My life in Berlin is a glorious mess. I don’t have a job. I don’t have an apartment. And I don’t have any money. I couch surf from one friend’s apartment to the next. My 78-year-old father has been hospitalized five times in the past three months. I need to fly back to the U.S. for a few weeks to see him, but I can’t afford an airline ticket. My e-mail account was hacked into by unknown parties. I was getting odd late-night phone calls from someone whom I later learned was an assassin looking for a pro-Kurdish journalist. My girlfriend of four years broke up with me six months ago. And, weirdly, I’ve been receiving nightly visitations from my much loved but long deceased cat.
It’s enough to drive anyone mad!
So, staving off encroaching insanity, I began seeing a psychoanalyst. His name is Dr. David Kneale. He’s a transplanted Brit who, rather than the tweeded Viennese father of his profession, looks like Ozzy Osbourne. He’s Berlin’s rock-and-roll shrink (I also have a rock-and-roll dentist, Dr. Anne Prestig. Her client list spans the last 20 years of Berlin’s music scene–from Einsturzende Neubauten and Todliche Doris to Rammstein). Dr. Kneale’s practice largely consists of English-speaking expatriates having difficulties adjusting to life in their adopted countries. However, instead of probing my relationship with my mother and my attendant feelings of abandonment because of her death, my sessions usually begin with provocative questions like: “How do you feel now that everyone in Europe not only finds Americans stupid but also detestable?”
“Why in hell would you ask me a question like that?”
“I have a lot of Americans who come into my office. Most say they’re feeling alienated because of the war. I hear words like ‘dazed,’ ’lost,’ ‘intimidated’ and ’embarrassed.’ Often, they find themselves in a bar, relaxing over a beer and suddenly a drunk will explode into an anti-American tirade. They feel the European community is confusing the American people with the policies of the current administration in the United States. I wondered how you felt, how you felt as a black American living in Europe. Do you feel affected or alienated by any of this?”
“I don’t feel ‘alienated’ by it. It just pisses me off. I’ve always been pissed off, so it’s nothing new. If some malcontent mouths off about Americans, I just ask them to tell me who they think the real American is: George Jr.? Or Elvis?”
“And …?”
“I’ve made them laugh and that’s the end of it. But, honestly, I’ve been expecting the U.S. to get sucked into an Orwellian wormhole since I was 15. That’s how old I was when I first decided to expatriate.”
“Fifteen?”
“Yeah. Back in high school. When the FBI bugged my phone.”
“Now why would the FBI consider a 15-year-old a threat to the security of the United States?”
“Come on, man, COINTELPRO! Where you been?! Everybody’s phone was bugged back in the ’70s! I don’t know why the FBI bugged my phone; maybe Hoover had the hots for my teenage tush. Had me in a file marked Operation: Cornhole. Who knows?”
“Don’t you think you’re being a tad paranoid. You were in high school.”
“No. I’m a lot paranoid! But it’s true. I was a Yippie. I hung out with the Panthers. I burned a flag. They put me in jail.”
“Why did it take you 30 years to leave then?”
“I didn’t have any f–kin’ money. I still don’t; but, by God’s grace, I’m here and not there. Frankly, America was completely over for me after the 2000 presidential election. It was the Supreme Court, not the American people, who decided who was going to dictate policy in the United States. And the American people sat down for it. If that had happened over here, the Reichstag would be in flames. I’m no great fan of the French–their national hero is who? A farmer who charbroiled the golden arches? But when the right-wing Le Pen won a majority vote in the French primaries, the population freaked. They were out in the streets. Did the Americans do that after Florida? No. So I respect the French. It’s ironic there is anti-French sentiment in the U.S. right now in light of the fact the present practice of democracy originated with the French, the heads of tyrants in baskets and all that.”
“But how do you feel here? In a white-European society?”
“I’ve got no complaints with the Germans. They drink, eat pork and smoke. They show porn on late night television. They run around naked on the beach. Bars don’t close until the last customer leaves. Schnitzel and Grun Kohl is my solution to the fried chicken and collard greens dilemma. And they make a mean potato salad. How can you not love a people like that? The Germans have never treated me with anything less than respect. At they’re worst, they’re just polite. And the reason why? They don’t see me as a black man. Now that’s strange, having grown up in America.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to America. I don’t know what it’s like.”
“I do. Class is the issue in Europe, not race–unless, of course, you’re a Jew. But I don’t play that. When some fool Bavarian asks me a dumb question like ‘Don’t you think the Jews are weak?’ I say ‘Look, I’m from New York. That means I’m a Jew. We are all Jews in New York. Even if you’re Puerto Rican, if you live in New York, you’re a Jew! SO F–K YOU!’ I think you would like L.A.”
“Excuse me?”
“L.A.–Los Angeles. You said you’ve never been in America. I think you’d like L.A.”
“Why?”
“Lots of Brits. Mostly ’70s metal-heads. They’re kind of embarrassing, though. They dress like those gangs of beer-swilling, middle-aged derelicts you see hanging outside of the train station here–long greasy gray hair, metal-studded leather pants and Black Sabbath T shirts.
“And you think I would fit in?”
“Yeah. Why not? L.A. is great fun. It epitomizes all the silliness in America. The House of Pies in Los Feliz, for instance. The food they serve looks like it belongs in a pop art installation. The fried bacon slices alone look like Lincoln Logs. And some of the houses are incredible. I have a friend who lives in a small house that looks like the interior of an old sailing vessel. He said it was designed by a Disney animator in the ’30s. When I visit Los Angeles, my first stop is always Musso & Frank’s.”
“Why?”
“Best martini in the world”
“I see. Why do you think Germans don’t recognize you’re a black man?”
“I think it’s because I’m an American. My former girlfriend says it’s because I’m charming. And I have a cute nose. But if I were African, it would be a another matter.”
“How so?”
“Let me tell you a story. I was on a train to Leipzig with a group of friends. Leipzig is in the east, right? Skinhead country. Not Red or Queerskins but the Nazi kind. We’re riding the cheap train, the one you ride on a group weekend–ticket for 28 euro [$31]. There was a soccer match somewhere. And the train was packed with drunken soccer hooligans. They were everywhere, like colonies of cockroaches. Gangs of them drinking beer and singing soccer songs. The train would stop. And a wave of skinheads would swarm out, run across the tracks, line up against a wall and piss on it–a huge steaming puddle washing back toward the passenger’s platform. Cops everywhere but they couldn’t or wouldn’t do a thing.”
“So I’m talking with my friends on the train, ignoring the skinheads. There was another black man in the car I was in, an African. And he was having a heated discussion with two longhaired East Germans. Or rather the East Germans were having a discussion with him. Two ugly pockmarked f–kers”
“Now I speak very little German. I know enough to be understood in supermarkets, bars and restaurants. And at the time, I didn’t speak or understand a word of German. I mean, I could say silly s–t like ‘bunny rabbit’ and sing ‘Springtime for Hitler’ but nothing practical. Three-year-olds would laugh at me and correct my German. So I have no idea what the East Germans are saying to the African. I don’t pay any attention. What I didn’t know–and my friends explained this to me later–was that the East Germans were threatening him, telling him to leave Germany. This confused me. I was black, too. Why wasn’t I threatened? My friends replied he was an African and I was an American. I wasn’t in Germany to take their jobs and women. That’s when I realized racism had a very different character here. It’s social, not optical.”
