"There was a time when we had no words for al this." "It just happened, and we were in the thick of it, watching, thinking something, anything, but without words." "Did this really exist?" "Perhaps it did, but what about inside our heads?" "Sure, all the time." "It was the "wordless time"." "In all sorts of situations we would just look at each other wide-eyed, shaking our heads, unable to say much but no words- brutality- madness- no words, really" "This was our poem of bliss." "It expressed our amazement, our admiration of the overwhelming, the stunning, of the simple and unspectacular but somehow monumental moments which we lived, and that pervaded us." "The sensation that nothing could possibly be more amazing, that we had never experienced anything similar, and so on..." "I'm only shooting the window." "Look." "This is what I'm doing." "No, no, no, you gotta cut it." "Stop it." "Do you want to see what I am filming?" "I am not filming people, see!" "." "But they don't want you to film, period." "They don't want that." "They don't even allow people inside to take pictures." "I know that." " And you're filming here, no please." "But nobody is gonna be recognised." "No, because they just told me." "You see I walked by you, Iike it's okay, but when I got there they said:" "Hey man the girl is over there filming." "I'm like, yeah you're right." "To me it's harmless, but they said, they don't want it." "okay." "It's still one of the mysteries and attractions about techno and club culture." "There is something about it that unites us, something we're all thrilled with, we all love." "But it only reveals itself to those who take part, who get into it, Iet go and absorb it all." "I asked Enur" " Come on, Iet's go out, and he said" " I only go out with gays." "Because he didn't want me to come along." "He thought I was a bit of a prude." "I don't know." "I had asked him two or three times, and eventually I had friends visiting from Spain." "I knew Enur knew where to get something, so when we met at Uni I asked him:" "You think you could get us something?" "And he was like" " What, Saskia, you?" "I would never have believed that of you!" "At that time the first issue of Flyer magazine came out in Berlin." "It had those modified brand logos on the front of the page." "The first issue had a Fanta logo." "He showed me the Flyer and offered me some speed during the break at school." "And showed me, look Bunker, Gabbanauten." "That's where they always went, and I should come along." "He virtually forced me into the club." "It was the old Planet." "I clearly remember that woman at the entrance." "She had massive 60s or 70s style hairdo." "And then we entered and I stepped in a courtyard" "and a small corridor and then this heavy iron door opened and I found myself in a huge hall and the bass was pumping..." "Wow!" "." "What is that?" "How cool is that?" "!" "." "And I saw all those people dancing." "It was dark with lights flashing, and I just loved it!" "It was 3 in the afternoon, and the people were dancing and the atmosphere was just so cool." "And then we felt, Iike, this flow of energy crossing us." "People sharing pills here, three guys peeing into the sea there, a fire juggler over there, and everywhere in the sand, literally every other square meter, couples of all combinations of sexes." "There was tinsel coming down from the ceiling and a really emotional song was playing that almost made me cry." "And then the whole place was glittering and everybody went crazy, 7.000 people or something." "And I just stood there and got goose bumps, and I thought, wow!" "I Iove it!" "This is what I want, all the time." "It really gives me goose bumps now because it was so great." "We had such an amazing party." "We danced and enjoyed the music until we were shattered," "let our emotions run free." "I woke up at home, and on Monday I had pneumonia..." "I don't really think I knew what happened with me there." "But I got so hooked, I just had to go there again!" "When I open the door and I see people lining up" "I don't make the decision the moment I open the door, but when I opened it the Iast time." "So, whenever I let someone in I roughly scan the next crowd." "often there's not much time and you overlook things." "Sometimes people's faces seem alright, so you let them in - but then I Iook down, I Iook at the clothes..." "It's always misleading with clothes, because people like to masquerade up for the weekend." "In other words, they're not really themselves." "It's really important to me that people act honestly." "I don't mind if there's a punk with a shabby uniform," "I'd actually always prefer that person to someone who just pretends to be a punk." "To whom I'd say, sorry, mate, not your night tonight." "We haven't done this at the new club, but at the other place we sometimes told people, Iike:" "Listen, get a grip, you are too fucked up, you came here all puffy eyes, 1 8 hours ago." "Relax." "And that worked because communication works." "People like to talk, and they also like to talk about others." "So it's easy to let someone know it's okay now." "They can come again if they like." "That's it." "I think everybody in this world should have one year of clubbing experience." "Then we would have fewer wars and conflicts on the planet." "clubbing is not