*
01
Yeah, so it goes. You try to ease Friday off the shelf and the next thing you know the whole weekend comes crashing down on you. I actually wanted to meet up with some old friends, but they were busy playing poker. It’s a big thing now, poker instead of partying, I mean, you know, we’re adults. Since I didn’t want to sit there at the pros’ table getting drunk out of boredom, I just headed to my go-to bar, the Diamond, on my own and started drinking my way through four vodka-and-apple-juices. After an hour I was already pretty wasted and, above all, still alone, so I headed to a friend’s and drank his herb schnapps while we watched god knows what on television.
Before long we called a cab, drove to my go-to club, the Indo, and instead of ordering expensive vodka we just pooled our cash and got as much beer as we could. So then there was this fake-silver bucket filled with thirty Heinekens sitting on our table like a punk, while around us the plebs stood at tables piled with champagne bottles. After a few beers and a few failed attempts on the dance floor I fell asleep on one of the comfortable sofas.
Later I was woken by some friends and hauled out of there. After-party or something. Too much drinking rounded off with even more drinking. We drove to a glass house on the Gold Coast. First thing I did when we got there was to vomit in a Philippe Starck toilet. Then we drank tequila shots and played pool until everybody went off and found themselves a sofa in order to sober up a little. I spent a while staring dizzily into lights that shone on Warhols, then I fell asleep.
Suddenly: dawn. Fuck it, we thought. Just keep drinking. Look, either you go home or you don’t go home, and if you don’t go home, even though you know it’s the only sane thing to do, the only way to get through it is with a lot more alcohol and, if there’s still any left, the rest of the coke. What happens then is you get in this hazy, half-hungover fog state that feels pretty good but that’s also dangerous because actually it’s only ever going to get worse. So we went up and sat on the rooftop terrace, smoked weed and stared out at the lake, which was glittering and somehow disgustingly beautiful. After a few bottles of wine and vodka it finally just got to be too much. The sun was scorching, the joint was glowing, the alcohol was flowing and my nose, yes, was running.
I went looking for someone who was sober enough to drive me home. Taking public transportation in this state just isn’t possible. The host looked the least drunk and had to go into the city anyway. Thing was though he only took me as far as Paradeplatz. From there I had to walk half a kilometer in brutal daylight, reeling like a bum, before I could go hole up at home. Halfway there I made a quick stop at the Diamond to drink a large iced tea. While I was there the fat owner, who regularly spends the night on a sofa in his crummy bar, gave me a lecture about how shitty I was looking, thank you very much. Then home to bed.
After a few hours I woke up and it was already dark. I was still pretty tanked and already steeling myself for more drinking. After a quick shower and a sandwich I was ready. Actually the Indo was again on the program. “Talent” was supposedly being flown in from the Pink Paradise club in Paris. So the same thing as ever, just with strippers that you could neither photograph nor touch. Naturally there would be a huge crowd. I had invited far too many people to this thing, had promised free entrance to far too many and reserved far too few tables, which is to say, none at all. I therefore had a problem.
By the time I got to the Diamond for some preliminary drinking, you could say I had the solution in hand: I’ll just get so monumentally drunk—I mean I did still have a buzz on from the night before—that the bouncers at the Indo wouldn’t let even me in, their loyal customer of many years. After three half-liter glasses of vodka-Red Bull and a few whisky shots I arrived outside of the Indo and fell flat on my face, one leg still in the taxi. The bouncers didn’t let me inside, as planned, but in my addled state I’d long forgotten my plan and I got pissy and started screaming at them. It was no use, fortunately. Some friends managed after several attempts to stuff me into a cab, which took me home or at least away from there. My problem was solved, and whether or not my friends got in, no longer my concern. Then: blackout.
When I woke up the next morning with a two-hundred-pound hangover, there were several strange things that drew my notice. My cell phone was missing again, half of the clothes I’d had on were scattered out in the hallway, there was ketchup all over the kitchen, in the bathroom there were a brush, shaving cream, and hair gel that I didn’t recognize, and one of my shoes was on the front step.
