything.

Top Ten for '10

2011-05-01T22:38:00.010+02:00

There is a definite silver lining to going through one of my periods of chastity. And that is film, Film, FILM. I noticed that up till now, four months into the year, I've already seen half as many films as last year. Swearing off "dating" gives me so much more luscious time to not only visit the alternate realities that film gives me, but it also saves me oh so much frustration!

I thought for most of the year that 2010 was really bad for film, but I'm seeing that it was just a year in which good films were slow to arrive to where I needed to see them. So it's time, finally, to do a top-10 list, while noting that many of the films in my 2011 list were actually released in 2010.

Here they are, representing 8 countries and 3 continents (none from Latinamerica this year). There's no particular order, except that Submarino is hands down my number one. Dane Thomas Vinterberg is truly a master of the dark side of the human psyche. There two more (!) from Denmark, a country that produces relatively little film but of tremendously high quality on average. And there are three very tough, very dynamic films from Africa, including the first feature-length film from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Submarino
Winter's Bone
Hævnen (In a Better World)
Ehky ya Scheherazade (Tell Me a Story)
State of Violence
Viva Riva!
Banksy: Exit Through the Gift Shop
We Were Here
Des Hommes et Dieux (Of Gods and Men)

From the Mouths of Babes

2011-04-28T20:23:00.001+02:00

I have it straight from a 27-year-old, the topic being mature women:

"They are like a nice glass of whiskey, without any ice... And younger ones are like frappuccino with lots of chocolate sauce and cream and all that nonsense stuff on it."

Truer words were never spoken: there's something for everyone out there! Which is really quite nice, if you think about it.

And yes, I admit it, I've been trolling Craig's List again. Only briefly. But then it only ever takes a few deft flicks of the wrist to get me into trouble...

Chastity

2011-04-23T10:28:00.011+02:00

Most dictionaries of name origin agree that mine derives from the Greek katharos, meaning pure. They go on to note, however, that there is some doubt as to whether the source instead may have been aikia meaning torture. Finally, there is a possible relation to Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic. Saint Aikaterina of fourth-century Alexandria was one of the earliest recorded with this name; she was born a "pagan" but died a Christian martyr. Depending on my mood, I could certainly think of my life as magical and of myself as a goddess, but there are definitely times when it is, well, pure torture! Right now, it's the purity angle that I'm working the hardest.

Whenever I go through periods of celibacy induced by the extreme despair brought on by the behavior of These Men (plus spending so much of the winter in gloomy Berlin, which nicely lowers my sex drive), it works well to visit pristine mountain towns on the Camino de Santiago where I can easily picture ascetics engaging in extended bouts of self-flagellation. I devoutly cross myself with holy water while lighting candles to my dear departed, picturing them looking down on me from heaven, content with this new leaf that I've turned over. [I do, naturally, instead of the recommended euro coin, put in 10 cents because I'm damned if the Catholic Church will profit from this pilgrim! A 10-cent coin launched into the collection box with conviction and a good flick of the wrist will resonate just as well as one euro.]

I'll conclude this post by regaling my readers with a list of some of my favorite synonyms: austere, celibate, clean, continent, controlled, decent, decorous, immaculate, innocent, inviolate, modest, proper, prudish, quiet, refined, restrained, simple, spotless, stainless, subdued, unaffected, unblemished, uncontaminated, undefiled, unstained, unsullied, unwed, vestal, virginal, virtuous, wholesome. Santa Katchita is back to wish you all an Easter full of appropriately heavenly thoughts.

Best Berlinale So Far

2011-02-22T00:03:00.010+01:00

It was a very good Berlinale year; about mid-way through, I realized I was virtually incapable of picking a bad film, so I rode the wave all the way to the end. Five-years' experience helps a great deal with translating into reality the universally glowing Berlinale film synopses (written, after all, by the very selection committees that choose the films). For example, I know that "contemplative" or "reflective" means the subtitles will put you to sleep within half an hour as you sit in a packed theater in your long underwear and thick boots (requisite for Berlin in February). "Experimental" is another tricky one; good-experimental means vanguard, edgy, just how I like film to be. But bad-experimental means an assault on the audience, of which I always give certain of Peter Greenaway's over-the-top oeuvre as my primary example.

I could have reached my goal of seeing 20 films this year, as I had a significant gap on the last Saturday afternoon. But there was nothing that inspired me, and I was looking at three films back-to-back the following day (Kinotag). So I didn't force it. Out of the 19 total I saw, there was only one film for which my screening techniques broke down; Traumfabrik Kabul just didn't live up to its subject matter -- a Kabul policewoman who made and starred in feminist action movies. Great premise but my head was nodding by the first half-hour in the stuffy back row of a packed Delphi Filmpalast.

So, what was the best of so many good films? Made in Poland got a lot of hype but I found the director's Q&A to be more interesting than the film, which he had pared from a color feature film of over two hours to a spare 90-minute black-and-white where the most interesting part was the numerous chapter titles, a la von Trier. He used a sort of talk-radio approach to the sound as the titles flashed briefly on the screen, with rabid (anti-gay, anti-immigrant, neo-Nazi, etc.) sound-bites reminiscent the worst of American talk radio. The director's comments on YouTube, Canon 5D or 7C cameras and how necessary it is to keep up with what the young people are doing with them were fascinating. Think of how the work of the Dogme movement (which of course has been one of the most important influences on post-modern film) would have looked if shot today...

I hesitate to let the secret out of the bag but the Generation 14+ section often has interesting selections, plus the tickets are also much cheaper than the usual films. If there is any sex involved, however (and few films these days leave out sex), one has to endure sniggering teenagers vibrating with sexual frustration. So go prepared to filter out the background noise. Denmark impressed me this year (but then, Danish film nearly always does), with two very good entries in Gen 14+. Skyskraber was one of the best films I saw in the entire festival -- a simply charming coming-of-age story of two misfits trapped in a rural Danish town in thrall to its sadistic mayor. In contrast, Frit Fald provided a poignant treatment of the city girl obliged to grow up far too quickly.

We Were Here was the best documentary; the only thing I didn't like about it was its uninspired title. I went into it with purposefully lowered expectations because I know one of the main participants. It's not usual that a documentary focus this well on such a complex and dynamic subject. But I was captivated by the in-depth treatment of the five individuals which the filmmaker chose to construct his careful history of this difficult time. It won a 3rd prize from the Panorama audience and I have to say on a personal note: Daniel, dahling, you are a star.

Berlinale V - Midpoint Debriefing

2011-02-15T23:17:00.005+01:00

Yes, folks, it's my fifth straight year, which makes me a real Berlinale pro. I'm at the middle-point already, have seen 9 films and think I'll finally meet my goal of a total of 20. The fact that this year practically everything is subtitled in English is helping somewhat, as my German still isn't good enough to follow German subtitles, which used to represent half of the screenings. However, this change also means the films are accessible to many more festival goers and the ticket lines reflect this; they are absolutely fierce this year.

2011 so far has been a great Berlinale year. The Devil's Double is a film that is both technically fascinating and wonderfully gripping. Viva Riva is the first Congolese feature film ever and has great energy. For those who love to look at beautiful French women, the captivating Ludivine Sagnier and Manie Malone, respectively, star in these two films, although both are sadly far too made-up. I'm predicting the first will hit commercial theaters big and the second might just make it as well, but we'll have to see.

For something a bit less flashy, I was very impressed with the Albanian film Amnistia, which is tightly, subtly plotted and carries the audience along to a powerful and surprising conclusion. Tomboy offered an interesting treatment of gender identity; director Céline Sciamma got some amazing performances out of child actors 10 years or younger. Nearly everything I've seen has been good and there are still 5 days left. Delicious!

Leave it to the Brits

2011-01-31T12:53:00.003+01:00

Now, everybody, how's this for writing?

Louise: Dunno if I want to get married but I wouldn't say no to a proper relationship.
Sophie: What is a proper relationship?
Louise: Living with someone who talks to ya after they've bonked ya.

[From Mike Leigh's Naked.]

"I took my time, though, you always do with new fanny. What I usually do with a new bird is hole up with them for a weekend and spoil them with loads of foreplay, champagne, takeaways and undivided attention to all the preposterous shite they drivel. That usually does the trick for getting into them on a casual basis for months. The best thing to do is to give a new bird the very best possible time, and then she knows you have the capacity to do that again and she's always looking inwards blaming herself for not being able to reactivate that passion in you. The best lovers ken that you only need tae be a good lover once..."

[From Filth by Irvine Welsh, the author of Trainspotting.]

Inquiring Minds

2011-01-19T11:01:00.008+01:00

You'd be simply amazed, dear readers, at how my technical German is improving. I could grasp almost all of this fascinating Der Spiegel article entitled [drumroll] Allergic to their Own Sperm! Na ja, I admit the high titillation factor had me speed-reading das Deutsch. Working back to the original source I found this. The title of the syndrome, Postorgasmic Illness Syndrome, is simply too delicious to let pass.

Poets and Prophets or Porsches and Pretty Boys?

2010-12-31T18:38:00.010+01:00

There was a time in my life, in Los Angeles, I suppose, when the arm of some famous movie producer is where I well could have ended up, dripping in jewels, with enough shoes to fill up the artfully designed pool in the backyard. I've been paraded down the main drag of Berlin in the sweetest little black Mercedes convertible and wisked out of muggy Madrid in a BMW on a fast track to the Spanish North Coast. But I soon dispatched the respective owners of those cars, as I have the few pretty boys with whom I've dallied, more than anything, in the spirit of social research.

In my 20s, I used to dream of disfiguring accidents that would rid me of this ridiculously fresh apple-pie face and incongruous bombshell of a body that have absolutely nothing to do with the strange creature that inhabits my head. In my 30s I came to some sort of uneasy truce with my looks, convinced they wouldn't last much longer. Well into my 40s, I'm still waiting for them to fade, because I'll tell you, this forever-young appearance is getting to be a real drag.

It's the last night of a pretty awful year, and what did my in-box have waiting for me today? I quote: "for gods sake! you could life [sic] like a queen and have a bunch of sporty guys right in your bed. you, like most women, don't realise the power you have. alone that perfect pair of tits can get you a wealthy guy and a mercedes sports car. drop the fucking morals and enjoy life."

Sigh. Is there anything I care less about than cars? So instead of the Hollywood glitterati, it was the poets and freaks in the West LA literary scene that I ended up with. After we headed north to the Bay Area, I was fond of vamping at parties, declaring I'd squandered my best years on my ex. But I think not somehow, just as I think these four years on my own in Europe have represented a much-needed journey for me. I seem to hear ever more clearly the prophets calling my name.

Best Yellow Curry in Berlin

2010-12-27T00:16:00.007+01:00

It exists, really it does, in two places that serve something reminiscent of the fare in Amsterdam's famous Indonesian district where yellow curry abounds. Both of the places I've found in Berlin are Asian fusion restaurants: something that works really, really well in the Bay Area, where a couple of months ago I was slaking the hunger for Asian food I'd built up over the last year. One has to be very, very careful about Asian food in Europe (think of Szechwan or North Indian cuisine stripped of all of their fire), and the mere idea of anything fusion frightens me here. As a consequence, I step foot, trepidatiously, in a new Asian restaurant in Europe perhaps twice a year. I often employ tasters, relying on word-of-mouth from friends with sophisticated palates.

In Berlin, then, Transit in Friedrichshain has a dish called Harvest Gold, which is quite close to that Amsterdam-style yellow chicken curry that I so crave. It is, unfortunately, sans the egg balado, but since it's a small dish (only 3 euros) with sweet potatoes, I can hardly complain. The Pirate took me to the second, Mirchi, in Kreuzberg's SO36 district, for my birthday. It gets such consistently bad reviews that I was sceptical, but due to a serious fashion error (walking way too far in a new pair of shoes) which precluded my hobbling even 100 meters more, the only other option was Amrit next door, which any long-termer in Berlin knows is seriously to be avoided. I was very happy with Mirchi's yellow curry (ask for it specifically as it's difficult to pinpoint on the menu). Given the many on-line reviews that bitterly complain about Mirchi's Thai and Indian offerings, I'd say it's best to avoid anything that's not from the islands. An additional warning: both restaurants have additional locations in Mitte but I generally avoid the tourist strips where there's always the danger of higher prices and lower quality food.

Nefi No More

2010-12-24T10:43:00.014+01:00

The Nefertiti bust is, I think, one of the most spectacular representations of feminine beauty I have ever seen. When living in Berlin I'd generally go see her every six weeks or so, always on the free Thursday nights. I kept that up after I became just a visitor, albeit a frequent one, going to see her most times I was here, even if it was just to drop in for 10 minutes. Last fall she was moved from the Altes Museum to the newly opened Neues Museum which I wrote about here.

I always knew my no-cost love affair would end some day. In this case, I returned to Berlin this December to find the free entry (last four hours each Thursday) terminated by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, which means no more popping in just to blow her kisses. But I think I always secretly hoped my love affair would end by her being returned to the Cairo Egyptian Museum, where she belongs. Aufweidersehen, schöne Königin. It was a beautiful four years. Now I hope you make it back home some time this century.

BBBBeRRRRRRlin

2010-12-20T22:35:00.005+01:00

I've somehow managed to lead a charmed existence with respect to Berlin weather -- my first winter here (2006-07) was very mild and the next winter I spent 5 weeks in India. I was here four months of the third (2008-09), missing only December, but don't remember it as particularly cold. Last year I know January was tough but again I was in Madrid. This year, though, I've hit the nail on the head; December has been very, very cold. For the first time I can remember since grad school in upstate New York, I'm dealing with temperatures of -11 to -13°C (well into the teens on the Fahrenheit scale).

There's been a lot of snow and I'm happy as can be to be back cat-sitting for the compelling neurotic Emile and Betty near Flughafen Tempelhof. I've already investigated and yes, the rollerblade paths of summer are now cross-country ski paths. Der Berg Ruft in Kreuzberg rents weekend ski packages at 20 euros and since Christmas Eve falls on a Friday, that means Thursday through Monday this weekend, instead of the usual Saturday through Monday. That's where I'll be heading soon, and I'm praying for more snow as the temperatures look set to climb back to normal.

Travel Hell Year or How I Stole a Car on an Expired License to Fetch D. from the Airport

2010-11-10T17:15:00.017+01:00

Having been back in the Bay Area for three weeks, I'm setting off for Europe in a few hours after having combed the Internet for any evidence of French strike activity. Looks like things are on the upswing for me, though there's the matter of my suitcases, both of which need to lose a kilo or so. On the way here I happened to get caught again in the October 20th strikes, the second time this year (see here for February's sad EasyJet/Iberia saga). I certainly hadn't planned on going to Germany on that trip but ended up getting re-routed to Frankfurt, where, as if strikes weren't bad enough, I scored a weather delay. I can't believe they even let me on my re-booked flight to SFO; there was an extremely anal South Asian (who'd found the ideal rule-enforcing place on earth: Deutschland) just dying to deny me boarding. Showing up with 7 minutes to spare before an Airbus takeoff was, offensichtlich, nicht in Ordnung. I don't know why he changed his mind at the last minute and waved me on; maybe it was the range of emotions that must have flashed across my face, none of which included any anger or aggression. No, dear readers, I was at the mercy of the travel gods and I damn well knew it!

Things just kept getting stranger as I sat next to a happy baby who really wanted to play with me, while his barely more than teen-aged mother cried into his hair and wouldn't let him out of her clutches or even look me in the eye. Then on the other side of the world there was the guy just in from Manila who finally finished hitting on me on the BART, only to be replaced by someone who asked if I'd accepted the Lord God as my Personal Savior and whose response, when I said "I really don't want to talk to you about that right now " was, "Why, what happened?"! I suppose that these things have to be expected when one is living through a Wednesday that's something like 33 hours long, the vast majority of those waking hours, which seemingly will never end.

But hold on here, what I really want to write about is what happened 3 days later while I was still seriously in the clutches of westward jet-lag (always the worst for me). D. was only just getting back from reorganizing her mother's entire life in the space of 2 weeks after her diagnosis for Alzheimer's (D.'s mother's diagnosis, that is). I was determined to provide her with a calm, supportive home-coming (as I'm staying at her house). So, even though my license expired 2 months ago and I did NOT manage to get my Spanish driver's license which I really should have had in August or at the latest, September, but STILL do NOT have due to the exasperatingly dysfunctional inefficiency of, I sometimes think, the entire country, I was determined to risk driving the paltry couple of miles to the BART station to pick her up. However, her car was loaned out and I was told to drive the white VW loaner using the key on her dresser. It was a dark and stormy night but I spotted a light-colored Jetta across the street, which was unlocked so I got in and tried the key. No dice, it wouldn't even go in the lock. Damn! I got out and looked around, saw another light-colored car on the street, also unlocked (this is North Oakland west of San Pablo, for those of you who know what this means), but this time the key worked. Not a good sign, I suppose, that I couldn't get the windshield wipers to work or that the car groaned and screeched anytime the gearshift passed neutral. And definitely not a good sign at the one-mile point that I noticed the gas tank indicator was emphatically pegged at a point beyond empty, which is also not to mention that the brakes were definitely not what one would want them to be, even in dry conditions, but these were extremely wet. Well, I pushed through the rain, scrabbling around for some napkins I spotted in the space between the seats to wipe the windshield off, with my arm crooked out of the open window at the next stoplight. I got to the BART having seen only one set of flashing lights that fortunately weren't for me, only to find out from D. that that's definitely not her friend's car. Well, babe, I said, I don't know whose car it is, but I made it here, now you're driving back, and, BTW, there's no gas. So much for the calm, orderly welcoming committee of one; hell no, this was Kaos Katchita at her most inspired, but I have to say that D. is no shrinking violet, which of course is why she's my friend. After all, anyone who could do Nevada in '04, weekend after weekend (together with me in a big floppy hat, long Big Love skirt and big American grin) and still somehow survive to stay in this country for '08 and the disappointment that Obama has proven himself to be, is a better woman than me...

Well, I digress because I have to say that we returned without incident to her house, both of us imagining having to abandon an out-of-gas hot car, post-joy ride, by the side of the road OR any number of unknown hidden surprises the cops may have found inside that car if we were pulled over and searched. The upshot of it was we pulled it into the same parking place I had vacated 15 minutes before and the jalopy wasn't any worse for the wear other than the soggy napkins I'm now remembering are littering the driver's side floor. D. proceeded to tell the tale to her neighbors on either side of her who must have been expecting her and popped up like mushrooms in the middle of the cold rain, all of whom launched into descriptions of the numerous cars I could have easily and legally (or semi-legally, as that license is still and always will be expired) driven on my little jaunt to the BART.

Well as a little addendum to these tales from Travel Hell Year, I will add that that's not the only time I found myself driving illegally in California. The next time was (never mind dark, late-night West Oakland streets) in full sunlight on a glorious day on Interstate 80 heading back from Napa. With my comadre breast-feeding my very hungry and very insistent goddaughter. In the back. Out of her carseat. At any rate, the only flashing lights I saw were from a motorcycle cop who'd already snared his victim. Because as my comadre said, I'm sure a woman driving on an expired license with a child out of her carseat in the back would have really made his day.

