Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (22 page)

I'd once seen Rip-Off Man in full action. I'd just locked myself into a public toilet stall and was about to shoot up when somebody leaped over the dividing wall and landed right on top of me. It was him. I knew from the stories the others told that this was his M O: He'd wait in a bathroom until a girl with H came in, and then he'd pounce. And I knew how brutal he could be. So without any resistance, I gave him my syringe and my dope. He walked right out of the stall and stopped in front of the mirror. He wasn't afraid of anything or anybody anymore. He slammed the shot right into his neck. He didn't have a single spot left on his body that he could shoot into. He bled like a stuck pig. I thought maybe he'd hit the main artery. But he wouldn't have cared if he did. He just said, “Thanks a lot,” and left.

I was sure that I'd never get to that point at least. In order to survive as long as Rip-Off Man had, you had to be a really tough, ruthless character. And I just wasn't. I couldn't even get myself to swipe some old ladies' handbags in the department store bathroom.

The world of our clique revolved more and more around our shared profession. The boys had the same problems that the girls
had. We still had mutual interests and could help each other out by exchanging information. We girls swapped stories about our experiences with customers. The field of customers that we had contact with was very limited. So when a customer was new to me, it was still likely that Stella or Babsi had already been with him. And then it was to my advantage to know what their experiences had been like.

There were recommended customers, less recommended customers, and then there were the problem clients. We never bothered with personal feelings. We also didn't care about his job or if he was married, etcetera. We never talked about the personal nonsense the customers unloaded on us. All we cared about was what they were able to pay.

A customer was considered advantageous if he was terrified of STDs and wouldn't do anything without a condom. Unfortunately, those guys were few and far between, despite the fact that most girls working the streets caught a disease sooner or later, and even then they were afraid to go to a doctor, especially if they were drug addicts.

Another advantage was if you found a guy who knew what he wanted and asked for it, right from the start (especially if he only wanted a blow job). Then you didn't have to spend hours haggling over everything. We also gave points to a customer who was relatively young and not disgustingly fat, and also of course if he didn't treat you like a piece of meat but like an actual human being and remained somewhat friendly, possibly even invited you to an occasional meal.

The most important criterion in determining the quality of a customer was, of course, how much money he paid and for which services. The ones to be avoided were the guys who didn't keep up their end of the agreement or who suddenly tried to threaten or bribe you into doing more stuff with them.

What we really kept an eye out for though, and warned each other about, was the kind of sleazy guy who would ask for his money back afterward, or sometimes even force us to give it back, because he supposedly wasn't satisfied with us. The boys, though, had more trouble with scumbags like that than we did.

Somehow or other, the year 1977 finally rolled around. Time didn't seem to compute in my brain anymore. Whether it was winter or summer, whether the rest of the world was celebrating Christmas or New Year's, to me one day was just like the next. The only good thing about Christmas was that I got some money, and so I didn't have to do as many customers. That was especially important over the holidays, when business was slow. I was totally numb in this phase. I didn't think about anything. Nothing at all. I didn't feel anything and didn't notice anything around me. I was totally preoccupied with myself. But I didn't know who I was. Sometimes I didn't even know if I was still alive or not.

I can hardly remember any specific details from that period. There probably wasn't anything worth remembering anyway— that is, until one Sunday at the end of January. I came home sometime in the early morning hours. I was feeling pretty good, actually. I lay in my bed and drifted off, imagining that I was a young girl who'd just gotten home from a dance. At this dance, my alter ego had just met a super-cute boy, and she already had a huge crush on him. I only felt good when I was dreaming, and in my dreams I became a completely different person. My favorite dream was one in which I was just a happy, carefree teenager. The teenager in that dream reminded me of someone in a Coca-Cola advertisement.

