Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (30 page)

Detlef was right behind me—and behind him, of course, were two undercover cops. After all, we'd behaved suspiciously enough. The cops didn't have to work very hard to catch up with us, despite our head start. Even before they'd arrived on the scene, a bunch of geriatrics in the subway had grabbed hold of us, gripping our clothes and screaming hysterically: “Here they are! Police! Police!” I felt like an outlaw in an old Western, and it seemed like the next scene was going to show Detlef and me dangling from some tree.

I clung tight to Detlef, but when the cops took us away, one of them just said, “That Romeo and Juliet act isn't going to cut it, so hurry it up; let's go!”

We were loaded into a VW bus and taken to the police station. The cops were mean, but they didn't bother taking down any additional information on me. They just told me that since this was the third time that they'd picked me up, they already had a binder on me. One of them typed up the usual statement, and all I had to do was sign it. They didn't even take the time to notify my mom. In their eyes, I was just another hopeless case. They'd keep filing away these statements and filling up the binder until the day when they could finally put a cross next to my name and forget about me.

Detlef and I were released about an hour later. Since they'd confiscated our dope, we had to go straight back to the hot zone to score two more quarters. Luckily for us, we still had some cash.

The undercover cops all knew me by then, and they generally left me alone. One of them—a young guy, with a cute, friendly Bavarian accent—was even kind of nice to me. The first time he saw me he snuck up behind me and shoved his badge in my face. I was obviously freaked out and worried, but then he laughed and asked me if I was working the streets. I answered innocently, like I always did, “The streets? Me? Are you serious?”

But he wasn't buying it. Still, he didn't even bother to go through my bag. He just told me to stay out of the area for a few days so that he wouldn't have to take me into the station. I bet the other officers at his station must have appreciated that, too, since taking me in would require that they write up yet another statement about a zombified fourteen-year-old addict.

After getting arrested, we couldn't find our old dealer, so Detlef and I had to buy our dope from this new guy whom we'd never heard of before. Then we went to the public bathrooms at
Winterfeldt Placz
³³
to shoot up. The doors on all the toilet stalls had been broken off, and the sinks were all broken and dry. I cleaned my syringe with the water from the toilet (which was in a pretty bad way). It was gross, but I used that tactic from time to time because a lot of the bathrooms were too busy for us to risk cleaning the syringe in plain view by the sink.

I don't know what was in it, but the new dope from the new dealer totally knocked me out. I fell flat on my face right outside the bathrooms. And even though I picked myself up right after that, I was still really groggy. For the first time in a long time, we decided to go to The Sound.

Detlef was looking for a party, so he went straight to the dance floor while I positioned myself (strategically) next to this unattended tank of orange juice. It had a hole at the top, so I leaned against the vending machine, pushed two straws together, stuck them into the top, and drank my fill. Without paying a cent, I was able to drink until I had to go to the bathroom to throw up.

When I got back, one of the managers got up in my face. He called me a junkie whore and told me to come with him. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me across the room. He opened a door that led to the storage area where they stacked the beverage crates. I also noticed that there was just one bar stool inside. Now I was scared.

I knew immediately what was going on. Or at least I thought I did—since I'd heard so much about this room. In here, the management would make the junkies—along with anyone else they

happened to despise—strip down to nothing, and then tie them up to the bar stool. After the person was rendered totally helpless, they'd beat him up with whips and whatever else was on hand. I'd heard about guys who'd ended up in the hospital with cracked skulls or other broken bones after just one session in The Sound's storage room. They were so traumatized and intimidated that they couldn't even go to the police afterward.

I'm sure the management at The Sound justified what they did by saying that it helped to keep junkies and drug addicts away, which in turn kept the authorities from being able to shut the club down—but clearly they also did it because they were natural sadists, and they just wanted to.

