playing berlin
and this is how: watch a buzzard catch a crow in the tiergarten and be
overwhelmed by the cruelty and go shopping but not buy anything
after all and let you stamp the credit for my coffee on your loyalty card
and bitch about schaubühne because crave is completely sold out and
pretend that we know everyone and even the playwright although the
playwright is long dead and we barely know anyone especially me and
go to the cinema instead and watch a terrible american movie but still
kind of like it and take your new friend to a bar where women actually
aren’t allowed and not really get into the swing of things and only
realise at home that we should have bought wine and have good sex for
the first time in ages even without kissing and watch tv together in the
old-fashioned rocking chair and for a short while feel no jealousy
whatsoever and sleep until the others get back from partying in the east
and treat them all to coffee at the flea market and buy your friend a
green shawl made out of raw silk and say goodbye to her because she
has mysterious plans for lunch and lose the others somewhere by the
vinyl and find the east german sandman but don’t buy the doll even
though it’s really cheap because you think that’s far too nostalgic and
cruise home hand in hand through the tiergarten and not spot a single
guy who could be interested not even from afar and remember that
buzzard catching that crow or was it a hawk and get invited for dinner
and again the east and find an excuse to go out on our own and right at
the end tell you that you smell of music much too loud and promise
myself not to miss you and repeat the promise and repeat the promise
and repeat the promise. and then leave again.
after all
after all the bedrooms and the kitchens, the sofas and the tables, the
back seats of cars, after all the train stations and airports, the cottaging
and cruising in clubs and outdoors, after all the danger, the fear and
the exhilaration, after all the couples and throuples, or is it triads? all
the tirades! after groups and orgies with twinks and bears and cubs and
otters in leather and latex, in rubber, in nothing, after the big, the
small, the medium, the tiny, the huge, the horse, the massive and the
monster, after lots of foreskin (like nature intended), after cut, after
bent, after beer can and mushroom, after thick and thin, after rough,
after tender with truckers and bankers, with judges and divers, with
artists and waiters, lawyers and painters, after all the yourplace-or
mines, the showers, the bathtubs, the pools and the oceans, after all the
poppers, the viagra (but never together), the roofies, the coke, the ghb
and the tina, after the ecstasy, the ecstasy! and all that coming down,
after the cum, the spit, the sweat and the piss, after manhunt, scruff
and grindr, those graveyards of quickies, of boyfriends, of lovers, after
all those hanky codes and abbreviations – the ff, the pp, the tt, the
what? – after all that bdsm with the muscled, the chubby, the toned, the
tanned and the way-too-skinny, after all the porn and the piercings, the
tattoos and the tickling, after all the jerking and jacking but mainly the
fucking with exes, with friends, with neighbours, with lovers, again and
again the strangers, the strangers, after the kissing and licking and
sucking and spitting, the slapping, the whipping, the fisting and the
rimming, after rome and paris, berlin and zurich, after london, madrid
and athens, to be honest?
to do absolutely nothing
in bed with someone
except perhaps: netflix.
Hobbies: none
As a child I could hear the ocean in the large conch that lay on my
mother’s nightstand, and as a young adult a Thai lover taught me to
dive. For the first time in my life I felt entirely in my element, as the
expression fittingly goes.
A lot has happened since:
I received an education and found not only a job but also a vocation. I
travelled a lot and had busloads of sex. I was ill for a very long time,
always in love and often had a man by my side – usually the wrong one
– and twice a dog. I planted trees, wrote poems, but never killed anyone
(apart from myself nearly, once). I was always quite poor, which
troubled me more than I care to admit. I moved to a fast, dirty and very
loud city in a cheaper and much sunnier country, where I will always
feel a bit out of place, as I will in its language, which I don’t mind at all.
I’ve been sober for nearly as long as I was an addict. I know myself well
and nearly believe the voice that keeps repeating that I’m no longer
searching for anything – especially for something as elusive as love. I
was rarely content, which I regret, but which will pay off when I fill
books with it one day.
For now, however, it suffices to say:
I have learnt to lie down on my bed, flat on my back, entirely still. I
have learnt to block out the noise and the stench, the sweltering heat,
and to sink deep down into myself. I need no shell, nor do I need an
ocean, and I swear: I can see all the fish in the world.
By Simon Froehling
These vignettes were either written in English or translated from German by the author.
A bilingual, German-English version of playing berlin was published in the Swiss literary magazine Entwürfe in 2006 and the Solothurn Literary Day’s anthology New Swiss Writing in 2008.
The original German version of Hobbies: none was published in the Swiss literary magazine Orte as well as the only queer German-language literary publication Glitter in 2018.
Read The Queer Riveter in its entirety here.
Simon Froehling was born in Switzerland to an Australian mother and a Swiss father. Roughly a dozen of his plays were produced or published before he graduated in 2009. His BA thesis included the novel Lange Nächte Tag, which was published to critical acclaim by Bilgerverlag. Simon has received numerous awards for his work, most recently the Network cultural prize for his contribution to queer arts in 2014. Around the same time he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Photo of Simon Froehling © Nikkol Rot