only about getting wasted or about experiencing yourself." "It's very much about being with other people." "You've got blacks talking to whites, students chatting with workers, people from all walks of Iife coming together, and it works." "So why shouldn't this work on a larger scale as well?" "Many people are afraid or aggressive about things because they don't know them." "or because the media conveys a negative image which people take for the truth." "If you go to a club your perspective will change." "It all starts with being together." "No matter if it's the Ostgut or the Speicher, okay, not the Speicher, but ordinary club life, including drug use, just makes people more relaxed." "What I Iove about clubbing is how the dimension of time shifts." "You lose track of it, time feels like a space that expands and finally disappears." "You go out at two at night and suddenly it's eight in the morning, then again five in the afternoon." "It gets dark, it gets light again and it gets dark again." "It's just not an issue anymore, all that counts is what you experience and with whom, whether you feel happy or not." "And afterwards you think, God, now the party's over, but it had only just begun!" "At the Panorama Bar in Ostgut I often felt really happy, and I thought, wow, this is it." "It's world outside..." "Well, an independent, sealed off, fantastic world that we're generating together." "I think now, being in our late twenties or early thirties, it's time for us to look a Iittle more..." "It's fair enough, you should have to look more respectable." "And if you go there, Iike, haha hiha ha, people won't take you seriously." "And that's the point." "You don't need to be taken seriously at weekends, do you?" "I actually find it quite funny to lie on an old shabby couch that may even have mites." "It kind of makes you feel like on the brink of homelessness." "That's basically the difference compared to more fancy clubs with a lounge or lovely decorations all over the place." "I think that's a waste of money for a club supposed to appeal to the techno scene." "These people just want to party." "You climb over stuff or a piece of furniture flies past you, or you see someone crawl along somewhere..." "That's because the drugs make people feel high-spirited and behave almost like they were in kindergarten." "That's precisely what I find sexy." "I don't like this velour style, all nice and so on." "When I smoke a joint I just want to throw it somewhere, and I want to put my beer on the floor without having to worry about the carpet." "I want to chill." "Sure, clubbing is a feast to your eyes, and if you're only surrounded by ugly mugs that's horrible!" "It ruins everything." "It spoils the fun." "AII it takes are a few of the right people who you know and you Iike and a certain beauty around you that allows you to shut out the rest, that's good enough for me." "I Iove this type of work in an unhealthy, closed-off space surrounded by "shredded flesh"." "I do kind of cheat on myself when I claim to be there basically because I work there." "It is a kind of self-deception, because some decisions are tough to make." "I hate to be alone." "Something that I really hate is to be alone." "I really like to be with my friends, with my kids, with family." "It's really important for me." "I would never- the saddest thing, I think, for me, in my Iife, would be to find myself alone." "You do feel really close to everyone, there." "You do make friends really quickly." "It kind of speeds up the process." "Spending eight hours in a club with someone, and talking a hundred miles an hour." "I kind of...yeah." "I'm always hoping to gain something from it." "Sometimes something quite small, sometimes it can be quite profound." "clubbing has always been important to me and my closest friends." "AII my friends enjoyed excessive clubbing at Ieast for a limited time." "I'm not friends with anyone who is anti-clubs and anti-drugs." "Your home moves from party to party." "Every now and then someone goes to sleep to return later or two others decide to go home." "That doesn't go unnoticed." "It gnaws at you if two, three people leave." "It takes about half an hour for the group to handle the shift, the dynamics, the changing energy." "You mull it over, you're like:" "oh no, so you're really leaving?" "Well... ok..." "Then the group morphs, it still consists of the same people, with a few missing." "But that's normal and fine." "And you know you can relax because there will be another party pretty soon." "Still, sometimes you just know that right now the composition of this particular group is just very special." "I think all people who go clubbing are in search of something." "Like myself." "I don't know." "Maybe we're looking for..." "don't know... someone?" "I never found true love in nightlife, and based on my experience, I doubt you can." "I don't think that with the way things are now, the people I currently go out with," "I won't find the one who feels right for me." "Don't ask me why." "It just feels that way." "Because everybody is so loose." "My first boyfriend I met at a party." "Just like my last, actually." "And then we danced for quite a while." "Until there was nobody left on the dance floor but us." "I remember I suggested we sit down." "So we did, and we talked