Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (12 page)

I calmed down, and was generally way more relaxed. Partly because of Detlef, but also because I'd cut out the uppers and was taking a lot of downers now. All my anxiety and restlessness were gone. I hardly ever went on the dance floor now—except when I couldn't find any Valium.

At home it must have been like a dream come true for my mom and her boyfriend. I didn't talk back; I didn't pick fights. I didn't rebel against anything anymore because I'd given up changing anything for myself at home. This, of course, made the whole situation a lot easier.

By Christmas 1975—when I was thirteen and a half—I believed that my relationship with my mom had improved to the point where I could give her at least the partial truth. So I told her that I hadn't been sleeping at Kessi's like I said I was. Instead, I'd spent a lot of nights out at The Sound and was usually still out when the last subway had gone. She reacted exactly as I thought she would: She was angry and couldn't resist lecturing me. I told her that it was better for me to spend the occasional night at a club and still come home when it was over, rather than run away like other kids from Gropiusstadt (who ended up more or less homeless, and who got into even more trouble later on). And I also told her that it was better for her to know the truth, to know where I really was, than for me to lie to her. That much at least she was ready to accept.

By the end of that conversation, I wasn't really interested in telling my mom everything that was going on with me, like I'd originally planned. But the need to be lying all the time got on my nerves. And it was getting harder and harder to make up believable stories. The real reason for my confession was that I wanted to go to The Sound over the Christmas break, and on New Year's Eve, and I couldn't think of a good cover-up story for those nights. And luckily, after our talk, my mom gave me permission to go out over the holidays. That blew me away. But then again, the way I'd described it, my mom thought The Sound was a decent, harmless teenager club—and that all my girlfriends went there. Plus, I reminded her of how much more calm I'd become ever since I'd started going to the club and had the chance to blow off some steam.

Meanwhile, things got more and more extreme at The Sound. Heroin hit like a bomb. It was all we talked about, even though at the time everyone in our clique was against it. We'd already seen enough examples of people whose lives were destroyed by heroin. But then one after another we tried it anyway— “just once,” we'd all say—and most of us stuck with it after that. Heroin blew our group apart. Once you did it, it was like suddenly you were part of a totally new group: There were just those who'd tried it and those who hadn't.

I had a deep fear of the drug. Whenever heroin came up, I was suddenly conscious of just how young I was. On the other hand, I had that same weird admiration again for those people who were already shooting up. For me, that was the natural next step, just like pot and LSD had been before. The junkies looked
down on us pot smokers and pill poppers with enormous contempt. They called hashish a “baby drug.” It was depressing to think that I'd never make it into the junkie group, into the real scene. I had a real feeling of terror when it came to heroin; it seemed like it was the end of the line. And as a result, unless I wanted to go all the way, I didn't have anywhere else to go. My drug career was at a dead end.

It didn't really bother me that heroin seemed to disintegrate all of the old relationships. The others weren't so important anymore because whatever happened to them, I still had Detlef. And things with him just kept getting better. One Sunday in early 1976, I took him along to our apartment. I knew that my mom and her boyfriend wouldn't be there. I cooked a real dinner, and then we sat down and ate our Sunday dinner like husband and wife. I thought it was very cool and kind of magical.

The week after that, I only thought about Detlef; I couldn't stop thinking about that coming Friday and about going to The Sound. When Friday finally arrived, I went to the club almost totally sober but still ecstatic. There was Detlef, sitting with this girl who looked like an absolute disaster. I sat down with them, but Detlef hardly even noticed me; he was fixated on something else. For a second, I panicked and thought that maybe the thing that had happened with Atze was happening all over again with Detlef. But that wasn't too likely with this human wreck of a girl. She was a mess.

At first, the two of them didn't talk, and then when they did, it was only in fragments that didn't make much sense to me. Eventually, I was able to piece the conversation together though: They were talking about heroin. And suddenly, it dawned on me that Detlef wanted to get some H from this girl—either that, or else she wanted to unload some of her stuff to him (which was essentially the same thing). I panicked. I literally screamed: “Detlef, you're insane! You're sixteen years old! You can't seriously want to start using heroin!?”