*
02
It’s gotten so that I’ve started having blackouts even when I’m not drinking. More and more these days there will be things I don’t remember. Whole periods of time, gone. Just like that, moments I can’t explain, broken up over the course of a day. I stand there in the kitchen and ask myself why I’m there and what the hell have I been doing for the past twenty minutes. I stare out the window and my thoughts grind to a halt. I repeat numbers or words in my head over and over again—hundreds, thousands of times. Hours go by like this. I think it’s the drugs. It’s true I drink way too much here and there, but I mean, it’s the other drugs like coke or ecstasy and god knows what else that are so dangerous for the brain. That’s what you read anyway. And so I’ve made a deal with the universe: every week, starting on Monday, I give up drinking completely for three days, but in return that means the weekend starts on Thursday. This arrangement is supposed to somehow ensure that long-term consequences stay long-term. And I mean aside from that I still have some sense. Even though it was the weekend, my hands were shaking and I had this intense desire to do a couple lines of coke—right now, please—I felt compelled to abstain and stayed home. My immune system was fighting a losing battle against the flu. That hadn’t been an issue with me before. Whether cough or plague, my plans were made—I was going out. I’d made no exceptions back then.
But when I started wheezing and coughing up blood-flecked brown slime, I decided to swear off the nightlife. And so I just watched The Faculty streaming on the internet in the worst possible quality. Sleep just isn’t an option. I’ve ruined my circadian rhythm with synthetics. In any case, it’s a dreadful film. Though on the other hand at least Josh Hartnett movies are decent enough for masturbating to.
One way or another I was frustrated that my run-down health was making me waste a chance to get wasted. On K1 I saw the rerun of a particularly disgusting report on processed cafeteria food. And as I watched fat lunch ladies with thigh-sized biceps stuffing piles of meat into the never-ending phallus of an artificial sausage casing, I came close to puking.
Friday night, and here I was sweating and coughing and watching suggestive documentaries. Usually at this time I’d have had a buzz on that would no doubt have made bearable the lesser and mid-level drawbacks of my existence. But the problems you drink away come back in twos, they say. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m all about things getting better in the present moment, not later on. Carpe diem ad absurdum. All it is today is pathetic. Before I found it tragic. Or the other way around.
I swallowed two sleeping pills and escaped to a simpler world.
*
03
When I was in high school I got used to taking cabs everywhere. I even retained a chauffeur from time to time. So anytime class got too tedious, I could have myself driven to this or that country club in a comfortable Mercedes, Rolls, or stretch limo. And on the weekends I definitely had a driver. Back then my compatriots and I weren’t about to get shit-faced and remain stationary. So it was practical to have a large, impressive-looking car parked outside the club to take us on to the next one.
At any rate, for a long time it didn’t occur to me to drive myself anywhere. Which I mean under the circumstances was unconsciously responsible of me. I thought if I dreamed of the cool Astons, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis I was sure to own someday, then a driver’s license was bound to materialize in the glove compartment without my even doing anything. I was eighteen, I had no problem getting around, and I mean my friends didn’t have their driver’s licenses yet either. No reason to worry. No cause for envy. And so I gave myself time.
A year later my friends started waving their newly printed driver’s licenses under my nose and showing off the new wheels that went with them. I started to feel a bit undignified, twiddling my thumbs in the back seat of an armored S-Class instead of winking at death behind the wheel of my own speed demon. And so I signed up for the necessary courses. But then was too lazy to show up most of the time. And then after three hours of driving lessons I decided that the whole shifting gears thing was too much trouble. I thought to myself, fuck it, to hell with it! Who needs a driver’s license to drive anyway? If they catch me, it’s not like they can take my license away. I mean, it can’t be that illegal. And so I bought myself a cool black Daimler for a joke of a price. So my parents wouldn’t find out that I had a car, I never parked it at home but rather a few streets away. I kept racking up parking fines, but it was worth it. A new world opened itself up to me. Blasting my favorite music at passersby. Finally knowing first hand the pain of not finding a parking spot. Ashing out the window. Freedom on wheels. A two-ton proclamation—complete with leather interior—that at last I was an adult. I enjoyed it, because I knew it wouldn’t last.