for, Iike, a minute." "That wasn't a minute." "30 seconds." "And then we started to kiss." "Heavy kissing." "on the leather couch right next to the bar." "We kissed until the bouncer came and said it was closing time." "Then we realized we were alone in the club and the music was out." "oblivious." "outside it was snowing." "Totally crazy." "I had never experienced anything like that before." "Snowdrifts." "Anyway, I wanted to join him to his place, so he told me he would leave for his parents that day." "Which I wasn't until the day after that." "But I knew, if we do it tonight we would probably never meet again." "AII too often, it all ends with a one night stand." "And I knew, if we exchanged phone numbers neither of us would get in touch." "So I said, give me your number, I'II call you." "I was working behind the bar and he - it was really funny..." "Funny thing was, she had heard a London DJ on the radio play a record she'd never heard before." "I was like, wicked tune!" "I hadn't heard the record anywhere before." "I had been working in clubs for a while but never heard a DJ from Berlin play it." "Anyway, I was working at the Exit." "And then André came from Frankfurt, and he had such a different style and attitude." "The Exitwas in the former East." "We had hooligans as bouncers." "Totally different atmosphere." "And he wanted to tip me." "Because I found her really cute." "And nobody seemed to tip her." "This was our first contact, Iike - er, that's a bit unusual here..." "It was a bit like:" "Where are you from, anyway?" "We talked a Iittle, not very much, and then he put on records." "Funnily enough, I was finishing work just then." "And I had smoked a couple of joints, everything was like really cool." "And then he played this particular record." "And she looked up, Iike, who's playing?" "Uh, that guy again?" "I see..." "And I was like..." "And after he finished his set, Iike 2 or 3 records later," "I snatched him up - hey, Iet's talk, smoke a joint, okay." "And then we clicked and got together." "We were both on acid, a drug entirely different from ecstasy which basically makes you get on with everybody." "It makes you go very, very, very egocentric." "At best, you feel a strong bond with nature and life and all those higher things." "You hardly ever meet new people and instantly feel attached to them." "I hadn't dropped acid in 4 years and it was the first time I dared try it again." "When we met, it was like love at first sight." "From that moment on we were together for 36 hours, and it felt like we were entity immediately." "To begin with, I'm bisexual." "And I somehow had the desire, and it just wouldn't have made sense to decide for myself that I could fool around, while he shouldn't." "Well, I couldn't bear it." "No, I couldn't bear it." "I would go green with jealousy." "The very idea of sharing my boyfriend with another man is just impossible." "Physically, too..." "No way." "I want to open up to Ralf..." "No, that's impossible." "Some people may say love is one thing, sex is another and you can have sex with anybody," "but - no!" "Nope." "It's a Iittle turn-on for us." "You are basically aware you're not the only one." "It's not Iike every weekend we check out other people, spread our legs and go for it!" "It's all very well considered." "We really try to weigh up options, to take into account what might hurt whom because they're acquainted with whomever and so on." "I know virtually everybody who belongs to this scene;, that comes with the territory." "And in some situations I did actually think, what is going on?" "People really hit on you;" "they feel you up, too." "Sometimes unrestrained." "Without restraint, really." "I wouldn't be surprised to be dragged into the darkroom." "I once made out with someone on the dance floor when I was totally gone, or -." "Afterwards I wouldn't have been able to tell whether it was a woman or a man, or whatever..." "Yet another reason to be jealous." "Another reason to be jealous." "In my relationship I still enjoyed to go out alone because that doesn't have much to do with it." "And then it's even nicer to return home and have someone await you with open arms laughing at how wasted you are." "Like:" "God, you are fried!" "And then it's really nice." "And vice versa:" "Look at you, flying in here like that!" "Actually, I never fucked around real kinky." "Recently my boyfriend and I were really horny." "So we thought it was time and we went to the toilets at Panorama Bar." "And we really tried, but it didn't work." "We were like,..." "In the beginning it felt like a real kick," "like, wow, we're doing it here!" "But while we were at it we discovered that actually..." "No, we are so in love it just doesn't work right now." "So we only made out there, in the toilets." "And I have to say it was way more beautiful than it would have been to fuck there." "Earlier I never had the heart to enter a darkroom." "although, obviously, I was always curious." "Because all the things that you're afraid of sexually you want to explore and experience yourself." "When I was younger I was like, oh, this is so cool, and oh, I can't stop staring..." "But then they'II notice..." "oh my God..." "But I've overcome that." "After all, fucking is always just fucking." "It depends on the personalities involved but on