photos: Franziska Müller-Degenhardt
When I first came here, I was innocent and inexperienced, clear as a blank slate. But since it’s been long established that Berlin is a city of creatives, it’s only natural that after a while, I ended up feeling like someone has scribbled all over me. The once blank page is now covered in chaotic drafts and I am only left with distant memories of love songs, script ideas and DJ sets, while some of their authors turned out to be way less meaningful in my life than I could have (however naively) hoped for.
Dating in the Berlin expat community with anything close to a monogamous mindset is like trying to do groceries on a Sunday – only happening five times a year in very restricted locations. While I’m usually able to steer clear of sex tourists, I’ve come to notice a local equivalent for that phenomenon: the guys who are permanently in their zen-like soul-searching mode, very unwilling to step down from their mystic cloud to see what’s up in the real world – unless it’s for a booty call.
I don’t blame them though. Berlin is a place where you’re often faced with an absolute apotheosis of the proverbial sex, drugs, and… well, mostly techno. You’re left with no other choice but to figure it out for yourself. While I can’t tell you how privileged I feel to live in a city that has the magical power of stimulating everyone to let their freak flag fly by night, it’s a shame when half-mast is the best they can do at daylight. It feels like I’ve met so many guys whose identity didn’t extend beyond the nightlife.
On a slightly different note, I’ve spent my two years here adjusting my quite naive teenage ideals of romantic love to a reality where polygamy seems to work out just fine for many. I got used to the fact that I tend to get more invitations to a threesome than to the cinema and my friend is regularly consulting me as to what lingerie she should wear to an orgy.
And although the search for a monogamous partner might sometimes feel futile in Berlin, I also know that there’s a lot to learn from all the unapologetic liberation around, namely – if you’re not the person responsible for your happiness, something is wrong. In any case, a scribbled page is way more interesting than a blank one. And actually, I still think some of those songs were really pretty good.