My mom woke me up around noon and brought me some lunch. When I was home on Sundays—that is, on the Sundays when I wasn't with Detlef—my mom always brought me lunch in bed. I choked down a couple of bites. It was almost impossible
for me to get anything down anymore, except for yogurt, cottage cheese, and pudding. Then I grabbed my white handbag. It was already pretty shredded: no handles anymore and with holes everywhere. That shouldn't have been a surprise, though, because in addition to syringes and cigarettes, I'd also stuff my jacket in there. It didn't even occur to me to get a new handbag; that's how little I cared about everything. I was so far past caring that I didn't even think twice about shuffling past my mom to the bathroom, shredded bag in hand. I locked the bathroom door behind me. Nobody in our family locked the bathroom door. I looked in the mirror, just like I did every day. A totally strange sunken face stared back at me. It had been a long time since I'd been able to recognize myself in the mirror. That face wasn't mine. Neither was this emaciated body. It was a body that was totally foreign to me. I couldn't even feel it when I was sick. It just went its own way. The heroin made me numb to any pain or hunger, even to a high fever. The body only registered one thing: withdrawal.

I stood in front of the mirror and prepared the shot. I was pretty anxious about it because I had M-powder. In contrast to the white or tan dope that you usually got on the market, this was a gray-green speckled powder. It's generally very impure,
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but it gives you an incredible kick—it's supposed to be like a flash. It goes right to the heart, and you have to be really careful with the dosage. Too much of it, and you're a goner. I knew the danger, but I still wanted it. I needed it. I was dead set on experiencing that kick from this M-powder.

I pushed the needle into the vein, pulled back, and immediately drew blood. I had filtered the M-powder a couple of times, but it was still extremely impure. And then it happened. The needle clogged. That's about the worst thing that can happen, if the needle gets plugged up right at that moment. Because then there's nothing else for you to do. You have to throw away the dope.

So I couldn't pull out anymore. I pushed as hard as I could to get this shit through the needle. And I was lucky. I got the shot to go in. I drew back once more in order to get the rest of it into the vein, but then the needle clogged again. I was furious. I only had eight or ten seconds before it hit me. So I pushed with all my strength. The syringe popped out of my hand and blood squirted everywhere.

The flash was insane. I had to hold onto my head. I felt an unbelievable cramp in my chest, right where my heart was. There was a roaring in my head, as if someone had hit it with a sledgehammer, and my scalp tingled as if pricked by a million needles. My left arm was virtually paralyzed.

When I could move again, I grabbed some Kleenex to wipe up the blood. It was everywhere—in the sink, on the mirror, and all over the walls. Luckily our whole bathroom was covered with an oil-based paint, so the blood came off pretty easily. While I was still wiping up the blood, my mom banged on the door. She immediately started in on me: “Open the door! Let me in! Why'd you lock the door, anyway? That's unacceptable, Christiane.”

“Shut up,” I called back. “I'm almost finished.”

I was super pissed that she was bugging me now, of all times, while I was wiping frantically at the walls with the tissues. In my panic, I missed a few bloody spots and even left a bloody tissue in the sink. I unlocked the door and my mom burst past me into the bathroom. I was totally unsuspecting and just thought she had to pee. I went into my room with my handbag, lay down on my bed, and lit a cigarette.

No sooner had I lit it than my mom came running into the room. “You're taking narcotics!” she screamed at me.

I said, “What? What gave you that idea?”

She then practically threw herself on top of me and forced my arms straight. I didn't put up any resistance. She saw the fresh needle marks immediately. She took my handbag and dumped everything out onto the bed. Out came the syringe, some loose tobacco from the Roth-Händle cigarettes, and a whole pile of small foil squares—which used to contain my heroin. When I'd go into withdrawal and didn't have any dope, I'd use a nail file to scrape the last bits of dust from the paper to get one more shot out of it.

The stuff that fell out of my bag was proof positive that I was an addict. It had already become clear to her in the bathroom though. Not only did she find the bloody tissue and blood splatters, but also some soot from the spoon in which I cooked up the dope. She had already read a lot about heroin in the papers, and she'd put two and two together now.

