Own That Shit When You Look Like Shit

I live in a nice, quiet little corner of a filthy, noisy city--along a lush, green canal, surrounded by trees and lawn, on a street whose primary commercial hub is a tiny Turkish-owned mini-mart that sells overpriced beer and Costco-style packaged foods. About four blocks away--far enough to be seen but not heard, from my apartment-- is a subway station and a huge, thriving mall. In the mall are a bunch of stores I can't stand, I don't know their names, only that they sell shit I don't need and dislike looking at. There is a store that sells coffee beans and nursing bras (coffee beans always, some weird non-related Other Product rotating). There are a few stores that are what I call Amy Winehouse Shops, overpriced "boutiques" that sell the tackiest, glitziest, most disposable fashion imaginable for astronomical prices. There is a Forever 18 (puke) and a few shoe stores. Remember when you were a kid and your mom couldn't afford to get you real Nike Airs or L.A. Gears or British Knights or whatever, so you spent a day at the Volume Shoe Source trying on whatever knock-offs they made to fit your big-ass boat feet, that sparkled and shone just enough to draw attention to the fact that they cost $12.99? Yeah, me too. There are a couple of stores like this in our mall, except they are cleverly named in order to conceal the level of cheap-shitness they are selling. "Uncle Sally's Trendy Hipstore Outlet" and that.

There's a movie theater, and a McPaper (yes they call a stationery store McfuckingPaper) and a couple of banks and most importantly, a big huge grocery store that I love love love. Going to the mall is always interesting because it is overrun with Turks old and young, big and small, and teeny-boppers of all stripes, and dirty refugee looking people dragging around cartloads of children, and normal non-brown non-non-German people doing their shopping, and at all times, a huge fucking number of spectators looking you up and down. The inspiration to write this entry was born out of my procrastinating going to the mall to take back some deposit bottles and picking up some pre-made schnitzel and sauerkraut, because I know I will have to exchange my sweats and crocs for something a little more presentable, which sucks, because who am I, Uma Thurman? Why should anyone give a fuck what I wear while shopping for Wiener Schnitzel? Back home I would go to the grocery store in my PJs (tacky, but no joke) or with my hair all wild, cocaine dribbling down my lip, undies sticking out, barefoot, naked, who cares, it's just the damn store. But I know that as soon as I get about three blocks away from my calm little paradise it is going to be a zoo, a zoo full of old and small and young and fat and big and pretty and ugly and dumb and smart and wholly unimportant people scrutinizing my every move. So I have to at least comb my hair and put on actual, you know, clothes.

A friend of mine lives on a fancy, busy street in Friedrichshain, which is like the big gay hipster paradise of Berlin. It's maybe the LES of Berlin, or the Broadway (in Seattle) of Berlin, or say, the St. Denis (Montreal) of Berlin, or even the Granville/Davie/Robson (Vancouver) of Berlin. The point of course is that it is in Berlin and not in any of these other posh cities, everyone here looks like shit, but they are convinced otherwise, and expect you to be the same. You can't just own looking like shit here. You're supposed to pretend to yourself that you really do look like people on the MTV or in magazines. But you don't. You look like a blind person who went shopping in American Apparel and couldn't tell your hundred-dollar bills from your tens. You look like you spent way too much money on not being able to realize that you look like shit.

So my girl lives on Simon-Dach Straße, full of cafés, bars and upscale indy boutiques and record stores. Morning, noon and night, her street is crawling with try-hard hipsters. She walks out her door and BAM! there is a wall of people waiting to size her up. (As a result, I hate spending the night there.) She loooooves it. It is a rare occasion that she evacuates the premesis in anything less than full makeup, stockings, scarves, hair-dos, perfume, nails done, heels on.

I would die. To me it's bad enough that I have to put on a bra to take out the garbage. If I had to put on eyeliner and deodorant every time I wanted to buy a pack of smokes or pick up some milk and bread I would just quit smoking and stop eating. I would starve in my apartment, covered in a three-day old crust and barely able to stand from the rickets. On "fat" days I would probably just cut myself and cry, then write a poem about it, then leave the house full of the confidence that comes from knowing that one is artistically tortured enough to walk among the hip--and 4 liters lighter to boot.

A lot of people here hate on the Turks, but if there's one thing I can say about living among them, it's that they know what poor looks and smells like. They don't like looking at my toes or my lip ring, but I can leave the house reeking of garbage with tits down to here and no one bats an eye.

I think I will just live here until I get so old that no one expects me to care about what I look like anyway.