Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (18 page)

NOTHING CHANGED MUCH FROM
one day to the next in the month of November. From two until eight, I was at the station. Then we'd go to the Hot House, a club at the top of the Kurfürstendamm. The Hot House was the place where Detlef liked to hang out. It was even trashier than The Sound, and the
people who went there were worse off, too. I often stayed till the last bus left, at 12:20 a.m. I basically just lived for the Saturdays when I slept with Detlef. Sleeping with him got to be more and more amazing—as long as we didn't do too much dope.

Then December came. It kept getting colder. I was freezing. I never used to feel the cold before. And now I was always freezing. I was a wreck, and I knew it. I'd known ever since one Sunday ealier in the month when I woke up next to Detlef at Axel's apartment.

When I woke up, I was freezing. Across the room there was a box and when I looked at it, the writing suddenly jumped out at me. The colors were glowing, and they were so bright that they were hurting my eyes. That was especially true of this one shade of red, which was scaring me. I'd always been afraid of red when I was tripping. But when I was on H, red became a soft, gentle color. Like all colors, red was beautiful when you were on H, as if it was coming at you through a soft veil.

And now the old red was back. My mouth was full of saliva. I swallowed, but right away it was back. It kept coming back up somehow. When it did finally stop, I had a really dry, sticky mouth. I tried to drink something but couldn't manage it. I shivered from the cold for a while, but then I got so hot that the sweat was literally pouring down my body. I woke Detlef up and told him that there was something wrong with me.

Detlef looked at my face and said, “You've got pupils as big as saucers.” He paused for a minute, and then he said quietly, “Well, it's finally happened to you.”

I was shivering again. “What?” I asked him. “What's happened?”

Detlef said, “You're having withdrawal symptoms. You're at the point now where you have to have it.”

I thought to myself, That's it, then. That's what it's like. You've got the hunger now for real.

But they're really not so bad, the withdrawal symptoms. Everyone was always making such a big deal about them, but at least I wasn't in any actual pain. In the end, it just turned out to be some nausea, some shivering, and some weird experiences with colors.

Detlef didn't say anything else after that though. He picked a small packet out of his jeans pocket and then grabbed some ascorbic acid and a spoon and cooked the stuff over a candle. Then he gave me the syringe, ready to go. I was shaking so much that I had trouble hitting the vein. But I managed it after a second. Then I felt fine again. The colors turned soft and gentle, and the saliva in my mouth was gone. All my problems had vanished, and I fell back asleep next to Detlef, who'd also shot up while he was at it. When we got up around noon, I asked Detlef how much dope he still had.

He said, “Of course you'll still get a shot before you go home tonight.”

“But I need something for tomorrow morning, too.”

“I don't have that much anymore,” he replied. “And I'm really not in the mood to go to the station today. It's Sunday and there's nothing going on there, anyway.”

I was furious, and in a panic I yelled at him: “Don't you get it?! If I don't have a fix tomorrow morning, then I'll go into withdrawal again and won't be able to make it to school.”

“It was always going to happen like this,” he said, “and now it has.”

We went to the station in the afternoon. I had a lot of time to think things over. My first withdrawal symptoms. I was now physically dependent on H, and I was financially dependent on Detlef. In all honesty, it was my dependence on Detlef that was more worrying. What kind of love was that, when one person was totally dependent on the other? What if I have to beg and plead with Detlef to give me dope some night? I knew how
junkies could get when they were going into withdrawal. I had seen how they humiliated themselves and how they let other people humiliate them, too. How they shrank down to nothing. I couldn't beg. And I definitely couldn't beg Detlef. If he allowed me to beg, then it was over with us. I'd never been able to beg anyone for anything.

Detlef finally found a customer, and I had to wait a really long time for him to get back. From then on, I'd have to wait for Detlef to get my morning hit.

I was in a dark mood that afternoon. Without thinking about it, I'd started a long conversation with myself—a kind of self-examination—which went more or less like this: “So, Christiane, now you've done it. You got what you've always wanted. Is this what you imagined? (No, it wasn't.) But this is what you wanted, right? For some reason, you always admired those old heroin fiends. Now you're one yourself. You're not a little girl anymore, and nobody can make you feel like one ever again. You don't have to wonder what it's like to go into withdrawal anymore. You know enough now to stay away from cons. Now you can be the one doing the conning.”

I wasn't very good at making myself feel better. I kept thinking about the craving, the withdrawal. I remembered how I'd always laughed at the junkies in withdrawal. I never really understood what was going on with them. All I knew was that they seemed helpless, so easily hurt; they had no strength. Junkies in withdrawal would never talk back to anyone, so everyone walked all over them. They were almost subhuman.

Sometimes I'd use them as an aid to my own ego or to release some pent-up anger or frustration. If you knew how to do it, you could reduce them to absolutely nothing, give them a real wake-up call. You just had to tease out their weaknesses, their sore spot, and keep hammering away at it, until they collapsed.
After all, when they were in the pain of withdrawal, that's when they had the insight to see what miserable losers they really were. These were the same people who generally acted like they'd been everywhere, done everything, and were over it. But when they were in withdrawal, the act was over. They didn't feel superior to anyone anymore.

And now that's exactly what they'll do to you, I thought. They'll tear you to pieces. They'll see how pathetic you really are. But you knew this all already, didn't you? Funny how it only occurred to you today.

These little talks with myself didn't really help much though. I should've talked to someone else. I could've simply gone up to one of those junkies at the station. But instead I crawled into a dark corner near the train station's post office. I already knew what other people would say to me. Detlef, too. Detlef could only come up with clichés when it came to our drug habit.

“Don't take it so hard,” they'd say. “Just pull yourself together. It'll all work out in the end. If you really want to, you can quit. There's methadone
²⁵
available if you need it.”