the whole it's always about sticking something in or pulling it out somewhere." "If it looks good or the bodies are handsome or whether it's a fat and a skinny guy..." "I might even watch because it looks so bizarre." "You're in one room with dozens of men who are having sex that very moment - or not." "You hear them gasp, you hear them groan, you hear the rustling of trousers." "In the beginning you're afraid or really nervous, with your heart pounding." "Many people who never experienced this probably think it's totally dull." "But I always had the impression - that is, especially, or only, when I enjoyed it, there certainly are truly dull places, too." "But at Ostgut it was like..." "Totally surreal." "It was right next to the dance floor separated by curtains, so you could see the strobe lights and hear the music." "Somehow it rather sharpened my senses." "You stand there hoping nobody will touch you or even see you and you wait for your eyes to get used to the darkness, then you look around for an unobtrusive place to sit or stand and ease into the situation." "AII you see are body parts or, every once in a while a face..." "Then someone sits next to you, a hand approaches, begins to touch you, you get excited and you let it happen, and then a stranger's head bows over you and starts to work you over." "It was funny to watch straight people come in, and girls." "There were straight couples fucking there just as well." "I gave a blowjob to a guy who I later saw at the bar with his girlfriend, a Brandenburg townie who felt like giving it a shot in there." "I think it's amazing because you can totally lose yourself in sex in 5 or 10 minutes." "Many people have a tough time merging like that with someone during a one nighter." "In there I could forget who I am." "I did things I'd never have done before, ever." "To use and you be used like a piece of flesh." "But always respectfully." "That's the thing." "You can jump around in there anonymously." "Like: ok, I'II just make a bolt for it although I fucked someone up the arse without a rubber." "He can't really know it was me..." "A minute later in the light of the dance floor you stand next to the guy, wondering - was it him, or wasn't it?" "People who fuck others or allow you to fuck them knowing they're HIV-positive probably think if someone fucks them or accepts to be fucked without a condom they must be positive, too." "It's like a mutual misunderstanding." "Nobody mentions it and in nights like that when there's sex in the air and people are fried and drunk..." "If you suddenly fancy having someone jerk off right into your mouth although 30 minutes ago that was absolutely not your idea of fun, you should quickly try to remember that!" "Sometimes I deliberately took risks because it gave me a buzz." "With hindsight that sounds really stupid, but sex is irrational, isn't it?" "of course, there's been some whinging afterwards," "like: oh no, what have I done!" "But at the time it made sense to me." "It was a thrill, it gave me a buzz, it was a game." "Sex, basically." "That's a typical Berlin thing." "Go out elsewhere in Germany or Europe, you won't find gays there." "They're traditionally an active part of the cultural and music scene here." "In Frankfurt and Hamburg they still hang out at their daft old gay discos and aren't even given a chance to prove what they can do." "That's always been different in Berlin." "Gays used to work at Hardwax and they have always been involved with major clubs that attracted heteros." "The fatalism of Berlin gays seems to attract heterosexuals." "It didn't feel like any of the places I'd been to in Germany, actually." "I mean, I came in high summer, but in terms of the pace of Iife and the kind of atmosphere on the streets it felt more like..." "the mediterranean... not Germany." "I don't know." "It felt like, slightly different." "More relaxed." "I Iove Berlin." "But the Germans are a Iittle boring and stiff." "At the moment everywhere you look there is this real hype about Berlin." "It's like a huge bubble that everybody wants to look inside, although nothing emerges from it." "It feels like everything was at a standstill." "That bugs me." "Like it bugs me that everybody acts like this was such a metropolis although actually we have this village mentality." "Someone from a small town, who thinks they are pretty freaky would discover when they arrive in Berlin that here there are people much crazier and freakier." "People have no limit." "Nobody has to go to work." "Everybody is doing..." "Yeah okay, someone has to paint a picture or the next one has to meet someone to go to breakfast at one o'clock or something like that." "This is..." "like, most of my friends here in Berlin are living like that, you know." "Nobody has to" " Nobody I know, has to go at six in the morning and go to an office or so, or something like that." "It draws a certain crowd of people, a certain section of society." "I think it's a quite creative atmosphere there, because the music is so creative and original." "The kind of people that are there and the kind of things you are talking about." "The atmosphere is like the music." "Its creative and its original and its exciting." "Like that night with Luke Solomon." "This guy who'd been around for a while shows up at the DJ booth, a queer