An Encounter ...

  When I got into Berlin I took a bus to the Ostbahnof, which was the old main train station in East Germany.  On the bus ride I saw a lot of Turkish people and enjoyed the German architecture.  Seeing both filled me with nostalgia for my old days in Berlin and Istanbul.  I got off at the Ostbanhof and passed the Mauergalerie, which was an outdoor art mural at the site of the Berlin wall.  I walked across the river Spree and into the courtyard of the Kopi.   The past was flooding back to me. I then arrived at the Reiche 63a and started unpacking.

  I wrote the guys from RASH Berlin and I got a response from them almost immediately and they told me that they wanted to meet me the next night in Fredrichschain.  The next night I met them at the tram station at Frankfurter Tor.  When I got off I saw Patty, Stuhle, Tomek, Res, happy from Freiberg, and Amin.  They had a bottle of vodka with them and we drank together until we got to a small party in a squat where they were playing electronic music.  After a while we got bored and some of the Rash guys decided that they wanted to go to the Freiboiter, which was a skinhead pub in Freidrichschain.  The reason they wanted to go there was because they knew there would be some greyzone skinheads, which are skinheads who are not Nazis but who are open and friendly to right wing ideas and music.  I did not really know what was going on so I stayed outside with Res, who was Stuhle’s girlfriend. When we got there, someone was having a birthday party so there were about 100 greyzone skinheads there. Since the RASH guys were vastly outnumbered, we left.

  I met up with the guys from RASH one more time when I was in Berlin. Los Fastidios, an Italian antifascist streetpunk band, was going to play in Potsdam, a city outside of Berlin.  When I got to Potsdam, I met with the guys and helped them set up. I talked a lot with Tomek who is from Poland his girlfriend’s brother who lived in Boston.  I was impressed with all the antifascist banners in the concert hall. 

 After we had set up, Los Fastidios arrived we went [KG1] with them to the Babelsberg 03 game which was before the concert.  Babelsberg 03 was a soccer team in the North East division in Potsdam Germany and it was one of the few teams in German that was strictly antifascist and supports left wing politics. The atmosphere at the game was fantastic. It was the first time I had experienced the energy and excitement when antifascism is mixed with sports.  After the game we went to the concert. I felt comradery with everyone there. The place exploded with energy as Los Fastidios played.

   I was about to leave for Prague when I heard that Oi Poloi was going to play the week I was leaving.  Oi Poloi was my favorite band at that time. They were an antifascist and anarchist oi band that had gotten into crust punk in their latter years.  I had never seen them and I simply had to go.  My TEFL program was going to start on Monday but I was expected to be there on Saturday.  I wrote them and asked them if I could come on Sunday night and they said ok. 

  Oi Poloi were going to play at a three day punk fest called Resist to Exist, which was the biggest punk festival in Germany.  On the first day of the festival, I left the Reiche 63ª and went to the Lidl and bought two boxes of wine.  At this point, after going to many punk bars and shows in Berlin and having no one talk to me, I resolved that I was not going to try to meet anyone but I was just going to enjoy the music by myself.  I boarded the U bahn at Kottbusser Tor and I got off at Waschauer strasse to transfer to the S bahn.  At the S bahn station there were two punk girls there with red hair.  I was resolved in my intention not to talk to anyone and I just drank beer and listened to my iPod.

  At the festival I walked around a bit and checked out some music.  I then heard that the Autonomads were about to play.  The Autonomads were a dub punk band I had heard about and I was really excited to see them.  I went to the front of the stage and danced. After they played, I sat down by myself and drank some wine.  I was sitting there a bit when Lilly, one of the girls who I had seen at the Waschauer station with red hair, came up to me and said something in German.  She wore the kind of punk clothes a teenager would wear and wore glasses that obscured her eyes but I could tell that she was very beautiful and really kind.  I had studied German years ago at university but my German was quite rusty so I told her that I didn’t speak German.  She could speak a little English, but not very much.  She told me to come over to her and her group of friends and we tried to communicate but her English was quite poor and my German was even poorer.  In the end, none of that really mattered; there was something between us that went beyond the bounds of language and we both knew it.  Within a half an hour, we were kissing and she was a really good kisser.  We laid in the grass and kissed and made out for a good two hours before we returned to her  friends and drank wine with them until I wandered of to watch some other bands and then I returned to her again.

  At the end of the night, we were both quite drunk and I wanted to convince Lilly to come home with me. There was a reggae nighter at Tommyhaus, a squat in Berlin, which was quite near to my house and all the people from RASH Berlin would be there. I told her that we should go together and that she could stay with me in my room in Reiche 63a afterwards. Her friend Anya tried to convince Lilly not to go with me but Lilly really wanted to.  Lilly told me later that she trusted me from the beginning.  We then got on the S bahn and headed towards Tommyhaus, kissing and caressing the whole time

  When we went to Tommyhaus we ran into the people from RASH immediately and they greeted me and I introduced them to Lilly.  The rocksteady music was nice, but it was so crowded there was no place to sit.  After a while, we were more into each other than the music and we decided to go back to my place at the Reiche 63a.

  We walked the six flights of stairs until we got to my room at the top floor of the Reiche 63a.  We listened to Black Flag and Casa di Chihuahua, which is a country folk band of punks.  We talked, kissed, and made out.  I started sucking her tits.  We then fucked and she was really animalistic and she scratched my back like she never did again.  There was a raw passion between us like I never experienced before or since.

   After we had sex the first time, the man who lived next door banged on and opened our door. We were completely naked. The music wasn’t that loud, but we apologized.  We then turned down the music and proceeded to make out again and the guy banged on the door and the guy opened again [KG2] and we were still naked.  Lilly said she thought he was a pervert because he knew we were naked and he wanted to see us again.  We then turned off the lights and music and we had sex once again.

  I had previously told Lilly everything about me and she accepted it.  At this time I was 32 and she was 20 years old.  I told her that I had thought for long time that no one would be attracted to me because of my disability and that I lost my virginity at age 27 to a sex worker.  Without her glasses on her eyes were a stunning green and she was extraordinary beautiful.  She accepted me totally and thought I was hot.  We feel asleep in each other’s arms and it was wonderful.

  We woke up to Bavarian music playing in the courtyard and she said what the hell why was Bavarian music playing, and I said it’s from your homeland right, she nudged me and said no she wasn’t from Bavaria, but Thuringia.  I kept on teasing her and we both laughed.  We then kissed and stared into each other’s eyes.  She told that she had to get back her friend’s house and that she needed to call her ex-boyfriend Tomas and tell him what had happened because she told him everything.  This sounded a little bit strange to me but I was grateful for the night we had shared.  We parted ways and we were going to meet each other later in the day at the festival.

  I went to the festival and I saw a couple of bands until I found her with about 20 other people.  We kissed but I felt awkward with all those people around.  It definitely didn’t feel as nice as the day before and I didn’t feel like talking to all those people.  I walked off and watched a couple of bands by myself. I came back to her and we watched Oi Poloi together.   After the show was over, we walked to the train. We were with these German guys and I thought they were talking about me.  I accused them of talking shit about me and she said that they weren’t.  On the train she caressed and kissed me to calm me down.  I was going to Prague the next day and I asked me to come visit me in Prague but I never thought that she would take me up on the offer.