Denying it was useless, so I gave up trying. Although I'd just given myself a really awesome shot of M-powder, I broke down and cried. I sobbed so hard that I couldn't get out a single word. My mom didn't say anything either. She was shaking. She was totally shocked. She left my room, and I heard her talking with her boyfriend, Klaus. Then she came back. She seemed a little calmer and asked, “Can't anything be done about this? Don't you want to get off that stuff?”

I said, “Mom, there's nothing I'd rather do. Seriously. You have to believe me. I really want to get away from all this.”

She said, “Good. Then we'll try it together. I'll take vacation days so that I can be with you the whole time, while you're going through withdrawal. We'll start today, right now.”

“That's great. But there's this one thing. Without Detlef I can't do it. I need him and he needs me. And anyway, he also wants to get off the stuff. We've talked about it for a while now. We were just waiting for the right time to do it. Together.”

My mom was completely stunned. “Oh, Detlef? Him too?” she asked, in a weak voice. She'd always liked Detlef and was proud that I'd found such a nice boyfriend. “Of course, Detlef too,” I said. “Do you think that I would've done this all by myself? Detlef never would've let me. But he also won't let me suffer from withdrawal without him either.”

I suddenly felt much better, almost cheerful. The thought of Detlef and me getting clean together really made me optimistic. After all, we'd been talking about it for a long time. But my mom was completely devastated. Her face turned a pale-green color, and I thought she was going to have a nervous breakdown. The news about Detlef had given her another shock. She was probably stunned by her own naïveté and gullibility over the last two years as well. And now there were more doubts haunting her. She wanted to know how I came by the money for the heroin. Of course, she immediately thought working the street, prostitution, etcetera.

I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth. So I lied: “Oh, I'd just asked people for a few marks here and there. And most of the time it worked. Then I also cleaned people's apartments or offices, off and on.”

My mom didn't pry any further. Once again she seemed very relieved that she got an answer that didn't confirm her worst fears. What she'd already found out on this particular Sunday was enough to totally devastate her. I felt truly sorry for my mom. It made me feel very guilty.

We drove off immediately to look for Detlef. He wasn't at Zoo Station, and he wasn't at Axel and Bernd's either.

In the evening, we went to see Detlef's dad. Detlef's parents were also divorced. His dad was a government official. He'd known for a long time what was up with Detlef. My mom criticized him for not telling her about what was going on. That's
when he almost broke down and cried. He was incredibly embarrassed about the fact that his son was a drug-addled prostitute. But he was glad that my mom wanted to do something about it. He repeated over and over, “Yes, we've got to do something.”

Detlef's dad had a whole bunch of sleeping pills and sedatives that he kept in his desk drawer. He gave them all to me because I told him that we didn't have any methadone, and that it would be absolute hell to try and get clean without any chemical assistance.

On the subway ride back home, I tossed down a whole handful of pills, because I could feel the withdrawal symptoms coming on. And then with all those pills in my system I felt pretty good and slept through the night.

The next morning, Detlef showed up at our doorstep. His dad had found him right away, and he was already in full withdrawal. I thought that was pretty courageous of him that he hadn't tried to give himself one last fix and arrived in the same state I was in. He must've known that I didn't have any more dope. And he said he wanted to be at the same level as me when we started going clean. He was a genuinely good and considerate guy.

So Detlef definitely wanted to get off the stuff just as bad as I did. And he was also glad that it was happening this way. Both of us were, like our parents, ignorant of just how stupid it is to have two addicts, who are also friends, trying to quit together. Because at some point one of them will get the other one going again, and they'll work each other up to the next shot. Well, maybe we did have some idea, just from the stories we'd heard. But then again, we were living within our own world of illusions. We always believed that whatever applied to other drug addicts somehow didn't apply to us. And anyway, we couldn't imagine doing anything of importance without the other.

Over the course of the morning, we were able to keep our heads above water with the pills from Detlef's dad. We could still
talk to each other. We painted a fantastically upbeat picture of our future after we'd gotten clean, and we promised each other to stay tough and brave through the next few days. Despite the pain that we were starting to feel, we were still pretty happy.