Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (17 page)

At first, I thought some of the customers were okay guys, more or less. The boys around the station sometimes pointed out this one or that one who was supposed to be all right, and then they'd say that someone should try to keep him hot so he'd come back. That's where I got my start. Some customers were really nice to me when they saw me with Detlef at the station. They thought I was sexy. That was kind of weird, the fact that these guys—who I thought were all gay—liked me like that. Sometimes one of the boys gave me twenty marks and said it was from a customer who thought I was really nice. Detlef never told me that some of these guys were already badgering him to have him involve me in a three-way.

I watched the other girls; almost all of them still just kids like me. And I saw the horrible shape they were in. Especially the ones who were addicted to H and who had to sell themselves to fund their habit. I saw the disgust in their faces when a customer came over to talk business (although they still tried to smile nicely). I hated the customers. They were a special breed of assholes, perverts, and pigs—skulking through the corners of this grungy station on the hunt for desperate, underage hookers. What was so much fun about going off with these strange girls—girls who were so clearly disgusted by them and who were so clearly miserable?

Eventually, my attitude toward Detlef's work soured. Over time, I began to realize what Detlef had to go through with these guys. Sometimes he had to really force himself to do a job, using every little bit of willpower to overcome his nausea and disgust. If he wasn't doped up, he often couldn't do it.

When he was going into withdrawal, so just when he needed a job the most, he had a tendency to just run away from the customers. Axel or Bernd would usually step in at that point, so that the money wasn't lost. But it really took it out of them. Axel and Bernd also had to be doped up in order to make it work.

It really bugged me that these guys all ran after Detlef like that. They stammered their funny confessions of love for him and slipped him love notes while I was standing right there next to him. They were all so pathetic and lonely. But I couldn't feel sorry for them. It made me want to scream. “Don't you get it?” I wanted to yell, “Detlef belongs to me, and no one else . . . and definitely not some sad, old asshole like you!” But I knew I couldn't because we needed those guys: They supplied us with cash, and we could take it from them like candy from a baby.

Then I noticed that some men at the station appeared to know Detlef pretty intimately—much more intimately than I did, anyway. It made me want to puke. And when I heard a rumor that some of the customers wouldn't pay until the hustler also had an orgasm, I just about lost it.

I saw less and less of Detlef. He was always off with some client asshole. I was worried about him. Somebody told me once that a lot of male hookers eventually become gay themselves. But I couldn't blame Detlef. We needed more and more money. And half of it was spent on my dope. Since I was part of this group, I wanted to become a real junkie, just like them. I shot up every day. But I always made sure that I had enough H left over for my fix the next morning.

Nevertheless, neither Detlef nor I were physically addicted yet. When you start to use heroin, it takes a while before you're completely dependent on the stuff. We could usually manage to go cold turkey for one or two days, using other stuff to get high. We hadn't really gone down the rabbit hole yet. And since we
were able to take some time off, we talked ourselves into believing that we were different from all the addicts, all the junkies, all the human wrecks. We could quit any time we wanted to.

I was still feeling pretty good, I think. Every Saturday I found some happiness in Axel's apartment. Detlef would crawl under the clean sheets with me, give me a good-night kiss on the lips, and then turn around. We slept back-to-back, with our butts snuggled against each other. And when I woke up, Detlef would give me a good-morning kiss.

That was as far as we'd go for the first six months of our relationship. When I first met Detlef, I'd already had some experience with male brutality. And I told him right away,“I'm still a virgin, you know. And I want to take my time. I want to wait until I'm a little older.”

He understood immediately and didn't make a big deal out of it. I was his girlfriend, of course, and we could talk together about anything and share everything, but at fourteen I was also still a child. He was always so sensitive and understanding. He was able to sense what I wanted, and without my saying so, he could tell what I could and couldn't do. Sometime in October, I asked my mom to put me on the pill. She got a prescription for me because by that time, she knew that Detlef and I were sleeping in the same bed, and she didn't believe that there was nothing going on between us.

