Berlin

     What is the opposite of orgasm, inquired Joachim in his typically husky tone, as we walked out of the building and into thick fog that had descended out of nowhere on that November afternoon, passed by the unsociable silhouettes of students and faculty members that emerged from a damp garment of white. Soon we were nimbly dragging ourselves along the gravelled turf with our hands plunged deep in our coat pockets. I gazed halfheartedly at Joachim but didn’t respond to his impish query, because making a coherent sound pinched a thousand needles in my swollen, smarting gums and also because I already knew what he was implying: the opposite of orgasm was a toothache, which had now kept me awake writhing in agony for the last two nights in my dorm, and walking back towards it induced in my spine exasperation coupled with dread. The night before I took a bunch of painkillers to no effect, as they only made me drowsy and nauseous, which didn’t even serve as a distraction from my main illness. I couldn’t finish my paper on double amputee Eugen Fohrbach either but Dr. Schmidt, unlike a number of other dastardly doctorates on this slaughterhouse of a campus, was sympathetic to my acute gingivitis and magnanimously extended the deadline by a week. I couldn’t afford to visit a dentist. The money I made from my work as a teaching assistant to Professor Rüdiger barely covered my nutritional needs. Thousands of miles away from home, studying for a masters degree, I felt like a child whose parents momentarily lose sight of him at a crowded fair, and the child keeps getting away from them, enchanted by some puppet show in the distance, he keeps walking on until he vanishes into another dimension, swallowed whole by a puppet or the puppet master, and is never seen again. There were moments when I, at first out of levity more than anything, contemplated killing myself rather than suffer another hour of pain hammering away deep inside my gums, but I have the guts of a snivelling rat, and perhaps a similar pain tolerance too. Amidst thoughts of offing myself, as if to encourage me or to hold my hand and take me towards it, Malcolm Lowry’s voice kept roaring inside my head: What is man but a little soul holding up a corpse. And I swear for a while all fear dissipated and I was ready to rush headlong into the perpetual abyss, for the Wolfeian voyage towards eternal slumber, holding Lowry’s trembling hand, the hand of a seasoned drunkard, whimpering out of pain and helplessness and yet staring sternly at death. A corpse will be transported by express! But my abstract courage was shattered in a trice by another piercing assault on my gums. Only if I could borrow more guts from a fellow rat. Outside my dorm, before leaving for home, Joachim, as if it suddenly dawned on him, told me that he could be of some help. My father is a dentist, he said, and you could visit him this evening after his usual clinic hours. Yes, write down the name and address: Dr. Herzenschtube. No, let me text you the location. I don’t want your foreign ass to get lost. I will put in a word and he won’t charge you much, if he’s in a decent mood. Whilst he was typing on his phone, I swear I wanted to punch that twerp in the face and knock his teeth out, except I didn’t want to inflict dental distress on anyone else, not even a withholding German, but Joachim had a legitimate reason for not offering help earlier; he told me his father had been up in the Bavarian Alps to attend a dental expo and had only returned late last night. At first I thought he was making it up and there was no such thing as a dental expo, but when his face didn’t budge at my cackle, I realised Herr Herzenschtube really had been at, how do I put it, an oral care fair. Then Joachim took his hip flask out and chugged some Puschkin down his throat. Before passing it to me, he canted his head upwards and recited the man after whom the liquor company had named that vodka: I shall again drink in sweet harmony, The mind’s creations will not cease to wring Warm tears from me – and on my sad decline Perhaps one day love’s farewell smile will shine. The urge to knock his teeth out momentarily made its way back into my head but I forebore. Do you know he was a part of this cum drinking literary society called the Green Lamp, asked Joachim, his head still canted, his face frozen into a vague smile. What? Who? Herr Herzenschtube? No, you arschgeige, I am talking about Pushkin, remarked Joachim before grabbing the flask and disappearing out of sight rather impetuously. I took a cold shower and stared out of the window, the fog