(This is a repost of something I just found and was tickled by. Originally from 2014)
I got an offer to have my birthday party at BERLIN this year. Berlin is a gay party at a normally straight club in Hell's Kitchen in NYC. No cover? Fantastic! My own table? Great! Free champagne? I'm there! So I had a gathering of my friends over at my Hell's Kitchen abode for chatting, music videos, drinking and Oculus Rift. A friend even brought cupcakes! Which I thought they banned at Hell's Kitchen Customs, so I was happy to have them. What I didn't expect was to encounter a dark underbelly of David Lynchian proportions.
We left at 11:30pm, got to the club and were shown to our table. Fantastic! A table! I may have been a little small, but that's okay. At least we were getting free champagne! A gentleman dressed as an Indian princess (as far as I could tell) with blue contacts came over and congratulated me on my birthday and asked if I wanted the free champagne.
Hell yes! I said. And he said, "Twenty dollars." I stared back at him. "For a tip!" "You can collect it from your friends!" Great. So, on my birthday, I'm supposed to be hitting my friends up for cash. Awesome. I think I got like $6 or $8 before I stopped asking. The champagne came and six of us drank it, and that was the birthday party. Later, I'd see the Indian princess and she looked at me with disgust, just as I'd expect. This was my first red flag. They're all smiles when you're about to pay them.
Because Berlin is not like the Berlin we all know and love from Cabaret. (Unless you count the money song) There is no Willkommen, no Bienvenue. Just an "oh... you're here."
To which I wonder, "Why?" So much malaise. So much je ne sais quoi. What do you have to do to be on their good side over there? People have told me I'm attractive, I thought that was a good way in, but I guess you need more. Do I offer them drugs? And the people who are actually IN this group of IN people look totally bored and like they're not having any fun at all. Is this just where shells of people go? But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Later in the night, I was on the main dance floor and a tall blonde boy stopped me. Insanely attractive. I think he told me he was visiting from Israel. Maybe. Maybe he was from Israel. His friend, probably. Him? Not necessarily. But we talked for a minute as I quietly gave myself a high five on the inside. This guy was seriously hot and approached ME. Amazing. So we started talking and then making out and dancing.
We did this for about two minutes before his "friend" came over. I say that with quotation marks because I'm not sure what their relationship was, really. He came over and said something like, "Greg wants to talk to you." and there was some sashaying and hesitation for a minute, then they both walked away. It was almost as if his "cunt" er, "friend" was judging me from afar, deeming me unfit to dance with him. Strange.
I followed because it did seem like he was into me. And we were pretty eye-locked the whole time, so unless his "get me out of here!" signal was aggressively making out, his "friend" had just cock blocked me on an epic scale. I mean, he approached me!
Once I was over there, I felt like I had fallen into another dimensional plane. Suddenly, I didn't exist. I stood next to them, near them, nothing. He danced with someone else as I watched, waiting for an opportunity to break in. It didn't come. The vibe was not good. So I left, wandered about for a minute and there he was again! On the other side of the bar.
"Hey..." I said.
"Oh, hi there, what's your name?" He said.
I paused for a moment while I contemplated what he was saying. Either this guy is a robot whose memory had just been erased, or he was fucking with me. Did his cunt friend do something to him? Erase his mind??
"You want a drink?" He asked. Dumbfounded, I said no. What was going on here? He went up to the bar. I needed a water, so I paused a sec, then walked up there and he passed me again! He grabbed me and we started making out again. WHAT IS GOING ON??
Not that it was a bad thing. I went with it. But suddenly, cunty shit face came back. He grabbed him by the arm and shouted, "If you like him so much, get his number!!!" then pulled him away.
WHAT IS GOING ON? I asked myself again. Also, this was not a good plan on shit stain's part. I mean, how am I supposed to get his number while he's being dragged away? Not very well thought out. I talked to my friends about the encounter and they suggested that maybe people are being paid to be here and look good. NO! I thought. That would be SO tacky. That's what go-go boys are for! Also, I'm still in my (late) twenties and good-looking, that kind of thing doesn't even APPLY to me. So I went back to the dance floor and cunty shit stain had more hot guys around him. He would whisper in one of their ears and they would float away. Or they would come back to him and they'd make out for a second then go back on their merry way. All of which I DO NOT understand. Cunty isn't even attractive. He's short with an ugly face and was wearing a weird jean jacket. Word around town is he was a dancer who dated a promoter at some point.
So why is everyone following him?
At this point, I went upstairs to the dark room. I should mention that tonight was BERLIN BLACK OUT, so upstairs was dark and downstairs was a dumb sex show where you watched silhouettes get blow jobs. Lame. The dark room was also baffling because they had security going through constantly with flashlights. Isn't the whole point to be able to hook up in there? Probably because of this, there was no one up there. But I wanted to check it out anyway. As I turned the corner into the dark room, I noticed a group of security guards surrounding a guy. He was convulsing on the floor and his friend (I assume) was picking him up. He was clearly ODing. On what? I wondered to myself. What makes you convulse like that? Is Berlin really so hardcore that people are ODing?? Or do people do so many drugs to make it fun? Then I had a thought.
Fuck. This club is Blue Velvet.
Ever see Blue Velvet? Its a film about a serene little town that looks pretty and nice on the surface, but has a dark underbelly by way of Dennis Hopper, playing one of the greatest screen villains of all time. I was starting to see.
What goes on in this weird group of promoters and go-go boys and people who just kind of hang around them? Did that guy talk to me because it was my birthday and someone told him to? Was it like, a thing the club does? I can't think of another explanation for his weird robotic actions. Was cunty shit breath in charge of something?
I remember specifically this one boy wearing a super low cut white shirt with some eye makeup on. Very attractive and he had pecs for days. I wanted to talk to him, but he looked so insanely BORED. SO BORED. How can you be bored on drugs at a club? Then his friend (who I think was the ticket taker at the door) came up to him, they made out for five seconds, then he pissed in the bathroom. The boredom never left his face. Same on the dance floor. Bored, walked up to cunty shit breath, made out for a second, then left. Maybe they're trading sex for drugs... are they really that expensive? I mean, with the attractiveness level of the group, I guess why not. You're not really selling yourself if you're into the other guy, right?
It's probably nothing. It's probably just some weird Mean Girls shit five years out of High School. I think I just WANT it to be something more. That blonde hottie wasn't just super fucked up, he was a pleasure robot grown in the basement during the sex show! The closed door room in the bathroom isn't for drugs, it's where they sell twinks on the black market to NYC executives! Or it's where they worship their twink god who demands baby teeth every Friday night or they'll grow love handles. That would be way more interesting than a bunch of bored, bitchy queens who sort of dance, but look pretty doing it.
Am I over it now? Hopefully. It sort of turns into a drug in and of itself. You remember that one time it was really fun and want that experience again, but you never quite get it. There's always someone out of your reach who you MIGHT get next time. Maybe that's why they're so bored. They're stuck in this place. They've developed a tolerance. I guess in the end, Berlin IS the drug.