Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. Read online

  At first it was hard for us to talk. He only wanted to hear about me. But I didn't have anything to tell him that would've interested him. It didn't occur to me at all to tell him about my time at my grandma's or the games I'd played with the kids out there. I finally asked him why he didn't go to The Sound anymore. He said that it was shitty, when it really came down to it. I asked him where he was hanging out instead, and after a minute he told me: at Zoo Station.

  I asked him what he was doing there. “Turning tricks,” he said.

  For some reason, it didn't shock me at the time. I knew from other junkies that they occasionally earned money that way. I didn't have a clear idea of what it really meant to be a prostitute, and I didn't really want to spend any time thinking about it. I only knew that it was a way for some guys to get off, that it was supposed to be separate from any real emotions, and that the guys who sold themselves could make a lot of money doing it. But on that day, I was just happy that Detlef had come over, and that he still really loved me, and that I loved him.

  The following Sunday was the first time since my return that I was allowed to leave the house. Detlef picked me up in the afternoon. We went into a café on Lietzenburger Street. Almost everybody there was gay, and almost everybody knew Detlef. They were all very nice to me and had a lot of really nice things to say. They congratulated Detlef on his pretty girlfriend. And I noticed that he was really proud that I was his girlfriend. That was the reason why he'd dragged me to this café where everybody knew him.

  I liked these gay men. They were nice to me and didn't try to hit on me like other men did, with their idiotic come-ons. They thought I was cute and liked me without expecting anything in return. All their compliments made me feel really good about myself. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I thought they were right. I really did look good after having not touched heroin for over two months. I'd probably never looked better.

  Detlef said that he still had to go to Zoo Station because he'd promised Bernd, his best friend, that he'd meet him there. Bernd had worked the street for both of them that day. Detlef didn't have time that day because of me. But obviously I was going to come along. I was looking forward to seeing Bernd again.

  Bernd had just left with a customer when we got there, so we had to wait around for a bit. The station didn't seem as horrible as I'd remembered. But then again, I was mostly looking at Detlef. At one point, Detlef started talking to another kid, and left me standing by myself for a minute; right away, some foreigners tried to hit on me. All I heard was, “How much?” or something like that. But I just hooked my arm into Detlef's and felt totally safe and secure.

  I talked Detlef into going back to The Sound with me. And once we were there, I asked him to let me just have a quick snort. He didn't want to at first. But I told him, “Only tonight. Only as a welcome-back present. I want to be as high as you are. It's either that, or you can't shoot up, either.” That did it: He gave me some. But he said that after that, he wouldn't give me any more. I told him not to worry, that he wouldn't have to. After all, for the past two-and-a-half months I'd proved that I wasn't an addict. And in the last couple of weeks, I'd noticed how much better I felt without it anyway.

  It seemed like my words had some effect. He said, “Hey listen, I'll quit, too. If you can do it, it'll be a piece of cake for me.” After that, he shot up and I snorted. We were both insanely happy and talked about how great our lives would be after our heroin days had ended.

  The next day at lunchtime, I went to Zoo Station and met Detlef. He gave me another snort. I started to meet Detlef at that station almost every afternoon after school. I also shot up again. It was as if I'd never left Berlin, as if those two-and-a-half months had never happened. We talked about quitting almost every day, and I kept explaining to Detlef how easy it was.

  I'd regularly go straight to Zoo Station from school. In my bag I'd carry a syringe and a big packet of sandwiches. My mom must have wondered how I managed to get skinnier and skinnier when I was taking so many sandwiches to school. I brought them for Detlef and his friends. They were dying for those lunches.

  At first Detlef was really pissed about my joining him there. He didn't want me to be around while he was working the street, hustling. He told me directly, “I don't want my girlfriend hanging out at Zoo Station, where you just don't know what's around the next corner. It's a dangerous place, with dangerous people. You can meet me anywhere else. Just don't come here.”

  It went in one ear and out the other. I just wanted to be with Detlef, and it didn't matter where. Bit by bit, I'd started to feel almost comfortable in that grimy station. Everything had, at the very least, become more familiar. I didn't notice the rotten stench of piss and disinfectant anymore. The whores, the junkies, the human waste, the dispossessed, the beggars, the bums, the cops, the drunks, the vomit spilling over everything: All of that had unquestionably become my natural habitat in the time between school and nightfall. That's where I belonged because that's where Detlef was.

  At first it bugged me, the way the other girls at the station sized me up—running their eyes up and down my body like I wasn't even human. Somehow they managed to be even more aggressive than the customers. But then I realized that these girls, who were selling themselves at the station, were also threatened by me. They were scared that since I was younger, fresher, and less spoiled, I would snatch away their best customers. And I guess that much at least made sense: I looked better than they all did. I still took care of myself and washed my hair almost every day.

  You couldn't tell that I was using heroin just by looking at me. And I knew that in that respect, I had an advantage over the other girls. That made me feel good. The customers would have just flocked to me. But I didn't have to go selling myself. Instead, Detlef was the one who did it. I was able to get my dope without whoring myself, and it was clear from the way the other girls watched me that they envied me.