hadn’t lifted yet, and though I was starving I couldn’t eat solid food, so I made some instant coffee, put on a fleece jacket, and called a taxicab to get to Doctor Herzenschtube’s clinic, which wasn’t that far had it been an evening of fogless visibility, but as that was not the case, I decided to leave a tad early. The cab driver, as cliched as it may sound, happened to be a fellow countryman of mine, a middle aged man from Punjab who had arrived in Germany back in 1994, covering most of the journey on foot and dodging the border police. As soon as he sized me up from the rearview mirror, he unleashed an unsolicited monologue about the travails of his past, and I could hardly get a word in edgewise, not even my feigned gasps and bravos, which would have only spurred him on to embellish his Quixotian journey with more and more apocryphal trials. On any other day, I would have loved to lend an ear to the cab driver’s story, which he must have narrated to several people on many a Berlin afternoon, navigating fog and rain and an interior lugubriousness, and that day fate had picked me to be at the receiving end of the almost motorised onslaught of his words, his so-called life story, but I was in no state to extol his steely resolve and make an acquaintance with him. The only acquaintance I desired to make that evening was Herr Herzenschtube’s, but from the cloistered hell of my dorm I had arrived in the backseat of slow moving purgatory, and to kill time I started mindlessly scribbling illegible letters of a made-up language across the window of the cab. For a while, I passed out, for once the sleep trumped pain, though it only lasted a few moments, and the cab driver broke off his monologue to tell me that we had arrived at the destination. When I got out of the cab, absolute dark had pervaded the dreary grey, and the narrow street in front of me was alighted with gas lamps. I thought to myself it was perfect timing: Herzenschtube’s regular clinic hours were over, which meant he was waiting for me. Inside the dimly lit clinic, I was welcomed by a nurse, who was reading a magazine called Cul D’Or, its cover adorning plump buttocks of a blonde maiden. She put the magazine down in a hurry and introduced herself as Fraülein Von Mylendock, a name that—for some reason—struck me as straight out of a work of fiction I might or might not have read on some late afternoon in the days gone by, or perhaps it was her face which I might have associated with a character from a work of fiction, I couldn’t be sure, and so for a moment or two I stood in front of her almost rooted to the ground, swimming in the murky backwaters of my subconscious to look for an answer, but my reverie was broken by Von Mylendock’s brusque voice, as she asked me to follow her to the Doctor’s room, which was fairly spacious and dazzlingly lit by fluorescent tubes (I was under the impression that fluorescent lights had been banned or became obsolete, like landlines) which my corneas adjusted to in a minute or so. Herzenschtube was nowhere to be seen. Von Mylendock asked me a few preliminary questions and then proceeded to take an x-ray of my teeth. I sat there recumbent against the dental chair, still thinking about the name of Herzenschtube’s aid, and then the Doctor walked in with a slight limp, his marsupial features suggested he was more of a pimp or an ex-pimp than a dentist, but nothing is more deceptive in this world than looks. Herr Herzenschtube looked at the x-ray of my teeth with morbid concern. Then he looked at me, heaved a sigh, and uttered his first words: Poor lad! Joachim told me all about it. You must have gone through hell and some. Poor lad! Then his attention turned towards Von Mylendock and they conversed in their native tongue, and soon after Von Mylendock started arranging all the tools: a dental mirror, a periodontal probe, a drill, a couple of syringes and a nasal mask. Then Herzenschtube turned towards me: Poor lad! Here’s a proposition. I know you are not covered for this procedure. I will not charge you a penny but only under one condition. Don’t fuss over it. It’s nothing, really. You see, sadly in this part of the world, the anaesthesia we use on patients is, how do I put it, very effeminate. It’s basically shit. A monkey’s shame. After years and years of toil, I have developed an anaesthesia of my own, mixing nitrous oxide with some fentanyl and ibogaine and another secret agent. It’s not approved by the spineless cucks sitting higher up, but I can assure you it’s completely safe. Tried and tested. For a few hours, you will go into a dream-like state, totally