So I took the pill but didn't let Detlef know about it. I was still afraid. When I got to the apartment one Sunday at the end of October, Axel had put fresh sheets on his bed. He said that it was silly that he stretched out in that big bed while the two of us squished onto a small cot. So we should take his bed.

All of a sudden, the apartment seemed to kind of lighten up. Detlef proclaimed that the apartment could use some housecleaning for a change. The rest of us immediately agreed. I started by
tearing open every single window in the apartment. When some fresh air started to come in, I realized once again what a horrible stench we'd been living in. Any normal person would have been knocked out by the stink of blood, ashes, and moldy sardine cans before he even set one foot inside.

Two hours later, the apartment was in a state of utter chaos. We gathered up these huge piles of trash—each one a kind of garbage dump unto itself—and stuffed everything into plastic bags. At the end, I even started up the vacuum cleaner and cleaned out the birdcage. A sleepy parakeet looked down from his perch at all this activity. Axel's mom had given the bird to him along with the TV, since her boyfriend didn't like birds. But the thing was, Axel hated it, too. When it was lonely and started to chatter and tweet, Axel banged his fist against its cage, which made the poor creature start thrashing all around in there. None of the guys did anything for the bird. But Axel's mom brought it some food once a week, and I gave it enough birdseed on Saturdays to last through the whole week. I also bought a little glass water dispenser for the bird, which was able to hold enough clean water for six days.

That night, when we went to bed, everything was different. Detlef didn't give me a good-night kiss and he didn't turn around. He started talking to me. Softly, and lovingly. I felt his hands on me, easy and gentle. I wasn't anxious at all. I touched him, too. We caressed each other for a long time without saying a word. It was wonderful.

Probably an hour went by before Detlef said something again. He asked, “Will you sleep with me next Saturday?”

I just said okay. I'd always been afraid of this question. But now, when Detlef asked, it made me happy.

After a while I added, “Under one condition. We have to both be sober. I don't want any H involved. I mean, otherwise
I might not like it. Or I might love it and think it's incredible but only because of the dope, and then maybe I won't be able to appreciate it when I'm sober. I want to be totally sober. And I want you to know what it's like when you're sober with me.”

Detlef said okay, and then he gave me my good-night kiss. We turned around and fell asleep, like always, with our backs pressed against each other.

We really did stay sober that next Saturday. The apartment was dirty and stinking again, but our bed had fresh white linens on it. As we were taking our clothes off, I started feeling a little anxious. At first we just lay side by side without moving. I thought of the girls in my class who told stories about when the boys got on top of them for the first time. How they'd forcefully rammed their thing inside them and wouldn't stop until they were finished. The girls said that it hurt like hell the first time. And a few of them didn't even keep dating the guy who took away their virginity.

I told Detlef that I wanted to have a different experience from the girls in my class. He said he understood.

We stroked and caressed each other for a long time. He entered me a little bit, and I almost didn't notice. Detlef could sense when it hurt without me having to say anything.

I thought, If it winds up hurting a little, that's all right. After all, he's already waited for half-a-year.

But Detlef didn't want to hurt me. After a while, it was like we were one person. I loved him intensely right then. But still, for some reason I couldn't do much more than just lie there, completely motionless and stiff. Detlef didn't move either. He must have sensed what I myself couldn't think or express just then. I was totally consumed by the conflicting emotions of fear and happiness.

Detlef pulled away and put his arms around me. I felt almost high, with this intensely warm and magical feeling. I thought,
How did you ever find such a great guy? He only thinks about you and never himself. Even when you sleep together, he only cares about making you feel good—he doesn't even finish. I thought of Kathi, how he'd just grabbed me between the legs in the movie theater. I was so glad that I'd waited for Detlef—that he was the one I belonged to. I loved this guy so much that I suddenly got scared: scared of dying.

