the atmosphere shifted, the strange music slowed right down to a few beats and the faces of people seemed to distort as i focused upon the woman who had given me the tea. she was staring at me intently and her lips were like an exotic fish, pastel coloured half pouting but her eyes shone like jewels as i watched them sparkle and take over the room.
uncertain if i had closed my eyes i was drifting in time, the memories had flowed over me like fresh river water but now they were carrying me downriver into deep time.  
i was so skinny, almost skeletal, my body was all angles and straight lines, sunken cheeks and part of the berlin night between my ears, half human half creature. wrapped in tight leather and a peaked black cap, my boots were older than me, an old nazis i had procured from a vintage shop in nuekolln, they were supremely comfortable and i loved stomping around the snow in them. well you old nazi i'm wearing your boots now i would think, hoping he would be cringing in the spirit realm. i was talking to ghosts in a city spilling over with them, and the strange thing was i was also a ghost but i didn't know it yet. i was loosing myself, falling into the dark zone of europa, a history of tears, bones and ghosts. sometimes i would see shadows where there were none, disembodied things were everywhere if you knew where to look so for most of the time i would be in bars and clubs drinking to stay warm and escape the phantoms, talking to girls or driving around in the back of a beaten up old merc. 
the car belonged to von donaldson's friend peter, a dealer in medical antiques. 
one night we smoked some very strong hash in the back room of his shop and drunk cognac from the previous century, a bunch of decadent expats at the end of the line, the crossroads of all influence, a city of random fate hurling us one by one on our way. a city whose history had burnt and whose future was rising from ashes, whose shadow was cast as long as it was wide. i was out of time, money and luck stumbling around in jackboots, unwashed and somewhat slightly dazed. 
peter was boring me to tears with intricate details of his skiing holiday in austria, martin was sitting on a milk crate discussing pool strategy, the room was filling up with smoke and there was no ventilation, i could feel myself phasing out while peter was talking and talking and i was drinking and smoking until all i heard was a fade in fade out atonal sound, 'wha wha wha wha wha wha' that was pulsing in and out, there was no air in the room any more. i just fell, straight as a ruler and just as rigid. passed right out but old peter just carried on talking even though i was on the floor being helped up by martin and some drummer from a band called the planets. they lifted me right back to where i was standing next to peter whilst with his story not even acknowledging my temporary absence, didn't even miss a beat and i just continued as if nothing had happened.  
we would always end up at der jungle, the one with the fashion police, that balcony overlooking the tiny dance floor, i never noticed that balcony until a few months of clubbing when i looked up to see a whole strata of nightclubbers looking down at us.
my girlfriend was an austrian air hostess called gabrielle. for some reason i was always going out with air hostesses, mostly whom worked for dan airlines, they were gorgeous but way to far gone to ever come back. i was pretty out there myself but i never follow trends, i never follow crowds and i just never really follow so i was outside her scene. 
gabrielle was always dancing, always on something or the other, always luring me into her with her sexy movements and motions. to be honest i didn't need luring i was quite happy to be trapped by her many charms. we didn't seem to talk much, my austrian was zero, my german was abysmal and i don't think she really liked talking in english and so our communication was all non verbal. i didn't care, never been good at small talk anyway. so we had this strange relationship. we would meet on the dance floor, we would embrace and kiss and dance together, she would watch me doing my crazy jungle stomp and i think was impressed with my originality and uninhibited ability to dance to my own beat and then she would lead me home to her apartment somewhere where if we were lucky we would be in bed before sunrise. gabrielle spoke a different language, her's was fluid, body movements and theatrical gestures, like a dolphin playing with a surfer she elegant and supremely decadent. i'd never take her to my apartment although it was big enough, my room was sparse, a mattress and a pile of books, a few candles, there was never any food there and there were always people coming and going. 
i hardly ever saw daytime back then, my existence was totally nocturnal. i liked that club as it played the kind of music i could dance to, tribal, organic and funky. it was a good place to meet people, i never found a similar club like it ever again. one day gabrielle flew away and i never saw her again. i wasn't to fussed, i had no expectations and always knew a relationship with her would be transient and beautiful, strange and surreal. the city got a lot colder after she left.
i was always looking for heat. winter was hard, everyone just got absurdly drunk. the wall was everywhere i went it would just loom out in front of you, it was always present so you could never forget where you were, tanks rolled down the streets, german, american, english and russian, every night there was some kind of riot, cars burning upside down. punks, hippies, zen masters, junkies, draft dodgers, speed freaks, artists, the city was spilling over with them. sex was everywhere, i never saw a city so turned on as west berlin. 
they had clubs where people just fucked on tables while you ate a burger. i was living on whiskey, weed and poppy cake, occasionally on market day i'd wander down to buy some bread and a big block of cheap cheese. 
some afternoon's when the weather was not so severe, it may have been spring i wandered over the bridge and picked up some onion bread and some cheap cheese which i purchased every week, the markets sold all sorts of produce but in those days i was kinda not an eater but i did like my cheese. for some reason it was getting cheaper and cheaper each visit or i was getting more and more for the same price. so in the end i had to ask my cheese dealer why it was so cheap only to be told it was from the part of norway that had been contaminated by radioactivity during the chernobyl disaster a few months ago. there i am eating fucking radioactive fucking cheese. in those days there was no health inspector, people could sell anything, in a few years they would be selling part's of the berlin wall. 
there was a greek guy called steel who played keyboards, he would always walk into a room and spit on the floor and rub his spit into the carpet or wood. he would often come over in the middle of a cold night and we would drink, get stoned and play cricket to warm up. indoor cricket with a real bat and cricket ball, and there was no holding back. our place was big but inevitably windows would get smashed. fuck, then it would get cold. after a few months of this i became adept at fixing broken windows with tape.
some nights i would wake up in the early hours, it would be freezing, my bones would be like ice bones freezing me from the inside out, sometimes i would sit in the kitchen with the oven on and open just to warm myself. outside dogs would be frozen on the street, the bars would be emptying people out and they would stumble along reichenberger strasse. 
next door was a bar frequented by older berliners, often men and middle aged whores all by the end of the night so drunk they couldn't walk, talk or find their way home. so one night i wake up and wrap myself in a big black cape, the classic kind with high collar and red silk lining on the inside. i roll myself a joint, the north london four skin, a spliff and gaze out at the window below. it's about 4am and the bar next door must be closing as a few people stumble out and stagger down the street. they only have to look up slightly to see me. my joint burns down and the awful stink of industry from the east manifested in some dark ambient cloud appears over the horizon. a lone figure ambles out from the bar, he is holding a bottle and taking large swigs from it. each step he takes is random, he's all over the place, two steps forwards one step back, he makes several attempts to bring the bottle to his lips but can't quite manage it and he's confused about which direction he should walk in. i gaze downwards and he suddenly stops walking and looks up.
our eyes make contact, he drops the bottle and i watch it explode into fragments on the pavement, it makes no sound but the man is open mouthed in horror, struck  by the shock of seeing me he runs away into the night.
and then it dawns on me, he's seen a strange naked man smoking a joint wrapped in a cape staring down at him. he's drunk and disorientated  so perception mutates but he would have a good story to tell tomorrow at the bar. i watch him disappear in the distance and then my gaze shifts to the reflection in the glass. i'm not there, just the cape and a burning joint.
outside i looked for the stars to guide me but the smog blocked out the sky, the city was consumed by it and i had been consumed by the city.