Here's the little culprit, in her little Halloween costume.

They Say It's Your Birthday

2010-09-01T15:26:00.008+02:00

I'm nearing four years in Europe, but oddly, I've never spent any time in August in Berlin. This year I've remedied that situation, for the last week of the month, at least, which means this is the first time I've spent my birthday here. My times in Berlin and Madrid have become so intertwined that it's difficult to say exactly how that time has split out between the two. I'd have to say Berlin's probably still slightly ahead, but it will soon even out as Madrid finally starting to feel a bit like home makes it more comfortable to spend longer stretches of time there without that longing to get away, namely to Berlin. It still feels best to be in Berlin, but it's always been clear to me that one country would not be enough. The question will be, with time, whether two will be sufficient. I'm pretty sure I could manage three...

This year's birthday was one of the best I've had; I have that feeling of having finally become that interesting woman I always wanted to be. Blogging over these last (nearly) three years has been therapeutic, a stripping down to the bone, that has allowed me to re-invent myself as an iconoclastic American ex-pat, the optimistic misanthrope who is, despite her best efforts, constantly engaged by this frustratingly crazy world of ours. It's good to have celebrated this special birthday in the city that I certainly never ever would have predicted I'd grow to love so much.

Here's yet another reason to love it: the world's first airport to become a rollerblade park (as far as I know). The weird historical redundancies in Berlin yield some very cool public spaces (Mauer Park, East-Side Gallery, the Bernaurstraße Gedenkstätte). But this is the coolest of them all, photographed on one of a number of glorious early-September days with skies as big as Montana's.

Dunkelheit und Traurigkeit

2010-08-11T14:18:00.005+02:00

I'll be back soon, for nearly a month of D & T, Berlin-style. After too many long, hot weeks in Madrid, I simply cannot wait to be back! In the meantime, this little gem thanks to the Lively German and Satire@SpiegelOnline.

Hier sprichter Dichter
Ihre Stadt (8)

Sie reden viel und fehlerhaft
dank deformierter Kehle.
Sie vegetiern im eignen Saft
und halten das für Seele.

Sie können nichts und wissen nichts
und sind zu dumm zum Siezen.
Sie hoffen nichts und missen nichts
und schimmeln in den Kiezen

und sind, dem Herrgott sei's geklagt,
zu blöd zum Brötchenholen.
Wer Hauptstadt der Versager sagt,
der meint Berlin (bei Polen).

Thomas Gsella

Katchita's Sex Tip #5

2010-08-10T14:23:00.006+02:00

I think my readers will stipulate to the fact that we are all of us unique. We each have our little foibles and interesting twists. I often equate sex to eating. When one sits down to a nice meal with a companion, one would never presume to order for him or her without consulting tastes and preferences, whether it's good to share dishes, if there are food allergies involved, etc. Why on earth don't we do that with sex? There is nothing more important when starting out with a new lover than asking what s/he needs to (how shall I put this) ... peak... I like to find out about those cool little kinks, using them as a sort of icing on the cake that takes sex from the prosaic to the potentially sublime.

I remember the first time a man asked me what rings my bell; it was quite shocking to this Catholic girl but oh so compelling. With time, I have developed a little trick of my own -- to ask a man to show me how he (ahem) pleases himself on his own. I am used, by now, to the surprise this elicits in men, and often a good measure of shyness. I have never, however, found one who could not be persuaded, often by a little bit of, shall we say, audience participation. Asking, or persuading someone to show you, gets you at least half of the way to being a good lover. But although I clearly remember the first time this happened to me, sadly, I'm still waiting for the second... So people, please, Ask, ASK, ASK!

Simply Resistible

2010-07-10T17:11:00.012+02:00

I've never been one to be particularly impressed with male beauty. There are a few exceptions, of course: Sergio Ramos being a particularly pertinent pick given Spain's accession to the World Cup final. For me, though, men are, well, masculine, and that's necessary and sufficient for this woman with a textbook case of penis envy. I've never gone for blonds at all, so immigrant women swooning over Germans have always had me shaking my head. But in the interests of helping out my fellow members of the fairer sex toughing it out in Sexless Berlin, I'll share a treasure trove that I just discovered. I'm crushed to see it actually came out short months before I moved to Berlin; it would have been invaluable to me as I commenced blogging the following year. It's from Spiegel's German Survival Guide and contains the following gems: Flirting with Fräuleins, Hunting for Herren and Hunky, Handsome, Wimpy and Weak.

Since I'm going on three years with this blog, I'm starting to think I've earned the right to Greatest Hits compilations. So I'll offer up my cornerstone post about German men here. I'll conclude with the series I wrote just before officially immigrating to Spain, during spring of 2009: Mr. Berlin, the even broader Mr. Europe and, with gratitude for The Director's scintillating insight, Mr. Germany.

Simply Irresistible

2010-06-25T12:53:00.004+02:00

I always used to advise my women friends who lamented their bad luck with men, that as soon as they stopped giving a damn, they'd have to beat them off with a stick. I'm holding to that conclusion, as even at my advanced age, I'm finding it re-confirmed before my very eyes. My new indifference has them circling thick as sharks. In the last two weeks or so, the barrage has been nearly constant and I've been surprised with my guard down on several occasions. In the most extreme case, an older Spanish man grabbed my arm at my favorite salsa club in Madrid, as my date was in the restroom, and told me he simply had to see me (and my smile) again!? In another, in a group of new friends, a man I'd never met before, there in front of everyone, declared his burning desire to dance the tango with me. Phew, what's that about? Out of necessity I've dusted off and oiled the old body armor and sharpened my sword.

I am quite certain this works in the opposite direction as well, meaning women to men. Indeed, the other day, I was comparing notes with Mr. Incredible, who has resurfaced as a minor character on the big screen of my life. He'd made a very similar comment about feeling completely indifferent and the women being thick as thieves. It would seem that both men and women love a challenge. The mystique of the unattainable: I've got it, for the moment at least, and I'm damn well going to flaunt it. Dangerous Curve Ahead: sharp tongue/sarcastic mind.

Katchita's Sex Tip #4

2010-06-17T14:18:00.016+02:00

I had very nearly resolved, this weekend, to shut down this blog completely, having apparently decided enough was enough when suddenly it struck me: what if it's something hormonal? As I pondered this, I realized, by Jove, I haven't finished with my Sex Tips, plus it's been far too long since the last one. Over the last few months, I'd contemplated Anonymous' four voluminous comments and will weigh in on this issue. Yes, it's entirely possibly my final thought on my deathbed will be, if not "I wish I'd had more sex", then at least "I wish I'd managed to figure out a way to make great sex last longer with the most twisted and inspired of These Men." Sadly, I have yet to find mind-blowingly amazing sex with a man who is capable of a real relationship. Indeed, things with these men generally last no more than a few weeks, or often blow up on the runway.

What exactly is up with that? I've concluded that mind-blowingly amazing sex is located at the extremes of the good old bell-shaped curve. I'm referring here to men who are either control freaks on the one end (watch out especially for those who hide it well) or preternaturally detached and distant at the other. There's something about these types that allows them to really tune into sex in the sort of single-minded, go-for-broke way that I find completely compelling. But these men are simply unworkable, and the sooner one realizes it, the better. The absolute worst nightmare is a combination, i.e., the detached control freak. It takes some doing, believe me, but it does exist. I've spent rather too much time trying to "figure out" one or two of these types. I finally realized it's probably a good sign that I never quite could.

Now then, if, on the other hand, you're one of those lucky people out there who is normal or can be happy with normal, my congratulations. Part of me has wanted normal all my life, but since taking a bite of the forbidden apple of mind-blowingly amazing sex, I have been, to put it tritely, damned for all time. For those of you out there who are equally damned, my advice, then, is to just accept that a great sex encounter will burn itself out in short weeks. The trick is to extricate yourself before you end up hating him, or worse, yourself. There's a real up side to this: having it end at the point where you're still wanting more (often when you're simply rabid for more) guarantees that that particular penile-bearing specimen, will always remain, in your mind, electric, scintillating, unforgettable. And that's not such a bad thing. No, not a bad thing at all.

Forty

2010-05-31T14:35:00.007+02:00

As any Catholic, good or otherwise, knows, this is a special number in the Bible. Moses in the wilderness, Noah on the arc, and any number of various other rogues passed off as saints, bore their particular travails for forty days, after which they were variously enlightened or delivered from their trials. For me, the forty day point represents something a bit different, as that's when the No Sex or Bad Sex question starts to rear its particularly repellent head. It's a question that I always face with equanimity early on, completely convinced that this time, I won't cede. And I have to admit this time it really is going quite well; it's been a good long time since I've felt this level of indifference to the penile-bearing among us. Indifference being, of course, infinitely superior to my more usual aversion or disdain: these being, obviously, strong emotions, and strong emotions being at the root of the problem. No, this time it's indifference that I'm savoring, to keep me squarely on the straight and narrow. Is this, then, the much-celebrated shift that women have to look forward to in their, well, forties? Because, hello Lawd, there's a sinner here, camped out in her own little wilderness, who could use a little bit of deliverance...!

All-Time Prize in the Category: Berlin Housing Ad

2010-05-27T11:15:00.010+02:00

I just can't resist; I'm still on a listserve for Berlin expats and simply can't let this little jewel go by without comment. I can't recall having ever seen better, in nearly four years (can it be?!) tracking Berlin housing. And "only" 321 euros a month. Hell, I know people who live alone for that price in both Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain (albeit without utilities included). Then there's a deposit that's nearly three times the monthly rent -- I've never seen that sort of usury in my entire time in Berlin. But the very best of all, I think, is the opportunity to share a single bathroom with 6 housemates plus visitors plus daytime office workers. It sort of seems like, well, the Knast, oder? Note that the CL link seems to be incorrect; I found it here: http://berlin.de.craigslist.de/roo/1759231136.html
Highlighting below is mine.

Beautiful room in flatshare/WG available July or Aug 1st (longterm!)
Wed May 26, 2010 3:07 pm (PDT)

Beautiful unfurnished room available for rent July 1st or August 1st (or any date in between), in old factory building located in the most northern tip of Neukölln (known as Kreuzkölln). Steps away from Maybachufer, Turkish market, Ankerklause, Admiralsbrücke, Reuter Kiez, Kreuzberg 36 and U8 subway.

This is a long-term rental, so please do not respond if you are looking for temporary accommodation or a furnished apartment! We want to find someone who plans on staying in Berlin for the foreseeable future and making this their home.

The room is 26 square meters (approximately 280 sq ft) with 380 cm high ceilings (approximately 12 ft). One large window on one side of the room, and a round window looking out onto your own private hallway on the other side. See Craigslist ad for pics.

The apartment is shared by six others: three men and three women, ages 28-43, all freelance professionals, most working in media/creative fields. We are not party people, yuppies or hippies, and the aforementioned need not apply. The entire apartment is 330 square m. We share a large eat-in-kitchen/ living room (70 square m) and a rather small bathroom (toilet and shower). There is also an office space in the apartment, where several people work who do not live here. Aside from one Dutch/American, everyone who lives or works here is German.

Rent is 321 Euros a month, which includes heat, hot water, wireless internet, telephone, and cleaning of the communal areas once a week. Deposit is 850 Euros, refundable after move-out. Once a year the actual costs of central heating and water are calculated, and sometimes we have to pay an additional bill (dependent on pricing and usage).

The good:
- happening neighborhood, convenient location, close to shopping, public transport, nightlife
- beautiful historical building, very Berlin
- great details, wood floors, lots of storage space
- dishwasher and washing machine
- access to rooftop
- smoking permitted

The bad:
- no gas (like many Berlin apartments), which means we have a crappy old electric "hot plate" stove
- no bathtub; bathroom is shared by seven people (more when there are guests)
- no pets allowed
- third floor, which (due to high ceilings) means lots of stairs to climb
- smoking permitted

If interested, please send an email to woning007 [at] gmail [dot] com including an email address and phone number where you can be reached, some info about yourself (who you are, where you're from, what you do, etc), and why you are interested in living here.

Bunnies Berlin

2010-05-17T02:12:00.012+02:00

I'll post some notes here about this year's DocumentaMadrid (the biggest documentary film festival in Europe) because it relates to both Berlin and my wrap-up post on this year's Berlinale (here). First, the cutest and cleverest film at DocumentaMadrid was without a doubt Mauerhase, a history of cold-war Berlin from the perspective of the bunnies that inhabited the Mauer no-man's-land. You see a lot of bunnies in this film, doing lots of bunny- type things while thinking all sorts of not-at-all bunny-like thoughts -- man, those Berlin bunnies are really DEEP. Here's a clip of Manfred Butzmann's original Mauer art which appears in the film. Ganz toll!

Then there was Budrus, the film that Rosa saw at the Berlinale and I missed, although I tried several times to get a ticket. The word was out from the first screening; then it won the Panorama Silver Audience Award. I was so pleased to get a second chance in Madrid and I liked the film very much. Its coherent and personalized portrayal of the first case of Palestinians using strategic non-violence to protest the separation wall was a wonderful counterpoint to what has seemed like so much video masturbation on the documentary scene this year. El Gaucho from Argentina was the only other Documenta offering that I saw that merits mention -- a quiet film that gradually but very effectively opened up the solitary life of a top rodeo performer in Patagonia.

Other than that I saw quite a lot of aimless documentaries, even more than in the Berlinale, and my conclusion from the far side of Europe is even stronger that 2010 is a bad year for film. I will say this: hey documentary filmmakers, please try to structure your work around some sort of narrative, a fable, a tale, something that will teach us something, at the minimum. The goal here is to open up new worlds to viewers. There's more than enough intellectual masturbation out there -- just look at blogs (ahem). And making a film is a HELL of a lot more work than the 15 minutes it takes to throw something up on a blog.

At any rate, check out Mauerhase; the Pirate says, for those who understand German, no need to pirate: it's on YouTube.

Der Himmel Über Berlin

2010-04-21T11:05:00.006+02:00

As if the EasyJet torture at the end of February wasn't enough, I got to spend this last week increasingly wondering if I'd even be able to fly out of Berlin, due to all the insanity over the Iceland volcano. Now, a little known fact about Katchita will be revealed: I am actually a pilot. Yes, indeed, I have a U.S. pilot's license, albeit the most basic level, meaning small planes and VFR (visual flight rules). It doesn't make me an expert, of course, and I know next to nothing about flying big jets, but what I can say is that I was well trained to visually evaluate conditions in the sky. So I spent much of the first hour of the flight from Berlin to Madrid doing exactly that. But I have to say that I saw absolutely no sign of any airspace even vaguely approaching turbid, murky, smoky or even hazy, up to the point when I finally fell asleep from boredom and pique (something I never did, of course, when in the pilot's seat).

I'm wondering if my luck is changing; I ended up on the first EasyJet flight from Berlin to Madrid in at least 6 days. Even so, EasyJet had, in less than a week, apparently forgotten how to use its own computer system. All of us stood there for an hour as they attempted to extricate themselves from some sort of massive system crash. As I am now of the opinion that EasyJet will use any excuse to cancel a flight (I'm sure they have it carefully calculated out, even down to the cultures most likely to accept being screwed, of which, I'm sad to say, Spain is one), I was on tenterhooks the entire hour. But we flew, no volcanic silicon ash choking our engines, and the thickest cloud I saw was some light Madrid smog welcoming me back.

K is for Kafka

2010-04-15T13:31:00.009+02:00

In yet another of the strange twists and turns in which my life seems to delight, I found myself this past weekend in Prague, in the very same hotel (the Hilton) that was the scene of one of the strangest experiences of my life a year and a half ago. I try to steer a wide berth around this sort of four- or five-star business/luxury U.S. chain hotel, the kind that are somehow supposed to define having "made it". But in neither this case nor the last was I the one in the driver's seat; I was just along for the ride. Approaching the hotel, as it became increasingly clear it was the same as before, I can hardly describe my sensations, other than that I was seriously channelling Kafka (and what better place than the city of his birth?)!

Although the first night was pretty sleepless, fortunately there was no repeat of my temporary amnesia of before. I'm now safely back and ensconced in the bosom of Berlin, and the odd feelings have passed, of being at risk of somehow losing myself entirely. Prague was cold and rainy and packed full of tourists, giving me the sensation of a city best avoided (just as Barcelona does). Although I went up to the castle both of the days I was there (how could I not?), the magic of that beautiful October weekend in 2008 had somehow faded. I'm left pondering whether some things may be best de-mystified. But not Kafka, never Kafka, whose Metamorphosis I'm back to deciphering (in German, of course).

Krucifix

2010-04-03T02:56:00.005+02:00

Being the good fallen Catholic that I am, and being in Berlin for [can it be?] my fourth Easter running, I decided to mark Good Friday in my best decadent style with another trip to the Kit Kat Club. No matter that I had not brought any particularly fancy party clothes along. [Berlin is my chance to feel that my increasingly impoverished drop-out lifestyle is way cool.] Being possessed of dangerous curves still gets me most places I want to go and spaghetti straps and tight black jeans are enough to do the trick. My voyeuristic cravings were, sadly, not completely satisfied as the usual crappy Berlin electronica drove me out by 2 AM or so, before people were really getting warmed up. But the man in the cardinal's costume wielding a fluorescent cross provided just the right touch. And it was nice to be in a club where sexy matters and people make an effort in that respect. At 12 euros it's a splurge, but my previous favorite spot for an hour or two of electronica (Tresor late on Wednesday night for only 5 euros) was a real disappointment the last time I went. They no longer open the neat-o downstairs machine room and being crowded into the upstairs bar with all the energetic young Germans on "E" is more than I can stand.

Dirty Pretty Things

2010-03-20T00:01:00.011+01:00

It's been an interesting couple of months on Sexless Berlin -- lots of input from readers that have me thinking mightily about "luv". It would seem that the older (and therefore more experienced) I get, the more I believe Sartre and de Beauvoir may have had it right. The ideal of platonic love as a pinnacle far above "romantic" (i.e., sexual) love seems, to me, just about right. Maybe it was all those years having to hear shitty romantic boleros on the radio in Latinamerica, while knowing nearly all the men (and naturally a fair number of the women) were cheating to beat the band. Or maybe it was, for the first and only time in my life, experiencing post-romantic love, in a pure, platonic sense.

In my line of work, we talk about confounding variables, and I find lust to be exactly that, a hopeless confounder of love. I've decided that it's simply impossible to separate the two in any sexual relationship that is at all successful. When the sex fizzles, as it generally tends to, well, then that's when things can actually become clear. Contrast that feeling of, "I knew I'd be better off without this guy" with the strange realization that, "hey, I actually want to keep him around".

