That Takes Ovaries! (6 page)

“I couldn’t let you ladies pass up on the opportunity to have a little chit-chat with a man such as myself.”

What made him think that either of us wanted to talk to him, I’ll never know. But I knew from his boldness that he wasn’t going to leave just because he was asked. I decided to talk to him in a way I thought he would understand.

“In order to have a chit-chat without an invitation, you’ll need to lay fifty dollars on the table.”

In my peripheral vision I saw Alice’s mouth drop. I kept my main focus on the man, who also seemed a bit surprised, though he quickly recovered.

I repeated myself in a sterner tone. “If you are going to sit here, you’ll have to lay fifty dollars on the table. Otherwise, move on.”

“You got nerve,” he said, unmoved.

“Yes,” I said. I pointed to his female companions, “Look, you don’t let them sit and chitchat for free. I’m not going to give you my time for nothin’, either. Now pay or go.”

I expected him to leave, to maybe laugh and go away. Instead, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of money, peeled off a fifty-dollar bill and cast it on the table. “I respect a
businesswoman,”
he said, as he casually leaned back in his chair.

He had called my bluff.

I picked up the money. Fearful of where my gamble might take me, I said, “That will buy you fifteen minutes of conversation, and it doesn’t have to be polite.”

The man began waving his arms like a choir director, while he rhymed and sang words as though he had memorized lines from some horrible off-Broadway play. As I ate, I watched his fanfare of body jerks and head bobs, with his fingers flaring and snapping. Though he had an impressive command of the English language, I found him irritating, annoying, despicable. I became insulted when he told me in singsong, “If-you-can’t-comprehend-what-I-recommend,
I’ll-just-back-up-and-come-again.”

I gladly interrupted him: “Your fifteen minutes are up. Either put another fifty on the table or leave.”

“Baby, you ain’t said nothing but a word.” With arrogance he reached for his money roll a second time and threw another fifty on the table. I put the money away and he continued his performance as if the interruption had never occurred.

After a few more minutes I saw the cabdriver head for the counter with cash in hand. I got Alice’s attention and nodded toward the checkout and our ride. I put on my coat and picked up the check.

“Where you think you’re going? I still got time on the clock.”

I checked my watch. He still had six minutes left from his second fifty dollars. I smiled and said, “That just mean you won’t have to lay out the money to pay for our dinners.”

I strolled off to pay the check, relieved to be out of his presence. And I was quite pleased with myself when I heard him say, “Aw man, she got my money. She played me, y’all. She played the player.”

When the Berlin Wall “fell” in November 1989, there was nothing else on TV. I sat stunned, watching hordes of East and West Berliners streaming through gates finally opened to them after
decades of separation. Revelers climbed on top of the wall itself, popping champagne corks and toasting what appeared to be the end of the Cold War. For three solid days the world was glued to CNN as German citizens furiously hammered at the graffiticovered west side of the wall. Picks, axes, and jackhammers were meeting its miles and miles of concrete. Apparently these folks thought they could slowly chip the wall out of existence. And they were right.

This was history happening—a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. So what was a recent political science graduate, an international relations buff, to do? Well, duh. Go.

Jobless and flat broke, I borrowed airfare from my mom and promised to have it back in a week. One week. Now I wasn’t being totally irresponsible; I had a plan. It wasn’t exactly one of those thought-through kind of plans; in fact, I suppose it was more closely related to an impulse. Two days before I hopped on the plane, I had come across a small paragraph in one of the many newspapers jam-packed with banner headlines, huge photos, and full-page accounts of the wall’s fall. A mere two lines, it said some entrepreneurial East Berlin kids were making a killing selling tourists bits of wall they’d chipped off. I packed my bags.

When my backpack slid down the Berlin airport baggage ramp and onto the carousel for passengers to collect, I could hear the pick and hammer I’d stowed away clank against each other. And I wasn’t alone. Two other backpacks from my flight clanked the same way when they landed. One belonged to a fellow young American who confessed he was there to collect wall and make a buck. The second belonged to a big Irishman, also our age, who wanted to see history as it happened, and bring home a souvenir. Ideologically, I was somewhere in between the two. The three of us instantly bonded.

Although our flight had landed late at night, we three went straight to the wall to scout out the work ahead of us. Within minutes of arriving at the daunting structure (it was much more imposing in person than on TV), and within seconds of putting
pick to concrete, we realized this was just about the hardest iron-rod-reinforced concrete any of us had ever seen—let alone tried to dismantle.

From then on, I spent nearly every waking moment at the wall. Either I was holding extraordinary conversations about glasnost, perestroika, and the end of the Cold War with any of the thousands of Berliners and tourists flocking around, or I was hammering. Every few feet along the wall’s perimeter, someone was taking a crack at it. In a few rare places the wall had been slowly, methodically, smashed through. There we could squeeze in between the bent iron rods and into East Berlin’s barren no-man’s-land, where only a week earlier someone could have been shot for standing.

By night, my two pals and I met up again only to collapse on incredibly uncomfortable cots in the cheapest and therefore most rundown hotel we could find. Rundown, yes, but they did provide strong pillowcases. Three days after I arrived, I left Berlin with a hotel pillowcase full of concrete, weighing in on the airport scale at ninety pounds. I also left the city with two rolls of film: proof of the authenticity of my goods. (“Pardon me, sir, would you mind taking a picture of me with my camera as I hammer at the wall. It’s for my mother.”)