look on his face." "Suddenly he steps behind the decks like he was looking for something, then starts to fiddle about your record bag or even the mixer." "Someone like that will always be around." "And every time you wonder, is the guy trying to freak me out, or is he freaked out himself?" "They are freaking!" "The problem is how to react appropriately in these situations." "At least I find it hard." "What can you say to someone who is totally gone anyway?" "I believe the music I play draws people who are more reflective in general." "Many people who come to my parties don't do drugs and hardly drink alcohol." "They just enjoy the music." "What happens here is truly real." "It's not about the amount of people but about the experience." "About the flow of energies going on between the dance floor and the DJ desk." "This is what it is." "A matter of energy." "There is an inexplicable quality to it." "You can't tell what makes it so amazing." "How come everything runs so smoothly?" "How come I always pick the perfect record?" "How come I don't panic?" "How come everything goes so smoothly?" "That's why you do it again and again, it's what you're looking for, what you want to experience over and over." "Sooner or later you figure out that such experiences are really rare." "I don't know it always sounds corny." "But it's quite nice to be an entertainer." "And that is really corny." "But it's..." "Yeah, I feel very lucky to be able to make a living out of helping people have a good time." "I don't pull off a show!" "Yes, you do." "That's weird." "Because the DJs I Iike best are the ones who just stand there, put on a whimsical smile now and then, do cool shit but seem rather unaffected." "I find that very impressive." "The people are doing different things for you." "The people are giving you things for free." "The people are loving you for free." "You know." "You don't have to do nothing." "You don't have to be very friendly to them." "And that's not okay you know." "The people have to love you because they have a certain experience with you, or because they had a conversation with you, or something like that." "But not because they heard that they have to love you." "That's horrible." "It's hard sometimes." " Yeah, it's very hard." "I realized how trivial what I was doing actually was." "You may argue that people need some entertainment or something to cling to." "I really tried hard to find excuses for what I was doing, but I just couldn't stand behind any of them with a clear conscience." "You know in Berlin and in Germany often with the clubs..." "clubs don't stop till the Iast person has fallen over." "It's kind of like, you know this phrase:" "A war of attrition, you know where it's like;" "you just have to gradually grind people down." "You know, you sort of knock them off one by one." "There've been a couple of parties where I've played for six hours." "And I thought I was gonna be playing for three, or four at the most, and I am getting to the end of my record box and I've played all my records." "And I kind of shout at the promoter and say:" "look is somebody else playing, because I am done, finished." "We don't have that so much." "And also I quite like the sense..." "I quite like it when clubs..." "I quite like it when you have that thing of going through an experience together, but it has to stop at some point." "And also it's quite nice to have an end record." "It's quite nice to finish a set, while there are still people there, rather than just playing and playing and playing as people gradually leave until there's only a few very disturbed people left, who would carry on dancing if you just stood there," "kind of banging a wooden spoon on a saucepan, as long as you did it in time." "It's about volume and bass." "You don't just hear the music, but it has a direct physical impact." "Your trousers vibrate when you're standing in front of the bass speaker." "When I hear music and it's really having a very big influence to my emotions and it's very impressive." "It's always the melancholic thing." "The dark side, the melancholic, the sad side of it." "Because this is making me feel different from the normal feeling I have during the day, you know, or I try to have." "Try to be positive try to be harmonic, the whole time, but in a certain moment I hear music and then all the sadness and all the frustration, the little one I have somewhere, comes out and I start to cry or something like that." "It has that intensity." "You know and you can..." "Yeah repetition." "That's the thing." "It's this thing of repetition with tiny changes all the time." "You can kind of loose yourself in it." "You know drugs and that type of music are sympathetic to one another." "They work together very well." "But you don't have to have taken drugs to be able appreciate the music and yeah, it's very easy to kind of loose yourself in it" "because of it's structure, because of it's repetitive structure, because of it's slightly hypnotic element." "The vocoder-Iike sounds, the way the music sneaks up on you from behind, it's dark, timeless, spacy, futuristic, deep..." "You know?" "Especially in some spaces in Chile, we did parties in really amazing surroundings, near the ocean and things like that." "In the early hours in the morning, it's like music becomes something