What, then, is "romantic love"? It can be a terrible cage, ranging from intense feelings of desire and longing to childish rages and unreasoning jealousy. This mostly, I believe, stems from needs unmet. That's lust, my friends, that's sexual need, and it seems so often mixed with deep inabilities to communicate. It's no wonder that I despair of social norms that seem designed for little more than to manage our pathologic delusions centering around sex. My, my, Katchita, you will say, isn't that a bit strong? Well, yes, I suppose it is, but I ask you, really, how many couples do you know who have successfully combined the romantic and platonic aspects of love I'm describing here? Now how many have made it last?? I rest my case.

While I'm on an anti-romantic roll here, let me just continue by saying that I don't care how many songs have been written about it, "romance" is simply not about being in the moment. It's about the past ("this is the story of how we met") and the future ("we'll be together for the rest of our lives"), but what does that sort of thinking get us? It gets us waking up at the age of 80 realizing we squandered much of our lives. Letting go of that and saying, simply, that I am a sexual creature and this is what I need now, and I don't need to put a special name on it and I don't need to only do it with my together-for-ever one-and-only, well, that just seems somehow more real, honest and alive. And given that being in the moment bas become one of my greatest goals in life, that alone is enough to make me a non-monogamist.

But, dear readers, do not despair, as I have, under it all, an optimistic message to impart! And that is that it's becoming clear to me that platonic love to a large degree transcends all those physical needs; it endures and burns strong; it casts a light that represents perhaps the best of what we humans have inside. What do I know, I'm nothing more than an armchair philosopher, an idiosyncratic student of life. But it seems to me that a non-monogamist who's found platonic love is well on the way to achieving the truly sublime.

What's Up with EasyJet?

2010-02-26T09:46:00.008+01:00

My mother, fond of delivering the dullest of banalities in triumphal fishwife tones, would always say, bad things happen in threes. And of course, that means after two bad things, it's impossible for me to breathe easy until the third thing happens. The problem then becomes, that, sunk in a morass of dread, I can never decide if something bad is quite bad enough to count. This time, it started with an EasyJet flight cancellation on Wednesday, through a weird series of circumstances in which I never should have been caught in the first place, followed by a second on Thursday due to nothing more exotic than a crew shortage, but which EasyJet (a company based in England, which was to fly me from Berlin to Madrid) blamed on the pilot strike in France.

Thursday night I ended up in an airport hotel for the first time since my last "real" job that ended three and a half years ago, feeling acutely the strange disconnect between my nationality (US), my home (Berlin), my residence (Spain), my identity (malcontent) and my past (dutiful worker bee). Now, despite that strange old feeling of being too "between" places and identities, things would not be that bad except for the sense of dread which started on Thursday morning, growing more acute throughout the day, which turned out to be well-founded, because the 375-euro replacement Iberia flight I booked out of frustration is running nearly four hours late. I'm spending my third afternoon in a Berlin airport, but this time will be a marathon session. Does that count as sufficiently bad to be the third thing, or should I expect this flight to go down somewhere in the Pyrenees?

Listen, Berlin, it's time to let me go, really. The love affair hasn't begun to end, don't worry; I'll be back in less than a month. The days, quickly lengthening, will be longer than in Madrid. The cherry trees in Mauer Park and at the Prenzlauer Allee planetarium will start to bud. The inches of black ice on the sidewalks will be long gone and cycling will be possible again. And the Germans, those stalwart creatures, will populate the sidewalk cafes that will spring up at the least hint of mild weather. Berlin, don't forget, absence ALWAYS makes the heart grow fonder. Bis bald, meine Liebe.

Berlinale Redux

2010-02-25T22:27:00.012+01:00

Sunday evening, the last day of the Berlinale, Rosa, The Director, The Pirate and I debriefed at the home of Berlin's best green curry. The Director and I had already decided this year's Berlinale was hands-down the worst for years (it's my fourth). The others couldn't weigh in as I've never seen the Pirate set foot in a movie theater and this was Rosa's first. I didn't see anything that would come even close to being that little gem that every film addict hopes for, at best, once a year. I saw, sadly, quite a lot of aimless, self-involved documentaries and pointless, uninteresting feature films; this in a year when I strategically avoided the competition section, focusing on the Forum, Panorama and Generation14Plus. I saw what could possibly qualify as the worst mockumentary of my film-going career (Putty Hill): need I say more than “karaoke at a white-trash funeral”? Was this a group of alt film-makers sitting around, sniggering, thinking to themselves, what is the WORST film we could possibly make? Good God, Berlinale Forum reviewers, what were you thinking??

Then there was I Shot My Love, hmmmm, the cutesy title should have warned me off. The most interesting thing about the whole film was the admission by the film-maker that he met his lover at Berghain the night after screening his first Berlinale film four years ago. But the film suffered from a terrible lack of direction and an unsteady hand, both literally and figuratively [directors, jolting hand-held cam is so NINETIES]. We're heading toward the teens of a new century... and wobbly home movies frankly just give us headaches. Next on my list of memorably bad film was Asheen (Still Alive in Gaza), which defined aimless. Yes, it was timely that the film-makers got in right after Israel bombed Gaza to smithereens this last time (a year ago), but timeliness is simply not sufficient to make a film worth seeing, as this meandering film was definitely not.

What else happened this year? With four years of experience under my belt, I'm starting to see the phenomenon of Berlinale favorites (as in directors), though this year without paying enough attention, I ended up in three.; I now know to control for this. Ines de Oliveira presented La Extranjera (an Euripedean tragedy) two years ago, which I found nearly perfectly unwatchable, but I liked some things about her current effort, El Recuento de los Danos (an Oedipal tragedy). From Tayfun Pirselimoglu's film Riza a few years ago showing the dark side of Istanbul, I knew to watch out for the genre, but I confused another Turkish film with Pus (Haze), ending up in this, Pirselimoglu's latest, and sure enough, it was a seen-one, seen-them-all situation. Having gotten this straightened out, I bought tix to Kosmos, from Hayat Var's director Reha Erdem, and although I liked the fantastical style of this film, it didn't have the substance of his previous film and I left feeling it was simply not as masterful.

Well, you might ask, Katchita, was there anything at all that you liked? I'd have to say my favorite was Winter's Bone, an American film that I saw primarily because I couldn't get tickets to anything else that day. I found the complex character portrayals combined with what seemed to me a painstaking ethnograpic examination of a very closed society (an Ozark Mountain clan) to be fresh and new. I also quite liked Bibliotheque Pascal, another fantastical film with exquisite imagery. Neither was a perfect gem, although Winter's Bone came quite close. Following my usual practice of managing to see nothing that would win an award, the only time Rosa and I split off from each other, she seeing Budrus and me Plein Sud (a feature film that was masturbatory crap if I ever saw it), and me never managing to get a Budrus ticket after she recommended it, I found out it won the Panorama 2nd place. I'll conclude with Black Bus, which I quite liked for its perspectives on women attempting to leave orthodox Jewish communities. As usual, I am displeased when the most interesting part of a film is the Q&A that follows. In this case the clear statement that since ultra-orthodox families are reproducing at a hugely accelerated rate, in the space of one generation or less, they will be the majority in Israel, is something that simply cannot be left out. So I'd suggest that this point should be emphasized, which could even be done with a simple written statement as the film ends, before the credits roll.

Oh well, there's always next year...

Berlinale Grey

2010-02-19T11:38:00.007+01:00

Just a quick post to report that The Director and I have decided: this is simply not an inspired year for the Berlinale. I say that 2009 was such a fabulous year in film that it's simply too much to hope for a repeat.
He doesn't agree that this is impossible, which I suppose makes him more of an optimist (who on earth would have thought)! The only film I can actually say that I thought was good so far, a full week into the Berlinale, is Bibliotheque Pascal. There are others, which I'll quickly write up later, that had some issues but were still worth seeing but I am simply not inspired. Berlin is grey, as it must be at this time of year, and the Berlinale even more so. But even so, it's good to be home.

Brunching Berlin

2010-02-10T14:27:00.006+01:00

Brunch in Berlin was something I learned quickly (within the first few months of living here) to avoid. Most spreads include acre-feet of meat and cheese, and in the winter the only fruit you'll see will have come out of a can. I'm a woman who appreciates carbohydrates for breakfast; I want breads with real preserves, plus French toast and pancakes and waffles, all with real maple syrup. So when the Pirate suggested a Russian brunch at Cafe Datscha in Friedrichshain, I was sceptical, but one look at all the strange little tchotcke things they offered was enough to convince me. Looks did not deceive in this case; although I have next to no idea what I was eating 80% of the time, 90% of it was fabulous. It's a real splurge at 9,50 euros, but if you show up good and hungry, then leisurely eat your way through a couple of hours, it's more than worth it.

The good news keeps on coming: Fortuna, whose Thanksgivings I've raved about for two years, has decided to do a Sunday brunch at her place on Weserstr. Naturally I chose real American-style buttermilk pancakes that definitely beat out my mother's recipe. She also treated me to a sample of her sausage gravy with biscuits. The gravy was wonderful, even for someone who avoids Schweinfleisch with a nearly religious fervor, but if I could be immodest, I do believe my biscuits would win out in a taste-test. The next time I'll have to try either the eggs Juanita or salmon hash.

Ode to Ofenheitzung

2010-02-09T20:37:00.010+01:00

As far as I can recall, I've lived eleven different places in Berlin; although a pair of these were as little as a week or two, I averaged a couple of months at a typical place, which was a great way to get to know various neighborhoods. In all that time, I've never had Ofenheitzung: I heeded everyone's warnings to avoid it. But I do have friends in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain who swear by it, even though they always have freezing cold kitchens and bathrooms, the latter of which is always the first thing I heat.
At any rate, in the interests of broadening my life experiences even further (which is the main reason I do the things I do), I'm trying it during my current stay in Berlin, learning the routine of having the coal delivered, lugging it up the stairs from the basement, mastering a starter burn, getting the blocks of coal fired up, waiting five or six hours till the place warms to something reminiscent of the tropics and finally cleaning out the ashes. I now have a firm grasp on the importance of the precaution stamped on each Berlin dumpster: Keine Heiße Asche... And I have to say, I certainly feel like a real woman going down the stairs and out across the snowy and/or icy courtyard, into the cold dark basement to lug coal when it's minus 5 or less outside (20°F).

Not in Love, No, No

2010-02-05T09:03:00.010+01:00

Womyn, as I’ve already alluded to here, a man’s relationship with his mother is an important, possibly critical, determinant of his view of women. My best advice is to find out how a man views his mother on the first date, if at all possible. You can subtly show interest in his family, for example, by asking about siblings, then move on to parents, where they live/if they’re still living, what do they do/used to do, etc. If it’s easy to keep the man talking about his mother, you have your answer right there.

Equally important but much trickier to extract is information on how a man sees the women with whom he’s previously been involved. It typically won’t be possible until after several dates and, in my experience, often not until you’ve slept with him. It’s a project for the future, I suppose: to figure out how to sufficiently probe this before jumping in the sack, without scaring the guy off. Because here’s how it works: the older the man, the higher the chance that the way all those other women ended up is exactly how you end up as well. There’s really no better predictor. All of us are special, of course (Sexless Berlin blog readers being naturally more special than most), but womyn, please don’t make the mistake of thinking you will be the beautiful fairy princess who finally sweeps this man into a rosy end-of-the-rainbow happy ending. Sure, these things do happen. But only in film, trust me. During the initial stages, go ahead, fantasize about it if you like, but please recognize that cold, hard reality will kick you in the ass and it’s much better if that happens sooner rather than later.

As extreme examples I present two mature, worldly European men from different cultures and countries who personally reported to me having never been in love before. These cases touch me in a special way, they truly do, after my initial astonishment wears off. I don’t know if there’s anything more wonderful than falling in love; it’s happened to me once in a big way and many times in a range of smaller ways [yeah, yeah, despite the tough exterior, Katchita finds it easy to fall at least a little in love with many of her lovers]. So to think of a man having spent half his life without this seems quite simply tragic. Even though I so much want both of these men to have this experience, it’s simply naïve of me to imagine that they don’t have their patterns well established. I have to ask, what are the chances for these men? Sadly, I fear they are low. Although I sincerely wish them both the best of luck, at the same time I must gently suggest that some serious paradigm shifts might be in order. OK, so, a screening question does occur to me: “tell me about the last time you were in love and who's that lucky woman?”

2009 in Film

2010-01-24T13:56:00.012+01:00

Before we leave the first month of the new year, I thought I'd get my act together and post something on film last year. This is my first formal top-ten list, inspired by the excellence of 2009 with regard to film. You'll have to allow me a bit of artistic license as some of the films were released at the end of 2008 but I didn't see them until their arrival in Spain in the spring or summer. Here they are, in no particular order:

Human Zoo (Rasmussen)
Anti-Christ (von Trier)
Séraphine (Provost)
Moon (Jones)
Hashmatsa/Defamation (Shamir)
Solo Quiero Caminar (Díaz)
Amreeka (Dabis)
The Messenger (Moverman)
Okuribito/Departures (Takita)
District 9 (Blomkamp)
Guest of Cindy Sherman (Donahue/Hasegawa-Overacker)

Finally, he's my friend, it's true (by American if not by German standards), but I just have to slip in The Director's first feature-length film, Übermorgen nirgendwo (Balkan Traffic), which was released at the end of 2008 while I was in Berlin. At that time I couldn't see it in the theater as my German wasn't up to the task. But I watched it twice on DVD, after which I felt competent to brave a theater showing in Brandenburg, the best part of which was The Director's Q and A. Probably the movie poster tells it the best, but I just have to say that this movie has what has to be in my top-five list of most absurdist scenes, depicting two morticians (one Serbian, one Croatian) robbing a grave in the pitch dark somewhere deep in eastern Europe, while arguing in German about the relative merits of nihilism. Ganz toll!

Motherhood, German-Style

2010-01-19T22:15:00.010+01:00

If you've read my Todo Sobre Meine Mutter, you've got a general sense of my idea of German motherhood: stoic dedication to duty (however strangely that might be defined), at all costs. While pondering this, for some reason, an image of the ice-cold Corinna Harfauch playing Magda Göbbels on the last day in Hitler's bunker from the film Der Untergang (Downfall) just flashed through my mind. But it must be clear by now that my mind is, well, a difficult thing to control...

What prompted these musings was a New York Times article on German women's roles, particularly as mothers. It's worth a short note here, as it goes far in explaining my own experiences with my third-generation German mother. She had to put her career, personal development and life in general on hold to raise her children, and by god she never let them forget it. Lo and behold, neither of her two daughters has reproduced. Match this with the German birthrate, which hovers around 1.3 - 1.4 children per couple and I'm sure you agree with me that German mothers are putting themselves out of existence.

The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part II

2010-01-16T17:22:00.005+01:00

Well now, it has come to my attention that this blog has become entirely too top-heavy with respect to the men-as-cheaters cliché so common among women. It's incumbent on me, therefor, to advance my anti-monogamy musings of last spring by explaining why this particular lament is not completely due to the dastardly nature of men themselves but more on social structures lamentably created -- 'tis true -- by penile-bearing creatures. Katchita, you will say, whatever can that tortured sentence be on about?! Well, dear readers, after struggling with this issue for years, I've decided it comes down to a simple question of bioanthropology.

Anti-Monogamy Theorem 1: Men have one and only one job: to impregnate as many women as possible.
Corollary to Theorem 1: Men must be constantly cruising and at the ready, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It's their nature, my dears; they really can't help themselves. I'll continue:

Anti-Monogamy Theorem 2: Women have one and only one job: to effectively raise their offspring, which they accomplish by obtaining as many protectors as possible.
Corollary to Theorem 2: Women must be sexually receptive to multiple men, either simultaneously, and/or in relatively close temporal succession.

It's our nature, darlings; we really can't help ourselves. My conclusion, then? That the most evolutionarily adapted among us, the ones best equipped to pass on our genes, are, if you'll pardon my language, simply going to fuck around. And the more we fuck around, the more we produce fuckers-around, and on and on it goes.

Well now, you may (perhaps) stipulate to my argument, but of course there's the more insidious problem of those societal constructs to which I was just alluding, now isn't there? And that's where the problem for women (or at least women like me) really comes in. Because those of us who've decided monogamy is not only anthropologically unrealistic, but who have, in addition, attempted to be open about and true to our beliefs, do, I'm afraid suffer. On a regular basis. Because what is more threatening to basic social constructs than a group of thoughtful, mouthy women who say, wait a minute, I'm not interested in participating in your tired old models? More on this later, my dears, but for now I'm girding my loins for another skirmish in the anti-monogamy battle.

Berlinale IV

2010-01-13T20:14:00.005+01:00

There are only four weeks to go to the Berlinale, my plane ticket's been long booked and this time I'm thrilled that Rosa will be joining me. I couldn't resist an advance peek at the festival website, although I know the program is never available more than 10 or so days before the start. What should I find to my great surprise but a video clip of Rie Rasmussen, apparently now the Berlinale's darling. Did I call it or what? I can't say how long that video will be on the homepage, so check it out ASAP. It would seem that she has a film in post-production dated 2010; those in the know will be looking for her to screen it at this year's Berlinale.

It's the festival's 60th year and I'm proud to say it's my fourth. I'm entering it with the goal of scoring tickets to 20 films this year. After all, with Rosa we'll be TWO people working full-time to scan that program, research those directors, endlessly queue and purchase tix. Berlin, I'll be back soon. I know you're cold and snowy; here's hoping you save some real snow for me! Someone's waiting for me with the Ofenheizung turned on high.

I Resolve

2010-01-02T02:27:00.009+01:00

Just back from three weeks in the U.S., I'm enjoying a delicious case of jet-lag, chomping on the last pretzel I picked up during my layover in Deutschland, neither doing what I should be (sleeping) nor what I'm tempted to (going out to hear music), but instead Skyping with The Pirate back in Berlin. Flying on New Year's Eve is the very best way I know to avoid all the hype and The Director posed an interesting question. Leaving SFO at 2:30 PM on a polar flight to Frankfurt, exactly where and when would I hit 2010? I calculated it must have happened somewhere in the North Atlantic, probably between Canada and Greenland, roughly four and a half hours out from SFO. By then I had drugged myself for the flight, thus skirting the whole issue entirely.

Well then, the Skype exchange was interesting enough to convert into a blog post... It relates to my New Year's resolution for 2010, something I've sworn to do for years now: to list every film I see for a year. I'm still clean for 2010, as Lufthansa's transatlantic offerings were so bad as to not bear contemplating. Musing on great film that was foundational in my life, I somehow ended up listing my top 5 erotic films (not in any particular order). Hanif Kureishi´s earlier work scores an amazing two in my top five: Samey and Rosie Get Laid (1987) and My Beautiful Laundrette (1985). Then there´s A Crying Game (1992), Body Heat (1981) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969, which I had to have seen sometime later). What, dear reader, you were expecting Behind the Green Door and The Devil in Miss Jones? That's not exactly what I'm on about. It's no coincidence that the movies I've listed were ones that I saw decades ago. Some of them I revisited later, in my 30s, and was disconcerted to find I'd preserved a completely different memory of what happened. There was, however, some special image or idea I'd taken from each of them that resonated in my young impressionable mind, deeply affecting my notions of masculine and feminine sexuality. It´s interesting to speculate where our peculiar individual behaviors and turn-ons come from. Not surprisingly, I suppose, in the case of this addict, they come from film. That and the Catholic Church, naturally.

