Wow, I thought I was free of this. In Dresden I wrote in my notebook that I was over the addiction. In fact it seemed long-gone. But I get one little taste last night and my nose is on the table.
It’s a curse to be excited. You’re doomed.
The whole day is waiting for the night, for the milonga, and then I screw it up. Or it screws me up.
I loved my outfit, I felt beautiful (which I haven’t so much lately)…
Bolting is a solitary act. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with friends.
Also. I really want to sit down in a restaurant and eat a steak. Not alone.
Armin and I agreed to go to Villa Kreuzberg, but I was, for once in the whole trip, not late. Which means too early. There wasn’t enough power in that room to suck me across the doorway. And despite knowing that my phone was dead and I’d no way to communicate with other friends who I was supposed to meet there, and no way to find the right bus to get home, I did another long walk to two trains to catch the last hour of some other milonga. I should have sat my ass down at one of those pretty tables in that pretty garden of that pretty building outside of that pretty, if sedate, room and waited for Armin, who I love to dance with.
What was I searching for? The power at MII was identical, save for one quite lovely gentleman, who I admired but did not try to cabeceo. Instead I danced with the journalist who just wrote the article about me, and with V. And really I barely did that because this was, hands down, the slipperiest floor I have ever met. It was some kind of polished vinyl or plastic.
But there was sky and colored lights. So I decided it was a perfect moment for my first German beer, house brewed, and did some observation of the nuances of the hips-forward crowd, while V downloaded the latest twists and turns of his breakup.
1am and I have the choice to dash back across town for the last two hours at Villa Kreutzberg or call it a night and eat falafel. Which then meant night bus and two more long walks.
I think this means that I blew an entire day (tomorrow).
What was it that made me bolt? The onda of gloom. Maybe it would change with more people. Maybe I needed to brighten it up. I did feel positive as I arrived, because this was the first place I breathed the air of Berlin in my previous trip. But I stood in the doorway, perceived lifelessness, and backed out.
Also quite a lot of women were arriving at the same time as me. I smelled their hunger (or their pain?) and it put me off. Even as I stood in the hallway, organizing my maps by candlelight, they continued rushing in. And I knew the men in that room were not enough for them.