After three months, an accident right in front of Zurich police headquarters, several blurry drives home from the Indo, a few just-how-drunk-can-I-drive experiments, and a bent axel, I was carless once again. All because one time I parked in the Rector’s parking space and he informed my heretofore unaware parents. They took the logical step and confiscated my car.
And so there’s no way around it. I need a driver’s license. I guess I also have to learn how to work a manual transmission. Manual transmission! Sounds like a disease. Or a way to get one. But lots of people find joy in stepping on unnecessary pedals and jerking the gearshift around like they were trying to get their poor vehicle to cum. It’s supposed to be sporty, I guess.
So after however long a time I had another driving lesson. Not with a certified driving instructor, but rather with a friend. And I was surprised at how well it went. I almost never stalled the engine, found the friction point again and again, even shifted from first to second and back. I ran over neither cripples nor schoolchildren. Not a scratch on the car.
After the lesson we went to the Diamond to pound whisky and vodka, then to the sketchy X-TRA to listen to Depeche Mode and dance around like idiots. Later still, schnapps, red wine, and YouTube videos at my driving instructor’s apartment.
As I stumbled home, I remembered why it’s so much easier to drive drunk than it is to walk drunk: fewer drunk muscles in play. When you’re stumbling, any uncontrolled movement can lead to a fall. One moment you’re trying to avoid a streetlamp, the next you’re lying in a drainage ditch. Driving is much less demanding. There all you have to do is turn a wheel so you can at least see a white line in the frame of the windshield.
Weaving, I walked bedwards through dark streets and hoped that I hadn’t already drowned my newly acquired driving skills.
*
04
Pubs are awesome! Soccer too. But only in combination. Many who know me would probably think my making this claim arises from a drunken mood. They can’t imagine what someone like me would be doing in such an establishment. That probably has to do with the image of the superior, arrogant brat that I have cultivated, intentionally and unintentionally, over the years and am finding all too difficult to shrug off today. That for a long time I only went around in tailored Zegna suits that I wore till they were falling apart and spent most of my time throwing my money around in so-called exclusive venues—I mean, it doesn’t have to mean anything. I paid so much for so many things, and they were nice, of course; great to have, lots of fun. But I mean I actually don’t even like the taste of Cristal. And actually the show that these Zurich trust fund brats put on makes me want to puke. Picture this: a teenager at the Indo, middle of the dance floor. With pimples on his face and no limit on his AmEx. On his wrist the ugliest Franck Muller that money can buy. His hairless chest resplendent under his wide open Dolce shirt. His scarf long since trampled on the floor. Unlit Cohiba in the corner of his mouth. And in his hands a bottle of Dom Perignon, ready to pop. A sight that I don’t necessarily want to put up with every weekend. A sight, however, that three, four years ago would probably have described me as well.
Nowhere is one spared from disgust. But sometimes it’s worth it to swap out one form of disgust for another. Thus did I return once more to the Oliver Twist. My favorite pub in Zurich. Unlike the usual bars, pubs, whether in England or not, are fully sealed off from the outside world. They are worlds unto themselves, into which one can escape. You step inside a den made of wood, smoke, beer, and carpets full of cigarette burns. The windows keep out any hint of daylight, you promptly start speaking English and immediately you feel right at home. I expect as little from the fish and chips I order as I do from the bathroom, and I am all the more cheered when they turn out to be totally inedible. That’s just part of it. Ugly pretty, I guess you’d call it. Like Frida Kahlo or Jean Reno. I don’t wish to embrace such places, and yet neither do I hold them at arm’s length. Naturally I try not to touch the doorknobs, and naturally I don’t roll around on the bathroom floor. And yet still such places call to me. It is here that those synapses start firing which before were dulled by vanity.
And so I sat in the Oliver Twist with an old friend and a Scottish guy and eagerly drank large Tetleys while we followed a soccer game on a greasy TV. I felt stupidly good, scarfing down mangled fish and fries dripping with grease, cheering at times for NEW, at others ARS, and soon I was jawing on in a fake dialect, feeling already like a born Brit, I forgot my haircut, suit and tie, made friends with the same people every five minutes and was just about to start telling stories from my gritty childhood in the East End when two bimbos in blue overalls forced their way into my perfect world. “Three packs for ten francs?” they asked. I quickly realized that I was still just in Zurich. Was brought back down to a questionable Earth, so to speak. As if the cigarette bimbos had sold me a change in atmosphere, I suddenly felt totally out of place. The crewcut exile Brits at the bar, all the cheering for goals and the smell of stagnation no longer seemed so cool to me then. I bought three for ten, ended my pub experience and went to the sole alternative, the Indo.
