#2: An Australian in Berlin

October 2016

I met Cameron* in October, in Vienna. We were staying at the same hostel. I didn’t find him particularly attractive, not that he was bad-looking, he just wasn’t my type. Average build, curly, thinning auburn hair, bad teeth, strange dress sense (he was a hippie from Australia, think Hawaiian t-shirts and beanies), piercing blue eyes. But I won’t deny that there was something that drew me too him. A sudden, strong, undeniable sense of connection. The click of magnets.

We first hung out with a few other travelers, a Brazilian woman and a Canadian woman at our hostel. The three of us went to a couple of bars together, drank, talked, danced a bit, as a group of companions thrown together by travel will do. Around midnight or 0:30, the girls went to bed, but Cameron and I hit another bar together, a craft beer place with a surly Viennese waiter and a mean double IPA. The conversation grew deeper, and I discovered that he was only a year older than me, and had recently broken up with his girlfriend while traveling- the day I had broken up with my boyfriend, in fact. We stayed up in the hostel common room until 3:00, and made plans to hang out the next day. Neither of us tried anything; I had only been single for a month at that point, and was still pretty unsure of myself.

The next day, we had a leisurely breakfast at a Viennese cafe, then walked to the Schonbrunn Palace to check out an Ai Wei Wei art exhibit. We talked a lot. I felt like I could talk about anything and everything that randomly came into my head, and the conversation rambled from books to art to my refugee friends to his time in Thailand to my random historical knowledge. He left Vienna that day, but we realized that two weeks later, we were going to be in Berlin at the same time, and agreed to meet up then.

As the rendezvous in Berlin approached, I started getting a bit anxious and restless. I had only been single for six weeks, but at 28 years old I had still only slept with one person. I wasn’t sure if anything would happen with Cameron, and to be honest I wasn’t even really sure if I wanted something to happen, but it seemed like a pretty strong possibility.

I messaged a friend in the US. If I’ve learned anything from watching every episode of Sex and the City, it’s to mull over romantic predicaments with your girlfriends.

Me: I met this Australian guy in Vienna. I will see him in Berlin.

Friend: Yay!!

Me: Should I make out with him????

Friend: Do you feel ready to make out with someone?? If so, then yes!!

Me: I don’t find him particularly physically attractive but he has a great personality. It’s been 6 weeks. . . I don’t feel ready to sleep with someone, but I think baby steps are acceptable.

Friend: Well I’d say go for it

I could do this. I think. . .

I rolled into Berlin after a long-ass day on the Flix Bus (a great budget bus line), got the keys to my friend’s studio apartment which she was kind enough to let me use, and took a power nap. I was wrecked from the long travel day, but I had also fallen down the stairs a few days earlier. I had a giant bruise on my hip that was so colorful, it looked like a galaxy, and a bandage hidden in my dirty hair protecting a cut on the back of my head. Attractive was the last thing I felt at that moment, but I was determined to meet Cameron and see where the night went.

We met for Thai food. Happily, our conversation was just as easy as it had been in Vienna. No topic was too taboo, too deep, too weird. Politics, religion, my time in Turkey, our respective former relationships, my newfound independence, philosophical shit, whatever came to our minds. He showed me his new tattoo, which was actually pretty cool and reminded me of the abstract art of Wassily Kandinsky.

Was it a date? Or were we just travel buddies meeting up? I’m so fucking oblivious that I still had no clue, but it was a good dinner, and afterward we had a beer sitting on plastic chairs outside a liquor store. As one does in Berlin.

I then began a very slow and drawn out seduction. It was quite by accident, honestly, but it was so well-played I’m pretty pleased with myself. I needed to use the bathroom, so we could either go to a bar or buy more beers and take them back to my place. He pointed out that the later was cheaper, so we took it back to the cozy studio. A few beers, a cup of tea, and a lot of conversation later, we were still there. I said he could stay the night if he wished, so he didn’t have to go back to the dirty, cold punk squat that he had been calling home. He asked if he should take the couch, and I said no, the mattress was big enough, he could sleep there with me. So we got into bed and awkwardly cuddled for a bit and he stroked my back for a long time until I just deal with the mounting tension any longer and I lunged at him. Which doesn’t sound particularly sexy, but that’s what happened: I physically threw my body at him and he did the same. It was as if we’d been sitting in a dark room and the lights had snapped on and all pretenses were tossed aside. In that moment we were simply two people who really really needed to be with someone.

A (very) short time later all clothes had come off and he was groping for a condom. I was getting pretty anxious and realized I wanted to tell him my secret, that I’d only been with one person. I nervously blurted it out, and to my surprise, he seemed completely unfazed by it. So we had sex. Just like that. It wasn’t mind-blowing, it wasn’t terrible, it was normal, satisfying, decent sex, and afterwards I was beaming. That was easy. Too easy. Was it supposed to be that easy? And why didn’t I feel bad about it?

Oh my god!!! I had slept with two people!!! Finally. Fuck. I was so excited, I initiated sex again maybe half an hour later. This time, it was his turn to get anxious. It was the first time he’d slept with a new person as well since his breakup. I don’t know what the etiquette is for sleeping with new people, how much one should or shouldn’t talk about one’s previous partners, but if there’s something I don’t give a shit about, it’s bullshit dating etiquette. I told him to talk it out, get it off his chest. And from the sound of it, his ex was a right bitch. He fell asleep after a while, but I was wired, and sleep did not come easily that night. I had been having trouble sleeping alone since the breakup, but it appeared that I couldn’t sleep with another person either. And until that night, I had been a person who had only slept with 1 person. Now I was a person who had slept with 2 people. I was a new woman. I was fucking Aphrodite born from the sea foam and shit.

We spent the entire next day together, wandering around Berlin. Surprisingly, it wasn’t weird or awkward. It was just. .  . nice. Comfortable. “Is this how adults do it?” I wondered. In my youth, whenever I’d messed around with a guy, the day after I would try so hard to be nonchalant but I would be freaking out inside so I’d end up doing the opposite, and just get super awkward. This was so much better.

That night, we went to an event that his friend was running, a vegan food thing at a hipster cafe that had been completely taken over by a motley crew of international punks. It was a lot of fun, and I chatted with some cool people, and drank a frightful amount. It was my last night of my ten months abroad, I was in Berlin, I’d fucked a guy, and damn it, I was getting DRUNK. Cameron and I went back to my place, attempted to say goodbye, and . . . well, shit happens. The first night, there had been a good amount of tension, and groping in the pitch-darkness. This time, sex was drunker, friskier, and messier, with the lights all the way on.

Sometimes when I’ve been drinking a lot, I get emotional super easily, and that night my emotional side reared it’s ugly head. He was trying to get me off, and it just wasn’t working for me. With my ex, it happened pretty easily over the years, but anatomy is strange and mysterious even when it’s your own anatomy and I started getting a little frustrated and teary. I had to kick him out, I wasn’t about to drunk cry on this person who was pretty much a stranger and I did have to leave in 5 hours to catch my plane.

We both admitted we were probably never going to see each other again but that we’d had a good time. Then he was out the door. I talked to him only a handful of times after that, and now a year later haven’t heard from him in several months.

The next morning (4 hours later), I dragged myself out of the bed, threw my stuff together, dragged my suitcases down the stairs, put the keys in the mailbox, and blearily stumbled toward the subway. I think I was on the train when it hit me: I’d forgotten to make the bed. My friend’s mattress that I’d had sex in. Multiple times.

At least I remembered to throw the condoms in the trash.

m.

Next time: Sometime spent in the U.S. after 10 months abroad.

*Name has been changed