Falling in Love in West Berlin #1: Making a Discovery on the Train to Berlin
Being gay or not gay becomes irrelevant
John settled into his seat and waited for the train to leave the Stuttgart station. He played over in his mind highlights from the last few hours which he had spent in the Staatsgalerie Café speaking with Andreas. The hours had flown by and he was sorry to break off the conversation in order to catch his train to Berlin. He realized he was physically attracted to him. He had no idea if it was reciprocal.
The train started moving. As it headed out of the city, John felt excited about his upcoming trip behind the iron curtain to West Berlin but at the same time wished he had been able to linger longer in Stuttgart. He speculated about what might have developed with Andreas.
As it was dark outside, there wasn’t much to see out the window as they passed through clean, orderly towns with intermittent countryside, also orderly. John sat back in his seat and reviewed the few sexual encounters he had had with women since graduating college two years before. He had to admit that they were not particularly enjoyable, and each was a one-time occurrence. ‘I guess the women weren’t very satisfied with my performance,’ he mused.
But he never considered that he was gay. He had never felt a sexual attraction to men. And wasn’t sure if he was attracted in that way to Andreas. But there was a certain tingling feeling he felt within him as he looked at his handsome face, the dark hair and blue eyes. He clearly noticed his slim, well-built frame. John recalled he had known a few gay men when attending St. John’s University in Queens, but he never thought he might be sharing the same sexual inclination. They seemed focused only on sex and never spoke about falling in love with someone. John knew he had a soul thirsting for love — to love and be loved.
He looked out the window at the nighttime landscape. The train stopped at Ulm. He was glad no one entered the compartment. He liked having it all to himself. John sat back in the seat and closed his eyes. ‘Could I find true love with a man? Who was it that said, “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies”?’ He went over in his mind the course he took in Western spirituality during his senior year. ‘Was it St. Augustine? No,’ He dismissed that. ‘Ah, it was Aristotle,’ he exclaimed silently. John considered it might be more probable for such a unified love to exist between two people of the same gender. He resolved to remain open to the possibility. Meanwhile, he turned his attention to his upcoming adventure in West Berlin.
At around 1 am, he was jolted out of sleep by loud thumping steps boarding the train. He looked out the window and saw a deserted and shabby train station. Then the train started to move slowly through a no-man's-land of barbed wire fences, lookout towers, and bright searchlights. It was eerie. John’s heart started beating fast. He was the only one in the train compartment and so he couldn’t ask any questions about what would happen next. Suddenly the compartment door was forcefully opened and the overhead light was flicked on. John saw a uniformed East German guard standing in the doorway.
“Ausweiss!” He bellowed.
“What?” John asked. He was wondering if that was a special visa for passing through East Germany.
“Ausweiss!” He repeated, staring at John.
“I don’t have one.”
The guard sighed audibly, still staring at John.
“Pass-port!”
“Oh, okay, sorry. I didn’t understand.”
John smiled and handed the guard his passport. He looked carefully at John and then looked at the photo. He looked again at John and, apparently satisfied, he thumbed through multiple pages as though he were looking for the right one. Having found it, he forcefully stamped it and handed the passport back to John. He shut off the light and left. John took a deep breath. ‘I’m glad that’s over.’ He knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again, so he just stretched out and looked out at the dark, bleak landscape as the train slowly made its way to Berlin.
As the train approached the Bahnhof Zoo, John saw the towering ruin of the Memorial Church, the symbol of the postwar city. He was surprised to find the station seedy and dirty, with a number of drugged-out vagrants sleeping on the floor. ‘So different from Stuttgart,’ he thought. John proceeded to the accommodations office and procured a reasonably priced room in a pension not far from the center of the city.
Walking to the hotel on a quiet cobblestoned street in the Charlottenburg neighborhood, he soaked up the atmosphere. Because there was no evidence of damage from bombing during the war, he got a sense of what prewar Berlin was like. He conjured up images of Berlin of the 1920s, especially the wild nightlife he had read about, and was excited to explore the nocturnal world of the city.
John wondered if he would fall in love in this city. And if so, he suspected it would be with a man.