He didn't care though. I kept pleading with him: “Go crazy tonight. Take whatever other drugs you want. I'll get the pills for you myself. But please don't fuck up like this.” I was literally begging him.

When he didn't react, I made a big mistake—one that I still think about today. I completely panicked and screamed: “If you do this, I don't want to have anything more to do with you. If you do this, you can go to hell! I don't ever want to see you again.” After that, I went straight out onto the dance floor.

I'd done everything wrong. I shouldn't have made such a scene. I should have talked to him quietly and calmly as soon as we were alone. After all, he listened to me. But most of all, I shouldn't have left him alone—not even for one second because he was already really stoned when he was talking to that girl.

A couple of hours later, someone told me that Detlef and his best friend, Bernd, had shot up heroin together. They didn't even start by snorting it. They'd shot up right away.

I saw Detlef again that night. He smiled at me, but it seemed like his smile came from very far away. He seemed happy, but like he didn't feel like talking to me. I didn't want to go to him either. That was an even worse night than that Saturday when I'd lost Atze. Detlef was gone. He went off to a world that I didn't belong to. One minute we were so close it was like we were identical—like we were the very same person—and the next moment we were strangers. Like a bolt of lightning, a single hit of heroin had changed everything.

Still, I kept going to The Sound. Detlef had another girlfriend by that time. Her name was Angie, and she was ugly and cold. I noticed that there was no spark between them. I never even saw Detlef talking to her myself. But she was a junkie, so I guess that
was the attraction. Sometimes Detlef came over to me, but there was nothing between us anymore. Mostly when he came over, it was because he wanted to borrow some change from me. I already knew he was trying to bum together enough money for his next fix. But still, when I had money, I gave him some.

Sunday mornings were totally depressing. Exhausted and drained, I'd drag myself to the subway station, thinking, What a big, fucking mess. I didn't understand anything anymore. I couldn't understand why I kept going to The Sound or why I was taking drugs, but I also didn't know what else I should be doing instead. I was totally, utterly, absolutely lost. Pot didn't do anything for me anymore. When I got stoned, I usually felt completely isolated and couldn't talk with anyone. But at some point, I'd have to talk to someone, just due to the fact that I didn't have Detlef anymore. As a result, I just kept popping more and more pills.

Then one Saturday, it so happened that I had a little more money than usual, and—since I was feeling depressed, and since drugs were never in short supply at The Sound—I went overboard. I washed down two Captagons, three ephedrines, and a few coffies (caffeine tablets) with some beer. But then I felt way too amped up. So I tossed down some quaaludes and a whole bunch of Valium to balance out the uppers.

I don't remember exactly how I got home after that, but anyway, on the way back from the subway, I collapsed. I crawled onto the stoop in front of a store and sat there, doubled over. After I don't know how long, I pulled myself up and steered myself toward the next object I could hang on to. I went from lampposts to trees and then back to lampposts again. It was an endless journey. I thought I would die if I didn't make it home. The worst was the pain in my chest. It was as if someone had stuck a sword into my heart and was twisting it around.

The next morning, on Monday, my mom couldn't manage to wake me up. When she returned from work that night, I still wasn't moving. She kept forcing honey down my throat. It was Tuesday afternoon before I could get up again. I told my mom that I had the flu and circulation problems. I told my mom that the flu was going around in school. I also told her that the circula-tory problems were a normal part of puberty and just a side effect of growing too fast. I wanted to keep her from calling a doctor because I was afraid he would figure out what was going on with me. And luckily that's what happened: My mom didn't call a doctor. She always seemed to calm down and be glad when I gave her any kind of explanation for what was wrong with me.

After that, I'd had it with pills. For the next week, I stayed almost completely sober. I felt like crap.