But yes, the titles I just listed are two favorites of mine from the golden age of porn and yes, some women do enjoy a certain type of porn, don't think it's dirty or misogynist, and even (gasp) enjoy the idea of men watching porn. However, I will always maintain that Deep Throat really sucks. Now, aren't we glad we got that out in the open?!? Happy New Year, all!

The Moviegoer

2009-12-10T17:06:00.007+01:00

Roughly 25 years ago, someone rarely mentioned in this blog, my ex-husband, got it right for a change (gasp!), when he gave me Walker Percy’s book. In my restless shifting through the Berlin vacation sublet scene during this visit, I ended up for a week at T.’s, who had it in a yellowing original paperback version. Re-reading it, I realized I’d forgotten that it has very little to do with film, but everything to do with detachment from life. Moviegoers need not be detached, of course, and my own moviegoing is governed by the drive to learn from worlds I cannot possibly experience for myself. How could I be a gay man in an Alice Springs beauty pageant (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), for example, or a small Kurdish girl escaping war the only way she knows how (Turtles Can Fly)? But of course I understand detachment; it’s what I necessarily must do every time I truly enter someone else’s film.

Recently I've realized that finding a truly good film (which happens perhaps once a year), is a bit like finding a truly good man. But the numbers are, frankly against me. I’ve been a discriminating moviegoer for some 25 or 30 years and have learned to bring sophisticated screens to bear when choosing films. I probably see nearly 3 films weekly on average, between theaters, rentals and downloads. In contrast, I’ve only been dealing with dating in Europe for three years. And I have to admit I dedicate substantially more time to moviegoing than the whole dating routine, which I treat only in fits and starts, often tossing in the towel for weeks or even months at a time. The way I date would be rather like walking up to my crappy neighborhood, sure-dubbing-is-great-because-reading-subtitles-is-so-tiresome theater and expecting the best of von Trier or Claire Denys or Mike Davis to magically appear.

So the real question, it would seem, is whether I am willing to give dating even a fraction of the attention I dedicate to film. Could I give up even one third of my movie-going experiences? Two hours is more than enough for a first date, but could I actually manage this once a week? I feel a palpable reluctance to even contemplate it. Could it be that men are so much less important to me than film? That hardly seems possible, so it must be that my screening process is still completely inadequate, or I wouldn’t be having so many horrifying dating experiences. So hmmm, it's quite clear that I simply must apply myself more diligently to the dating problem. Sigh. Moviegoing is just, frankly, so much more fun.

Off the Wagon

2009-11-30T23:56:00.006+01:00

What have I gotten from Internet dating? After wading through hundreds of responses and suffering dozens of achingly dull first dates, I have gotten some great (albeit truncated) sex, OK, sure. But more than anything it's brought quite a lot of heartache (yes, there really is a heart somewhere inside this tough woman exterior). When I asked The Pirate what it is about people who use the Internet for dating, he said, we're detached. I'd say that's putting it mildly, and am often tempted to describe this as withdrawal bordering on the sociopathic. My specialty, English-language Craigslist ads in both Berlin and Madrid, seemed to draw the oddest collection of misfits and chronically placeless ex-pats. Well, I always did like strange men.

My last ad was right about this time of year last year, and I am virtually certain I'll never place one again. But this time in Berlin, with my housing falling through and Craigslist being one of the easiest ways to pick up an easy short-term sublets, especially at odd times of the month, well, hmmm... my mouse strayed toward Men Seeking Women. What could it hurt to just check out what idiocies These Men were up to? I had an interesting exchange with a hair fetishist, and was all set for a sorely needed hair make-over, when he admitted he was married and his wife wouldn't approve (sigh). I nixed that, albeit reluctantly, and will have to drag myself into a Berlin hair salon for another hair massacre, unless I can hold out until I hit the U.S.

On a whim, I responded to a second ad awash in good old straightforward American crudity. I really have no idea why; other than a certain carpe diem sensibility, it didn't particularly appeal to me. I must have been ovulating. Or maybe there just comes a time when the thinking 40-something woman says to herself, I simply cannot play one single game more! So here I am once again in sexless Berlin having, well, sex. For hours and hours. Until the sun comes up and goes down again (which, it being Berlin near the winter solstice, is still an acceptable hour to lunch in Madrid)! And it's with someone who doesn't seem to think this means I will steal his soul for all time. Oh dear, oh dear, this is definitely throwing a monkey-wrench into the vehemency with which I repeat my daily mantra, "Madrid is my home, I live in Madrid," with the hopes that some day it will finally make it into my subconscious. Berlin, dark, wet and sad, a strange sightless sea creature masquerading as a siren, keeps calling my name.

Spellbound

2009-11-27T14:48:00.009+01:00

Seeing Lars von Trier's Anti-Christ twice in Madrid this fall wasn't enough, and I was particularly wanting to revisit Breaking the Waves, as I was sure there are artistic parallels. So when I was offered a special back-to-back viewing of the two, I naturally jumped at it, requesting first BtW, followed by Anti-Christ. Other than re-emphasizing what I already knew, that von Trier should be forbidden to create epilogues, this experience heightened my fascination with how he views women, the most interesting aspect of his work.
The production values of Anti-Christ were miles ahead of 1996's BtW, not surprisingly, and even the third time around I was transfixed. I find, in both films, potent juxtapositions of women's true power with their own misconceptions about that power. He manages to simultaneously convey how threatening this is to men, in a way that I simply cannot manage to find misogynistic, despite what virtually all the critics say. This is a man who is quite simply spellbound by women. And frankly, there is no better kind of man. If only they were more common...

In that vein, I'm further refining my screening mechanism to better weed out Men's Club types (see The Good, The Bad and The Ugly). Last year after it became clear that blogging was not just a passing fancy for me, I remember discussing my dilemma with my dear friend D. She didn't think it advisable for me to share my blog with every potential conquest. But my instinct has been to use it as the perfect screening tool. And so, I'm vowing from now on to begin any dialogue this way: "Hi, I'm katchita, and if my blog rings your bell, we can talk." Hey, it seems to have worked with my newest, who apparently has a certain reputation as one of Berlin's top video pirates. Is there any feeling more delicious than sensing potential new worlds opening up? I live to learn; without learning I cannot live.

The Ultimate Size Post

2009-11-14T19:27:00.012+01:00

What should arrive, straight into Katchita's mailbox this very afternoon, but an important news flash for the differently-endowed among you. The sadly defunct TheyFit has been replaced by a new product called Coripa, which claims some 55 sizes. I quote: "Sie wissen es. Wir wissen es. Es gibt ihn nicht, den Einheitspenis." ! Germany, man, is where the condom size revolution is happening! Fantastisch! Coripa's manufacturer has worked, clearly, in close conjunction with Amsterdam's Condomerie, which has set itself up as the primary distributor. MySize will have a run for its money, but, I suspect, only among the most intrepid of men. A 110-plus-IQ may be required; as with TheyFit, there is a nearly indecipherable sizing system involving print-outs, cut-outs, and measurements long and wide, which must be accomplished while maintaining a certain (ahem) stiffness.

Your trusty blogger was, natürlich, on the look-out for the memorable TheyFit paper-cut warning. Here's the surest sign that Germans got ahold of this one and made it their own (I quote directly): "Please pay attention to sharp cutting edges during the application!" Hey, it could be worse, such as: "Please attend with closeness to edges during measurement application for to avoid sharp cutting of penile apparatus." Trust me; I've done more than enough proof-reading to know.

Given that, prior to leaving Spain, I dispatched my latest well-endowed specimen (a champion withholder per this post), I am staring squarely at another patch of sexless Berlin. So I'll have to leave it to you out there to test Coripa (how on earth did they come up with that uninspiring name?) for me.

Mauerfall--The Dominoes

2009-11-10T21:08:00.004+01:00

In the cloud of chaos that surrounded my arrival in Berlin, my camera went missing, so these three Mauerfall posts won't have photos until those I talked into taking photos to E-mail to me actually do so. Ah well, it's already been photographed from all ends; Radio Free Mike makes it pretty clear how miserable the rain was. I'll just add that the temperature that day managed to rise from 5°C to, well, 6° (41 to 43°F for the Celcius-challenged among you). I gambled wrong and left my umbrella at home. Despite that, I was in a cheery mood, hanging out with one group of friends, then taking a sushi break at Potsdamer Platz (I do like the little place in the Pasarelle) for an hour to dry out a bit and finally hooking up with E. for the Mauer Mob. Seven hours all told, some of which were dry or only lightly drizzling. My secret is Glühwein and more Glühwein (the hot mulled wine that's ubiquitous in German outdoor winter markets).

At the start of my perambulations, I caught the dominoes before sundown, walked as much of the length as possible (things got complicated around the Brandenberger Tor stage area) and got myself pretty wet. When I braved the elements again, Mauer Mob had about 10K of the 33K needed and I had called it right -- we shored up the very end of Zimmerstraße where they ran out of people. It was neat to look all the way down the length of the street to Stresemanstraße and see the line of people. Then we walked to Postdamer Platz to check out how easy it would be to steal a domino. But we got there shortly before 9 PM and they hadn't even toppled that section. Unbelievably it was possible to get close enough to watch that happen (thanks to the rain, I'm sure). So I was pretty pleased with our timing.

The guards at the dominoes didn't seem to go for my request for a domino as a gift. [E. interpreted as I didn't know the German word for auction, meaning the dominoes will be sold off; for this the wall toppled??] But despite the rain, the guards smiled at my attempts. I remember this feeling, of knowing that I finally have Deutschland figured out. It is possible to crack that stony tough-man exterior. A super-extroverted gringa just in from Spain: that's the secret.

Mauerfall -- The Mob

2009-11-09T13:31:00.003+01:00

There's still time to sign up for what will likely be the coolest thing to do on Mauerfall. That's as I'm assuming no one will be able to get within a half-kilometer of anywhere the dominoes are located, and a full kilometer within the stage where the celebration will be based. I'm in Group 137, at the corner of Zimmerstraße and Axel-Springer-Straße, which I chose as they need people to fill that section where the wall heads east, a bit north of the Jewish Museum and east of Checkpoint Charlie. So readers, hurry and register at MauerMob. There are 9000-plus registered at this time, but they need 33,000!

Mauerfall -- The Basics

2009-11-09T13:24:00.010+01:00

More on this later as I landed in Berlin late last Thursday to find my sublet wasn't going to work out and have spent much of the weekend couch-surfing and apartment-searching. Still, on Saturday I managed quite the appropriate tourist promenade from Schlesisches Tor across Oberbaumbrücke to the East-Side Gallery (which I'd never walked before in its entirety). The famous portrait of the Brezhnev-Honecker kiss is bright and shiny again. I popped over to Unter den Linden (renamed Brandenburger Tor S-/U-Bahn) and checked out the wall "dominoes" -- very cool. From the Bundestag to Postdamer Platz the wall has been effectively reconstituted (the dominoes will fall tonight around 7 PM if I'm not mistaken, so there are only short hours left to check them out). I followed them down to P-Platz and shouted across to the West, "Hallo West". This being Berlin, of course, no one blinked, much less shouted back. And this being German, of course, I can never be certain if my errors in declination render me completely unintelligible. No matter. I smiled to myself, the shine of Spain still upon me.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2009-10-21T19:21:00.014+02:00

So, womyn, if you'll stipulate that a necessary pre-condition for membership in the Men's Club** is a cavernous void in the space where one might think a heart should be, then you'll undoubtedly, during unrealistically optimistic times in your life, have launched energetic searches for the few men that don't qualify for membership. Vigorous screening, my dears, is the order of the day. In my line of work we like to organize our thinking with two-by-two tables, so I've developed one especially for this problem. I always say my own personal
sample size is not sufficient to draw any conclusions, particularly as it's scattered through far too many countries and cultures. But I'd say the good sex/likeable category (A) is at no more than 10 to 20%, optimistically. I've spent far too much time in the second (total pig) column, I have to admit. There are various reasons for that, not the least of which is my terrible fondness for "social research", meaning figuring out what on earth makes these bizarre, penile-bearing creatures tick. But more importantly, perhaps, it's a man's job to convince a woman that he's really in the sweetheart column, and many of them do quite a good job at the beginning. So don't beat yourself up too much if you only discover after the fact what his true proclivities are, particularly if you're operating in a new culture far from home.

To help reduce the time spent in column 2, I've come up with a few infallible rules:
1) Pretty boys will ALWAYS be bad in bed. They just don't have to make an effort because most women will go wild over them all the same. They are nearly always strong practioners of the quantity over quality approach, and I'm certain that many never find out what they're missing. They're solidly in box D.
RULE #1: NEVER WASTE A MINUTE OF YOUR TIME WITH A PRETTY BOY.
2) The extraordinarily well-endowed, their attributes kept exclusively out-of-sight thanks to the stupidity of us over-socialized humans (a fact I lament every day), are in a special category. They're dangerous for two reasons: if you're having protected sex with them (and I really hope you are), it's almost a given that that very protection is turning them into porn stars (per The Size Post: Part I), forever hard, and you are dying of pleasure. I divide these men into two categories; there are those who just want to be loved for themselves, the poor dears, and not for their substantial members. Then there are those men who seem to see themselves as natural resources, to be carefully rationed. Despite the fact that you just had heavenly HOURS-long sex with this man, trust me on this, you're lucky if you get to see him more than once a month. Let's put it this way: the well-endowed are just not the giving type. They're almost always in box B.
RULE #2: A KING-SIZED DILDO WORKS JUST AS WELL AND IS ALWAYS BY YOUR SIDE.

My archetypal example of a well-endowed pretty boy (he's so Fraaahnch) makes me shudder in horror at the memory. It's a lethal combination. If I had followed rule number 1, of course, I would never have had this disagreeable experience... But again, operating outside my culture, diligently conducting social research, what was this girl to do? I can now confirm, this rule can be applied world-wide.

Coming soon: screening tests to protect against the well-endowed -- an unresolvable dilemma?

**As my ex always used to say, "one of our members will be contacting you soon".

The Size Post, Part II: The Solution

2009-09-30T12:08:00.009+02:00

Having made the great sacrifice of getting my butt down to Valencia on a nearly all-expenses-paid trip (thanks to a fortuitous sugar-daddy opportunity) to do Important Public Health Research, I went personally to meet the man who may be responsible for saving lives among the differently endowed in Spain. As far as I've been able to confirm, he's the only supplier of a fitted condom in Spain. But I continued in my tireless pursuit of safety+pleasure for the men of Spain, as I have subsequently engaged in hours of intensive product testing. I can testify that I have convinced a confirmed condom dodger to dutifully don the right-fitting tool, who, once properly equipped, subjected these condoms to prolonged, rigorous and highly successful use. Ladies and gentlemen, a drum roll please as I introduce at least a partial solution to the size conundrum, thanks to top-notch German engineering (is there any better?): MY.SIZE.

A few more words on this product: it appears to be a simplified version of TheyFit, although it does not resolve the unfortunate assumption that equates length with width. The wider condom sizes are longer (perhaps too long, though better too long than not long enough). It's a good beginning though there's definitely room for improvement; I'm convinced it's still possible to develop a fairly simple scheme. My ideal would be two or three different lengths for each width, meaning a total of 12 or 15 sizes, which seems to me imminently more marketable than TheyFit's 70 or more.

MY.SIZE also provides a measurement guide that can be printed out, just like TheyFit, isn't that nifty? Then there's the handy educational My.Size video (for the moment available only in German) which engenders the strangest feeling in me -- could there be anything more droll than a German male armed with six differently-sized dildos providing condom use instructions?? Perhaps I'm most consternated by the fact that I understand virtually every word?!

To those otherly-endowed men in Spain: run, don't walk, to the source that will make your life much much more fun and imminently safer: RAMASAnitaria, www.ramasa.com.

The Size Post - Part I: The Challenge

2009-09-04T20:28:00.011+02:00

Womyn, it will come as no surprise to you when I say, all men are simply not created equal. But it amazes me that they tend to have only a fuzzy idea of exactly where they fit in, at least those who don't indulge in sex with other men, sex clubs, etc. As ridiculous as it seems, I'm certain their main basis of comparison is the locker room. [Imagine!] Which must explain that old myth we always heard (at least in the U.S.) that, shall we say, members vary greatly in size when soft, but everything pretty much evens out when erect. HA! If experience with men from five continents and at least double as many ethnic groups counts for anything, then believe me, the only rule is there's no rule. And I'd have to say, Vive la Difference! How interesting would it be if every time we unwrapped the proverbial package, the gift inside were always the same?? Finally, for you men, yes, absolutely, there is such a thing as too big, and smaller is definitely nicer for certain pastimes.

But I digress, as the point of this post is to convey an IMPORTANT PUBLIC HEALTH MESSAGE. So, condoms being manufactured by men, and men being convinced they are all the same size (the porn star phenomenon aside, which we should all recognize as ridiculously aberrant examples of FAR TOO BIG, even if admittedly very nice to look at), I am going to say that in the 4 countries in which I've lived, one is very hard pressed to find more than, at most, two condoms sizes. This could be roughly equivalent to a shoe store offering a normal or extra large shoe. Except, unlike feet, members (ahem!) come in compact, all-around super-sized, it's true, but also short but stubby, long and lean, mushroom-shaped, pyramidal, and, well, I could go on and on. Larger by no means signifies longer AND wider and shapes vary to the point were I've even seen one that BENDS half-way down.

Womyn, I used to be completely hard-line, with no sympathy for men who tried to get out of using condoms: What sort of idiots were these, I wondered? But having been hit in Europe with an unusual run of the amply endowed, for whom an XL is not nearly large enough (doh, no, please don't try to STRETCH OUT THAT CONDOM!!!), I've actually come to sympathize. Seeing a man squashed like a sausage into a contraption that robs him of any chance of pleasure has silenced my self-righteousness. About a year ago I started looking around for a solution, and hit upon the intriguing but impossibly complicated TheyFit which had 70 sizes. The sizing system was completely occult (for example, B66 or E17), requiring one to previously print out a template and measure in the privacy of one's own home. Meant, undoubtedly, to assuage the feelings of the more modest-sized man, this company seems to have gone spectacularly out of business -- see the website of Amsterdam's Condomerie. People lucky enough to have sampled TheyFit (I was not) still lament its demise in various blogs. Condomania.com still carries what remains, presumably the less popular sizes.

