Two Dicks on My Birthday

"If the mystic has failed to understand the world, why has the innkeeper come to know it so well?"

It was my 45th birthday. I woke up to a very nice card from Sara with an original drawing of Ruggles. She had commissioned an artist to render him in colored pencil staring at me in front of a shelf of record albums. It was very thoughtful, and I felt "known" and cared for.

As well, I received an Amber Alert from Seattle with pictures of him well-fed and cared for and a video (!!!) of him stalking toward the camera while she sang "happy birthday." I am fortunate to have such thoughtful people in my life and I hope I return that thoughtfulness.

The kindness and sweetness of that reduced some the building stress. Berlin is a comfortable city, but there are many perils. Chief of which are the dreaded sidewalk bike lanes. Going out for coffee can be more dangerous than crossing a Saigon highway. The dreaded bells of the Berlin cyclists, like the mocking tinkle of Satan's court jester!

As well, some difficulty in booking passage to Gorlitz had furrowed my brow. These side trips are usually so easy to manage, and yet... I chalked it up to my usually hanging out in smaller places where the train station is the hottest game in town. Berlin has bigger fish to fry.

We called an audible and decided to spend this day doing laundry, drinking some quiet coffee, having a nice little meal, and reading by the canal. And so we did. Or attempted to. At the laundromat, we ran afoul of a strange computerized system where the machines have names.

We pumped ten euro (TEN!) into a slot and chose "Dicke Berthe" as our machine. We then stuffed all our clothes into the machine labeled "Berthe" and went back for soap powder. Dumped it in, hit start, and... nichts!

Then we realized, Dicke Berthe was a completely different machine. We'd been feeding Little Berthe! Gathering the clothes up carefully so as to conserve the precious, precious soap powder, we found the right one, but the machine had timed out! Ten euro (TEN!) down the German toilet.

Ok. Ok. No Gorlitz and a bag full of dirty laundry. We briefly thought about pumping more money into the Dicke, but felt our hearts couldn't take it if it failed again, and somewhere in the distance we heard the flapping of Sticky Fledermaus' wings.

Calmed myself with some cold burek and a trip across the street to Wowsville. A record store of great virtue. Alas. Closed.

Ok. Ok. No Gorlitz, the mocking laughter of Big Bertha, and a closed record store whose sign said it was open. Ok. Ok. We're fine. We're just fine. We're totally cool.

We took a walk past an old "Disinfecting Center" that had been transformed into a children's theater and explored the canal's shore. Autumn leaves and scruffy little dogs. We sat on a bench and read the books we had intended to read while the laundry cooked.

Peaceful and restorative.

Gave Wowsville another shot, and... the door opened! I gave a genuine cry of delight. And inside... rewards and treasure! An Aladdin's Cave of illegal records! Rockabilly nonsense and Wanda Jackson's German record! It was a famous score, records I've wanted for a long time or have only been available to me at inflated prices. A famous score.

The cashier smoked casually while my shaking hands handed him the money.

We floated on air back to the apartment, stopping only for a salty pile of currywurst served from the window of a little iron shack at one end of the platz. So so salty, and mine had enough mayo to revive a comatose Frenchman.

A marvelous and revolting treat. Then I wrote while Sara figured out the arcane laundry machine in our apartment. We had avoided it, since it was complicated and we wanted the experience of Foreign Laundry. But... she bit the bullet and figured it out.

Then, the soft whirring of the machine and the soft rain outside lulled us to a few quiet, pleasant hours of reading and rest. I also cleared a few sparkles, since I am a sick person who is addicted to a child's game and the avoidance of meaningful activity.

I had picked up a flyer at Wowsville advertising something called "Shoobee Doobee Nacht" at a little bar called Soul Cat. It was within walking distance, so we agreed to make that our night's activity. We shook hands and fell asleep.

When we awoke, the laundry was done spinning, so we hung it on all the strange surfaces in this quirky little place. A silver hand hung from a string on the ceiling, and it slapped my face every time I crossed the room.

This was the first day we hadn't heard much from The Sex Dwarf. His room cum night club cum recording studio was dark this day. I had gotten used to the dark disco beats sneaking out under his door and his savage, rhythmic croaks.

Dark little walk to the club side of town where we cracked up at the sight of a bar called "Papa Loves Dick." Oh, how we laughed. Our second dick of the day. Was Dicke Bertha Papa's daughter? Was it a bar for Berlin bears? The mirth of it! The delight!

A peek in the window told us nothing! We moved on toward Soul Cat through a lively little district of promising cafes and bars. Inside, we met a sweet, fussy little bartender with a pair of mustaches and a Bavarian sweater-vest. We ordered an Old Fashioned and a Tank and Tonic. TNT! 

There was no shoobee and even less doobee coming through the speakers. It was more like freak-out organ covers of Summer in the City. But, you know. It was cool. I sang along. My drink arrived quickly. It had those big-block artisan ice cubes, but the drink was served in a tall glass, so they never touched the whiskey. They were, these cubes, trapped at the top. 

And you couldn't sip the drink through them, because they poked out of the top, so big they were, these cubes. So, you forced a straw past them and hoovered up the warm whiskey. Something was a little off at the Soul Cat bar.

The gin and tonic took a long time. Sweatervest came by the table and said, "Do you want, ahhh....ahhhh.." he seemed cheerfully agonized, and then... "Cucumber!" 

The pleasure of his having found the right word infected all of us. Smiles and nods. Very sweet. And unexpected. Cucumber!? Marvelous.  

German covers of Joe South songs hissed around us, and we tried to make sense of a newspaper graphic. A couple made out furiously in the corner. Men drank wine poured to the very top of the glass. Sweatervest returned. Empty handed. 

"Sorry," he said. I was sure he was going to say they were out of Tanqueray. 

"We have no cucumber." 

This is what comes from letting the DJ bartend. Bartenders can DJ, but lord help the reverse. It was all very charming, but we went elsewhere for the second drink. There was no shoobee there either. 

So we called it a night.

On the walk home, we stopped by Papa's for one last look. I had read the sign incorrectly. In my defense, the font was goofy. It wasn't a K, it was an H. "Papa Loves Dich." Daddy Loves You.

We laughed even harder at this. What mirth. What delight. How joyous to have been so wrong. What pleasure is to be found in simple mistakes. What happiness to gather up from plans gone astray.