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in this issue
Suzana Tratnik
Berlin MetelkovaIt was one of those evening events dedicated to fighting intolerance and arguing in favor of the importance of this or that non-governmental initiative, or the crucial action of this or that movement. A panel discussion was held at the Metelkova center, I don´t recall the title but the subject must have had something to do with tolerance of homosexuality. Again, I was a guest speaker - not one of my favorite roles in life, but as a formerly ardent activist I have become accustomed to everything; as the need arises, I tend bar or speak in public about the reasons why the lesbian movement must be organized.
I hadn´t had a good night´s sleep in a while, so the sight of a meager audience put me in a good mood; it meant the shindig would soon be over and I could sit down at my regular table with my friend Dara. I scanned the crowd, looking for familiar faces, trying to assess who and how many among them were journalists and activists - they were in the majority, which meant I could roughly foresee the questions that would be asked, or at least that I would not have to spell out the similarities and differences between the lesbian movement and feminism or even explain that homosexuality is not a disease. At most, someone might broach the subject of genetics, which had lately become more hip than hormonal theories.
Having the good fortune of being among the last to speak, I didn´t have to talk long. Without qualms I skipped a few years in the history of the movement and probably omitted a good number of quite crucial events. Whenever I go on for too long I start wondering what I´m doing there and why I´m talking about that particular subject at all.
Then I stepped up to the bar, as far away from the journalists and their potential questions as possible, and ordered a beer. Anita, a new face on the lesbian scene, came up to me and smiled uncertainly. `I´m sorry to bother you,´ she said, `but I have a question, actually a few questions.´ `If I can be of help,´ I was all tolerance. I wondered how old she was. Must have been under twenty-five. None of the new ones are older than twenty-two. `This is all so new to me,´ she apologized. `You´ve probably got more experience, you know so much more. Could you tell me... The thing is, I´m taking evening classes at university, to get a degree, and I´d like to do some work on this subject.´ Aha, I thought, another term paper `on that subject´. Oh well, I´ll live. `So...´ Anita continued, `as regards your experience... do you feel discriminated against?´
Do I feel discriminated against? I lit a cigarette and tried to give the question some serious thought. `Sure,´ I said after a short pause, `sure I feel discriminated against.´ `I thought so,´ Anita was visibly encouraged, as though she´d found we had something in common. `And - in what way? How do you feel discriminated against?´ Now I no longer needed to think long or particularly hard. In addition to having beautiful teeth she also had lovely hands and I liked what she was wearing. `Well, in several ways.´ Anita nodded eagerly. `I can´t get a scholarship because I´m too old. I don´t have the right kind of relatives. I never get to meet the right people, or if I do, I find them uninteresting. I can´t smoke pot in bars and other public places because it´s not legalized here. I´m not a homeowner.´
Anita was silent, and I felt I´d said quite enough for my part. `Sorry, could I have a cigarette? Thanks.´ She took a few drags and said: `You probably think I´m funny, don´t you? Maybe it was different for you guys, or, well, for you, when you were twenty-one. How old are you now, if that´s not a secret?´
`No, I don´t think you´re funny at all. Everything I said is true. And I´m thirty-four. Aren´t these ample reasons to feel discriminated against? I know it doesn´t answer your question, but it´s an answer.´ `Yes, but I´d still like an answer to my question, you know, for my paper.´ `Sure,´ I said, `I can give you a select bibliography. Come around later, I´ll give you my phone number.´
On my left, there´s a fish tank, on my right, the bar and the women. It´s late. Or rather, early. Dara and I always sit at the same table in the corner, maybe that´s why our point of view at Metelkova is always the same. Some women embrace or even try to dance in a rhythm totally unrelated to the music. Or to music totally unrelated to dancing. When they embrace I always imagine they´ve had too much to drink. Anita carefully flirts with all of them and only talks to some of them, probably the ones she thinks would be a good catch. I´m pleased when I see her glancing at me surreptitiously. I´m beginning to feel more inclined to discuss discrimination with her, or rather, to steer the conversation into my waters.
`We´re, like, from those books,´ says Dara.
