The Reeperbahn is Anything You Want It to Be

I hang onto that thing like someone who got kidnapped as a child and, instead of religion, got tattooed a symbol on their arm that was never explained to them. I think about it often, so that someday I’ll be able to think of nothing else.

E goes out and cusses passers-by

Shrinks never mention it directly. They prefer to have you stumble upon the information. They get you well-versed in the right jargon and blame it all on unresolved family trauma.

Not all addicts end up on skid row, and not all drunks blow up their kidneys by pouring whiskey down their throats. I got this from a therapist when I demanded some proof of her powers. Guess she expected this to become my mantra every time the can goes “Psssst.”

My holiday is going as could be expected. My dietary needs are well taken care of. I’ve had a few sweet, bubbly drinks at breakfast to fix my blood sugar. Through my request, I’ve had my cup filled all throughout our guided tours. I’ve thrown up, filled back up and navigated a polite drunkenness throughout.

This keeps me obedient for a while. But boredom gnaws at me like a crow plucking at a hanged man. I make a scene. I pull rank. I demand the right to experience the city on my own, like some backpacker thrusting into foreign cultures, not some gazillionaire chaperoned to brothels wherever they go. I say something profound in glass-built ivory towers. I am escorted toward the freedom I seek. It’s the best that my bodyguards can do for me.

I hold court. I tell D and my minders why Hamburg is special. I gloss over the obviously taboo topics, the ones that make American teenagers have to communicate through memes. Instead, I tell them about the Romans, the fact that this is the cradle of civilisation, the way in which Germans love their soccer, and, of course, the laws that you can drink in the middle of the street. This kind of thing would get you thrown in jail back home. I expect that they’re impressed. I wobble.

“Now, you think about that, and you tell me who’s really the superior race… certain past events being excluded, of course?”

They nod and don’t say much. They keep all the chuckling shut off until they get off work.

“I know what’ll cheer you up!”

I walk into a Späti and get beers straight from the refrigerator. I walk out and hear some loud mumbling. My new friends pay for the drinks.

I talk and talk. It’s the same as speaking to yourself in public, only without the funny looks. I don’t get any replies other than what is absolutely necessary.

When I get sad, I sniff the air. It’s covered in filth.

We walk all the way to Landungsbrücken. I ignore pleas for a vehicle. I insist that this is how Europeans move, that this is where real Germans eat. I look around and notice we look like overdressed Arctic birds, beaten off the regular migratory path.

We eat. Someone pays. We walk some more, and I feel sick. Try to avoid the indignity of throwing up a new meal on my new shoes.

By the time we make it to the perpetually ketchup and piss-stained bridge, a symbol of commerce and wealth, I feel better.

But it’s a false alarm. My stomach’s pacified, but I’m going to piss myself.

“Are you feeling alright?” D asks.

I don’t answer. I just sit there feeling like the eyes of every passerby are burning a hole through me. Members of every social class look on at me as if I were some pink ape.

“I could call to have a car pick us up,” D says. She’s not amused. She looks like she’s going to cry, and probably tries to work out if she gets paid enough for her babysitting job.

An older woman and her husband stroll by. The woman is wearing glasses. She squints when she sees us. I doubt that she recognises me. I’m not as famous as I should be, even here.

She looks disgusted. I can tell. I’ve tried to erase that look from the mirror many mornings.

She’s probably looking at me and thinking that voting doesn’t solve anything. That that war that one time did them good and proper, and now they have to deal with it forever. Doesn’t matter how rich they get; they still let people like me show up on her doorstep.

She’s thinking that someone ought to tie me to a boat, set it on fire and send it out to sea, a forced Viking funeral meant to tell anyone who can read pictures that Hamburg’s not accepting any more tourists.

To my credit, I don’t immediately start yelling at her. When I do start, though, I am yelling at the whole city and loud enough so that it can hear me.

I’m yelling because this right here is the worst thing that the vile nature of the world has conjured up. It’s a city of lies, and I can’t believe that I was deceived before when I was telling all those stories to my new friends.

Here’s this lady acting like she’s better than the rest, but living in New Sodom, in a place where if any of the religions are telling the truth, flames will rain down from the sky until it’s all singed. I don’t know what God thinks about this place, but probably nothing good enough to pick up the phone and call the fire department.

I start yelling in perfect American English about how filthy, degenerate, and unappealing Hamburg is. I yell toward the sky, pleading. I tell the sky how dumb, ugly, and evil all the Hamburgers (yes, that’s what they call them) are.