totally like..." "Religious." "It's really like, you're completely shocked." "Really completely shocked with the sound and the frequencies going on." "almost as if you could see the music, you know?" "It's like something you could imagine completely in space and you could see the frequencies going on." "And the frequencies, especially when it's minimal music, and it's really like, everything is well separated." "The frequencies of the sounds are well separated, to each other." "And there are not so many things." "You are touched by the different frequencies you are touched by special feelings, also." "Really, the special frequencies are touching you and calling some feelings out of you, which are completely hidden normally." "And then you hear music and you start to think about your childhood, you start to think about some problems, and you feel incredible things, you know." "And this happens sometimes for sure with classical music or when you're sober, when you're in a normal state of mind." "But in this intensity, it can happen only with drugs." "Especially when all the people are on the same drug, which happens sometimes, it's really, really incredible how all the people react in the same way." "It's hard to explain." "But I think to some extent drugs also make you more open minded to new things." "Which they certainly did in my case." "What can be confusing to outsiders is the intensity of it." "It's not one single drug but a cocktail of five per night." "And it's always about more and more..." "A snort of cocaine every once in a while is okay." "But I wouldn't polish off a whole gram at 8 in the morning." "It does happen to me though, that I'm with people who do that and I'm just bewildered and think:" "Man, what are you doing here?" "I'II take one snort, you can take 20." "That's fine." "None of my business." "I always went home in between to get some sleep." "I never had a four-day party." "Ever." "Because I know that gives you wrinkles." "Today most comments you get are sex-related." "As if people had a sign saying "fuck me" on their foreheads." "Hardly ever will someone tell you, you look good with no strings attached." "If you're asked if you want to dance..." "Back then, we would find someone we really got along with." "It's like an 'E-CIutch'." "We would take each other's hands and stay together all night long, talking." "It was amazing, but never about sex." "It was about travelling together for a while, so to speak." "I'm not sure I agree everybody needs clubbing experience." "After all, some people have negative experiences in clubs..." "There's so much behind it..." "It would be so nice if we could do without..." "A club is like a..." "I don't know." "Really." "There was this guy at my school." "He was in 7th grade who had just moved on to college." "In Berlin you go to primary until the end of 6th grade." "He already had a Iot of experience with drugs then, at 1 2 or 1 3." "He'd tried heroin, and some of the people he used to hang out with were older than him." "They were more like hippies, smoking pot in Kreuzberg Park in the afternoons." "But on weekends they went to the Bunkerto get their dose of Gabba." "Though normally they listened to 60s music," "Velvet Underground and stuff." "They got carried away with this junkie attitude." "They loved to be fucked up." "So, I met this guy and I was very keen on any kind of drugs." "Even when I was 14, all I wanted was to take drugs of any kind." "I was totally open-minded." "I was a willing victim, as it were." "It was like a whirlpool, pulling me in." "If something was available..." "But there was no reason to say no." "So I always took everything I was offered." "I came in and he was like..." "And when I asked him what he was up to, he told me he was smoking MDMA." "Back then I had no experience whatsoever, so I believed him." "I just thought, cool, I want to smoke that, too." "And he was like:" "no." "Don't do it..." "And I was like:" "Huh?" "Why not, Iet me try it, no problem, and so on." "Then he slowly came out with the truth." "That he wasn't smoking MDMA, but heroin, and that you really had to be wary about it, but he totally had it under control." "That day I didn't feel like trying it, I was rather shocked." "But also intrigued." "I didn't think I wanted nothing to do with him anymore." "I thought he really knew what he was doing, and wanted to do it like him one day." "I shared a flat with some ravers." "So I was always surrounded by dealers and this techno family." "And I never really came down." "I felt knackered and really needed to rest, but I didn't." "Instead I went to E-Werk or Planet on Saturday and took speed." "I used to combine it with working a Iot." "I would work the whole day, go clubbing at night and return to work from there." "Day shift, night shift, clubbing." "At times working two jobs, one night after the other." "It started to suck me in" "like I was determined to go home after my second shift to get some sleep, and then some friends would drop by around closing time on their way to a party." "one word from them would be enough for a drink," "I was thinking I'd be going home." "In the end I would take another snort and I'd obviously go clubbing." "I Ioved it so much!" "I just couldn't believe you could get this marvellous feeling for such a ridiculous