I arrived in berlin searching for a home but also for a person, for my lobster. a mate.
I promptly scheduled a date with a german man, we had really good online chemistry. We flirted and I nearly let myself go for him with out even meeting him, but something stopped me. I was pretty convinced that we would click, but when I met him it was akward. He was tremendously tall and didn't laugh at my jokes. like a small prickly overly boisterous hedgehog trying to keep the company of a towering giraph, I was left feeling out of place in his company.
All my efforts at hair removal and nice underwear were in vain. I kissed his cheek and let him take the last bright yellow berlin subway car home, if its not a "hell yes" its a "no, right?
In the morning I panicked about my desicion to stay in Berlin. I had not fallen in love like I had hoped, there were no secret sparkles waiting for me upon arrival so I impulsively hopped a train and headed for prague, still searching for love. Alas I ended up wandering the streets packed with strangers with no love for people or place. I wandered disconected thru the city like I was a dim light left negletdly unpluggled. The feeling of both lonliness and homesickness sinking deep into my chest, aching like a hidden wound. But lonely for whom and homesick for where I did not know. I have no person nor place. I was adrift. A ship lost at sea without a captain, a compass or even a sail. shit, what had i done.
I sat at the train station with no planned destination. It was vintage 70's orange, and lacking any internet so I was stuck making decisions with only the most basic information to go on. Should I go to budapest and dive deeper into travel or should I go back to berlin and go on a date with a new german man who was messaging me and asking with a sense of genuine kindness I was drawn to to take me out for dinner.
I had no idea what to do. I walked briskly and without direction and cried amongst drunk slovanians as I strugglied to find tickets or choices. In the end, for lack of enough information to make a properly informed decision, I boarded the first train that arrived at the platform. It ironically originated in Budapest but was bound for Berlin, giving me the unsettling feeling that somehow this empty old bruised train with stained orange curtains had gone to Budapest without me. My summer fate sealed by the convenience of proximate departure times. I ate goulash on the train while men yelled in hungarian after too many beers. I was achingly lonely amongst strangers. I spoke not a word to anyone.
When I finally arrived in Berlin I decided to try and settle in to yellow subway cars, an endless supply of saurkraut and great vintage flea market finds. My date turned out to be a sweet german with a PhD in physics. I didn't have any feeling that I wanted romance from him but enjoyed his sweetness and our shared pain of divorce after exactly the same number of years of marriage, 17. After brunch and many words he asked if we should walk thru the park and he eventually led me to a grassy patch where we settled into talking. I am lonely I admitted. I am too he replied. Why not let me take away that ache you have, let me hold you and comfort you he suggested. But I couldn't. I saw before me a sweet man wearing an illfitting t-shirt and a small pageboy hat. The hat I liked but the tshirt was unflattering and I held this against him like a scar on his character. Sure he was rumpled and showed signs that he spent a disproportinate amount of time using his brain instead of his body, but he was also smart and incredibly sweet. He listened to me and consoled me, argued me into the logic of accepting comfort from even strangers in illfitting shirts. I started to weep as I struggled with this engulpging feeling of loneliness. I stared at this stranger who was offering to magically remove it all from me. Like a heart surgeon, he sat scalpal in hand ready to rid me of my pain. He leaned over across the grass to comfort my tears with his gentle arms and I succomb to him with out real effort. This is where it started... Later, I got out of bed sweaty and satiated but vaguely nautious from what I had just done. I cried and felt repelled by his touch after leaving his bed, but I for reasons of loneliness and comfort agreed to see him again. Strangely, after a day a flip was magically switched inside me, and like a bullet train filmed in slow motion something quickly changed in me. The now familiar thick fog of lust induced brain chemicals overtook me and I started to crave his smell and need his company. Like a heroine addict who stops caring about the condition of the couches she sits on as long as they catch her in her drunken stupor, I let myself be overtaken, I let myself sink into the comfort of the worn and battered couch in the nearest abandoned building I could find.