I am happy to report, dear readers, that I've recently taken up this question much more seriously and launched a market-research campaign, so that those of you confronted with lovers of unusual endowment will no longer have to go through condom wars. I'll begin with my own personal experiences. First, there's Germany, not typically a country prone to exaggeration, which offers, funnily enough, the Condomi XXL; note that this is longer (200mm) but NOT wider (its 54mm is a pretty standard width). An XL in Spain (such as Adapta, 57mm x 195mm) gives only a bit more width. The U.S.' Trojan Magnum is meant for large men but its tapered shape is a bit of a puzzle. It would be perfect for the large mushroom-shaped man (the stats I've found on the web indicate it's 64mm tapering to 57mm). But for a man with a more uniformly cylindrical shape, it's, well, a cock ring. Stay tuned for more on my search for the perfect condom brand...

Give Me Fever

2009-08-29T17:44:00.014+02:00

Just as I re-surfaced from a wicked heat wave (nine days of 97°F/36°C plus or minus 1°C) in Madrid, after three days of practically arctic temperatures (no higher than 90°/32°), I was hit with another birthday and rising temperatures yet again, up to 35° yesterday. Slogging my way through the birthday aftermath, I'm contemplating the feverish dreams my brain has seen fit to devise for me over the last couple of weeks. Now I'm no Jungian, and it's undoubtedly for the best that I hardly ever remember my dreams. But this fitful sleeping in hot and stuffy little rooms is a perfect dream factory, and it's very difficult to avoid the conclusion that my subconscious, at least, is simply not signed onto the fact that I live in Madrid now.

All three dreams have centered around Berlin, and two of the three, unsurprisingly, involved lusciously cold weather. In one, I seemed to have misplaced a lover somewhere in another country, and turned up another, ill from alcoholism; all the while the Lidl/Kaiser's/Robben und Wientjes area north of the Prenzlauerberg S-Bahn had turned into an ice-skating pond (doesn't that sound great?)! In the second, that previously misplaced lover inexplicably turned up with another woman on a bus in the German countryside, while I had apparently become invisible to him and his friends. Before I had time to become too distressed about this, the bus stopped and dumped us all out somewhere well outside of Berlin, with lots of snow and no clear way to get back to town. To put the icing on the cake, I was completely on my own while everyone else, somehow, miraculously had cars. OK, so, angst and displacement, perfectly explainable, particularly as I'd seen the very very eccentric Anti-Christ (Lars von Trier's latest) the night before the second dream.

But it's the one from last night that has me freaked out, as Mr. Not-a-Gentleman, about whom I hadn't thought for months, somehow replaced Sergi López (picture me wailing in distress) in a faintly-related and definitely sexual reprise of Isabel Coixet's movie, Map of the Sounds of Tokyo, that I just saw last night. López, one of my favorite actors since the oh-so-sexy Une Liaison Pornographique, was also fabulous in Dirty Pretty Things and Harry, Un Ami qui Vous Veut du Bien. In Tokyo, he meets a Japanese lover weekly at a "love hotel" with thematic rooms, Sergi Lopez's character's choice being one done up as a train car (I do admit to that being one of my own particular, ahem, preferences, as well). I can't recommend the movie (for me the plot's too weak), but there is one particular scene where López comes up for air, after pleasuring his co-star's character, and, with the coyest look possible, acts out removing a pubic hair from his tongue. Fascinating concept, that: a French woman directing a Spanish star in a scene that pointedly features (gasp) oral sex au naturel. I do believe it should be required viewing for all Spanish adult males in 2009. Oh my poor, poor brain, please try again tonight, to get it right.

The Opposite Sex

2009-08-28T12:11:00.005+02:00

Americans, of course, are terribly fond of examining in obsessive detail the damage our parents did to us and Germans aren't far off the same mark. But most Spaniards seem to genuinely like their parents. One will find children happily living at home well into their 30s, until they're ready to marry, at which point the old song seems to apply: "I want a girl just like the girl who married dear old dad". As I was escaping the heat in Madrid by visiting Rosa, we had time for several intensive days of full-out feminist thinking and arrived at a wonderful epiphany. It's the relationship one had with the parent of the opposite sex that is definitive in determining one's romantic trajectory. Thus, my close relationship with my father ensured I am capable of strongly bonding to men in extended relationships. My friends who didn't have that tend toward unsatisfactory and/or truncated flings and don't make it much beyond two or three years at most. And just think of Germany: so many men with German mothers).

I'm sorry to say, then, that things look grim for those of you who had fucked-up parents of the opposite sex. But don't think I'm home free just because I had a good father. It seems pretty apparent that I am incapable of being attracted to a nice normal son of a nice normal mother. Why? Hell if I know! But Project Mind Made Up will serve as a useful test and is already generating interesting data. In the meantime, Rosa, you and I clearly have more work to do, before we get it all figured out.

Request for Proposals

2009-08-17T13:58:00.005+02:00

This post is for those of you men from whom I haven´t managed to walk away completely and who, despite your extremely emotionally-unavailable selves, can´t help but be in contact with me, no matter how sporadically. It´s been two and a half years now that I´ve been on my own -- plenty long enough for this daddy´s girl to say, I proved I can make it alone. And more than enough to know that I don´t much care for solitude. So make me an offer -- virtually everything´s open for negotiation except what I need to do to maintain my residency here in Europe. I´m not looking for the love of my life -- the last time it came close to doing me in. I don´t want the world; I´ve had more than enough in the past, and it becomes harder and harder to bear each time the world falls apart. No more looking back and realizing another decade of my life is gone; I want a couple of years that are simple, peaceful, with enough drama to keep it interesting, but no more. I want the day-to-day, I want you tossing the salad as I bake the bread, I want to wipe your brow when you´re feverish and you to run down for Motrin when I can´t seem to make it off the couch. I want to hear about your day, to celebrate little triumphs together and soothe away each others' setbacks. I want someone by my side who's as out-of-place as I am in these ridiculously large brains of ours. I want to feel our way together, toward our own truths, because the rules have never been made for the likes of us. My mind´s made up: I won´t be alone another Christmas.

Berlinostalgia

2009-07-25T20:11:00.009+02:00

As my kvetching about the glacial pace of my Spanish visa proceedings has taken on some pretty apparent tones of desperation, the Director has asked me if I really think Spain is the country for me. And he's asked not once but twice, which, coming from a German, qualifies as a really unforgivable invasion of privacy but which I, as American, take as a possible indication that this acquaintanceship could in, oh, let's say 10 years or so, become a lovely friendship. The word's still out on which country I should (in a perfect world without boundaries) be in, but practical reasons have made it Spain for the time being.

And so, as of today I no longer officially live in Berlin; I've abgemeldet (un-registered) from the residency list. I'll admit it, I dragged it out until practically the last minute: my residency permit in Germany expires at the end of this month. I'm feeling inexplicably sad and nostalgic. A year and a half ago I was so eagerly making plans to get the hell out and start my exciting new life in Spain. But maybe, just maybe, this will be the last time in my life that I indulge in thinking that the next move or change is the one that will finally make my life perfect.

So, until I give Madrid exactly as much time as I did Berlin, I'm withholding judgment. Given that I'll be back in Berlin in November for at least a month, maybe more, that means it won't be until at least a year from now that I weigh in on Berlin vs. Madrid. Stay tuned...

Claustrophobia

2009-07-17T12:13:00.009+02:00

Some days there’s just not enough strength of will, spirit, or plain old heart to get past the fact that one’s completely alone in a strange land, and the thought comes to mind, that I could fall over dead and days could go by, and when they did find me, I’d certainly end up in the public morgue then probably slapped into a cheap coffin and stuffed into a grave in the section of the paupers cemetery reserved for the unknown and unloved. And when this happens I always swear to myself that I’ll put an emergency contact card in my wallet. But the only person who’s at all appropriate to put on that card at this point in my life is my mother, and that’s right, of course my mother should know if I fall over dead in a foreign country… And then I have two options, either I contemplate how long she’s likely to even be around, after which there's no one who’s appropriate, or I go back to worrying the question of what to do with the body: let’s say it’s at the public morgue, maybe they put it in cold storage, but then she’s supposed to do what, fly over here and somehow take charge?? Or is there some sort of service for shipping bodies overseas?? I suppose there must be, but this is all getting rather out of hand when really all I want is to be cremated. Which circles me back to thinking, good god, how much of the body would even be left, it could be quite some days before anyone notices I have, well, expired. OK, sure, that had more currency in the winter in Berlin, but now in the blistering Madrid summer, it probably wouldn’t be long… And with that I'm tidily back to convincing myself cremation's the only logical option as I make a mental note to tell her to have it done locally, since something about the idea of my decayed body taking wing just freaks me out.

At any rate, what I’m really trying to say is that I’ve always been the kind of woman who needed that emergency contact to be a man, and there is no man now and there hasn’t been for two and a half years, and consequently that emergency contact card has not and probably never will make it into my wallet, because dying an anonymous immigrant in a strange place with no lover to mourn my loss (and preferably throw himself on my [newly] dead and still [reasonably] attractive body) is a fate so grim that I have to push it aside and mentally pick myself up and shake myself off, cursing whatever horrid bureaucrat of the moment has gotten me into such a state (in this case it was finding out that the last step to process my residency isn't until October 23, meaning I can’t leave the country for what will total 6 months, which throws me into a claustrophobic panic), tell myself I have it a HELL of a lot better than 95% of the other people who come from truly difficult situations and aren’t affluent and light-skinned and American and close to fluent in Spanish. Yes, I have it so good, but I’ll tell you I always remember life would be so much easier if I could be, just, well, normal, with a beautiful house and beautiful children and a beautiful job and beautiful SUVs parked in my driveway in the good ol' USA, with, above all, no need to think so damn much, then yeah, life would be just great.

Lost in China

2009-07-09T14:41:00.009+02:00

If you'll stipulate to the fact that we are all the centers of our own universes, then it should come as no surprise that I am the most interesting person that I know. Recently, however, I've had the uncomfortable feeling that I've been surpassed, at least temporarily, by the Lively German. Should I be blogging about his Great Adventure rather than whining about the lack of initiative on the part of the local wildlife in various European capitals? I am tempted since, aside from mass E-mailings every week or ten days, he's not doing it for himself...

In the interest of discretion, I'll limit myself to the memories and imaginings that his trip stirs up. From Delhi (where he stayed with my old friend R.) he bussed to his starting point in Dehradun and in less than a month, he'd made it the roughly 1500 kilometers to Kathmandu without incident. But not surprisingly, upon reaching the border with Tibet, since he was neither part of an official guided group nor had he obtained special permission, the Chinese turned him away unceremoniously. This entailed a return to Kathmandu and a whole series of rearrangements to his itinerary, that rather put me in mind of my own blunder trying to leave Costa Rica for Nicaragua in 1986. In my defense, I was very young and it was the first time I'd traveling as an adult outside of my country (although I was accompanied by my theoretically-more-experienced but in reality dead-weight boyfriend who most unfortunately turned into my best-unmentioned ex-husband).

Now then, it was the Costa Ricans not the Nicaraguans who were the problem; hindered by pigeon Spanish, we finally garnered that we'd failed to purchase exit stamps needed to leave the country. The existence of said exit stamps were, of course, a complete surprise to us, but less surprising was that they could only be purchased at the nearest state capitol, which meant back-tracking well into Guanacaste. My well-experienced traveler brain looks back now thinking, hmmm, what would have been the chance of bribing whichever official stood in my way? But I was still (relatively) pure at that point and said thought never crossed my mind.

The bus company unloaded our luggage and dumped it by the side of the road at this shitty border outpost in the middle of a war zone (remember: 1980s, Sandinistas). We probably looked pretty forlorn -- two sweet young things -- and as the bus pulled slowly away, a journalist who'd been traveling with us since San José slipped us $20 worth of colones through the window. [OK, well, maybe he did it before getting back on the bus, but somehow it's more dramatic this way.] Those colones certainly came in handy as we'd of course spent up all ours before leaving and had little chance of finding anyone to accept our travelers checks until Monday morning. I always remember that guy with gratitude and have returned the favor more than once. In that vein, before the Lively German left Berlin, I slipped a few bills into his luggage where I knew he'd find it after it was too late to do anything but scold me long-distance. At which point I told him not to fret, but to put it away somewhere as emergency money. One never knows...

But I digress; back to China where the Lively German, then, was apparently unable to charm or bribe his way over the border. [Would a German ever actually bribe?? Would a Chinese official ever accept a bribe?] He ended up flying to Chengdu in the middle of Szechwan province where he seemed daunted at the spiciness of the food (I drool at the thought of it) but pleased with how prettily-shod the women are. After making it into Aba well up on the plateau that continues west to Tibet, he's been out of touch now for half a month. As he must be somewhere in the wilds of Quinghai Province [sans riots? sans floods?], I've had to rely on flights of imagination, picturing him camping amongst Tibetan or Mongolian herders, his lime tent blending between their white and brown ones and the green highland grasses. Or I imagine he's gorging on lamb and dumplings and noodles to keep those biking legs in shape. I hope he'll make his date tomorrow, to meet up with the requisite (and very expensive) guided tour, which is the only way he's permitted to do the Golmud to Lhasa leg (a mere 1200 kilometers planned for 3 weeks). Here's hoping he'll manage a phone call to one of his biggest fans currently in not-so-exciting Madrid. She'll be waiting for it, likely sipping gazpacho, in between dashing up to La Rioja for wine tasting or over to the Camino de Santiago to expiate a sin or two.

Clean Break

2009-05-23T12:16:00.012+02:00

If timing is everything, then I'm not doing too badly -- certainly running well above 50-50 in the clean-break game. There's nothing like it when it's done right, to yield a wistful memory of an ex-lover, a little smile as one thinks, ah yes, now that was something. It's always so decadent to be able to add, with a rueful shake of one's head, that, sadly, it ended badly. The trick is to time it for when the initial lust has just peaked and started its down-swing, before two people become too comfortable with each other and the pettiness begins. I've always thought that it's OK to be a little in love, but just a little. That bears careful watching and a lot of skill, that being just a little in love.

Recently my ex has declared that he no longer feels a burning passion for me, news that has somehow shocked me to the core. By my reaction, I clearly see that I thought he would desire me forever. Isn't every man with whom I've made a break (clean or otherwise) perpetually lusting after me? I certainly thought so, up to a week ago. But my ex quite startled me by stating the simple truth (that so few men seem to grasp), which is that synergy is everything, and when the energy is abruptly removed on one end, well, sooner or later that's the end of it. And preferably sooner. Because, the very worst, the perfect opposite of a clean break, in my experience, are the cases when things ended badly but one talked oneself into thinking it might be possible to recapture that old magic. There can be something downright icky about this; it has never not been a mistake.

Clean breaks have become a bit harder these days for me, I'm afraid; I'm certainly aware that something's changed in me. The messy-to-beat-all-messy break (with my ex) has sent me shying down a new path, it would seem. The emotionally ambiguous, the chronically uncommitted -- and particularly those who hide their pathology well -- seem to hold a strong appeal. The days of having things, well, "settled" seem to be over. But I've made a pact with my ex -- we're back to the days of no more suffering fools gladly. And so in the last week I've ditched two more men, who seem to be under the misguided impression that they can just coast along with me. Case #1: after more than 3 weeks of dead silence on his end, during which I single-handedly moved myself to Spain, found housing, battled with ridiculous immigration paperwork, and managed a half-hearted attendance at DocumentaMadrid, I discovered *I* was supposed to be in charge of communication with the man Berlin threw at me at the last minute. My response? "It is not only the duty of a gentleman, but, one might venture to guess, also his great pleasure, to inquire after the health and well-being of a lady, as often and as immediately as possible. That is even more pertinent given the difficult circumstances which confronted this particular lady at this particular time." His abject apologies, to be accepted between the hours of 14-17, Mondays thru Thursdays, have not, to-date, been forthcoming. And he, I'm sad to say, was to be my evidence that there was more than one can-do German in Berlin. As the Lively German (who, I might add, has managed to call me twice since my move to Madrid) should by now be over the Nepalese border into Tibet, this means Berlin has exactly zero at this moment.

Definitely a more sinister commentary on Spanish manhood (or what passes as such), the second case involved Mr. Boy Toy from back in December. Did he call or Email me to greet me when I arrived? Did he offer any help with house-hunting or moving? Why no, actually, he got the brilliant idea to send not one but two SMSs, spaced at the particularly irritating interval of 11 minutes, at four in the morning last weekend. This, I've decided, is what passes as a mating call among Spanish men of a certain age. I don't suppose I need to outline my withering response (particularly as it was rendered in Spanish).

My ex used to say, semi-accusingly, that everything with me was a test. I prefer to think of it as "social research". But yes, of course we women are testing, and the more seasoned we are, the more refined our tests. After all, it's our evolutionary duty. Even still, I do admit, that I sometimes yearn for those days long past, when somehow everything seemed to just flow, as we jumped in with no thought for the future, because, quite simply, we had no pasts.

Expiation

2009-05-05T14:07:00.006+02:00

And now, a special post for the Catholic among you. Mr. Incredible is expiating his sins. Or so he says. When I saw him a couple of days ago, it had been six months since he cut things off with me, shock-and-awe style. Surgically, one could say. The putative cause of this military action? An ex-girlfriend. Who had just flown in from Argentina. And installed herself in his apartment. Against his will. Without (if you'll excuse the crudity) putting out. Which has continued during this entire time. SIX MONTHS. A man and a woman living together, like a pair of monks, incensed and inflamed to a level which, as he describes it, can hardly be humanly bearable. Particularly given that, the last I was in a position to check, there was only one bed in his apartment...

Gentle readers, you will undoubtedly ask, Katchita, were you born yesterday? To which I would respond, Does it seem that way? Well, no, of course not, so I immediately asked what those sins might be. Twice. But sadly no details were forthcoming. My mind has wandered, of course, as is its wont. Just think of the possibilities: monstrous sex crimes that I don't even want to spell out (of course) top my list. Followed closely by the most interesting of the Ten Commandments. Murder. Mayhem. Adultery. Then there are the Seven Deadly Sins. I end with the Golden Rule, hmmm. Well, masochism has never been my thing but my imagination is certainly sufficiently ample to grasp the concept. So yeah, the possibilities are virtually endless. Another case where I will probably never know the true story. But probably the one in my mind is more interesting.

The Only Town in Germany

2009-04-26T16:00:00.013+02:00

I've been asking ex-pats in Berlin about what it is, exactly, that's special about this town. It's difficult to put a finger on it exactly, but Berlin has a funny way of wending its way into the hearts of those of us who don't belong anywhere, exactly. When I moved to Berlin, I will admit to something approaching outright prejudice against German culture and language. My move was completely expedient: I absolutely had to get the hell out of the U.S. and between professional contacts and funding opportunities, it pretty much had to be Germany. I hardly thought twice about Cologne (the other possibility); there was really only Berlin. When I arrived, my German vocabulary consisted of exactly six words: bitte, danke, Pfefferminztee and Mineralwasser mit gas, which was all I'd managed to learn in a 10-day visit in 2003. OK, make it ten words, as I'm sure I knew Mein Kampf, Blitzkrieg and Luftwaffe as well. They weren't going to be of much use to me, of course, particularly as I doubt I even knew what they meant other than Bad Things Germans Did. It wasn't until two years later that The Lively German pointed out to me Kampf is struggle; I'd simply never bothered to ask myself what it might mean. German was "that Nazi language" to me, and my clearly formulated intent my first year was to give the impression of a nice but linguistically-challenged woman who simply could not manage to learn it. This may be possibly the only example in my entire life when I've qualified as sufficiently incurious to border on bigoted.