  At first, the customers drove me crazy. Especially the immigrants in the area, with their constant, “You fuck? You go hotel?” Some of them would only offer like twenty marks. After a while, I discovered I could get some shots in and have some fun with these guys. I'd say, “In your dreams, asshole. For someone like you, it would take five hundred to even start a conversation with me.” Or I'd just stare straight through a guy and say, “With you? No chance in hell. Fuck off.” It was kind of thrilling to force these pathetic assholes to tuck their tails between their legs and slink away.

  I acted superior with Detlef's clients, too. When one of them would get cocky with me or try to get into my pants, Detlef was right by my side. And before Detlef left with a customer, he'd ask his friends at the station to look out for me. They were like brothers to me. They chased away anyone who tried anything funny.

  I was pretty much over The Sound I just hung out at Zoo Station now instead. I lost touch with most of my old friends, and just saw the same few Zoo Station people— Detlef of course, and also two other guys; Bernd and Axel.

  Compared to Detlef and Bernd, Axel was pretty ugly. None of the features in his face seemed to match. And his arms and legs seemed totally disproportionate to his body. So pretty much not at all who you'd think would work out on the streets. But he got his customers and even had some regulars. Detlef could insult his customers and scream at them whenever they pissed him off, but they always came back to him, whining for more. Axel on the other hand, because of his looks (or lack thereof), always had to swallow his pride and really cater to his customers. But who knows, maybe he did something special for those guys, something kinky that really drove people wild. Otherwise there was no way he could've kept up with the competition.

  But he still found ways to revenge himself on the customers whenever he could. Once he got his hooks in someone, he would lie, cheat, and steal for all he was worth. Axel was a cool, strong guy. If you made fun of him or humiliated him in some way, he would never let it show. He always remained sweet and friendly. He was always willing to help out s
omeone else—a quality that was rare among the other junkies. In fact, there was nobody else really like him. It was as if he didn't deserve to live in this shitty world. A year later, he was gone.

  Axel's story was familiar by now. His parents were divorced, and he lived with his mom until she moved in with a boyfriend of hers. At least his mom was generous. She left him a two-room apartment with a few pieces of furniture and even put in a TV for him. Once a week, his mom would visit him and gave him a little money to live on. She knew that he was an addict. And she probably told him several times to quit. In her own view, she did more than a lot of other parents. She gave him an apartment with a TV.

  I spent one weekend in Axel's apartment. My mom thought I was staying with a girlfriend.

  It was an absolute dump—a real junkie's place. I could smell the odor from inside as soon as they opened the door. Inside, there were empty sardine tins everywhere. And cigarette butts had been stuck in oil, tomato sauce, or mustard—whatever was handy. And then there was the issue of the cups. They were absolutely everywhere—glasses and other small containers, each one with a little grab bag of water, ashes, tobacco, and rolling papers inside. When I tried to move a few yogurt containers over to the only table in the place, a couple of sardine cans at the other end clattered onto the floor. The sauce soaked into the carpet. Nobody cared.

  And that was the worst part: the carpet. When I watched Axel shoot up, I saw why it stank so much. He pulled the syringe with the little bit of blood out of his arm, filled it with water, and then squirted the pink brew directly onto the carpet. That's how he cleaned his syringe. After every fix a few more drops of blood were added to the threadbare Persian patterns. And that's what caused the sickly sweet musty smell—that, and the fish sauce. Even the curtains were yellow and smelly.

  In the midst of this stinking chaos was one dazzlingly white bed. I fled to it immediately. As I pressed my face into the pillows, it smelled like my favorite laundry detergent. I thought for sure that this was the cleanest bed I'd ever been in.

  Axel said, “I changed the sheets just for you.” And the bed had fresh sheets on it every Saturday for the next few weeks, whenever I was there. I never slept on the same sheets twice, while the guys probably never changed their sheets.

  The boys bought me whatever I wanted to eat or drink. It seemed like all they wanted was to just treat me well and make me smile. And best of all, they only bought me the best dope. My liver was still giving me trouble back then. When I shot up anything dirty, it made me feel horrible. They really worried about me when I started to look run down and sickly. So they only bought the purest stuff for me, even though it was expensive. The three of them were always there for me. Somehow, they only had me to care about. Aside from Detlef, Axel, and Bernd, I didn't have anyone.

  I felt real happiness—a happiness that was almost totally unknown to me otherwise. I felt protected and safe. In the afternoons at Zoo Station, and on the weekends at Axel's heroin den, I felt at home.

  Detlef was the strongest in the group, and I was the weakest. I felt physically inferior to the boys, but I also felt like I was of lesser stature otherwise, too—probably just because I was a girl. But for the first time in my life, I enjoyed that feeling of dependence. I enjoyed the fact that Detlef was in the driver's seat. And I savored the way Detlef, Axel, and Bernd were always there when I needed them.

  I had a boyfriend who did what no other junkie would ever do: He always shared his dope with me—every little bag. He earned money by doing pretty much the worst job there was— and now that I was using more, he had to take on one or two customers more a day. Everything was different with us. With us, it was the guy who did the hustling. I used to think we were special that way—that maybe we were the only couple in the world with that kind of an arrangement.