Was it possible that I had judged too soon, that I had simply not looked inside the cover of this non discript book, not discovered its hidden knowledge. We were strangely similiar in so many ways. we both yearned for logic and science, we both needed our brains let free to wander about.
We stopped eating and sleeping and for days we drank in only each other. I tried desperately to run away from this new addiction but after 4 days I succombed and did what any sensible person would do in this situation. I moved in.
You're not my lobster I appologized repeatedly even as I lay naked and wrapped in his arms, having just let my lusty screams out the window to gently float into his neighbors kitchen uninvited. lobsters mate for life so they must somehow find this one lobster that suits them so well they have no choice but to choose them as thier sole companion for a lifetime of strolling the bottom of the sea. Or so i mistakenly thought at the time due to a poorly researched episode of friends which had somehow inadvertently infiltrated my psyche with unscientific but romantic imagery of the sex life of this delicious crustacean.
Your not my lobster was our mantra. But I got the feeling he imagined I was his. We passed our days wandering from a small Italian coffee shop to its matching small Italian lunch cafe. In the evenings he brought me to candlelit berlin bars adorned with velvet couches and low tables, giving you the feeling you had wandered into a hipsters living room just after the power went out. We made out on the couches like we were teenagers with no where to go but our parents house. if only he were my lobster. But his flaws were adorned across his arm like large badly drawn tattoos, they were too hard not to notice. He was only a slightly upgraded version of the man I spent 17 years with. He lacked the quantity of testosterone that allowed him to do for me deeds of cake ordering without asking. His sweetness was not balanced with enough power, he did not embody the sexy appeal of the lion stalking his prey on the Savannah, mane blowing in the night wind. This was not good enough somehow, not good enough to pay the bill in full for the mighty sacrifice of my family. I had unwittingly thrown my family into cauldron of the fiery volcano, like the sacrificial cow of balinese custom. I better get something good in return. But still somehow, how sad that this man was so sweet and wanted to hold me and kiss me for hours but still lacked some essential missing detail, like buttons all missing on a shirt making it impossible to wear.
so I did what you do when you are trying hard not to fall in love, I left for rome, declaring that if I had to pick one city to live in and one person to be with he was not it. But do I have to pick just one? I began talking again to the adulterous kiwi without fear of heartache. I also began arranging dates like I was picking cherries off a tree. Is it possible to juggle people and places like a chinese plate spinning circus act. Could I do this? An Italian man bought me a cappucino. He was handsome and wore a proper collared shirt and a nice watch. He had been married and when I asked if he wanted to frivolously date or was he looking for his lobster, he declared with typical Italian flair. "But of course, a man needs a woman!" a lobster needs a lobster, but which one and for how long?
He walked me to my bus stop after only a brief conversation. He then without warning and a simple cappucino as his only payment for my lust, began to kiss me. He was handsome and I liked his nicely groomed beard and his clean smell, so I kissed him back. This went on for what felt like three long leasurely minutes under a large shady tree on a bustling street corner in the heart of Rome. Eventually, I pulled my lips off his and thanked him, I told him it was nice meeting me and I turned and walked away without looking back. I may not call rome home but I can visit, and I can kiss an Italian after a mere cappucino. Maybe in fact, I am not a lobster afterall. maybe I don't need to find a home. maybe I can merely find enough kisses and cappuccinos to keep me going.
It turns out that in fact the true story of lobsters is much sluttier than the metaphor erroneously stolen for this 90's sitcom. The female lobster only finds a male to mate with when she sheds her shell and needs protection for her soft tender skinned body hiding beneath her hard now discarded exterior. she stays with her selected mate until she hardens up ready again to face the world and off she goes, another female waiting in the empty doorway for her hasty departure, the tough sexy lobster male happy to accommodate them all. Am i a lobster? I don't know... but somehow I think i am something else. but what?