“I think it’s better to stop that,” D asks.

The two heavies move closer to me. But they’ve no authority to lay their hands on me, and neither does anyone in this city.

I gesture with my hands. I bring some of that ol’ fashioned preacher spirit and yell that this will be the first place marked for the new bombings. I shout at passers-by, advising that they should’ve moved to Dresden from Hamburg when they had the chance.

I’m a fool for spending time and money in this place. And somewhere I also know that I’m a fool for turning myself into this thing, but I cannot stop.

At least, the screaming acts as a stimulant. If the Polizei see it, they’re careful to stand aside.

I felt invigorated. It’s the best I’ve felt in months, maybe years. Feel like I can make a comeback on late-night television.

“D get on the phone and make the television thing happen, okay? This place has got me feeling much better!”

D nods and pretends to make a note on her phone. I pretend not to notice.

But as I take a deep breath of that grungy air and proudly look at the embarrassment on the face of D. and the rest of our group of Yankee boutique dandies, I realise I’m still going to piss myself. This time it’ll be in public.

“Gonna take a piss.”

I move nearer to the bannister. The smell testifies to my good instincts.

“That’s the last thing we need,” D says angrily, but immediately realises some drug-addicted drunkards could snap a picture of the deed.

She grabs my arm and escorts me below the bridge. The walk takes three minutes, and I mumble a song about freedom and the youth so that I can distract myself.

E hears AI Bryan Adams for the first time

Talk to a machine all day. And the next day after that. At its best, if you look at it objectively, that’s what the future of mental health looks like. Ask the wrong questions, get fed the right answers, get the authorities involved when you ask the same wrong query more than once.

These people have bladders of steel and the sheer force of will to deny themselves going to the bathroom for months at a time. They’d make excellent house pets, or land invasion troops in some desert war.

On the other hand, I do not, and have long ago given up straining in the hopes of raising a tougher bladder. I am shown the way. I jog my way down the bridge, and below it to the bathroom that I was advertised.

I pay my 2 euros using my phone, marvel at the going rate for a respectable piss round these parts, and rejoice at the lack of human interaction. The furthest they kept this here was a few metres away. There is a lady, judging by the sound of her humming, cleaning up in the women’s bathroom.

What is it that she is singing? Some German lied certainly, something I must’ve heard while faced down on the pavement at some point, something that got implanted in my brain.

Nah, this is something even more famous, I think, as I zip down and make it to the urinal just in the nick of time. And as I find sweet relief, I too am humming.

I am taking a piss, and I hear God. It’s a voice that’s all rough around the edges, like the sound of a golden statue being dragged on a pavement on a chain.

And, I am not sure if I am going to be sure of knowing who this voice belongs to for very much longer.

This is no song about fierce sailors, no Nico gothic collection from post-WWII Germany, no European Christmas carol. This is good ol’ Bryan Adams, America’s favourite Canadian son. This is a song that they play at weddings, or at least at the party afterwards, when the groom has had a few too many and started crying on the arms of his best friend.

This is “Summer of ‘69”, and they are going to play this for however long recorded music is going to exist. And, once that is done, they’ll get someone to play it on guitars made up of strings collected from alley cat skins. And, once those are no longer available, someone will find a way to give a rendition of it while smashing rocks together and murmuring: “I got my first real six-string…”

Never have I realised the sterility of this song. Needed the bathroom tiles to let me hear it clearly. How did this ever become a hit in the first place? Never thought that this was actually a terrible song. But how can they still be playing this on the radio? Do people still demand hearing this out of a sense of nostalgia?

But I close, start humming louder, tap my foot to the groove of the song. It feels familiar, sure. But this isn’t it.

It could just as well be. It won’t make much of a difference. Nobody will have their evening ruined by hearing a soundalike. No memories of “getting your first real six-string” will simply disappear by hearing something that isn’t the real McCoy.

But as sure as I can recite my name in front of a police officer if requested, just the same, I can testify that this isn’t “Summer of ‘69” even though it is.

It must be a very small thing indeed to demand the truth while inside a pisser located in the Deutsche branch of the Palace of Sin, but this is no good ol’ Bryan Adams.

The voice crackles just like audiences expect. The words make you think of the good old days that you never actually lived through. And if you could see the artwork, I’m sure that the hair-do and the jeans would look just as nice as in the original music video.

But this is not “Summer of ‘69.”

E reveals his theories to his minders, but is ignored

I run through the turnstile. I lose composure. Nearly lose my dignity, too. Nearly end up with a puddle of piss in my shoes. For a moment, I entertain the thought that, red-faced and with limbs flying as I am, I’ve hit upon a new version of what specialists call a nervous breakdown.