When Saturday rolled around I made my way back to The Sound and dropped some acid. It turned out to be the worst trip of my life though—at least up to that point. It was just like before. I even saw the same grotesque, monstrous face that I'd seen the last time things started to spiral out of control, when I was staring at that poster on my wall. For hours after that, I was convinced that I was bleeding to death. I couldn't talk, and I couldn't walk. But somehow I made it into The Sound's movie theater. I sat there for five hours, still obsessed with the idea that I was bleeding to death.

After that, everything was out. No pills, no LSD, and pot was useless anyway. So I stayed clean, except for a couple of Valiums here and there. That lasted for about three weeks, I think. It was a pretty shitty time. We moved to Kreuzberg, close by the Berlin Wall. It was a bad neighborhood, but the rent was cheaper. It meant that I had to ride the subway for half an hour to reach my school in Gropiusstadt, but it also meant that I was that much closer to The Sound.

In case it's not clear already, The Sound was nasty—and pretty much unbearable without the aid of drugs. It was also boring; absolutely nothing happened there anymore. But then, one morning on my way to school, I saw that posters were being put up everywhere. Outrageously cool posters that made your eyes pop. I'd never seen anything cooler in my life. “David Bowie is coming to Berlin,” they said. I couldn't believe it. David Bowie was our idol. Nobody made better music than him, and absolutely no one was cooler than he was. All the guys wanted to look like David Bowie. And now here he was, coming to Berlin.

Through her work, my mom got me two free tickets to the concert. Strangely enough, I knew right away whom I wanted to invite. His name was Frank, and although it might have seemed a little random, I didn't think twice about it. Frank was someone from our old clique at The Sound. He looked just like David Bowie. He'd even dyed his hair red, using henna. Maybe that's why it had to be him.

But Frank had also been the first one from our group to try heroin. He was also the first one to become addicted. They used to call him “Little Chicken,” but now everyone just called him “the zombie” because he looked like the walking dead. He was about sixteen years old, like almost everyone else in our clique. But for his age, he seemed especially wise and worldly. He was superior but not pretentious. He was so self-confident but never condescending, even to me—young pot-smoking girl that I was.

So for my date, I'd chosen a total junkie. This concert was like the biggest event of my life—that's the way I thought about it at the time, at least, even though I couldn't have had any idea how significant it would actually turn out to be. Not when I offered the ticket to Frank, anyway. Somehow my attitude toward heroin must have changed during that time when I began to sour on pills, pot, and LSD. Those solid, impassable barriers between me and the junkies seemed to have vanished.

The day of the concert, I met up with Chicken at the Hermannplatz.
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He was super tall and impossibly thin. It kind of shocked me; I guess I'd never noticed it before. I told him as much. He said he still weighed 126 pounds. Frank earned part of his dope money by donating blood, and so he was always weighed before he was able to donate. Even though he looked like a corpse and his arms were full of needle tracks, and even though junkies are at high risk for hepatitis, they still kept accepting him as a blood donor.

In the subway, it occurred to me that I forgot my Valium. I told Chicken that I really wanted to have some on hand in case I started to have an anxiety attack at the show. (Even though I'd already taken a few Valium at home, I just wanted to make sure I was able to stay cool at the concert.)

Chicken was suddenly totally fixated on the Valium that I had at home. He wanted to go back and get it. I asked, “Why do you have such a craving for Valium?” He just repeated that we needed to go back. When I took a close look at him, I was able to see why. His hands were shaking—he was going cold turkey, and he totally had the itch. (That was a phrase that we'd borrowed from the Americans. “The itch” is how we generally referred to the withdrawal symptoms veteran junkies got when the effect of a fix was wearing off. Some people also called it “being on the monkey” or “on the hook,” but not us.)

I explained to Chicken that we didn't have time to go back because then we'd be late for the show. He said he was out of dope and out of money—he hadn't been able to get anything beforehand because the dealers had been cleaned out by all the concertgoers. It was totally fucked up, he said, lame to go to a David Bowie show without any special assistance—without even a Valium! And now Chicken didn't seem so cool or confident after all. I'd often seen people who were going cold turkey, but I'd never seen somebody with the itch up close and personal like this.