There was one thing that the girl junkies could do to save themselves a beating, though, because if you agreed to have sex with the manager then he would leave you alone. The Sound was just an absolutely brutal environment. If parents knew what really went on at “Europe's hottest club,” they would never have let their kids go there. Every day more kids started using heroin in and around the club, and every day another young girl was reeled in by one of the pimps or hustlers who lurked around the place, and still the management did nothing. They just didn't care.

So there I was, standing at the door to the storage space and just absolutely consumed with panic and fear. With a strength that was surprising even to me, I ripped myself away from that guy and ran like crazy for the exit. I made it all the way to the street before he caught up with me. He grabbed onto me, but instead of dragging me back down he just threw me, hard, like a piece of trash, against a nearby car. I didn't even feel the impact though. I was more worried about Detlef at that point. They knew that we were always together. And after he'd run over to the dance floor, high as a kite, I hadn't seen him again.

I ran over to a phone booth and called the police. I told the cops that my boyfriend was being assaulted at The Sound. They seemed thrilled to hear it, and it only took them a couple of minutes to show up—a whole vanload of them. They were clearly hoping to be able to finally shut the club down. But after the dozen or so cops that were there had finished combing the place for Detlef, there was still no sign of him. That's when it occurred to me to call Rolf. Detlef was already there, in bed.

After all the drama, one of the cops came over and said, “So, you were just high, right? Listen: Don't you ever pull anything like this again.” As I made my way home, I couldn't help thinking that all the heroin was making me lose my grip on reality.

Because I'd been arrested and taken into custody so many times, I was eventually summoned to pay a visit at the police department's criminal division. My appointment was for 3 p.m. at a building on Gothaer Street, room 314. I'll always remember that room number because it was about to become the destination of many future visits as well.

After school I went straight home to shoot up. I gave myself a healthy dose because I thought that if I was high enough, the cops wouldn't be able to rattle me. But it so happened that I was out of lemon, and that was a problem because the dope I had was far from pure. It was hard to get good stuff. Every time the dope changed hands—going from a big dealer to a middleman to a smaller dealer down the line—it was being cut with something else in order to increase the profit.

So I had to find a way to dissolve this dope that had already been cut with so much else. I decided to use vinegar because, like lemons, it also has a fair amount of acid in it. I poured the vinegar onto the spoon with the dope, but I poured too much. So with that done, I had to shoot this vinegar solution into my vein along with the dope. It was either that, or I'd have to throw everything out—and that wasn't going to happen.

As soon as I'd shot up, I was out cold. It took more than an hour for me to regain consciousness. When I did, I could see that the syringe was still stuck in my arm. My head felt like it was going to explode, and at first I couldn't even stand up. I thought that maybe this was it. That I was finally going to die. I just lay on the floor and cried.

I was so afraid. I didn't want to die—especially not like this, all alone. So I made my way over to the phone on my hands and knees. It must have taken me about ten minutes to dial my mom's office number. When I finally did, all I could do was mumble: “Please . . . please Mom . . . come home . . . I'm dying.”

Once my mom got back, I was able to stand up again. I pulled myself together, even though my head still felt like it was going to burst. I told her, “I think I just had just another stupid circulatory collapse.”

My mom obviously knew that I'd started using again. She had a desperate look on her face but didn't say anything to me about it. She just kept staring at me, and I could see the sadness in her eyes. I couldn't take it. The look on her face pierced me right through and made my head pound even worse than before.

After a while, my mom asked if there was anything I wanted. “Yes,” I said. “Strawberries.” So she went out and got me a big basket full of strawberries.

In the course of that afternoon, I got the feeling that I was running out of time. I hadn't shot up a huge amount; it was just too much vinegar. When something went wrong, my body didn't have any ability to resist or fight back anymore. I couldn't keep treating it this way. I couldn't keep abusing it.

I could recognize my downward spiral for what it was because of the fact that I'd already seen it happen before with some of my friends who had already died. The first warning sign was when they started to just pass out after shooting up. It kept going on that way, with things getting worse and worse, and then
eventually there would be one time when they passed out and just never woke up again. That was it. Game over.