divorced from pain. Into blissful immobility, if you will. Enough time for us to fix your ailment. Poor lad! All you have to do is sign on this document and we shall begin. Fraülein Von Mylendock will be happy to answer any questions you might have but I’d say the sooner we get on with this, the better. Von Mylendock stood on top of me with a sheepish smile on her face. I had no time to think it over. A few hours ago, however flippantly, I was ready to put a bullet into my mouth and go out with a bit of showmanship, so how worse that cocktail anesthesia developed by Herzenschtube could have been, I reasoned with myself and put my signatures on the consent form. Herr Herzenschtube smiled the most crooked smile and turned towards Von Mylendock: This is what I admire about the Asians. Nuts of steel. Germans have become everything their forefathers had feared they’d become. Paralysed and weighed down by the collective guilt settled in their saggy scrotums. Citizens of a sanatorium. Ah…well…thanks for trusting me with this. Good lad. At his words, prompted in part by his crooked smile, a suspicion rose in my heart that I might have made a terrible mistake; that I might never wake up from Herzenschtube’s experimental anaesthesia. A corpse might well be transported back to Punjab by express. But what could I have done really? You can exhort a man in a recumbent position to almost sign up for anything. Von Mylendock brought a couple of ampules and a syringe. Herzenschtube first covered my nose with a mask and a nauseous smell emanated from it. Then, he started filling up injections with typical doctorly precision. My heart sank into my scrotum. I wanted to get up and run for my life but life had already exited out of my body and what remained was merely a paralysing weakness, the feeble gasps of an emaciated man who had seen death plummeting towards him at a vertiginous speed. A needle entered my veins. I couldn’t quite make out whether it entered the veins of my arms or legs or balls. I had already closed my eyes, accepted my fate, said my last prayers. Darkness and unconsciousness ensued. Joachim and I were floating across Warschauer street in a dream. It was a cold but pleasant afternoon. He was carrying a pocket edition of Michael Kohlhaas, the best German novel according to him (he hadn’t read The Magic Mountain, but I am not certain weather that would have made any difference), the book that inspired Kafka’s Trial and Coetzee’s Michael K, but he wasn’t saying that in my anaesthesia-addled dream but had told me much earlier, on our second meeting outside Professor Rüdiger’s office, inside the cauldron of reality. And then we floated into Fleischerei Domke, where he ordered a dish of blood sausage with sauerkraut and potatoes for himself and a bottle of premium pilsner for me. We sat waiting for our order surrounded by deafness. Outside the window, black cars and erect postures were floating across Warschauer street; it almost felt like a screen projection, behind which time and shadows swelled, burst and then froze. Markus Werner says there will always be toothache and horseflies, even in paradise, but the former couldn’t even cross the threshold of the dream world. Maybe anaesthesia had already kicked in full throttle. Whilst I sat waiting for a bottle of beer with my mate, my mate’s father and his smut-reading aid, must have been busy fixing my gingivitis in a clinic fair few streets away from Fleischerei Domke, where we sat silently in the company of the tragic, diminutive figure of Michael Kohlhaas. Then, everything suddenly dissolved into blindness and I woke up inside Herzenschtube’s clinic in a dream-like state, transported from one dream to another, from the butcher shop to the clinic, except this latter dream had a certain vitality to it. Everything was vivid. Fluorescent lights had started flickering, which threw me off kilter, and then my gaze fell upon Herzenschtube’s face, whose pimp-like features were further accentuated under that wavering light. My clothes were off barring underpants. A cold numbness traversed my entire body. Von Mylendock walked in wearing light blue latex panties with a zipper and a matching bra, her knockers barely fitting in, and Herzenschtube gave her voluptuous buttocks a whack, at which she sniggered and heaved a moan. For a while, I closed my eyes to revert back to my previous dream, but my effort was cut short by thundering footsteps of a strapping figure dressed in a bearsuit. He was simply referred to as Rocco by Herzenschtube. Rocco’s enthusiasm dampened when he realised there were only three people