Tegan, Sara, and Every Butch in Berlin

Becca’s back in town—my ex, the one where the relationship died but the spark didn’t quite. What do you do with someone like that? You drink Lambrusco and some lurid Beck’s Green Lemon abomination on the U-Bahn until the faces get prettier and the journey gets shorter, and you go to the Tegan and Sara show at the Columbia Club, which functions on this particular night as Berlin’s unofficial lesbian convention.

The show survives in my memory as fragments: bad beer in oversized plastic cups, couples glued together from chest to hip, a crowd where reading gender felt like a sport, döner somewhere, red lights, lipstick, guitars, and the sweetest "thank you" I’ve ever heard from a stage. It was a smoke-free gig by the artists’ request, and that detail has somehow outlasted most of the music in my head.

The next morning my skull punished me for all of it. I missed meeting Marten and Nicki, which I’d been genuinely looking forward to. That still stings a little. Berlin isn’t going anywhere though. Next time will be better—I’m promising that.