amount of money." "A line worth 5 marks or something." "And it gave me the best feeling I'd ever had in my Iife." "The very next day I went to get more heroin." "Soon we would all take more and more heroin." "We kept going to the Bunker and using club drugs." "But during the week we were actually junkies." "The entrance fee at Bunkerwas 1 0 marks but we weren't the type of guests who would spend hundreds at the bar." "We refilled our Beck's bottles with tap water." "We could finance our drugs because luckily at the Bunker you had to pay a bottle deposit of 1 mark, which nobody realized." "So when we took a break from dancing we would browse the place for bottles." "The staff weren't happy if we showed up at the bar with 20 beer bottles, but they had to refund us anyway." "So we were left with 20 marks, equalling the entrance fee and half a pill." "Pills still cost some 30 marks then, which is unbelievable today." "They were precious." "Girls would suck off guys only for a pill." "They would go like:" "I blow you for a pill." "Nobody would do that today." "Unless they wanted some action anyway..." "It certainly has a good deal to do with wanting to be beautiful and slim." "When you take loads of drugs you hardly need to eat." "It is a pure experience;" "it makes you feel physically pure." "Eating is like the exact opposite of that." "And it made me feel really sick." "I felt that especially speed, which I took rather often then," "I have the feeling it really fucks you up." "It sucks all the strength out of your body." "You try to be strong anyway, but you just can't make up for that by eating alone." "It would probably take some sleep and seeing beautiful things or something..." "I tried to compensate by stuffing myself with food." "Because the emptiness was so huge." "I think speed is really one of the most highly destructive drugs." "Real physical dependence came after about a year of heroin use." "I realized I just felt physically fucked up whenever I wasn't on it." "So I had to do something." "It started when I noticed that snorting and smoking was quite costly in the Iong run." "So it was time for the needle." "I had absolutely lost my inhibitions." "I knew mainlining the same quantity would get me rid of my turkey and give me a hit." "otherwise only the turkey would be gone." "So obviously I decided to inject." "I hadn't slept in I don't know how many days, just been on drugs." "And I heard my name calling, but there was no one there." "Very weird, I thought." "And then a really good friend of mine who had been away travelling for six months returned." "I have to say in my defence she had long, black hair before she left, and when she returned she was bald." "And she told me about her holiday experiences." "And suddenly I began to think she wasn't herself but someone else passing encoded information to me via stories about some random people in Thailand." "But we were sharing a flat so I just thought, oh my god, evil is in my house!" "I didn't recognize myself anymore." "I Iooked in the mirror and I wondered:" "Who's that?" "Seriously." "I didn't feel connected with myself anymore." "I couldn't even sense my head anymore." "It was like frozen." "I thought there was a power unit at the back of my head controlling my thoughts." "I kept trying to find the switch to turn it off." "But I couldn't." "AII this time I never admitted to myself that I was addicted." "I found it cool to be a junkie and in a way, I identified with it." "But I never thought I had a problem that I wouldn't be able to get out of." "Nope." "I never believed that." "It felt like I was depriving myself of Iife and all the beautiful things about it." "While others didn't seem to have that problem, I couldn't even admit I had one." "I would tell people I wanted to cut down on clubbing." "Everybody would understand that and find it reasonable." "I didn't let the dimension of my problem shine through." "It was always like, ok, I'II just go for a few hours, no drugs and so on, but once I was in the club it just didn't work." "It was really an addiction, I think." "I just couldn't resist." "I miss the euphoria." "The feeling you also get with magic mushrooms." "That's how I first got to know it and..." "I do miss that." "This feeling of unity, Iike, we're so united and we love each other so much." "If you only understood!" "It's unparalleled." "Really nice." "Where can you feel this kind of love?" "Where else can you find that?" "Sure, we're in relationships, we have families, we have other things." "But to finally feel happiness in such an intense way..." "Sure, it's probably just a negative reflection of our society that we are not able to create this feeling without drugs." "I don't think our society is one that fosters happiness." "AII the tradition and everything that is..." "The traditional group of your life, which is the family, is disappearing." "The meaning of this is disappearing." "Everybody is living their individual life, and kids are not a very good idea." "The other thing is that the industry wants people who are individual, who don't have responsibilities with kids and this and that." "There is a big contradiction and we are becoming more and more individualized." "Atomized you know?" "Completely atomized." "And the thing is that," "I think in a world where