I brush these thoughts aside. I run outside of the bathroom. Frantically, I gesture toward my companions. They’ve been so hard to ignore up to now, but now look embarrassed and avoid my gaze.

“Quick! Get over here!”

The level of interest written across their faces makes me realise that, without these jobs, none of them could hack it in the sex trade.

“Who likes Bryan Adams? You?”

I gesture to the older-looking bodyguard. He points at himself.

“Me? Well, I don’t….”

I grab D by the hand and pull her toward the bathroom. I’m seeing lawsuit dates the moment that I start tugging. She sighs, and one of the bodyguards gently gets me to let go, pretending to listen to me attentively.

We get to the bathroom just the same and walk to the turnstiles.

“Is this your favourite song? Come on! Maybe not! But you know it, yeah?”

She nods her head. First, it’s to show that she doesn’t understand, then to signal clearly that she doesn’t care, and no career opportunities will change that.

“What is it? What the hell is it? What’s the damn song playing on the radio?”

She remembers her training. Play along! Get him home safely!

Concerned that she is dealing with a dangerous drug-addled madman caught in some kind of mania-induced rage, and knowing that there’ll be a way out of this once I get to my hotel room and get safely strapped to my bed, she bugredgingly plays along.

“Bryan Adams. It’s “Summer of ‘69.” That’s the song, right?”

Finally, she’s realising she’s the world’s best-paid babysitter.

“That is the song, isn’t it?”

“You’re hearing the exact same thing as me. What? You don’t like it?”

And, just like that, it is gone. A new song segues into it. It’s sung in German. This also sounds familiar, but not enough for me to put my finger on what it is.

I stare at the floor for a moment. Everyone else, including the lady who’d been cleaning up the women’s bathroom, stares back at me.

“I’m a serious person. I’m a serious person,” my conscience mumbles back to me.

“That was Bryan Adams,” I sigh and smile.

“No doubt, I guess.”

“You heard it, too, right?”

“We all hear the same song you hear,” D replied.

“But it wasn’t fuckin’ Bryan Adams, was it? That’s not the Summer of ‘69, is it?”

“Sounded like it. Who cares?”

“Don’t you know “Summer of ‘69?”

“I guess. Everyone knows it. It’s not like I listen to it every morning.”

“It’s not like anybody listens to it every morning, is it?” I snap back.

“ I don’t… Some do. Some must.”

“Everyone loves Bryan Adams, right?”

“Everyone loves Bryan Adams. Everyone likes Mickey Mouse, and everyone says they support equal rights. Everyone does everything.”

I take two steps. It feels like walking a marathon.

“But do people love Bryan Adams enough to miss him if he were gone?”

“Sure, I guess.”

“Would people queue up in front of the government building and demand the real Bryan Adams?”

“Better ask his manager.”

“Would they, do you think?” I say, and my voice rises. It forces the cleaning lady to gesture for us to leave, waving her phone nervously toward the exit.

“Not sure people’d do that …,” D says as she retreats to the street while politely nodding for forgiveness toward the cleaning lady.

“Was that the real Bryan Adams?”

“That sounded like some ‘80s song to me. They’re all the same thing, aren’t they?”

“And you’d know the difference between that and a fake?”

“I wouldn’t bother.”

“But you’d be able to tell which is which if you had to?”

“A fake? A pop song is hardly an auctioned Van Gogh?”

“And you wouldn’t miss the real thing?”

“Hm… Hearing “Summer of ‘69” from time to time without asking for it, or never hearing it at all, that’s the question.”

I run my fingers through my hair. I use my heaviest fingers to give myself a good hit over the forehead. I stare out into the traffic. My minders look concerned, and so do several other people walking by. They know what they’re seeing. They’re witnessing one more businessman lose his mind in this Northern German city. There must be a ward dedicated exclusively to us.

“It’s time we get back!” D says. I pay her no mind.

“Come on. I promised I’d look after you, after all,” her voice sweetened for the first time today, and I make no further attempt to protest.

Now, I just walk on toward our taxi while trying to hum “Summer of 69.” I am doing my best to remind myself what the real Bryan Adams’ voice sounds like.

I try to imagine a golden necklace being cut into pieces by a metal saw. I tried to think of Bruce Springsteen singing “O Canada.” I try to recall the Bryan Adams singing his hits. And, for the life of me, I don’t know how much I’m making up and how much is real.