  It never really occurred to me, during those weeks in the fall of 1976, that I should go earn money that way myself. I mean, every once in a while the thought would pop into my head—usually when Detlef had to go off with a scumbag customer—but I knew that Detlef (who never threatened me) would've slapped me if I so much as hinted at working the streets myself.

  I still didn't really understand what it was, exactly, that the prostitutes did for their money. I didn't want to think about it, and I didn't really want to know anything. Detlef didn't talk about it. From various conversations, I just knew that, one way or another, they got their customers off. But in my mind, all that stuff had nothing to do with Detlef and me. I didn't feel repulsed by what Detlef had to do. If he had to touch the customers, that wasn't so bad. That was his dirty job, and that was the only way we were able to score more dope. I just didn't want those lowlifes to touch my Detlef. He was mine and only mine.

  At first, I thought some of the customers were okay guys, more or less. The boys around the station sometimes pointed out this one or that one who was supposed to be all right, and then they'd say that someone should try to keep him hot so he'd come back. That's where I got my start. Some customers were really nice to me when they saw me with Detlef at the station. They thought I was sexy. That was kind of weird, the fact that these guys—who I thought were all gay—liked me like that. Sometimes one of the boys gave me twenty marks and said it was from a customer who thought I was really nice. Detlef never told me that some of these guys were already badgering him to have him involve me in a three-way.

  I watched the other girls; almost all of them still just kids like me. And I saw the horrible shape they were in. Especially the ones who were addicted to H and who had to sell themselves to fund their habit. I saw the disgust in their faces when a customer came over to talk business (although they still tried to smile nicely). I hated the customers. They were a special breed of assholes, perverts, and pigs—skulking through the corners of this grungy station on the hunt for desperate, underage hookers. What was so much fun about going off with these strange girls—girls who were so clearly disgusted by them and who were so clearly miserable?

  Eventually, my attitude toward Detlef's work soured. Over time, I began to realize what Detlef had to go through with these guys. Sometimes he had to really force himself to do a job, using every little bit of willpower to overcome his nausea and disgust. If he wasn't doped up, he often couldn't do it.

  When he was going into withdrawal, so just when he needed a job the most, he had a tendency to just run away from the customers. Axel or Bernd would usually step in at that point, so that the money wasn't lost. But it really took it out of them. Axel and Bernd also had to be doped up in order to make it work.

  It really bugged me that these guys all ran after Detlef like that. They stammered their funny confessions of love for him and slipped him love notes while I was standing right there next to him. They were all so pathetic and lonely. But I couldn't feel sorry for them. It made me want to scream. “Don't you get it?” I wanted to yell, “Detlef belongs to me, and no one else . . . and definitely not some sad, old asshole like you!” But I knew I couldn't because we needed those guys: They supplied us with cash, and we could take it from them like candy from a baby.

  Then I noticed that some men at the station appeared to know Detlef pretty intimately—much more intimately than I did, anyway. It made me want to puke. And when I heard a rumor that some of the customers wouldn't pay until the hustler also had an orgasm, I just about lost it.

  I saw less and less of Detlef. He was always off with some client asshole. I was worried about him. Somebody told me once that a lot of male hookers eventually become gay themselves. But I couldn't blame Detlef. We needed more and more money. And half of it was spent on my dope. Since I was part of this group, I wanted to become a real junkie, just like them. I shot up every day. But I always made sure that I had enough H left over for my fix the next morning.

  Nevertheless, neither Detlef nor I were physically addicted yet. When you start to use heroin, it takes a while before you're completely dependent on the stuff. We could usually manage to go cold turkey for one or two days, u
sing other stuff to get high. We hadn't really gone down the rabbit hole yet. And since we were able to take some time off, we talked ourselves into believing that we were different from all the addicts, all the junkies, all the human wrecks. We could quit any time we wanted to.

  I was still feeling pretty good, I think. Every Saturday I found some happiness in Axel's apartment. Detlef would crawl under the clean sheets with me, give me a good-night kiss on the lips, and then turn around. We slept back-to-back, with our butts snuggled against each other. And when I woke up, Detlef would give me a good-morning kiss.

  That was as far as we'd go for the first six months of our relationship. When I first met Detlef, I'd already had some experience with male brutality. And I told him right away,“I'm still a virgin, you know. And I want to take my time. I want to wait until I'm a little older.”

  He understood immediately and didn't make a big deal out of it. I was his girlfriend, of course, and we could talk together about anything and share everything, but at fourteen I was also still a child. He was always so sensitive and understanding. He was able to sense what I wanted, and without my saying so, he could tell what I could and couldn't do. Sometime in October, I asked my mom to put me on the pill. She got a prescription for me because by that time, she knew that Detlef and I were sleeping in the same bed, and she didn't believe that there was nothing going on between us.

  So I took the pill but didn't let Detlef know about it. I was still afraid. When I got to the apartment one Sunday at the end of October, Axel had put fresh sheets on his bed. He said that it was silly that he stretched out in that big bed while the two of us squished onto a small cot. So we should take his bed.