*
05
I can’t remember exactly when it was that I last left Zurich. Since my vacation in St. Tropez who knows how long ago, my sense of time has gone to shit. Something stopped working. My drinking too has been totally out of control since then. I get out less and less. Every trip, every outing seems not worth the trouble. Too demanding, all of it. On the other hand I’m languishing here on the banks of the Limmat.
That’s why I’d decided to go to St. Gallen for the weekend. To kind of an exclusive party. This event happens every year. You pay a hundred Francs, and in return they give you a wristband and you get to consume as much alcohol as you want. Kind of a losing transaction, I’d imagine. Not that anybody’s interested.
For me this occasion has always been something of a debacle. One time I threw up in a restaurant before the party even started, and I can’t remember the rest. Another time, after the party, I couldn’t find my way back to the apartment of the friend I was staying with. And every time I’ve lost at least one article of clothing. But of course the flat-rate politics of the organizers aren’t the reason I keep making the pilgrimage to St. Gallen. Many of my friends went to study economics at the university there after high school. Actually that was my plan too, but I decided against it. Even if the HSG is considered the best school for economics, even if all my close friends moved there, I wanted to stay in Zurich. I was still just hoping that so long as I changed nothing about my life, my life wouldn’t change either. So over time my ties to my old friends loosened. And therefore any excuse I get to visit them in St. Gallen is alright with me.
The train ride was a pain. It was packed, even in first class. The air was thick, and stank from all the snow-caked jackets cooking in the overheated compartment. Yokels with shopping bags. Families in rubber boots. Rheumatic joints. Runny noses. I just went to the dining car to stare at the newspaper over a few beers. Outside the snow was falling hard.
I had booked a room at the Radisson so as not to put a strain on any friendships. First thing I did was order room service: a club sandwich and a bottle of Absolut. Six glasses to go with it. For my imaginary guests. The party wasn’t happening till the next day and I wanted to have a few leisurely drinks to welcome myself to St. Gallen.
The next morning I woke up on the bed with my coat and shoes still on. The pillow mint had melted somewhere beneath me. The carpet was covered in broken glass, most of the furniture was tipped over. It was already midday. I took a shower, put on new clothes and stumbled down to the hotel restaurant to eat something. After a bottle of expensive Chianti and some kind of pasta I felt super jetset-y and sent the concierge to go track down this huge book on Stanley Kubrick. When I got bored again I went back to the room and ordered another bottle of Absolut.
At that point I stopped for a second and asked myself what the point of all this was. Ever since I’d gotten here I’d felt lonely. But the whole point of coming here was to party with my friends! The whole point of coming here was to do something good for myself! A little depressed, I turned on the television. The maids had cleaned up, the room was spotless. And outside it was already getting dark again. Right about now everybody else would be starting to get themselves in form. Dressing to the nines, no doubt. I still had a few hours to kill before I’d be heading to the party. I lay down on the bed, watched high diving and got drunk. After the first four drinks I had to throw up. That didn’t bother me at all. I felt neither happy nor depressed. Just comfortably numb. One after the other they dropped spectacularly into the water. When after a few more drinks I had to throw up again, I could barely see the screen anymore. Just keep going. It was already past midnight when I too tried to get myself in some kind of form and went looking for my friends. I felt like the last man on earth. I definitely needed coke. I took a taxi to the club where the party was happening. I bought coke from the first person who had it. Then I reeled towards the bathroom, where I had to wait for other people before I was finally able to do a few lines. “If it were legal we wouldn’t have to hide,” I screamed when somebody impatiently knocked on the bathroom door. I felt immediately better and started walking around the club. I sat down at various tables and talked to people I recognized. But everybody seemed too drunk to be able to keep up a conversation. I tried to buy a bottle of Absolut for myself but the servers were too busy. Every few minutes they brought more champagne to some loud table. Soon I was having trouble telling people apart. Every figure could just as easily have been a friend, a complete stranger or one of the servers. I just helped myself to every bottle that didn’t look like someone had a claim on it and out of caution spoke only to people who spoke to me first. Suddenly I saw someone coming towards me whose name I chronically forget. No matter where I am, he’s always showing up out of nowhere, and always when I’m particularly wasted, to criticize me for drinking too much. Before I could compose myself, he was standing in front of me and telling me my life was going to the dogs. I nodded, heartily agreed with him, and quickly excused myself to go to the bathroom.