I was afraid to die, but if you had asked me at the time for a reason why, I wouldn't have been able to offer any good reasons. I just didn't want to be alone when it happened. Junkies tend to die alone—and to add insult to injury, the setting for the big event is usually a stinking toilet stall. But all that aside, I had more or less made my peace with death. I mean after all, what was I waiting for at that point? I couldn't think of any reason why I ought to stick around. Even when I was younger, it was hard to think of any real reason for me to be here. And now that I was a heroin addict, it wasn't like things were getting any better. What was the point? The longer I stuck around, the more lives I would probably ruin, including my own. If I died, I would be doing my mom a favor. Sometimes I myself had trouble telling whether I was alive or already gone.

The next morning I was feeling better though. Now at least I had some hope that I could go on for a little longer. But I had to make it to the police, unless I wanted them to come and get me. There was just no way I could handle going by myself now. No way. I called around looking for Stella and was lucky to get ahold of her at this client's place—he was a customer we shared. I asked if she'd come to the police station with me. She was game to go right away. Her mom had just reported her as missing again, but Stella wasn't afraid of anything; she couldn't care less. She wanted to go with me to the precinct, even though she was officially a missing person at the time.

So Stella and I went and sat like a couple of good girls in the long hallway outside of room 314, waiting for my turn with the police. When my name was called, I walked into the room so meek and obedient that if anyone had asked, I would've even curtsied. Mrs. Schipke—an overly friendly woman—took my
hand, held it warmly, and told me right away that she also had a daughter like me—even though she was a year older than me and not using drugs. She acted really maternal with me. She asked how I was doing, and like a good aunt she even brought out some chocolate milk, cake, and apples.

This Mrs. Schipke sounded like she cared about some of the people I knew from the drug scene—asking where they were now and how they were doing. She showed me some photos of junkies and dealers and asked if I knew them. Yes, I kept telling her, sure, I recognize him; I've seen him once or twice. Then she told me that a number of these people had said this or that thing about me, and eventually, after enough of that kind of stuff, she got me to talk. I realized that she was setting me up—and not even doing it very delicately—but I still wound up giving her a lot of information. Afterward I signed a statement, swearing the truth to a whole bunch of shit that she'd been feeding me.

While we were wrapping up, another cop happened to ask me about The Sound more generally. That's when I decided to really open up. I told him about all the people I knew who had been seduced into the H scene there and about the brutal tactics that the management used over there. I also let them bring in Stella, who corroborated everything and said she would swear to it all in court.

Mrs. Schipke kept leafing through her files and quickly figured out who Stella really was. She started to grill her, and Stella immediately returned fire and shut Schipke down. Stella was so insulting that I thought that they'd book her right on the spot. But Mrs. Schipke's shift was over and done with, and she wanted to go home, so she just told Stella to come back the next day. Stella, of course, had no intention of obeying any of this woman's orders or requests.

As she was leaving, Mrs. Schipke said to me, “Well, I'm sure you and I will see each other again soon.” The tone she used was exactly the same as it had been the whole afternoon—way too fucking sweet and friendly. That was what really stung. Despite her smiles, it was clear that she thought I was a totally lost cause. There was no hope for me.

In our fight against drug abuse, the police department believes that by making every effort to restrict the supply of drugs—especially heroin—in and around Berlin, we provide an essential support to the efforts of other state agencies in offering therapy and rehabilitation to drug users and addicts. In 1976 we impounded 6.4 pounds of heroin, in 1977 it was 10.8 pounds, and in the first eight months of 1978 we've already impounded 18.5 pounds of heroin. This increase in seizures doesn't necessarily mean, however, that we're keeping up with the increased amount of drug availability and consumption in the area. In that respect, I am personally rather pessimistic. The quantities of heroin in circulation have definitely increased. Just one year ago, the arrest of a German middleman with a quarter pound of heroin would have been a small sensation. Today it's a pretty regular occurrence.