My Kiez
Still half-thinking about Charlotte Roche’s Wetlands narrator and her thoughts on intimate grooming, I surface from Charlottenburg S-Bahn station and turn right toward Wilmersdorfer Straße. The sun hits the back of my neck. The rest of my head is full of school debris: the bottle of Lipton iced tea I drank today apparently covered 120% of my daily sugar intake, which explains the trembling. I also need to put together a signature list for the petition to swap P.E. for English—class rep duties—and I noticed that when the usual crowd of chaos around me was absent, I actually liked the lesson. Maybe I should sit up front next semester.
A small cluster of emo girls outside the electronics store grins at me for no reason. I grin back. I’m almost past them when the blonde one shouts: "Look, he’s got a piiiierciiiing!" I hear it even through my headphones. "Heellooo, Piiierciiing!!" I raise my right arm and throw the horns. They laugh. I grin. I nearly walk straight into a bus.
At Hugendubel I buy a new Moleskine and the current issue of Blond, then feel obscurely pulled toward the Lidl downstairs. I haven’t been here in a while—the supermarket near my place is easier, and I’m lazy. I want something to drink. A pale Swedish family is blocking the aisle, moving with the intent-free calm of people on a very long vacation. I fall in behind them. I’d told myself I’d get sparkling water, given the sugar situation. But every time my hands shake I convince myself I’m developing whatever Michael J. Fox has, and I pick up the apple spritzer instead. At least it’s no deposit.
At the register, just as I’m about to pay for the spritzer and a microwaveable currywurst, the young cashier calls the security guard over and whispers something. The guard rushes off, comes back, and the cashier asks: "Which one?" "The small blond one"—and gestures toward the Swedish family with the subtlety of a flare gun. I pack my bag and briefly consider waiting around to hear the kid yell when the 200-kilo man descends. I decide to leave.
Back aboveground, a policewoman is standing right outside the entrance. She’s placed a diving mask on some random man and pressed two full beer steins into his hands and is reading him the riot act. I don’t catch the words but spot an unusually conspicuous camera mounted on the pole in front of me. Some kind of comedy street thing, apparently. Which means I might be on television now. Should I stop and pick my nose? No. I keep going. The emo girls come back the other way, grinning, and the blonde one winks at me.
A quiet satisfaction settles somewhere. I like this corner of the city. It’s good here.