At some point I lost my tie. Later my hat. Then every familiar face. Somehow people were now going to the Trischli. I made the rounds a few times to see if I could find someone I knew. Or, if need be, if I could get to know someone. If somebody would offer me a drink. If I could offer somebody some coke. But I didn’t see anyone. Just a mass of distant silhouettes closing out the night together. I still felt like the last man on earth.
Outside the morning was coming on and I realized that I didn’t remember where my hotel was. I didn’t have any money left for a taxi. How had I spent so much? I wandered around town, threw up behind a dumpster and at some point by pure chance I found the hotel. In the room I drank the rest of the vodka before falling asleep. That afternoon, as I was late checking out, the friendly woman at reception gave me my big Kubrick book. Then, still drunk and infinitely tired, I set out on my way back home.
*
06
It’s getting rarer and rarer that I don’t have a hard time falling asleep without getting drunk. Benzos help me just as little as reading or television. I’ll nod off sometime in the early morning, and only because at that point there’s really no other option left.
During these sleepless hours, when there’s no article left in “Week in the World” worth reading and the books on the nightstand are too imposing to start, I just try to lie quietly, get my pulse even and see if I can approach the impossible condition of thoughtlessness. And right when I’ve almost given up on falling asleep, but the dream world is starting to tease me with its coy velvet gloves, and the borders are starting to blur—that’s when I’m shaken awake again by the things I try so hard to ignore. It’s the small disappointments I’ve experienced that then seem so large—as indeed they are large. It’s the small offenses that then seem so dramatic—and in fact they always have been dramatic. And it’s the feeling of disgust, towards myself and everything else, which tastes so bitter then—as bitter as it always tasted. It’s all the things, basically, that I have to keep buried deep down so that I can live.
But once I’ve seriously started to consider just one depressing thought, that’s it, here come the rest. Same as with a glass of vodka. Everything that follows follows hard. And tears away with heightened drama all my defenses in its wake.
Too much, I castigate myself, too much have I ground into dust. Without ever wanting things to end up that way. Without ever suspecting that once things did end up that way, I might not like it. I shouldn’t be surprised at the tears that flow when I’m drunk and I take out old photos. But it’s not so much the guilt that weighs on me; it’s the innocence that I mourn.
I’m not the only one who in quiet hours is visited by his demons. But slowly their sting begins to weaken me.
In the East they have something akin to a dog fight. Several dogs are locked in a cage with a hyena and bets are made. In the beginning the dogs suffer horrible setbacks. The Hyena seems too strong. It can fatally injure a dog with one bite. The dogs limp around the hyena and snap at it, pitifully, until suddenly, unexpectedly, one lunges and injures the hyena. The other dogs smell blood and attack with renewed strength. It doesn’t take long for another dog to lunge. And another. And another. After a short time the once so powerful hyena lies gasping, near death, on the ground.
All the unhappy faces I’ve seen come together on sleepless nights to form a single crushing sadness. Whether it was the girl in kindergarten whose drawings I ripped up. Whether it’s feuding friends. Or whether it’s me, coked up, smiled at and pitied, speechless, there in some club.