So, that's how I ended up in Berlin, but after that first year, why did I stay on? The choice between more part-time work in Berlin or going back to Bush's U.S. was pretty clear. It was only a half-year later that I took off for Spain, convinced that I was through with Berlin. But I kept having to going back to Germany for visa matters, then was hired for another part-time gig, and somewhere in that time I realized I actually could speak some rudimentary German (how did that happen?) and also that Berlin was slowly seducing me. At that point the stage was set; all it took was a German as tenacious as he is whacked to break through to the side of me that is always there, voracious, insatiable, ready to gobble up knowledge. I am as discomfited by looking back at my petty close mindedness as I am amused by the fact that in the last four months I've progressed from little better than beginner to a solid intermediate level in German.

Back to Berlin, then. I shared this last sublet in Prenzlauerberg with the most perfectly uncomplicated Swiss guy one could imagine (he had all of one moving part). He's the reason I know that Berlin's charm only works with freaks and misfits. I asked him several times when he'd be back. He was always completely uninterested: "oh no, there are far too many other cities to see in this lifetime." I can't disagree with him about so many other cities, of course, but it was interesting to see Berlin was completely lost on him. And this despite the last four weeks of as close-to-perfect weather as can be.

As for me, Berlin was up to its usual tricks. In the last week she tossed out, of all things(!), another German man with energy and initiative. That means there are TWO in Deutschland; Mein Gott, what on earth am I supposed to make of that?!? I returned to Madrid yesterday with that old familiar what-the-hell-am-I-doing-moving-yet-again feeling. Have I gone from sexless Berlin to sexless Madrid?! It's 10°C (18°F) colder in Madrid than Berlin as I write, and I have not ventured out of my new sublet today. Berlin -- so hard to love, but so hard to leave -- ich vermisse Dich.

Chorin Chorale

2009-04-23T00:23:00.006+02:00

The visit to Chorin in March, Lively German-style, meant tagging onto someone else's Deutsche Bahn group ticket, in this case the Brandenburg ticket, and only paying a couple of euros for each of us each way. Of course this takes a fair degree of hutzpah and luck, both of which the Lively German has in spades. This is easier to do as a single person traveling to and from larger population centers, but it's a great way to beat the system when it works. On the way back, the conductor wasn't far behind us as we searched for and found a group of three on its way back to Berlin.

Our visit to the monastery coincided with that of a Hamburg choir, which, as soon as they found an acoustically perfect room, burst into song. I was, quite simply, spellbound. There is nothing more captivating than stumbling into completely unexpected beauty. It didn't take much mangled but enthusiastic German to talk them into an encore. The complete truce that the L.G. and I had declared, combined with the immediate rush of endorphins that choral music dumps into my bloodstream, must have meant we were both emitting unusually strong peace-and-tranquility vibes. After a walk around the nearby pond into which the L.G. immediately plunged (that German suffering thing, don't you know), we were both chilled through. This nearly perfect day was topped off as we returned to the monastery for our bikes, struck up a conversation with a retired pastor who guides monastery tours, and were invited to his house for tea in front of his spectacular Ofenheizing.

Biosmokes

2009-04-22T23:41:00.009+02:00

When I first moved to Berlin two and a half years ago and discovered my favorite pool, the Europa Sportspark at Landsberger Allee, there was a cigarette vending machine right out front, all the better to get budding athletes hooked on nicotine as early as possible. I can't say exactly when it disappeared; perhaps it was a result of Berlin's smoking ban, phased in during the second half of 2008. But I'm happy to report I've found another one in the most unlikely of places -- Lehde, in the middle of the Spreewald bioreserve. Lehde is the cute little town about 2 kilometers east of Lübbenau via the footpath that winds through the various canals and wetlands. This was another pleasant day trip just before Easter and I highly recommend the canoe/kayak rentals. We only did the basic one-hour route but I definitely want to go back some other time for the longer two- or four-hour loop. It's simply too too precious!

Important New Flash for Men

2009-04-20T09:54:00.007+02:00

OK, you men, I know that female behavior probably seems completely arbitrary to you, but it's really not that hard to figure out, with just a little thought. Has it really not occurred to you that roughly 15% of the time, a woman between the ages of, say, puberty and 50, is having her period and no woman chooses to initiate sexual relations under such conditions!?! I mean, what if you're one of those guys who's totally icked out by such things, which is a definite majority of you, in my experience? Why would we want that funny look (some of) you get on your faces to be our memory of The First Time? We can add to that another 25%, at least, for the times when a woman certainly never thought things would go quite as far as they have and, in all seriousness, 1) hasn't shaved in the various places she feels she should--first sexual encounter and all--and 2) has on old shapeless underwear that is not in the least sexy! Hey men, we women have been brainwashed (just as you have) into thinking these things are important and you really have to allow for them, unless you can convey to us with overpowering animalistic energy that you couldn't care less if we just spent the entire last year in the Amazonian jungle sans soap! So that means chances are high that you'll need at least a second, and probably a third, date. After all, no decent woman has sex before the third date, am I right? Just a simple tip, courtesy of Sexless Berlin.

Day Tripping

2009-04-18T14:31:00.011+02:00

It seems I'm finally moving away from Berlin -- after two years and seven months I will abmelden (un-register) with the German authorities, as my Spanish residency will require me to register there. I'm feeling quite wistful about this, and as seems to have become quite a pattern with me, I don't seem to be able to make a completely clean break. I'm storing some winter things in the Lively German's cellar as I doubt I'll be able to resist coming back for the 20th anniversary of the Wall-Fall in November. That's how I justify it to myself, anyway, as to why I'm only planning on being in Spain for the next six months.

Another sign I may actually really be leaving, though, is I've gotten serious about doing tourist things I never bothered with as a Berlin resident. Over the last couple of weeks I organized two Toytown outings: Poland (I'd never gone, even though it's all of one hour away) and Spreewald southeast of Berlin (I'd been once years ago but hadn't allowed enough time to hang out). I've always kept my distance as Toytowners can be a snide, nasty bunch, but the Berlin-Brandenburg special train tix are really cheap when one travels in a group of five, and Toytown's the quickest way to round up the necessary bodies. Both times I was lucky to find some nice people; one very cool couple went along on both trips.

Poland was Szczecin (included, incredibly, in the Brandenburg ticket and accessible via several DeutscheBahn non-stops daily). This wonderful weather found us sitting at a café on the Oder river drinking Starka vodka and eating pierogis (a delicious food that for some reason I'd never sampled before in my life). The next time I'm in Berlin I'll either have to hop over to the Polish side of Frankfurt-an-Oder or find a good Polish ex-pat restaurant here in the city. These pierogies are not to be missed! Although Szczecin is said to not measure up to other cities a bit further into Poland, in addition to the river, it had a quaint, if small, old town and I was quite taken with the green ceramics decorating the red brick buildings. I found Szczecin to be a cheap and easy introduction to the country. The direct train back to Berlin was a peaceful two-hour ride, which I made with a bottle of Starka vodka nestled in the seat beside me. I'm leaving it here, untouched, to celebrate the Mauerfall anniversary.

The (Anti) Monogamy Post, Part I

2009-04-14T22:37:00.005+02:00

There's no escaping that the secret to my (past) success with men was my ex. A woman who's getting (most) of her needs met elsewhere is virtually irresistible to men. I found it very interesting, actually, that most men are surprisingly good at playing second fiddle for an alpha female. Only once in ten years did I have someone (quite a bit younger) fall a bit too hard, although I do remember one other relationship where, due to circumstances, and by unspoken agreement, we didn't declare ourselves. Living the alpha-male <---> alpha-female <---> beta male(s) construct for nearly 15 years now has been wonderfully instructive. All in all, I've found many men are very good at not pair-bonding. I'm virtually certain this is something deeply embedded in human sexuality. After all, why not engage in a little beta-male behavior on the side, as long as it takes little effort? It can only improve a man's chances at passing along his genes.

The interesting thing is that the opposite seems to be completely untrue: very few women can deal with their partners' extracurricular activities and precious few seem to be any good as beta females. I simply can't make up my mind if the alpha-female <---> alpha-male <---> beta female(s) construct fails so dramatically in European and American (including Latinamerican) culture because of socialization or if it's something that runs deeper, at the bioanthropologic level. The only men who I've found to be the least bit adept at managing relations with multiple women are Nicaraguans (this could possibly be expanded to Latinamericans in general, but I hesitate to do so as I haven't spent enough time in enough countries). What's the secret to their success? I'd have to say it's an uncanny ability to keep extra-curricular activities completely hidden. And this brings me to one of the strangest things about humans: we are the only species to hide our sexual behavior, unique within the animal world. Is this for women's benefit? I really wonder if might be.

I'm certain that I can hardly think of anything more contrary to women's best interests than socially-dictated monogamy. The extremely long time that it takes to properly raise a human child virtually guarantees a mother will need multiple protectors, and I believe it is a fundamental drive within us women to seek as many as possible, both alpha and beta. And how exactly does a woman do so? By convincing as many partners as possible that her offspring are theirs as well. And how can she best do this? By having surreptitious sex. I'm constantly flummoxed that, no matter how good I am as a modern woman in taking care of myself, I always feel a deep, visceral need for a protector. Or two, or three! So you men, let me cite Henry Miller, Nexus, who got it completely right: "A woman, when truly grateful for the attentions she receives, nearly always offers her body." It's really that simple. And that's why Mr. Berlin, Mr. Europe, and Mr. Germany just won't work, at all, ever.

And He's Off...

2009-04-11T10:38:00.016+02:00

With the usual heavy lifting attendant upon an international move (or in this case a partial move for most of the rest of the year), the Lively German is on his way to his Great Adventure. After spending Thursday and the first part of Friday helping with any and all last-minute moving, organizing and errands, I ended up at the Hauptbahnhof with 5 minutes to spare and him realizing that he had brought no water at all. He was on the top level of tracks, the stores are 2 or 3 levels down, and it isn't easy moving through the Hauptbahnhof, unfortunately -- the elevators are worthless and the escalators hopelessly truncated. There were no large bottles of water in sight (Germans seem to subsist on half a liter per day) so in desperation I grabbed several, blatantly cut in front of everyone waiting to pay with a thousand pardons, explaining my friend was leaving in 5 minutes. Then I ran as fast as I could, shouldering people aside in my best imitation of a Hollywood chase scene, down the main hall, up the escalator, around the turn, halfway back to the center of the hall, up the center escalator to the tracks and out of sheer luck (the Lively German is the luckiest man I know), he was hanging out the door of a car just ahead. I ran up, threw myself and the water at him as the door was sliding shut on us; the door backed off, of course (German safety engineering, don't you know), giving me time for a big dramatic kiss and hug before it slid shut again, with me blowing exaggerated kisses as the train drew away. I do SO like dramatic send-offs, and this one simply could not have been better!

Afterward, The Painter -- who had volunteered his car to schlep the 35 kilos of baggage, which the Lively German apparently intends to cycle over the Himalayas -- and I took a deep breath, then another, looked at each other and shook our heads. I said, in English, "I need a drink". We ended up at his house toasting the Lively German with a bottle of very, very nice Ukrainian vodka. The sun was shining fiercely as I walked up Bernauerstraße, past the Mauer (Wall) memorial which they've expanded since the last time I was there. The cherry blossoms are out in force from Prenzlauer Allee to Mauerpark, there's not been a drop of rain for 12 or 14 days (I've lost count) and scarcely a cloud in the sky the whole time, all of which is forecast to continue until my departure. All's right in Berlin, schlampe in her Easter finery, and, once again, sexless.

Mr. Germany

2009-04-02T14:07:00.010+02:00

There is some possibility I was not in my right (or full) mind while composing the Mr. Europe post, as I was feverish with a flu at the time. And I most certainly cannot be held responsible for performing it in person, with various flourishes and embellishments, several hours later, at the Lively German's birthday dinner. Really, how could I possibly resist, as the sole woman there with five men, four of them German? Reports of it are apparently making their way throughout Berlin, as last night The Director was able to repeat some of it word-for-word (or at least the most important word: WANK). I do always encourage active audience participation, which in that case led me to a critically important discovery. One of my victims (I mean, audience) described his approach to seduction as "posing". Well, my friends, I was beside myself with joy at this hugely revealing remark, which has increased my understanding of the German male roughly infinitely (from zero to 0.001).

Last night The Director and his brother provided me the opportunity for a short reprise of the Mr. Europe performance and I was able to gather that The Director believes wanking happens not before but after the outing in which the typical German male interacts with, well, no one at all. [Posing, don't you know.] The Director's sample scenario, as far as I was able to make out, is this: German man spots desirable barista; does nothing (oops, I mean, poses). German man returns following night and poses to beat the band in a corner of the bar. German man returns a third night and observes object of desire depart with another man. German man returns home to punish her (I am very clear on this exact phrase, delivered with a giggled insistence that this "punishment" will involve hands places chastely ABOVE the covers). Honestly, I'm shaking my head: will I ever understand These German Men?!?

No matter, at this point we were extremely well lubricated, having been at an Arsenal screening of a particularly incomprehensible film from Thai artist/director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Every time I've been there this year, they've had wine flowing freely after the screenings (they are really doing something right when it comes to grantsmanship). We decided to shut that party down, and were in the process of finishing off various partially poured bottles of wine when it occurred to the brothers to ride the glass elevators up and down the Filmhaus' seven floors. I went along to test whether drunkenness trumps vertigo (it does) but decided I'd be more comfortable riding on a bar stool on which I proceeded to plant myself within the elevator as I continued sipping wine. In my mind this was great performance art, but, sadly, at that point, we were rather indulgently shown the way out. Bicycling back very late to Prenzlauerberg via Unter den Linden, the Berliner Dom back-lit in blue from the Radisson's agressive neon lights, I had another Berlin moment. I told The Director's brother, "Sometimes I just love this place". Na ja, it must have been the alcohol doing the talking.

Berlinale Recycled

2009-04-01T13:16:00.005+02:00

NEWS FLASH -- Berlinale must-see films currently playing in Berlin: Deutschland '09 and Hayat Var (more below).

Immediately after the Berlinale, the original-version theaters in Berlin screen the pre-determined "hits", such as Milk (definitely worth seeing for Penn's performance but 1984's documentary, Times of Harvey Milk, was better) and The International (total crap). A month or two later a few of the more alternative films from the festival might cycle through, per the incomprehensible hit-or-miss system that seems to govern film distribution. I was hoping Human Zoo would be one of these, but I don't see any evidence of it in the two cities I watch film: Berlin and Madrid.

Another film I'm pulling for is Hashmatsa (Defamation), the best documentary I saw at the Berlinale, but it will, I'm betting, be a bit difficult to track down. My U.S. readers can see it soon at the Tribeca film fest's international documentary competition
and I'm guessing it will show up on the Jewish film festival circuit this summer. Israeli director Yoav Shamir asks two very important questions: does the extremely powerful Jewish American anti-defamation lobby actually do Israel more harm than good? And, is it of any benefit to Israel to play the role, as some of his ADL interviewees expressed it, of "last resort" for American Jews? You'll have to see the film to find out exactly what he makes of these issues, but I will describe one thread that I found most touching: his portrayal of Jewish children as inculcated with fear of the outside world. I have no way of knowing how extensive this is, but watching teenagers explain in such a matter-of-fact way how the whole world hates them simply because they are Jewish, was, I found, somewhere between heart-wrenching and maddening.

Back to my main point: the charming but equally heart-wrenching Hayat Var (My Only Sunshine), about a young girl growing up in poverty in Istanbul, is playing tomorrow and Friday at Berlin's Turkish Film Festival this week in Berlin. So if you can read German subtitles or understand Turkish, SEE THIS FILM! And, my second favorite documentary, Deutschland 09, is, as expected, all over Berlin. Of the 13 shorts, 10 ranged from quite good to amazing, and for a compilation, one could hardly ask for a better hit ratio.

Spring is Sprung

2009-03-31T22:43:00.005+02:00

Yesterday at 5 PM, the sun came out for the first time since November 17th and by 6 PM I was in Helmholzplatz licking an ice cream and sitting on a park bench with my face like a sunflower pointed straight up at the sun. Today was even warmer and the mercury is forecast to approach 20°C by the weekend, so all thoughts of working on my FUTURE in capital letters are out the window and I am instead focusing on recovering from so much grey, grey, grey. I'd forgotten the delight of spring after a long, hard winter (the hardest since I moved to Berlin). One thing that the Germans know for sure is that suffering, once removed, can feel oh-so-good. I learned this, of course, from my German mother. Zu leiden ist ihre Leidenschaft. [See -- isn't that neato? -- suffering and passion have the same root in German!]

Berlin is once again meine Leibe, though her renewed seduction is perhaps rather too dependent on the Lively German. He is leaving soon on his Great Adventure (bicycling from Delhi to Shanghai -- yes, that's right, that means big mountains, actually the biggest in the world, so can we all say BUNS of STEEL??); I will have to see if she can hold her charms in his absence. And if not, my return to Spain is fixed; I will be interested to see how I feel flying away -- leaving home, or returning to it? I really have no idea where home is at the present time, but am counting on yet another move to show me exactly.

Both Ends of the Candle

2009-03-27T13:52:00.007+01:00

I was in Brussels this week and came back by train to the Hauptbahnhof which is just across the street from the Hamburger Bahnhof (confusing, I know, but the latter is a museum and not a train station). It was during Berlin State Museum free hours (the final four hours every Thursday), so I popped over to see what was happening. They always seem to have more or less Beuys, but this time I paid more attention since I'd seen an exhibit on Beuys there earlier this year with the Lively German, who is a fan. Beuys as an artist became convinced of the pivotal role of creativity in life, and in education as well. This is a theme close to my heart, as I think much education is at best drudgery and at worst soul-killing. He became an important figure in green/socialist politics and advocated a radically open approach to education that led to his dismissal as a professor. But he was also a Nazi, having volunteered in his late teens for the Luftwaffe. I always say people become more of what they really are with age. So for me there's something very attractive about people who become leftists as they get older. Am I able to think this way about a Nazi? I'm not sure am I, but it's something to consider.

This visit I came away with a killer quote, really right on the mark for me:
Jeder Mensch muß sich verschleißen. Das wäre ja schrecklich wenn er nicht verschlissen wäre und dann schon sterben würde -- wäre ja schrecklich. [...] Das heist, man muß sich vollkommen bis zur Asche verbrennen, sonst hat es gar keinen Zweck. Wenn man am Ende noch zu gut in Schuß ist... ///
Every human being should use him/herself up. It would be really horrible if s/he were not worn out and then just died -- it would be really horrible. That means, one must completely burn oneself to ashes, there is no other goal. If one is still in good shape at the end...