Once back home, rushing, I put each chip of wall in its own plastic sandwich bag. The coveted pieces were the ones with graffiti paint on them. I got lots. Also in each bag, I slipped a photocopy of a pathetically short description of the Cold War and its apparent demise (all those years as a Poli Sci major had finally paid off). I headed to New York, dragging my boyfriend with me. We drove the five hours to the city, pulled off the highway, and illegally parked in a loading zone five feet from Macy’s front door. I set up shop. My boyfriend stayed in the car and watched my back as I unfolded my tiny portable table. It was rush hour, December 22. Oy, were those Christians in a frenzy, eager to buy the hottest gift that year (was it Cabbage Patch dolls?), or anything at all, since there were only (ready to panic?)
two shopping days left before Christmas.

I unfolded the cardboard display I’d made. It included my airline tickets and the photos of me at the wall, pick in hand. Suddenly I was surrounded. Everyone wanted a piece of me, or at least the wall.

“How much? How much?” they shouted at once.

“Look, she was really there,” others cried, pointing to my display.

“Great stocking stuffers!” I heard someone say.

My prices were reasonable: $5 to $25, depending on the size. It was a tad chaotic, but in ten minutes I made over $350—the cost of my airline ticket. I was elated, and I still had eighty-six pounds of wall left. From the car, my boyfriend beeped and pointed behind him. I saw a truck on his butt and knew he had to go. I nodded, sure he would zip ’round the block and be back in a flash.

Then a man asked me how much for a certain piece. “Ten,” I told him without looking up. And why should I? I was busy taking money from some lady buying three bags.

“Wow. They’re real, too,” the man continued. “I see that from the plane ticket. That’s great. I’ll take one. Say, do you have a permit to sell on the street?”

“Huh? Uh, no,” I said, glancing up for the first time. He appeared to be a harmless if disheveled working guy.

“Oh, well then …” and with that, he flashed a police badge, swept my entire display, pieces of wall, and folding table into a huge garbage bag, handcuffed me, and whistled for a blue van to pick me up—all in about two seconds flat. I was inside that van with five other offenders before you could say
’Tis the season to be jolly.

I had to work to keep from crying. “When my boyfriend comes back,” I sniffled out the window to the vendor who’d been legally hawking Jesus bookmarks right next to me, “tell him I was arrested.”

He offered me a sympathetic look and said, “You need a permit.”

No kidding.

I sat with my handcuffed wrists behind my back for the next hour as we picked up a half dozen other permitless vendors and their wares. Sunglasses, teddy bears, pocketbooks, watches—all now in police-sealed garbage bags lying at our feet. Evidence. We were brought to a huge gymlike room, lined up with others, and fingerprinted. I became a bit of a celebrity. They’d never confiscated the Berlin Wall before. “It’s real! I saw the photos,” the excited arresting officer told his colleagues.

I was separated from the other vendors and brought to my own cage; after all, I was the only woman in the bunch. Before I could sit on the floor to ponder what to do next (like I had a choice), a plainclothed cop advanced toward me, screaming, “Don’t I know you? Aren’t you the punk bitch who ran away last week when I tried to arrest you?”

“No,” I squeaked, backing up, though my cage would only let me go so far.

Satisfied he’d sufficiently shaken me up (and he had), the pitbull cop withdrew and I was left alone in my six-by-six.

Then, a few hours later, at about 10:00 P.M., just as suddenly as I had been taken in, I heard “Get outta here.” In what appeared to be a whimsical decision, one of my captors swatted the air with his backhand, indicating he had bestowed freedom upon me. Dazed, I nodded, walked out the door and onto the dark street. I had no idea where I was, but at least I wasn’t in jail anymore.

Amazingly, my boyfriend had found me and was waiting outside in my car. We hugged, cried about how scary it had all been, and then went to my grandmother’s apartment to visit, pretending we had
just
rolled off the highway and into New York City. (She didn’t even know I’d gone to Berlin.)

Three weeks later, a court-appointed lawyer I met thirty seconds before my hearing pleaded with the judge to let me off. The judge rolled his eyes, “Pieces of the Berlin Wall. Right, sure. Whadda scam.”

“They’re real,” I barked back, New York–style.

My lawyer told me to sit down and shut up. I did, and impressively
he got the case dismissed—as long as I didn’t get rearrested in the upcoming year. That seemed doable.

A month later, I drove the five hours back to New York, this time to visit the city’s huge—football-field-huge—Confiscated Goods Warehouse. I was on a mission to collect my wall, and quite worried it might have gotten lost or stolen during the ordeal. History-in-the-making is not easily replaced. When I opened the sealed evidence bag, I was elated; it all appeared to be there, though I bet the arresting officer had taken a handful. Unlike the judge, he had believed me.

I am a professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and an avid supporter of our women’s basketball team. In 1995, when I attended the homecoming doubleheader (men’s and women’s games back-to-back), I was startled to be sent through a metal detector. What’s up with this? I asked. Had someone threatened our teams? No, a colleague told me, President Clinton was visiting. And he had brought his daughter, Chelsea, to our event. After all, the White House was only down the road.