`What books?´
`You know,´ she says, `the books you showed at the panel. Except that we don´t have a book of our own yet. Because we don´t have so many places and important dates, see?´
From those books with photographs which represent the history of lesbian culture and similar tripe. Books whose sole purpose is to provide every weirdo in the world with their own square meter of identity. You´re supposed to just leaf through them and know where you belong and where you stand. Then you´re supposed to feel better. And know that women have embraced in bars and gotten drunk since always. Take the photos from Berlin in the 1920´s: In all of them there are masculine lesbians with monocles - tolerance has dubbed them `butch´ - and their feminine lovers. Or the ones of lesbian artists from prewar Paris. That´s this damn history. That´s what they call `gay pride´. The dead get Berlin, the zombies Metelkova. And in both cases there´s this same state of being captured in images. Whatever I do will be recorded on the pages and in the color photographs of some book soon to be published in paperback. There´s no getting away from history, not on your life. Pages 44 through 46, photos nos. 16 through 38: `Berlin-Metelkova´.
`What you´re saying is deep,´ says Dara. `I never thought about that. I only come here to get high and look at the women. It´s fun. Sometimes I also talk to them. And if I´m down, I watch the fish in the tank. But history - I never looked at pictures like that, it never occurred to me. Do you often think about those photos when you come here, I mean, for a beer, not to attend a panel?´
No way. God forbid I should do something like that. I´d never come to this club if that were the case. I´m not so stupid as to see my life in terms of a sequence of photos. As a matter of fact, I find all these associations with old scenes, with things already seen, obnoxious. As soon as you do or discover and document anything, there´s already someone asking you about discrimination.
`The two of us have our own movie, girl,´ says Dara triumphantly and raises her glass in a toast to me and the women dancing at the bar.
Yeah, I say, I have plenty of scenes which will never make it into any damn picture history book for novice lesbians. I have a fantasy about my ideal woman. Or rather, my two ideal women. But who cares? Dara starts laughing - now she is watching my reflection in the fish tank.
I don´t know, girl, I continue, maybe I´m saying this because I´m slowly going nuts. Maybe I´m back to picturing fixed ideals because there´s no moderation anywhere any more.
First, there´s Her. Her image began to take shape early in the spring of 1997. Under the influence of rave culture. Under the influence of drugs, the final isolation, the craving for a living being, or rather, for a lethal symbiosis. Under the influence of the fact that there was no-one in my vicinity. No-one. In a hundred-kilometer radius. Or in a thousand-kilometer one.
I had to make somebody up. I just had to.
Mathematics
Her. She has long red hair. Very bright red, a bit tangled and slightly damaged by hair dye. Sometimes she wears color highlights, and sometimes she dyes her hair green. She hasn´t turned twenty-five yet, probably not even twenty-three. It´s hard to tell her age. She´s painfully mature for her years. And lonely. In public she appears serious and aloof - except when she´s high. She´s into drugs big time; she does everything: ecstasy, skunk, shit, pot, coke, but scarcely touches alcohol. She loves good food, eats hardly any meat, and likes all kinds of fish and exotic dishes. She´s a good cook, though she only cooks on rare occasions. She can make a divine pepper steak with melon, pineapple and sour cream. I´d never even heard of that before. She made that steak especially for me the first time she invited me over to her place. No-one´s ever eaten anything like that before. (Me neither, obviously, since I´m only indulging in a fantasy.)
Mathematics is her life´s obsession and her field of genius. All of it - formulas, calculus, geometry. She writes brilliant, zany books when she feels like it. Or so I´m told, because obviously I don´t understand anything; you know mathematics is not my forte. And she doesn´t even have to attend lectures, she´s so brilliant. All she has to do is take exams (all straight As, naturally). When she feels like it and is not too depressed, she can take as many as five exams in a day.
A lonesome genius. She has never stopped thinking about death. She used to live with her parents in Ljubljana for many years, almost in complete darkness. She´ll remain somewhat unsociable forever, though she has good communication skills and old-fashioned good manners.
Most of the time she wears black and silvery gray. When she´s with me, she laughs a lot, and not because of drugs.
Now she lives in a big old house, no, a manor, not far from Ljubljana. The manor stands in the middle of an overgrown garden with a dirty stone pool I´ve been dreaming about all my life. That´s where I live too, that´s my home. There, with her. That´s the only place I can call home. The manor is rundown, because she´s alone and she can´t take care of everything on her own. She´s sick of this rotten life, that´s why she doesn´t feel like doing anything, she´s been tired of life since always. That´s why sometimes she doesn´t want anything. She just sits at her enormous oak desk and writes. She does calculus. Formulas. She often places her hands on the large globe she keeps on her desk; it´s a rich dark brown.
[...]
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