I kept thinking the same thing over and over: I don't want Detlef to die. So while he was caressing me I said to him, “Detlef, we should stop shooting up.”

He said, “I agree. You should never become a junkie.”

He kissed me. Then we slowly turned around, and with our butts pressed against one another, we fell asleep.

I woke up because I felt Detlef's hands on me again. It was still very early, but there was some gray light coming through the curtains. We started making out, and then we made love for real. It had more to do with what was going on in my head than what was going on with my body. But now I knew how really good it was to sleep with Detlef.

On Monday after school, I went straight to Zoo Station. Detlef was already there. I gave him my lunch sandwich and my apple. He was hungry. I was hungry, too, but in a different way. After having gone clean for three days, I really needed a hit. I asked Detlef if he had a shot for me.

He said, “Nope. And you also won't get any more from me, either. I don't want that. I love you too much. I don't want you to turn into a junkie.”

I flipped out. I had a real craving, and I ripped right into him: “Oh, please, don't put on this holier-than-thou act. Your pupils are like pinpoints. You're totally doped up. And meanwhile you've got the nerve to tell me that I should stay clean. If you quit, I'll quit, but don't act like you're doing me any favors when you're just hogging all the dope for yourself!”

I really let him have it. And didn't have any reply because of course I was right: he'd been high for days already at that point. He finally gave in and promised me that later on we'd quit together. Then he serviced another customer for my next shot.

Having slept with Detlef changed a lot of things for me. I didn't feel that comfortable at the station anymore. I suddenly had a much better idea of what Detlef and his friends did to earn their money. Now I knew exactly what those scumbags wanted when they hit on me. They wanted to do with me what I had done with Detlef. They wanted sex.

That wasn't news to me, of course, but up to that point, it had all been very abstract to me. Now it was something real and wonderful and intimate. It was something that Detlef and I shared. The customers disgusted me. What went on at this station was almost unimaginable. How could I ever think of going to bed with one of those desperate foreigners or let some drunk asshole, or some bald, sweaty fat guy actually have sex with me? How could anyone? The thought turned my stomach. It wasn't funny anymore when the johns used their stupid pickup lines on me. I didn't want to return fire with any clever replies anymore. I just turned away, repulsed; sometimes I even went after them with kicks. I also felt a completely new hatred for the guys who went after Detlef. I could've killed them. And in order to just keep my cool, I had to keep suppressing the thought that Detlef was acting affectionate toward them.

But despite all that, I kept on returning to the station after school every day. I went because that's where Detlef was. When he'd finished with a customer, we'd go to the Zoo Station café, and I'd have a hot chocolate. Sometimes business was pretty bad, though, and even Detlef had a hard time making enough cash for dope for the both of us.

By hanging out in the Zoo Station's café, I got to know some of the other prostitutes through Detlef, although he'd always
tried to keep me away from them. They were much more fucked up than we were, and had a much harder time attracting customers. They were older, the kind of experienced street veterans that I used to admire for some reason, not so long ago.

Detlef said that they were all friends of his. And he warned me to watch my back around them because after all they were longtime addicts and would do just about anything for a little extra cash or another fix. They were always craving a hit, but they never had any money. As a result, you could never let on that you had any money or dope on you. Otherwise you risked getting knocked out and waking up with empty pockets. Not only did they rip off their customers; they also robbed each other.

I began to see what this “glamorous” drug scene was really like. I was almost in it now. Once upon a time, the only thing that I wanted was to be a part of this world.

Friends of Detlef would occasionally tell me, “Girl, you gotta quit. You're too young. You can still do it. You just have to get away from Detlef. He'll never get off the stuff at this point. Don't be stupid. Break up with him.”

I gave them all the finger. Breaking up with Detlef—that was the last thing I wanted. If he was going to die, then I would, too. I didn't say that though. Instead I just told them that they were crazy. “We're not addicted,” I'd say. “We can quit whenever we want.”