--Joseph Beuys in conversation with Knut Fischer and Walter Smerling, 1985 [Note: he died in January 1986]

Oh yes indeed. My ex and I always agreed, there will be plenty of time to sleep when we're dead. And never mind that I hardly slept a wink during this trip; the sun is shining here in Berlin and there's probably some adventure out there waiting for me. In the meantime, here's a magnificent Rubens from Brussels' Musée d'Art ancien. Cherubs and virgins are not really my thing but who can ignore how after all so many centuries this piece still glows? And when's the last time you saw art mounted on a red museum wall?? Simply a fabulous choice, I have to say.

Mr. Europe

2009-03-19T17:11:00.011+01:00

Soy una mujer del Nuevo Mundo [a little tri-lingualism in my Berlin blog just for you, R]. I expect energy, interaction, and, most importantly, initiative. In short, I expect a spark. And that means I'm not interested in E-mailing for weeks until you make up your mind to meet me, I won't want to join your instant messenging list before you've even asked me out, and I expect you (if I could be so crude) to put out when I want you to put out. That means I do not expect to wait until the stars are in proper alignment, the Pope has sent his personal benediction, your ex will not be dropping in for the next five hundred days, or your mother is in the air on her way to Mallorca and can't check in on you every five minutes.

The other week I was at the Arsenal, Berlin's archival film theater. I'd recently mused it hardly seems right that in over 25 years of rabid film-going, I'd never once met anyone at a screening. It's not that moviegoers are uninteresting, of course (and I'm talking here about us addicts who nearly always go to films alone). No, it's just that we're a terribly solitary lot and would scarcely dream of talking to each other. Currently, the Arsenal is presenting various film series, apparently with sponsorship, as the last two times I've been there, wine and pretzels have appeared afterward. This last time, determined to take matters into my own hands, I looked the crowd over, and spotted a solitary man with very nice El Greco hands. He must have seen me scoping him out, but, being German, he would never dream of approaching me. In the interest of social research, I did it myself. He was quite flustered (admittedly I had to use English since my ability to flirt in German [if it's even possible to flirt in German] is non-existent as of yet). After some fairly awkward exchanges, I did obtain his Email address, but he never responded to me. And this after I sent him a photo of a 500-year-old painting of his very own hands. ... Sniff.

So I've had countless (well, the number hasn't reached infinity but I certainly have lost count) dates with Spaniards, admittedly limited dates with Germans, and thankfully brief encounters with the completely icky Frenchman in Berlin, drawn-out dead-ends with both an Italian and a Venezuelan in Madrid, two horrifying one-night stands in Spain along with two little-better-than-one-night stands about which I'm still deciding whether to be horrified about or not, and various disappointing dalliances with immigrants (including some Americans) in both countries. I find most Spanish and German men hopelessly passive: the Spanish ones seem lazy and spoiled and the German ones withdrawn and poorly socialized. And of course I launched this blog in the first place by explaining what happens to immigrants here.

My ex, who spent three years in Norway, always used to describe people going to bars and drinking themselves into a near-stupor as a sort of obligatory foreplay. One of the Spanish little-better-than-one-night-stands described virtually the same scenario: a man goes to a bar or club, chooses a woman and buys her 6 or 8 drinks, at which point she (and perhaps he as well) is magically freed of her Catholic upbringing and groping can begin in earnest, with the inevitable conclusion. In contrast, I'll never forget the Ex-Berliner's great Dr. Dot column that appeared just a few months after I moved here. Dr. Dot opined that German men are so cheap that they would rather just wank off before going out so that they don't have to spend any money on a date. Maybe here it's the woman who's in charge of getting the man sufficiently lubricated; I simply could not say. Other than the French (whose appreciation of sex is nicely documented), I do wonder at times if single Europeans have sex more than once or twice a year.

I'm honestly not sure what the solution is but I'm determined not to admit defeat. If I've learned anything at all from all this (and surely I must have learned something), it's that if the spark is there, it's there right from the beginning. One can see it often from the minute one looks into a man's eyes, but certainly within the hour or two it takes for a first date. From now on, no spark, and I walk. Hasta la vista. Auf wiedersehen. See you later. Oder besser nicht!

Mr. Berlin

2009-03-12T04:18:00.006+01:00

Found on Craigslist (the bolding is mine). It is so perfect that, for once, I have absolutely nothing more to add.

the dilemma - 35 (Berlin)
Reply to: pers-1045711947@craigslist.org
Date: 2009-02-22, 8:57PM CET

oh well, i have absolutely no experience picking up girls for one night stands or affairs and normally i am not looking for it.
i tend to be unfriendly with people that i don't know so this makes things more complicated.
right now i feel that i should not and don't want to have a serious relationship until i sorted out some unhappiness within myself.
on the other hand i feel i am getting grumpier and grumpier every month that i am not sharing physical intimacy.
i am german 35, tall (1.90m), slim (75kg), smoke too much, drink too much, i guess i am intelligent, occasional misanthrope.
i can be funny but often i dont want to.
i like slim girls, 25-40, young at heart.

i am looking for somebody who feels to be in the same situation,
i will not pay, nor marry you, nor do anything else for except for meeting you, so don't bother me with any of these offers and don't even try.

i am not looking for porn style fucking nor exploring any kind of sexual weirdness, fetish, sm or whatever, just some slow and peaceful sex, respecting everything the other doesnt want.

Historical Reconstructionism

2009-03-08T22:10:00.010+01:00

The Neue Museum on Museuminsel is on the verge of re-opening for the first time since its pounding during WWII. I went by there on Friday to check out this weekend's open-door preview, but the long line of people waiting an estimated hour in cold drizzle was enough to send me on my way. Its website lists the opening date as October 16, 2009, but clearly another artwork shuffle will take place in the next few weeks. Nefertiti, with whom I just checked in a couple of weeks ago, will be moving to the Neue Museum's Egypt rooms and that part of the museum will open in April, if my reading of the very difficult German on Berlin's Staatliche Museen website is correct. After all, they can hardly afford to keep Nefi out of circulation for very long. She gets around, though, that babe. She was in Charlottenburg in the summer of 2003, the one and only time I visited Berlin before moving here three years later, by which time she'd moved again, to the Alte Museum.

Working the long line of waiting people was a group called the Gesellschaft Historisches Berlin, handing out slick pamphlets with color photos and asking passers-by to complete a small survey as to whether the museum should have been rebuilt instead of "conserved as a ruin". I have railed before at historical revisionism in the context of the destruction of the Palast der Republik and I'll say again: Berlin was leveled in the war and virtually anything you see in the center of town that looks over 70 years old is NOT. The Director kindly gave me this photo he took just days ago of the empty lot where the Palast once stood. The graffiti reads DIE DDR HAT'S NIE GEGEBEN (THE DDR HAS NEVER EXISTED).

An old-time American Berliner who's since moved on used to say that the only thing people care about here is either Nazis/Jews or East/West. There's a great deal of truth to that, in my experience. But standing in the middle of downtown Berlin, one would think that the only thing worth memorializing is the former, and even such examples are precious few. I'm particularly fond of the Anhalter Bahnhof and Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (preserved unapologetically as ruins). The Bundestag is a brillant compromise between preserved remains and modern reinvention. Although scarce, such examples do at least exist. But the destruction of the Palast makes me fear for Alexanderplatz, with its wacky space-age clocks and workers-of-the-world murals and Plattenbau and the Marx-Engels statue that kids love to clamber over. The true heart of the city, Alex is, rightly so, constantly morphing. But they'll never take its crazy brave-new-world touches away from us, will they? They couldn't, could they?

Moving Day

2009-02-27T16:49:00.007+01:00

Not even two months in my Kreuzberg place, which by the way I really liked, and already I've had to move again. I would have stayed, but I'd only arranged for January and February and the guy I was subleting from moved out for good. I'm back in Prenzlauerberg which seems to be where I've lived about half of my time in Berlin, even though Graefekiez really is my Leiblingsbezirk. PZLberg is more affluent and, as such, it's easier to find sublets from Berliners who forsake the city for months at a time, particularly in the winter. Subletters can't really be choosers; we have to fill in where the demand is, often on short notice.

It's become impossible at this point to escape the fact that there's something about this that is quite simply extremely abnormal. In the last week I've been called both a nomad by a German and a culo de mal asiento by a Spanish friend, which I'd have to translate with a great deal of poetic license as having "ants in my pants". For those not fluent in English, the later is mainly used for little kids who can't sit still. There is, indeed, a certain truth to it. So, let me see, I've come up with a classification scheme:

1) Has possessions scattered around the world, in friends' and families' houses. One point each for the number of cities involved. Bonus point for more than one country. Two bonus points for more than one continent.
2) Has sold/gotten rid of cars, furniture in recent years. Three points per car and one for each room of furniture.
3) Has accomplished at least one international move in the last three years. One point per move.
4) Has cell phones from more than one country. One point per country.
5) Uses a Skype number for voice mail. One point per number. Bonus point for this number being in a different country from the cell phone(s).
6) Has at least one post office box. One point per box. Two bonus points for having never checked the box personally.
7) Has a paid storage locker in at least one country with the full intention to move back there at some point.

Let me see, with 3 continents, 4 countries, 8 cities, cell phones in two countries, a Skype number in a third, a PO box that I've never checked personally and one storage locker, I have a score of roughly five thousand out of a possible twenty. But somehow I think I prefer the term nomad to ants-in-my-pants.

Bewurstsein

2009-02-24T23:12:00.015+01:00

It being Mardi Gras night and 1.50-euro cocktail night at the Bei Schlawinchen, I invited a couple of new friends to help me celebrate the wildest Catholic night of the year. The (German film) Director had loaned me a Kafka compilation as I couldn't think of any better motivation to learn German than to read Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) in its original German. For some reason I'm having no luck finding it here in Berlin, so on a wild impulse, I bought Der Prozess (The Trial) the other day. For now, it will be enough to simply fondle it as I try to read a few sentences now and then. It reminds me of the book that was my inspiration and entré into Spanish, something that I'd also previously read in English and impulsively decided to try in Spanish. Omar Cabezas became, undoubtedly, the sexiest Sandinista after publishing the memoir of his guerrilla days in the jungles of central Nicaragua --La Montaña es Algo Más que una Imensa Estepa Verde (the English title is Fire from the Mountain).

It wasn't my first year living there, as my Spanish wasn't good enough to read literature. It was when I started going back in the second half of the 90s that I bought that book. And it was around the same time that I met another Cabezas brother (there were six of them, but three had died in the fight against Somoza). C., with whom I ended up working, was sharp as a tack and an unpredictable and fascinating conversationalist. He's the one who first clued me into the importance of double meanings in Spanish; he kept me constantly on my toes. So meeting Omar was doubly disillusioning. I remember him as a mass of neuroses, who at one point asked, effectively, didn't everyone worry about what other people thought of him? Those were the days when I was, with the unerringly instinct of the young, too cruel. "Well no, actually not", I remember responding, as I turned back to C. and a more interesting topic. The third brother, the one who ran the plaintain plantation, was there as well, taciturn to the point of withdrawal. What a strange mix they were: professor, neurotic revolutionary-cum-writer-cum-politician, and farmer.

But to circle back around to my original point, multi-national mixes of intellectuals typically make for interesting reflections on the vagaries of language, and this was no exception. The Director and I were well on our way to silliness when the Polish (theater) director arrived. Discussing Kafka had made me realize I don't know the word for awareness in German. Instinct told me it would be one of those long German words offering not even the slightest Latin-based or English-like hint. I focused mightily but the bar was noisy and I misunderstood the Director to say Bewurstsein. "Was ist das?" said I, delighted beyond belief, "BeWURSTsein?" Awareness in German has sausage in it?! Could anything possibly be more perfect, I asked the Pole?! She, having scored her German citizenship short days ago, merely tsk'ed.

Berlinale Soup

2009-02-17T01:36:00.014+01:00

Back in January the Lively German had introduced me to a film director here who ended up being great fun to hang out with during the Berlinale. He invited me to another director friend's traditional post-Berlinale debriefing soup, which was more than helpful in treating the massive exploding head I'd developed from seeing so many films in so little time. This is proof I'm not cut out to be a real film reviewer... Although I am well aware that some see 4 or 6 films a day (they're the ones who walk out after 15 or 20 minutes), I simply cannot take a wine-tasting approach to film. I don't sip; I drink deeply: the deeper the better.

Last year's Berlinale was about immigration for me. This year's theme seemed to have been women. This wasn't intentional on my part - I didn't specifically seek out women-centered films. It just ended up that I saw a lot of film that made me think even more than usual about what it is to be a woman in the world these days. I call myself post-modern, but I can clearly see women ten years, and now even twenty years younger than me, strong-arming their way even less apologetically than I have done, through this man's world. As far as I'm concerned, the sooner the old guard steps aside, the better. The only good thing about Pink, which in my vocabulary has now become a synonym for the worse sort of maudlin dreck, is the great contrast it presented.

I saw more competition films (three) than usual [R. wanted to see Mammoth--which turned out to be a poor cousin of Babel -- but we couldn't even letch at Gael García Bernal due to both a really unfortunate hairdo and a hopelessly flat role as a 30-plus-year-old boy]. Then Schmid's Storm was a poor cousin of Human Zoo -- if we want to represent what rape as military weapon means to women, maybe it's not surprising to think that a woman director/writer would be better equipped to do so. However, Schmid's Forum entry, Die Wundersame Welt von Wacherschaft, was a female-centered documentary: an interesting and sympathetic treatment of the hopelessly dead-end lives of Polish border women who wash Berlin's hotel laundry daily.

The only competition film I really liked was Deutschland '09, which is scheduled for a March 26th release in Germany. A set of 13 shorts at over 2.5 hours long, it held my attention quite masterfully; only a couple of the shorts would have been better ditched, interesting the first and last. Daniel Levi's piece on German's dark view of their country was screamingly funny -- picture a flying Jewish boy landing in the middle of a Neo-Nazi meeting to be hailed as the newest Führer! We also saw a masterful teacher working with 8- or 9-year-olds on conflict resolution, a cool critique of shock-and-awe capitalism, a terrifying piece on German domestic anti-terrorism secret forces gone wild, and Fatih Akin's interview of Murat Kurnaz, the German-Turk who's still waiting for the German government to apologize for its complete failure to get him out of Guantanamo at the very beginning.

Pink Pap

2009-02-13T01:53:00.010+01:00

When one attends a film festival of the stature of the Berlinale, one expects to be protected, to some degree, from film that is total crap. Of course, the more foreign the film and the more alternative/experimental the genre, the more likely exceptions become. The experienced film-goer will of course have a certain tolerance for this and skill in correcting for it. But when the film is from the festival's home country, screened by life-long residents and fluent speakers of the language, one has every expectation of seeing the very best that the country has to offer.

Given my new-found admiration for the German language, I'd planned to spend a relatively high percentage of my time, roughly one third, on German cinema this Berlinale. Many of these films have premiered late in the festival, which means the usual two to four showings are scheduled back-to-back, and there's less time for word-of-mouth to spread. I've just attended Pink, which had premiered only last night. This film is archetypal in that it couldn't be a more perfect representation of a film one would never, in one's entire life, ever want to waste 9 minutes on, much less 90. It is insults the intelligence of its audience, of women, and of the men who have any interest in them. And it does so in a way that is not even worth the words to describe; suffice it to say that it will undoubtedly do just fine on German television, for which it was apparently made, according to the Lively German who spotted the tell-tale clues in the credits. WHAT THE HELL IS THE BERLINALE DOING, SCREENING MADE-FOR-TV FILM??? And in the "Special" section, no less! Special, my ass.

I stood up in the Q&A and asked, rhetorically, how was it the Berlinale permitted such a thing. The Berlinale staff manning the Q&A had nothing to say, and the director's response was "I made the film I wanted to make and it's too bad if you didn't like it." My reaction to this film is rather along the lines of that for the equally scintillating Girls Lie, a stellar example of male directors doing just as they please, from the 2nd Berlin Porn Film Festival. One certainly can't argue with their right to do just that, but I want to know how many of his family, mistresses, and/or debtors are reviewers for the Berlinale Special section?! I demand a refund: 7 euros down the tube. As for the 90 minutes plus 30 (as I simply couldn't let something like that go without participating in the Q&A), well, that's added one more frown line that I certainly did not need.

Seventeen New Worlds

2009-02-12T12:50:00.006+01:00

My first Berlinale I saw 10 films, my second 13, and this year with a great deal of determination I will have managed 17, a bit short of my goal of 20. But at Day 7, as I'm about to set off to number 12, I admit to experiencing some fatigue. Each day I spend roughly one hour waiting in line, one hour or more going to and fro on transport and 4 to 5 hours inside movie theaters. The good thing is that I've now bought all my tickets through to the end (yesterday was the last day standing in line). My light-deprived state is, fortunately, counteracted by the huge head trip of whizzing in the space of short hours, from the war-torn Balkans to Istanbul slums to gorgeous Greece. Attending so many films has clearly diminished my ability to blog (eating, inconveniently, has to happen, and today I gave in to the need to actually spent time doing laundry).

I'll expand this post when I have time to breathe. But right now I'm recommending these films for the final days of the Berlinale. Yesterday was a good day -- Hayat Var from Turkish director Reha Erdem (whose work I'll definitely be seeking out on video) and a very surprising Isabelle Adjani film, La Journée de la Jupe, which was masterfully crafted from beginning to end. Today, so far, has been Strella, a Greek film that one-ups the Crying Game in a big way. All of them, along with Human Zoo, fall in my "run, don't walk (to get tickets)" category.

Human Zoo

2009-02-07T23:14:00.015+01:00

Slicing nothing more interesting than apples yesterday morning, I cut deep enough into my thumb to give that shivery reminder that I'm just flesh and blood. The blood stained several slices pink, before I was able to staunch the flow. I bandaged it up and traipsed off to my first two films of the Berlinale yesterday. Today were numbers 3 and 4, and though I'm not accustomed to weighing in so early in the process, I'm going to stick my neck out and say I attended my best film of the Berlinale this afternoon. The film was not perfect, with a couple of confused plot twists that may have been due to either over-writing, over-editing or a combination of the two. But when I see this sort of energy in a director's first feature film, that's something to which I play close attention.

Not for the faint at heart, Human Zoo takes up the sociopathy of betrayal, in the context of love and war. Writer/director Rie Rasmussen also plays the main character, a woman of mixed Serbian-Albanian parentage narrowly saved from rape or worse in 1999 Kosovo by a man who is, aside from a quirky feminist streak, strictly psychopathic. During her subsequent time with him in the anarchic mafiadom of Belgrade, the camera returns to her wrist wounds from the war. She worries them open again and again; we see quiet drops of blood, richly red, artistic, fall onto an etched glass bowl in one scene, contrasting with some of the more effective portrayals of violence I've seen in recent years in the cinema. We observe the betrayal of nearly every norm of decent society as Rasmussen rages at this world of ours. It's a particularly female form of rage, and I, for one, think it's about time the world take note.

