Berlin

by Bea Setton

I was ruining my life a little every day, and although I see now that these things were redeemable, I’ve always found starting on a clean page more inviting than amending an imperfect first attempt.

People even dress as if they are perched on the sill of a long journey,

and three of them were called by some variant of the name Catherine.

her gestural preening charm.

She only became important later.

half-mortified and half-thrilled by my solitude.

that to this day remain only names to me.

I liked repeating precisely the same thing, putting my brain through its paces, feeling like a powerful gymnast or horse, knowing how much youth shimmers and lust fizzes close to the surface—but keeping it in check, turning in early and alone, delighting in the precision of the coming day’s choreography, choosing to do only this—over and over.

I shared the two-bedroom apartment with a Polish woman called Ewa who was very nice on the days she didn’t take crystal meth.

a philosopher responded to an ad of mine, I wouldn’t even answer. I would assume that he was aesthetically stunted and sexually frustrated, and that he ate horrible, fishy, bristly things for breakfast.

She stretched out her hand; it was tiny and bony and a little moist, and fluttered nervously in mine like a bird caught in a trap.

I suspected the true reason she wanted to meet me in person was to make sure I was a “real,” white European.

which she had somehow not touched since the last time I had visited her, exhibiting the kind of self-control I’ve never been capable of.

I love a fresh start. It was magic to feel my self-reliance, and these strongly muscled legs and tight bags swinging against my torso as the train rattled. What a compact adult package I had become!

I cannot figure out if a yogurt pot can really be recycled and if the smooth soft mirror lid can go along with it—or whether it belongs somewhere else altogether.

Very human

The point is that with regards to the light, EG was true to her word.

I started googling “very loud explosion in the night” and discovered a series of threads about a sleep disorder called exploding head syndrome:

I have been fending off prescriptions of antidepressants for most of my adult life because what I hate most about myself is tangled up in with what I like best.

terrified that I would accidentally “like” one of their pictures and they’d know that Daphne Ferber had nothing better to do. That day, I spent hours stooped chimp-like over the glowing shell of my Mac, opening and closing internet windows robotically, repeatedly boiling the kettle to top up paling dregs of Nescafé.

She swore often but ineffectively, so that everything she said sounded contrived.

I did what I always do in situations I find awkward—I prostituted my soul for the social good,

This interaction was a confirmation that I had done the right thing in moving to Germany.

She is so silly

I eat only raw food and adding milk to something is the most cooking I’ll do—so

She is so amazing. I hate her

Of this I am still certain, despite everything that happened to me in Berlin.

I watched videos on latte art and studied caffeine-extraction curves.

cultivating a street-smart bookish aesthetic that I found irresistible.

The anxiety became too much to bear, and I quit without notice the following week.

I pretended to be in the same situation as they were, and always felt like a sham.

This idleness was a citywide phenomenon and was part of the strange, disorienting social fabric of Berlin.

with the detached, benevolent smile of the Buddha.

This is not because I am a beauty—although I do have nice ankles and an expensive colorist—but because I am such a brilliant bullshitter that I can blow air into the holiest of egos.

and simple sentences like, “I don’t love him now, but I do miss him.”

Even though I was not interested in Callum romantically, I instinctively did what I do when “Boys” come over.

He told me in great detail about the plot of his first novel. It was an original idea about a group of pregnant women protesting against climate change by live-streaming late-stage abortions, told from the point of view of the would-be fathers.

Horrifying

I was so unpleasantly, inescapably present. I could feel every particle in the space between us tingling expectantly, but it didn’t feel right and delicious in the way it can when you want something to happen, that precise sharpness of magnets clicking or scissors nipping.

It was the exact shade of blond that my hair colorist tries to synthesize in me.

“I don’t think you really mean that,” she replied, with terrifying directness. “I appreciate it, but I’m not so easy to get along with. And I think you’re the same, maybe. Well, you are nicer and people like you more. Come on, introduce me to some of your other friends.”

because Day Daphne knows that Night Daphne’s resolve is weak.

What I wrote in the previous chapter is not completely true.

I’ve wanted to obliterate a most shame-inducing character from my narrative. But if I can’t be honest in writing, when will I ever really be honest?

This part of the story won’t be drawn out. There will be no sketching of his face or prolonged description of the kind of food he ate, nor will I relay the line of conversation.

He thought, as many intellectual men do, that ceaselessly pointing out everything that is bad in the world was enough to make him good.

This email still lies in my draft folder, ready.

which I delete from my spam folder so that I will never be tempted to read them for a kick of adrenaline.

and somehow this whole story would become all about him. He is actually not at all important; his character certainly does not warrant the attention I have given him until now. I was the more interesting one in the relationship. Cleverer, too. When we were together, I wasn’t that keen on him. I lied to him all the time. I found him weak and easy to dominate. I developed a much greater attachment to the scar that formed around our breakup than to his actual person.

don’t do well on weed at all.

Shes just like me fr

Even if I remain as immobile as a paperweight, time will still stack up the days and pin the receipts of all of them to me until I find myself with a thick wad of them in my forties, and a hefty pile in my sixties.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it, but I am freakishly tall,

I just really wanted you to think I am a good person—but I’m not different from anyone else. I’m weak, and my need to be liked is stronger than my liking for the truth.

I’m a feminist, sure, but I want to be attractive.