Tegel [Excerpt]

An extract from Tegel, my forthcoming novel meditating on place, memory, music, and the city.

I’ve spent the morning on my feet.  I wanted to free myself from the algorithm by picking a random single direction and walking in it, attempting to force the serendipity of stumbling upon somewhere the old way.  But after several hours of walking, riding random city buses and feeling unsafe when I became the only person on the street, I took shelter in the window seat of a tiny Mexican-run pizza place.  I ate a mediocre slice of pepperoni and drank a coke from a can then pulled out my phone and typed “dive bars” into Google Maps.  I selected one with a good rating and a comparatively short journey by public transport and hit the directions button which instructed me to walk for 20 minutes and then take a train.  I dutifully did as I was told by the app until I found myself following the blue dot past art deco corporate office buildings, day-drunk hen parties and the weekend sports tourists of the city’s central business district.  I passed several groups of these middle-aged men clad roaming about together – a culture which will never be my own but I think I can understand a bit from the outside – before the blue dot delivered me to my destination.  And here I am, standing outside a bar next to a liquor store with black fire escapes on the brickwork and an awning in calming green with the words OPENS AT 7 AM printed on it in large white letters.  I check my watch to see that it is just before 2 pm and push the door to enter.  The sound explodes out of the bar in the split-second it swings open – a cacophony of shouted Saturday conversations and ‘Stayin’ Alive’ playing on the jukebox.  As I stride in, I decide that this must be the place.  I scan the room and see two German tourists, bewildered but trying to hide it, being quizzed by a local about their time in the city.  I look at the bar and see a reassuring display of tattered foreign bank notes pinned up behind the beer taps – among them the familiar calming pink of a ten euros.  Perched high in the corner is a single TV tuned to a college football game on ESPN with subtitles, the volume on but drowned out by the noise.  I manoeuvre myself onto a stool at the end of the right-angled bar, sitting sideways with my back to the wall to give a good view of everything that is happening.  As I settle in the bartender slides two PBR tallboys down towards the solo drinker three stools down from me on the corner, a man in his mid-30s in a baseball cap.  I watch as the beers whiz one after the other past the dollar bills strewn as tips on the counter.  The solo drinker receives the cans gratefully – “thanks Bob!” – and looks over at me, briefly taking in the sight of this new entry before returning his glance up towards the college football.

I order a Yuengling from the tap – although most of the other patrons are drinking cans there’s something about the feeling of doing so in a bar that I don’t like – pay with a five-dollar bill, then leave another dollar on the counter, hoping the bartender sees that I have tipped him.  I’m relaxed and calmer than I was on my walk and I feel I can write, so I pull out my laptop from my bag and place it on the bar, its back edge up against the plastic mat thing the drinks are placed on.

I open the screen and glance down to the bottom right-hand corner to see that most of the battery power is still left, then click on the minimised Word logo on the taskbar and instinctively hit CRTL + S before typing anything.  I take a sip of my Yuengling then get myself into position, looming over the computer so I feel physically present in the writing.  I’m initially self-conscious that this comes across as an act to make me look lost in creation for the benefit of the bar patrons, but before long I’ve settled into my rhythm and am typing away, tapping into the cumulative endeavour of the last few years churning round my head, trying to channel it into something tangible and real.  And as I do this I feel that I’m falling forward, forward into the Berlin late afternoon sun as it shines down on me and the crowd, reflecting in little patches of bright white on their shiny black outfits.  Curses’ set bounces off the buildings that flank the courtyard at a stately 130 bpm, segueing from something hard and techno-y into something lighter and more house-y.  I look up and squint at a plane that’s passing overhead, and I reach down instinctively into my belt pocket and ask

– Are my sunglasses in here?

Did I say this out loud?  I immediately realise it doesn’t matter if I did because I am alone – alone with many other people, probably over two hundred, but still alone.  And then the question of whether I said this or not leaves my head and I focus fully on searching for my sunglasses.  I gingerly feel something within my pocket, something that feels like a shape.  I reach in deeper to touch the different contours of it – the long arms, the glass lenses – gently confirming that this shape does indeed form my sunglasses.  I slowly pull them out of the dark of my pocket and into the bright of the open air, briefly catching sight of them looking alien to me before they mutate into familiarity, and I open their arms and slide them onto my face.  As I do this, I’m in the crowd looking back at myself, seeing the sight of other people’s bodies in fetish gear reflected back at me on the outside of my lenses.

I zoom out to re-orientate myself and fully open my eyes – I have been squinting since I looked up at the plane – and see that I am perched on a bench at the side of the dancefloor, set slightly back from the action.  Everyone’s outfits look gentler in the daylight than they would in the dark of a club and the sun bathes their rubber, PVC, and see-through tops in a warm and friendly glow.  The mood is relaxed and summery as people dance and chat away, with smiles behind the bar and smiles behind the decks as the music soundtracks the transition from afternoon to evening.

A younger Scottish couple sit down next to me.  We talk about how the party is going and they tell me that the rubber top I am wearing is

– Gorgeous

In an interaction shot through with genuineness.  Time shifts into later and whoever’s on after Curses is playing ‘How About It’ by Jakob Mäder with its taught post-funk house perfect for the setting.  I’m struck by the feeling that this could be earlier – and as I’m on the dancefloor I’m asking myself: is this actually earlier? – as I look up at the claret and cream carriages of an S-Bahn passing along the elevated tracks behind the DJ booth.  Its passengers glimpse the party in the gap between the light industrial buildings, the combination of us and the setting performing the visual of the

“Berlin Open Air”

for their benefit.  This is during the song’s breakdown and we dance this moment for them, embodying the perceived norms of the inner city, of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg witnessed through a window on the way back to the “real Berlin” of the suburbs.  Sweat runs down the back of my rubber top and trickles down the curvature of my spine.

I realise that the track which is now playing – which is still ‘How About It’ by Jacob Mäder – can’t be playing earlier as it is playing now and now is later – under the lights in the cool evening.  The DJ segues through some bouncier stuff and into the extended version of ‘Vesta’ by Athlete Whippet, one of the artists from the Toy Tonics stable with its organic house sensibility and clever uniform branding.  There is a break in the middle of the track where the beat drops out to leave just a phased synth effect, and the DJ presents this sparse moment uncluttered, intact and unamended, signalling from the booth to the dancefloor that the end is coming and that the party will soon be over.  But there is one final push left and in the moment at 4’08 where the instruments return we all come in again for one last round, united in calm euphoria and relief that the beat has re-entered after the break – the crowd swaying and disorientated as individuals, but present collectively as a cohesive whole.

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