even communication is completely technological, it's very, very important to have human touch." "To have human contacts, you know." "And you see this in the nightlife scene, that the people are really completely addicted to that." "To be together with other people." "While you're with those people on that night, you have this instant bond and feeling of closeness, but it's a good thing that you can walk away from it at the end of the night and not have any responsibilities until the next time you bump into that person." "There is a pool of people who offer basically everything." "We offer something, too, we're part of the pool." "We also add to it, in a way." "There are people to have fun with, people to talk to, people to have sex with, people to do drugs with, people to conceive ideas with, or projects." "And if we've had enough, there are people to go on a weekend trip with." "Everything is available." "Well, I did have such candidates." "As you know." "You have to be extremely lucky to find someone there who you get along with and who can cope with you, and with this excessive situation." "You may fight with your boyfriend for a really stupid reason, just because you're both totally on edge." "But from experience you know the problem isn't really you." "It's the price you have to pay." "You've made your bed, now sleep in it." "When Harald doesn't go out with me" "I am usually fucked on Sundays and lie wasted on the couch." "We may talk a Iittle, but basically I don't do much but watch TV." "on Monday I go to work, come home and smoke a spliff and that's it." "For Monday." "on Tuesday I may feel slightly depressive, if I'm lucky, I don't and everything is fine again." "But sometimes it wears on until Wednesday." "That's what bothers Harald." "That we really don't get to spend much quality time together." "And sometimes you look at what you're doing and you think:" "What am I doing here?" "Why am sitting in this room, with all these people, in this state, at this time, with this weird noise playing at deafening volume?" "I mean it's a very strange environment." "Sometimes it feels completely normal and natural but other times it doesn't feel right somehow, it just feels like:" "How did I end up here?" "Now that I'm a bit older I totally accept that I Iove to go out." "Actually, I'm happy I still enjoy it at 36." "That's great." "I wouldn't like to be like others my age, considering myself too old or only going to 30+ parties." "That's self-marginalization, isn't it?" "Whether you're 36, 40, or maybe even 50, in the techno scene you will hardly ever get stupid looks." "I hope you don't only pick the bits where I talked about sex." "Like I was a real sex monster, or a sex freak." "I'm not a sex freak." "If I hadn't lived through all this, at 40 I might be a frustrated alcoholic beating my wife, still straight although I'm actually gay." "That's how I picture it." "If I hadn't gone through this as a teenager it would have hit me another way." "I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you." "I would have different interests, maybe even have kids." "or I'd be married." "I mean, I'm going to be 25 soon." "Imagine I'd done my A-Levels..." "Honestly, I think I'd be quite strange..." "I'm glad I've gone through this, which is why I finally decided to talk about this." "I can speak of it proudly because I came out of it so well." "There are at Ieast 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 things I want to do in my Iife, half of which I don't even know about yet." "They will occur to me over the next 5 years." "These things make my Iife exciting and beautiful." "I think they're even more important to me than clubbing." "although it is quite a struggle sometimes with the little rave monster on my shoulder that keeps telling me:" "Come on, clubbing is the best!" "Nothing compares to that!" "You know I just think, yeah, don't forget to go home at some point." "That would be my title." "It's like, have fun, party hard, but, don't forget to go home!" "Maybe kids in 10 or 20 years time will be" "laughing at our sad raves and thinking it's extremely sad that we all go and dance to house music and they'II be doing something else." "I don't know." "Maybe we have got some kind of a weird sect that we're all signed up to now we're stuck in for life." "I still go there sometimes." "But I often leave early, too." "or I decide rather to go to bed early and enjoy the next day." "Because I'm tired of it." "At some point having fun wears out, too." "I had the notion that others were feeling the same way but they wouldn't admit it so they could keep celebrating because it's such an important part of their lives." "And otherwise they would have to ask themselves what else to do, if not party together." "We lurch outside," "Shattered, we move along the pavement." "You pull yourself together." "You let yourself go to the fullest." "You knew you'd have to pay the price." "With all your might you try to resist the comedown." "It works." "You find a taxi." "An instant of real closeness in this wordless misery, of gratitude." "My friend gets in the taxi, uttering the famous last words." "Later we will talk about how this moment restored a tiny remnant of our dignity in this hour of woe and disruption." "Right." "No, we will never stop living this way."