Lead actor Vojin Cetkovic from Serbia dominates the half of the film that takes place in Kosovo and Serbia. He played a bit role in my to-date, all-time Berlinale favorite, which you undoubtedly all tire of hearing me mention.... KLOPKA! He's a thinking-woman's psychopath whose ruminations on the societal constructions intended to make us "human" are the strongest and most startling part of Rasmussen's work. Any actor capable of making me believe someone out there could truly find it more justifiable to kill children ["after all, what do they have: at most, maybe 5, 6, 7 friends?!"] is, strictly speaking, a cinematic genius.

The post-film environment smacked of conspiracy, into which the audience sank with palpable satisfaction. Prior to the screening, Berlinale staff indicated it wouldn't be followed by a Q&A as they didn't believe the director was present. Afterward, however, the supporting male actor, Nick Correy, jumped on stage and angrily denounced Luc Bresson, much of the time without a microphone, until one belatedly surfaced, the Berlinale crew all the while indicating that scheduling didn't allow for a Q&A. He talked about obstacles to the film's financing and production, then Rasmussen showed up very briefly on stage, after which they both took it outside the theater. Their message was that, short days before the Berlinale, a non-disclosure agreement had been signed and Bresson's name had, from complete absence, been elevated to a prominent place on the credits, this being the first time a film with his involvement had been chosen to open the Berlinale Panorama. Interestingly, IMDB has nothing linking him with this film as of this writing. Outside, the press swirled around (see here how Variety panned it) and I thought to myself, this film will be a hit. We'll see, but with a beautiful, angry and talented actress/ex-model-cum-director/writer at the center of an artistic controversy, it has all the elements. Run, don't walk, to see this film. The screening today was not even sold out; the final one is next Saturday evening and I can't think of a better way to spend Valentine's Day.

Before the film I'd gone swimming and removed the bandage from my thumb, as the wound seemed to have closed up nicely. It wasn't until I stood up to leave the theater that I sensed a sticky, cool wetness between my thumb and forefinger. Somehow it had reopened, but I felt nothing. As I walked out, I closed my hand into a fist to keep from dripping blood onto the carpet of the theater below.

Mind Made Up

2009-02-04T11:00:00.007+01:00

Living in Berlin without Kakao is unthinkable, really (and to further torture us, its website continues to be on-line). Little did I know, when I wrote this post, that that was the last time their orgasmic hot chocolate would cross my lips. It was still open when I returned to Berlin last June, but the weather was so lovely that I ordered one of their chocolate ice creams instead. Then by October when I returned to submit all my visa paperwork, they were closed. M. remembers seeing a report of a place shut down in a drug sting operation (their Klassik was decadent enough to have been declared illegal). After going by there last night, talking to the wait staff, and verifying the venue is now occupied by a completely alien business, I rushed home to immediately booked my return flight to Madrid. I'll arrive back in time to spend at least part of the spring drowning my sorrows in Spanish chocolate caliente con churros. In the meantime, what is left for me in Berlin? Ah, well, the Berlinale, of course. Sans hot chocolate.

Tickled Pink

2009-02-02T19:29:00.012+01:00

Another Berlinale is upon us and I'm so glad I decided to stay in Berlin for it. Today the ticket windows opened at 10 AM and although very little is on sale beyond the opening night (with which I never bother), the last day (Kinotag) is available from the beginning and I picked up a couple of tickets. Early afternoon, the line at the Potsdamer Platz ticket counter was non-existent though I suspect that will change by Thursday. For my recommendations on how to approach the Berlinale, click here.

This year seems a bit different; I don't remember all the Panorama films being English-subtitled previously as they are now. There are also some films marked as having German+English subtitles; I asked twice for details, at the Berlinale office and the main ticket counter. Both times the staff didn't know the answer and had to call. We'll see, but it seems this means dual subtitling, which I run across occasionally in Spain and is quite unpleasant. However, I am willing to put up with it to see more cinema from the former Yugoslavia (Hans-Christian Schmid's Storm). Finally, an important difference this year is that sold-out films are no longer marked out on the big program board. Instead, there is an electronic screen that scrolls through 28 pages; with each projected for 15 seconds or so on, it can take up to 7 minutes to get the information one needs. That is, if one is fast enough to digest the information on roughly 20 films per page within 15 seconds. Whose brilliant idea this was, I have no idea.

In scanning the program, I recognize three films I've already seen: Solo Quiero Caminar, Berlin Calling (currently playing at the Central where it will be much easier to get tickets) and Lemon Tree (a repeat of last year's Panorama Public Award). The number of films on Israel stands out, and I hope that the Berlinale has applied its usual sophisticated political approach to this excruciatingly difficult topic. I'm considering Simone Bitton's Rachel -- about Rachel Corrie, the 23-year-old Californian who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar tractor, while she was protesting home demolitions in the West Bank in 2003. I remember it so vividly as my ex was protesting in the West Bank at that time as well. The visceral fear and worry I felt for him translated into feeling completely sick-at-heart for her family and the useless waste of such a promising young life. My eyes tear up at the thought of it still, and I don't know if I could bear to see such a film, but I don't know, also, how I could not see it.

Film is my passion, it's life-blood, a way to jump out of this mind which is, all too often, an uncomfortable place to inhabit. Through it I travel worlds otherwise closed to me. For a time I'm transformed into a small Kurdish child living in forever-war (Turtles Can Fly which I reviewed here), a kid on the impossibly mean streets of Mexico City (De la Calle), a decent man (Klopka, The Trap), or the kick-ass woman I've always dreamed of being (Death Proof). It's not just an escape, but it adds entirely new layers of consciousness that could never be possible in any one single life. It's the best training I know for altruism; it reminds me, as nothing else, what it means to be human.

Staying Out

2009-01-26T19:03:00.012+01:00

I'm living in Graefekiez again, just one block from where I was in the fall of 2007 when I started this blog. This time I'm on Schönleinstraße, directly across from the classic Berliner dive-bar Bei Schlawinchen (#34), with its Tuesday-night 1.50-euro cocktails. Tonight I've had to do that most terrible of things: go to a bar all alone to drink. In the whole world, Berlin has to be my top choice for a solitary woman in a bar, as she can go for years without anyone talking to her. Is there any better place in the world to be alone than here, I wonder? I'm thinking about extending my stay in Berlin through the spring; after two years on my own, perhaps I've grown accustomed, to some degree, to the solitude. And solitude is just not something that one can pull off, with any panache, as a woman in Madrid. Berlin, somehow, just fits.

The event that elicited this particular flurry of neuroticism, was Revolutionary Road, a film for which I had few hopes, but which consequently proved to be a bit of an unexpected surprise. It was directed by Sam Mendes, who gave us the astonishing American Beauty. The dialogue was overblown in more than one scene and DiCapprio couldn't refrain from overacting, but Kate Winslet was really spot-on. So, as always, isn't it best to have low expectations? I've certainly found Berlin vs. Madrid to be a perfect example. I expected little to nothing from Berlin when coming here, but perhaps a bit too much from Madrid, which was to be my perfect escape, and now, will you just look at that, Berlin is where I'm wanting to be. It's crept under my skin, damn it, and not even the cold and grey can deter me.

Now that Obama's been in for a week, all of us voluntary political exiles are asking ourselves (or if we aren't, our friends are doing it for us): should we go back? Revolutionary Road captured, with a great 1950s twist, the exact smothered feeling the U.S. gives me, and why I should not and hopefully will continue to manage to not go back. Although I celebrated the inauguration last Tuesday night, it was really to mark the end of Bush [of course I'm not immune to the thrill of having the first African-American president]. The festivities in Berlin were dull and slightly alienating (I simply cannot bear true-believer American expats) and even party-hopping didn't end up feeling satisfactory, but no matter, the important thing was W is out. I remember so well the end of Bush I, and the scant hope that we had for Clinton, which was borne out all too well. I have little more for Obama; I'm afraid the cynicism runs just about deep as it can -- there seems to be no other option these days for a thinking American in this world. But low expectations, as I've already said, are the best. Go ahead, Obama, surprise us cynical expats; we'll be more than happy to eat our words.

Hooked

2009-01-24T12:41:00.005+01:00

Every language has its own personality. Spanish is exuberant, seductive, perhaps a bit over-sexed, but a perfect first love. French, on the other hand, ephemeral, effervescent, has eluded my grasp for most of my life. German is respectably turned out in sensible shoes and perfectly straight seamed stockings; an upstanding but entirely unlovable citizen. But despite my unrealistically romantic idea that French will be my third language, the Lively German has found my Achilles' Heel, namely that there is nothing I love more in life than learning, unless it is change, which, naturally, is what we do as we learn. I can sense the tentacles wrapping round my brain; I am resisting of course, as learning German involves something I have avoided like the plague for as much of my educational career as possible: MEMORIZATION. For two years I've vowed to tally up the number of cases I would have to memorize but I get too tired every time I arrive at the conclusion that it may be approaching one hundred. One of the four forms of declination, the Genetiv, they say, seems to be falling out of common usage and I, frankly, have not even bothered to determine what that particular animal might represent.

But, my friends, I have found something to be passionate about in German, and that is complex words. You all know the phenomenon of the 30-plus-character German word. Well, with a bit of practice, one can see these are actually three or four words stuck together. And, contrary to all the other rules Rules RULES, creating a German complex word nearly always seems, when I ask "is that German??", to elicit a nod yes. Schön!! My latest creation: Verrücktdeutschemutterscheiße -- 28 characters -- ooh la la, as the Lively German would say. Hell, for all I know it could be 29 or 30, with a declination or two hiding in the middle of the word, to add an extra "s" or "n". So, Deutschdeklination, you've been replaced by Komplexwörter and I'm simply not going waste another second of my brain power on your Crazygermanmothershit.

Todo Sobre Meine Mutter

2009-01-19T10:41:00.013+01:00

Womyn, if you want men who are phenomena in bed (and often in the kitchen, not to mention with the shopping, the cleaning and more), find eldest sons of narcissistic mothers. I honestly don't know if anything can be more simultaneously wonderful and dreadful. The attention, the care, the consideration is so compelling. But we know all too well, don't we, how this goes hand-in-hand with being men-who-love-women-so-much-they-find-it-impossible-to-say-no-to-a-whole-assortment. And how inevitably messy history will trickle out, bit by bit.

I'm still waiting for the poetry book from my ex that is to be entitled Wire Mother, which we came up with many years ago but was nixed by the dunder-headed editors of his first book. It's a theme that's run through every serious relationship I've had with first-world men. Now the Lively German and I are having great fun chewing apart the German mother angle on this. I'm fourth-generation German-American, strictly matrilineal, and it's amazing to me how deeply embedded this complex is, all the way from my great-grandmother to my grandmother to my mother. It took coming to Germany to really grasp its full implications. I now understand why, as a child, nary a medical check-up was missed and I was always adequately clothed and fed. Now, the beatings were, one would suppose, a little bonus for my own good: spare the rod, spoil the child, don't you know. The vicious cycle will stop with me, however; no more passing on German mother genes by this woman!!

But I digress, as I want to go a bit farther still and imagine the German mother complex coupled with the narcissistic mother syndrome. What sort of disaster do we suppose this might be, particularly for their eldest sons? For this intrepid observer of male behavior, could anything be more deliciously dangerous? In contrast, Spain, where children genuinely seem to like their parents (imagine!) is starting to seem impossibly insipid. No wonder Spanish men appear so hopelessly unmotivated to me, in all things sexual. Because if a mother exists primarily to serve her children, how on earth will her son ever learn his true purpose in life?? Namely being always at the ready, every minute of the night and day, to fulfill one (or multiple) womyn's every desire!

Cold Shoulder

2009-01-10T10:10:00.009+01:00

As my plane headed into Berlin's Flughafen Schönefeld late Tuesday night, the pilot announced a temperature of -19°C (or -2°F). "Was?" said I to the flight attendant, "Minus 19 oder minus 9??" It was indeed true; within the city temps bottomed out at -17°C (1°F) for both Tuesday and Wednesday nights. It was fiercely cold, particularly as I was coming from a balmy 10°C in Madrid. As I write, there is still snow on the ground and I have a yen to do some cross-country skiing.

The cold shoulder, unfortunately, has continued, as I've still not been paid for the work I did at the end of last year, plus right now I'm working without even a contract. Honestly, I am contemplating a personal strike next week. The Lively German, being a strong advocate of class struggle, is right in my corner on this one. I was all ready to sign up for the struggle, something that's sorely missing in my life, and was picturing something on the order of Die Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei (The Edukators), a little charmer that I recently revisited while following the thread of Daniel Brühl's work. Still, it has gradually dawned on me that Klassenkampf, in his mind, seems to involve nothing more strenuous than, well, simply not working. I'd hardly realized I'd nearly qualify as a class-struggle poster-girl for going on 18 months now! But I'm determined, starting Wednesday when my last scheduled contract gig ends, to struggle even harder....

Having been caught out traveling schwarz, yet again, and for the first time, deservedly, not being let off with a warning, I'm staring at a 40-euro fine at a time when cash-flow is, quite frankly, as iced-up as the streets outside my window. Does Klassenkampf extend to taking a stand against paying a transit fine in a capital city with shamefully under-subsidized public transit and far too many vehicles? Hmmmm, I'm still working on this one but suspect that my conscience will win out. The warm welcome I was given Thursday by the Foreigners Office, which unquestioningly extended my visa for another six months, makes me inclined to pay my debt to society. And the Lively German's just now calling me into the kitchen for a piping hot dinner. Warmer weather is in the forecast; we may even see the sun next week.

Deluded

2008-12-28T15:57:00.007+01:00

I'm ovulating, which in my case seems to involve astonishing hormonal peaks that I am positive must include a great deal of testosterone, as that is the only way I can understand the aggressiveness that results. So, readers, you have now been duly warned and I will start with a truism: it's the woman who makes the decision. She's the one to decide if, with whom, and when, if at all, sex is to proceed. A man's one and only job is to be at the ready, at any and all times. It's a simple physiological fact, my friends, honed over millions of years of evolution. I will now impart a jewel of wisdom: the best test of the true mettle of a man is to give him the choice between food and sex. A real man will go straight for the booty, every time.

I've recently been test-driving a boy toy; at 15 years younger than me, this is the biggest age difference so far. I remember C. used to lament that she wasn't able to just duct-tape their mouths shut to prevent things coming out that were, nearly inevitably, a turn-off. Although I found that almost shockingly misanthropic at the time, as I've grown older I'm unfortunately starting to understand. Initially this seemed to be of no consequence as Mr. Boy Toy is perfectly happy to occupy his mouth otherwise. However, I am quite peeved as I have summoned him by SMS and he has apparently refused in favor of lunch with friends. This is a very bad sign, my friends, and I will have to seriously consider whether it is a deal-breaker (90% odds say it is).

Back to the title of this post. I have it straight from my ex: there's no better word to describe men. Somehow they seem to think that they have a say in the matter. I find that to be a particular problem in Europe, frankly. Sure, we're talking about centuries and centuries of cultural constructs. But biology runs deep, my friends, millions of years deep. And this particular female has neither the time nor the patience for beta males.

A Decent Man

2008-12-09T15:48:00.011+01:00

The Lively German has shown himself to incorporate the obligatory amount of German self-loathing with a love of cleaning, but combines this with a natural teacher's determination to encourage my abysmally poor progress in his mother tongue and, such a nice surprise, a militant cyclist's disregard for the idea of paying for public transit (IMAGINE!) that encourages my worst anarchistic tendencies for riding schwarz. Most endearing is his absolute dedication to the most important things in life like cooking for me and showering me with silly little presents whenever I will permit such aberrant behavior. Womyn, it is SO nice to be reminded that attentive, considerate men still walk this earth!

In addition, he's smart and thoughtful and we can discuss whether altruism is really hedonism (I think absolutely) and chew over the many possibilities for translating words with complex multiple meanings, between English and German and Spanish and French. I don't recall exactly how we started our discussion of "decent". When I moved into my current flat with a Portuguese woman who turned out to be an extremely unpleasant control freak, I remember her asking me to only bring "decent" men to the flat. I have, of course, violated her request, but it really made me think further about somewhere I'd been headed in my head for some time now. It's a fascinating word, isn't it? It ranges from the moral -- upright, respectful, full of integrity -- all the way to the sexual -- decorous, gentlemanly. I'm of course not interested in sexually "decent" men; rather the contrary. But the man who could manage to pull off sexual indecency in a gentlemanly way, now he would be quite the catch!

So let's examine the other extreme, shall we (with which I've had lamentably far too much experience)? I present Exhibit A. I met up once more with Mr. Too-French-To-Be-Believed, and that was enough to remind myself exactly how cold he leaves me. Oh yes, he’s classically handsome, and extremely (ahem) well-endowed, but he clearly has one turn-on, and only one, and that is, well, how can I put this, HIMSELF. He, M., the Great French LUUUVVVAAAIIRRR. Now the rest of this post is not for the faint-of-heart. Let me begin with a question. Is there some sort of French sexual humor the rest of the world has not been let in on? Because M. decided he would test out, what do I know, the shock value of recounting that his last "partner" (if we can even call it that) was 12 years old. But it gets better (doesn't it always)? I.e., he’d earned 250 euros for services rendered to an older “lady” (not this one -- I still haven’t arrived at that sad end)! Who knows if it was true; the point is he felt at liberty to say such things. UGGHHH. I felt like I'd been slimed.

Womyn, it's not that hard to figure out, is it? Because our bodies tell us all we need to know. And that's why a decent man makes me hot, and these pricks leave me cold. It's really just that simple.

Katchita's Sex Tip #3

2008-12-06T19:01:00.007+01:00

Womyn, if you want to truly be treated like a goddess, find a man with a kink -- preferably one that untaps your hidden talents as an actress. Make his fantasies come true and he will, quite possibly, adore you forever. What is it exactly about kinky men? The older, or should I say, more experienced, I get, the more I’m coming to suspect that either 1) the only sex worth doing is kinky sex or 2) it’s only worth having sex with men with kinks.

To that end, before returning to Berlin in November, I’d written another Craigslist ad for Madrid, openly recruiting men with some kink that had gone unfulfilled. It’s rare the man who is able to write or even talk openly about his own particular thing, so I decided to employ a pretty intensive screen: an English-language Craigslist ad in a country where Craigslist is nearly unknown, requesting a multi-national, multi-lingual man-of-the-world who knows what he wants sexually and to whom God has been generous, in, shall we say, physical endowments. In three weeks, I've actually received a couple dozen responses but have only bothered with the top two. I’ll have to report back at some future time as to whether my screen worked or not, but let's just say the initial data collection is underway!