in the room. He then whistled and four boys in uniforms walked in carrying a rather heavy one-way mirror, which they started installing in the middle of the room. Logistics, eh, sighed Herzenschtube and landed another slap on Von Mylendock’s shapely buttocks. Despite the numbness, my cock started coming to life, but it still had a long way to go, long before it inevitably wrestled control of its life. Some seven or eight blonde maidens with bob cuts and bodies painted in smoke-grey walked in and had Herzenschtube almost on his knees, as drool rolled out of his crooked mouth. Then came more men, more women, more creatures dressed in bizarre fetish gear, goths, freaks, men wearing bulldog harnesses, women covered in shaved sable fur and naked beneath, latex catsuits, d-ring rubber stockings, a stocky manikin carrying his cock on his shoulders…my head spun like a top. After installing a giant one-way mirror, the boys handed over a receipt to Herzenschtube, who frowned after glancing at it and got into a heated argument with those workers. Herzenschtube left the room and came back with a bunch of receipts which he flung at the mirror boys. One of them stepped forward and sucker-punched Herr Herzenschtube and sent him rolling backwards. Before he could do more damage, he was held back by his comrades. He spit out of spite and then they all left. Von Mylendock rushed to help the disgraced Herzenschtube but he waved her away, got up on his own, and smiled as if he didn’t have his wind knocked out of him seconds ago. Then he came up to me: Does your sausage get hard, lad? Yes, Herr Herzenschtube! Bring it out, lad! I can’t, Herr Doctor. I understand your reticence and I will help you. Soon a bob-cut blonde walked up to me and started rubbing my cock. Her face looked familiar. I thought I had seen her at an Anton Newcombe concert earlier in the year but I was not sure. Around me, the fucking or fuckathon had begun. Moans, screams, slaps, and a plethora of devilish sounds were blaring in my ears. I asked the girl her name, she whispered Hildegarde, took my hand and shoved it down her nether regions. Might as well get on with it, I said to myself, and started pleasuring Hildegarde, who was wearing a very sinister, dark shade of lipstick. I looked at her face and imagined how I would like to fuck her. Usually I don’t like to face women while fucking them. It’s embarrassing and emasculating. But I couldn’t imagine shagging Hildegarde from behind. I wanted her to get on top of me and ride my sausage, to borrow from Herzenschtube, whose own sausage was being sucked in a corner by Von Mylendock and another woman in a chest to crotch harness. I wondered what freakish fuckery was going on the other side of the mirror. Before Hildegarde could go down on me, or I on her, Rocco came and grabbed her by the hair: You coke-whore cunt, I thought you hadn’t come. I always come, Rocco, you thick headed fuckwit. Rocco laughed, took her to the dental chair where I was supposed to be getting treatment, and started fucking her in the arse right away. They had a prior chemistry, it seemed, because Hildegarde shouted several times that she was gonna cum as Rocco pounded her from above and repeated her exact same words. The stocky manikin, whose name I figured was Antonioni (he preferred to be called Lord Master Antonioni, Von Mylendock had told me), carried his giant cock on his shoulders but wasn’t fucking anyone. He had a camera and was taking photographs of a woman in d-ring rubber stocking. She must have been six and a half feet tall, or so it seemed, as she got down on the floor and slowly crawled towards Lord Master Antonioni, who rolled back and forward nimbly and observed her through his camera lens: That’s it, my sweet little cunt. Keep crawling. Yes, lizard queen! Real slow. Now give me that tease. Innocent but also whorish. Yes, there you go. Dirty but also sweet. Fucking A. That’s my naughty little cunt. Alright, done, let’s screw her! roared Lord Master Antonioni and walked over to the other side of the mirror. The woman was joined on the floor by a bald goth and they started making passionate love. Herzenschtube’s face was now getting pissed on by a beauty in a latex catsuit. I was ok with piss and cum and spit and slaps but I was praying it didn’t turn into a scatological clusterfuck. I started masturbating under flickering lights, in front of men and women fucking the daylights out of each other. I wanted to fuck Hildegarde but that wretched bastard Rocco had stolen her away from me. There were two women in a corner kissing each other, and as there were no