*
07
The Diamond died recently. After a long illness. The owner had to sell it to avoid going bankrupt. Fortunately for me it’s not a problem. The bar, the name, the generous pours, that’s all going to stay the same, the only thing that’s changing is the name on the lease. And so we had the traditional drink-it-dry party. The idea is to hand over the bar dry, that is, with no inventory of alcohol. And we actually did drink the whole place dry. Everything on the house, of course. Whisky, vodka, wine—red and white—Bacardi, Ramazotti, Martini, grappa, and beer, we downed all of it in a frenzy till it was running out of our ears. At some point the boss lay down to sleep on a sofa. We kept going, took turns playing DJ, broke glasses and bottles, sang, screamed and danced, until there was nothing left to drink. Then we went out into the icy cold night and jumped into bushes until our jackets were all ripped up. The next morning I had to peel a blood-flecked bed sheet off my back. Hangovers—I’m so far gone by now, I don’t get them anymore.
*
08
New Year’s was nice. Started off at the new Diamond with a good crowd. Then by the lake in the pouring rain. Ohh. Uhh. Ahh. Dousing fireworks with Moët, celebrating. Gave a spontaneous interview to Radio 24. Ridiculous. We left before it was over to go meet old friends and better halves in an apartment in Niederdorf. Then two of them accompanied me, out of friendliness, to T&M, my favorite gay disco. I stood at the bar and ordered drinks. I wasn’t really in the mood, so a homophobic hetero and good friend started pushing me to go hit on a shy guy in the corner. I was already pretty drunk by that point so I went along with it. He was a cute guy with blond hair, seventeen or eighteen, in his prime at any rate. We were immediately on the same drunken wavelength. I kept forgetting what he said as soon as he said it, but it didn’t really matter. And it wasn’t long before he had his tongue down my throat. After two hours my friends left. And me and the guy went one floor up to Ahhh!, T&M’s fucking section.
The next morning I could have kicked myself. I neither had his phone number nor did I remember his name. Searching desperately for details, I couldn’t get this boy out of my head.
Missing a chance like that is frustrating, sure, but it always stokes an old fire in me. It’s not like usual, where my view of things is just: Oh yes, yes, I’m gay. Who cares? Noodle salad? If I’m not currently in a relationship, I think of being gay as a kind of vague tool that I can fall back on whenever I need to realize my sexuality. Of course I check out good-looking men on the street, but it’s not anything pronounced. It doesn’t strike me as especially cool or extraordinary. But after experiences like this New Year’s Eve, or back when I was first realizing that I was gay, the feeling is totally different. With me it never lasts particularly long, but I like it a lot. It’s being aware that you belong to a minority. Being certain that you’re different. Thinking it’s hot to think boys are hot. Being gay as something that takes prominence. That blocks out the everyday. That makes my heart beat faster. That shoots adrenaline into my bloodstream.
Gay not just as a means to sex, but as cool in and of itself. Of course I love sex, and not much works without it, but what hetero gets any kind of kick out of being hetero other than at the exact moment when he’s inside a woman?
*
09
And once again school is fucked. I felt this creeping sense of certainty that it’s all for the birds. I mean, from the start, my interest in school was just a means of sustaining hope. I have to do something conformist, I thought. If only to give my life structure. And to give my dream of a high-paid position realistic chances. But that wasn’t reason enough to tackle the work. As of a few weeks ago I stopped going to class altogether.
Yeah, well, fuck it! I tried at least. No, I didn’t even try. I think maybe college is fundamentally not for me. I’m bored enough on my own. I don’t need any side-part-wearing, sweater-tied-around-their-shoulders-I’ll-be-a-millionaire-someday-lame-asses from the economics department. And I can do without the elitist I-know-all-about-Kant frauds from the philosophy department too. And the slipper-wearing lefty German Lit. students whose clothing seems to consist of all different kinds of neckerchief, them I’m also fed up with. And the goddamn TAs. You don’t even have to open your mouth and already they’re patronizing you. You take care not to even look in their direction. Before you know what’s happening they’re droning on and on at you, giving interdisciplinary justifications for why it’s more efficient for them to still live with mommy at age thirty-five. With one finger up their nose, they shower their professorial ambitions over defenseless students like so much dandruff and fail to notice that for three months they’ve had the same piece of toilet paper hanging out of their pants.
An institution of higher knowledge? Bah! The only thing universal about the university is the fat-assed bureaucratic monster that looms over every department. And the educational incest. Spoiled fruit. Vomited out by one generation and fed to the next. Over and over again. Till all the vitamins are gone. They can run in circles without me. I’m sitting this one out.