The only one I could maybe talk to was my mom. But that wouldn't work, either. I couldn't do that to her. I thought, She loves you and you love her, too, in a way. She would freak out if you told her all this. And she couldn't help you anyway. Maybe she'd put you into an institution. And that wouldn't really accomplish much. Nobody can quit if they don't want to. And least of all you. You'd really dig your heels in then; maybe you'd even break out and run away. That would only make things worse.

I found myself talking under my breath again: “Just stop it. This is something you can handle with your hands tied behind your back. When Detlef comes back, you'll tell him: ‘I don't want any dope. I'm quitting. And either you quit right now also, or it's over between us. You've got two halves in your pocket? Okay then: We'll shoot up one more time and tomorrow we're done.’” I noticed how, while I was talking to myself, I was working myself into a craving again. Then I whispered as if I was revealing a big secret to myself: “Detlef isn't going to buy it. He won't do it. And you—would you really break up with Detlef? Come on, stop telling fairy tales. Be real for a minute and tell the truth. This is the last station. The end. It's over. Really the end. You didn't get much out of it, did you? But this is the life you wanted.”

Detlef came back. Without saying a word, we went to the Kurfürstenstrasse and found our regular dealer. I bought a quarter, took the subway home, and holed up in my room.

TWO SUNDAYS LATER, DETLEF
and I were alone at Axel's apartment. It was the afternoon. We were both incredibly, incredibly sick. We hadn't found our regular dealer on Saturday and were ripped off by somebody new. The dope he'd sold us was so bad that we had to shoot up twice as much as usual just to get by. So that was all we had, and it was still only the morning. Detlef had already started sweating, and I noticed that I wasn't that far behind.

We looked everywhere in the apartment for something that we could turn into cash. But we already knew there was nothing left. From the coffee machine to the radio, everything was gone, everything had been used to pay for dope. Only the vacuum cleaner was left. But that thing was so old that there was no way we'd get even a single mark for it.

“We've got to get some cash,” Detlef said, “and we've got to get it now. In a couple hours we'll be sober and have the itch, and we'll be worthless. There's no way I can get enough money on a Sunday night all by myself. You've got to help. Best thing to do is for you to go to The Sound and hit some people up for cash. You've got to get forty marks. If I do a customer for another forty or fifty marks, then we'll still have some left over for tomorrow morning. Can you do it?”

I said, “Of course I can. You know I've got a talent for it.” We agreed to meet again in two hours at the latest. I'd done a lot of mooching in my days at The Sound. Often just for fun, and it had always worked. But not this time. Not at all. I was in a hurry, but for the art of mooching you need time. You have to watch the guys closely and watch them for a while before you approach them. You have to adapt yourself to their ways of communicating, maybe talk to them for a while, and be cool. You had to enjoy it.

I started going into withdrawal and didn't have my usual touch. After a half-an-hour I only had around seven marks. I thought, You'll never make it. I thought of Detlef, who was at the station now, where there were probably just a bunch of families getting back from a Sunday afternoon at grandma and grandpa's. He was also going into withdrawal. He wouldn't attract any customers while he was in that state anyway. I started to panic.

Without a definite plan in mind, I walked out onto the street. I was still hoping that the pickings might be easier out in front of the club. A flashy Mercedes stopped in front of the entrance. There were often big, fancy cars pulling up or driving slowly past because The Sound was the one place where you were guaranteed to find pretty young boys and girls. There were some girls who didn't even have enough money for the cover charge because their allowance was all gone. They got inside those big fancy cars just for the price of admission and a couple of Cokes.

The guy in the Mercedes waved me over. I recognized him. He was often in front of The Sound, and he'd hit on me before. Did I want to earn a hundred? I'd asked him once before what he wanted for that, and he said, “Nothing really.” I'd laughed at him and walked away.

I don't know exactly what I was thinking. Probably not much. Maybe I just thought I'd go over and find out what he really wanted. Maybe get a few singles off of him. In any case, he was waving like wild, and suddenly I was standing next to the car. He said, “Why don't you get in?” He said he couldn't stay there much longer. I got in.

I knew exactly what was going on. That this was not about mooching anymore.

Johns weren't alien beings to me anymore. From my time at Zoo station, and after hearing all the stories that the guys told over there, I knew how this scene would unfold. I also knew that it wasn't the customer but the hooker who set the price and conditions. I tried to be cool about it. I wasn't trembling, but I kept gasping for air when I was talking and had trouble finishing my sentences in the same tone that I started them. “So, what's up?” I said.

He said: “Not too much. A hundred marks. Do we have a deal?”

“Well, sex or something like that is out of the question for me.”

He asked why, and I was so flustered that nothing came out of my mouth—well, nothing at first, and then the truth: “Listen. I have a boyfriend. And he's the only one I've ever slept with. And I want to keep it that way.”

He said, “That's fine with me. Then give me a blow job.”

I said, “No way; I won't do that either. I'll puke.”

Then I was back to being cool.

He didn't let himself get rattled at all. He said, “Okay, a hand job then.”

I said, “Sure, no problem . . . for a hundred.” I wasn't registering anything right then. Later I realized that this guy must've been really into me. A hundred marks for a hand job—and at the Kurfürstenstrasse, where the cheap baby hookers hung out? That was unheard of. He must have gotten off on my fear, which I couldn't really hide. He knew that I wasn't pretending, the way I sat there, squeezed against the door, my right hand on the door handle.

As he was driving away, I was scared out of my mind. I thought, I'm sure he wants more; he will force me to give him more—a hundred marks' worth. Or maybe he won't pay at all. He stopped at a nearby park. I'd walked through this park a thousand times before, but it was pretty sketchy, with condoms and tissues everywhere.