men with them, I went over to join them, but they pushed me away, and I figured they were probably homosexuals, much adept at handling their own equipment. But I was in luck, as Antonioni’s lizard queen, a woman significantly taller than me, after getting done with the bald goth, came over and started sucking my cock. Herzenschtube glanced at me approvingly. I feared I’d cum straight away but I surprised myself with how long I lasted. Eventually, I did cum, probably inside her mouth, because when she got up she delivered a hard slap on my cheeks and walked away. I put my underpants back on and sat down on the floor. What was going on the other side of the one-way mirror, that question was killing me. Herzenschtube was sucking on Von Mylendock’s feet. Rocco was still fucking Hildegarde, despite them having cum at least twice. Lord Master Antonioni walked back to our side of the glass and started taking random photographs of men and women sucking and fucking and pissing and choking and gagging and biting each other’s flesh. Driven by morbid curiosity, I walked over to the other side of the mirror, expecting another group of fuckers, but to my shock and horror, there were several gentlemen and women, dressed in expensive suits, who sat on the couches sipping alcohal and keenly observed the fucking of others. Among those sick fucks, my gaze fell upon an inflated doll or a clone of Hermann Göring, who sat on the couch apparelled in a light grey jacket, his hair combed back, his menacing eyes covered by the same dark spectacles he wore during the infamous Nuremberg trials, and a tinge of melancholy traversed his fat countenance, or so it seemed under the flickering fluorescence, but there was one apparent oddity which I first mistook as goiter and only upon closer inspection did I realise that it was a cock that jutted out the side of his neck. He was talking to another man, probably some SS officer long dead, and they were laughing. Göring said to the group: I wouldn’t have minded some slavic-maidens, or some P-girls, getting thumped by those freaks on the other side. Everyone laughed, except me, as I stood frozen in the corner and observed their mannerisms. They would have ejaculated back fat lard from their anuses, Herr Reichsmarschall, responded the man in a blue suit sitting next to Göring, and everyone laughed maniacally. Soon I was grabbed by the arm and taken back to the side of the fuckers. It was Herzenschtube, who reprimanded me for breaking the protocol. I sank on a couch and closed my eyes. Before I could pass out or be transported back to another dream or another reality, I was joined by Hildegarde, who lit a cigarette and sat next to me. Do you know what’s there on the other side of the mirror, I asked her. Of course I know, everyone knows, but I’d like you to shut your trap and stop being a buzzkill, said Hildegarde. So I kept my trap shut, borrowed a cigarette from her, and started watching Von Mylendock being penetrated by Lord Master Antonioni, who had finally decided to let go of photography and make use of his dufftool. Then I got bored, leaned against Hildegarde’s arm and passed out for good. I must have slept for ages. A dreamless slumber. I woke up and Herzenschtube was sterilising his tools. The lights were no longer flickering. Fraülein Von Mylendock was nowhere to be seen. Ah, you are up, lad. How are you feeling? I can’t complain, Herr dentist. That’s what I do, that is what I do, said Herzenschtube and smiled his orgiastic smile. I got up, put my fleece jacket back on, and walked out into the street. I could have called a taxicab but I decided to walk. The night was far advanced. The fog had lifted. I kept walking, thinking about pain and anaesthesia, thinking about acid colors. I could have gotten lost on my way back to the dorm. I could have been abducted by another group of fuckers and taken to a tunnel to watch or participate in another fuckathon. Several things could have happened. Several things had already happened. It was all a dream, I told myself, a dream induced by a strong cocktail of anaesthesia developed by Herzenschtube, and I couldn’t help but laugh at how bizarre a night it had been. I was walking back to my dorm when through the glass window, inside a roadside deli, my gaze fell upon Von Mylendock, who was having coffee with another woman who sat across from her. I got closer to the window. My knees gave out when I saw Hildegarde, wearing that dark shade of lipstick, sat across from Von Mylendock and stared listlessly at a cup of coffee, moments before they were joined by the unmistakable figure of Rocco.