Spillman - All tomorrows parties : a memoir

All
Tomorrows
Parties

All
Tomorrows
Parties

A MEMOIR

Rob
Spillman

Grove Press

New York

Copyright 2016 by Rob Spillman

Jacket design by CHIPS

Jacket photograph ullstein bild/Getty Images Author photograph by Foster Mickley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or .

Note from the author:

Though this book is a memoir, Ive changed names and certain background details to preserve the privacy of characters who arent members of my immediate family.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 978-0-8021-2483-8

eISBN 978-0-8021-9040-6

Grove Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

groveatlantic.com

For Elissa

Art should be life. Its an imitation of life. It should have some humanity in it.

John Lydon

Soundtrack: Sex Pistols, Holidays in the Sun, 1977

THIS MUST BE THE PLACE . I point to the street signs above us, then back down at the flyer.

If you say so, Elissa says.

Where else should we possibly be? I ask, and raise my glass.

Four months before reunification, we are drinking a previously impossible-to-obtain West German wine at a makeshift sidewalk caf stumbling distance from our illegal coldwater flat. Although the Wall has fallen the previous October, West German authorities dont yet have authority to cross into the East. When the German Democratic Republic (GDR) polices wages vanished, so did they. The only authority left here is the elite riot police and the remnants of the GDRs army. They keep order by bashing the skinheads and anarchists in running street battles every night. We havent seen many other Westerners on this side of the Wall. Most are staying away until reunification. Young East Germans have looked out for us, twenty-five-year-old Americans, married less than two years, self-proclaimed bohemians crazy enough to live in the midst of their chaos. But to us it doesnt feel crazy; there is something alive and magical in the air, what it must have been like in the twenties when Marlene Dietrich was roaming the risqu drag clubs in mens clothes, when culture and politics collided and the possibilities were revolutionary.

Now, for East Germans, Berlin is reborn and in the month weve been living here everything feels possible. Two weeks ago, this wine bar was a boarded-up food market. Young locals pooled their money and drove through a gap in the Wall in a battered Wartburg which they filled with cases of West German wine, then smashed down the markets door and served the wine on the sidewalk on upturned cable spools scavenged from abandoned warehouses along the Eastern side of the Wall. Thus the Prenzlauer Berg Wine Bar was born and thus we became regulars, doing what was unthinkable only a year agopublically downing a whole bottle of cold 1989 Pflzer Landwein from the Rhine. Not that there arent still risks. Almost every night the sirens sound, blaring like World War II air-raid warnings, winding up louder and louder, signaling that the riot police are coming in to clear the skinheads who are trying to firebomb the Autonomen (anarchist) squats nearby. All up and down our block the anarchists have taken over abandoned buildings and have painted them pink and are flying old East German flags with the hammers and compasses cut out of the centers. When the riot police charge in, they bust any and all heads they see. If the clashes arent on our street, well wait out the alarm in our bullet-pocked archway, unrepaired since World War II, and if the melee is on our street well flee up the four flights to our apartment.

The sun is bleeding down, streaking East Berlins grays and browns with fiery orange and red, warming the cold, gray buildings to create a pocket of calm, an oasis perfect for sharing our nightly bottle of wine before we head off to the CV, our other regular neighborhood bar, just across the park. I pick up the hand-drawn flyer that the young East German has dropped on our table, try to make sense of it. Black and red concentric circles telescope down to a black X, with the names Dunckerstrasse and Lettestrasse written below. We are sitting directly under the street signs for Dunckerstrasse and Lettestrasse.

Thanks, I tell Michael. Hes one of the earnest Bat Theater Studio guys who are still putting on plays and happenings in appropriated ex-government buildings despite, or to spite, the vanished socialist subsidies.

But what is it?

A rave, he replies, all business.

Rave?

Ja , rave. A big dance, mostly illegal, held in big, illegal spaces.

Like here? I ask, not getting it. I look to Elissa, but she also doesnt understand.

How do you mean? Michael asks.

I point to the street names on the flyer and his confusion cracks into a smile. No, no. We meet here. Tomorrow night, starting at midnight, every half hour, one of us will come here and take you to the place of the rave.

Which is where? I ask.

You Americans are funny, yes?

We debate going to the rave, whatever a rave is, but it isnt much of a debate. Of course Im going to jump into the abyss. Thats what I dothrow myself into the unknown. So, twenty-four hours later, flyer in hand, at exactly midnight I jump on the back of the sparkling blue Vespa, driven by a young East German I hardly know, who has promised to take me someplace secret and spectacular. Michael takes off before the other Vespa, sparkling red, pulls to a stop in front of Elissa. She scrambles behind the unknown woman and they set off after us. I hold tight and we fly the two-block length of Helmholtzplatz park, then past the even smaller Kollwitzplatz park, weaving our way through scattered cobblestones and torched Communist cardboard cars, Wartburgs and Trabants, stacked like charred logs under the dead street lamps. I feel like Im in Fellinis Roma, a camera mounted on a scooter gliding through Rome at night, the Vespas soft, sweeping light illuminating ancient fountains and statues. But in reality, in the here and now, this Vespas narrow beam of weak white light is cutting through the stark blackness, catching obstacles so that we dont crash out on the cobbles.

Last nights battle between the skinheads and anarchists has coated the streets with smashed Molotovs. Michael tries to avoid the bigger shards as we zigzag out of Prenzlauer Berg and toward the Wall. Around the corners I check behind for the trailing Vespas yellow beam. I briefly wonder if Elissa is scared or thrilledshe doesnt speak German and I dont know how much English her driver has. I shelve that worry, as we are now heading straight for the Wall, but a short block away, Michael lurches us hard right along a road that parallels the clean gray slabs of concrete.