Our town was boring, historical, post-industrial \u2013 both pretty and hideous, a drunk town. A tall gothic cathedral, a baroque square, a castle-turned-brewery-turned nothing. A closed-down chicory coffee factory and other food imitation factories on the outskirts. Their buildings slowly deteriorated, patiently waiting to become Nestle. Train tracks wormed the historical center; connecting us with Prague, Vienna, Berlin. Yet, most people stayed here and drank.<\/p>\n
My mum recalled the sad eyes of Tatiana buying a frozen pizza and three bottles of the cheapest wine in the local supermarket after her marriage fell apart. My dad called Tatiana a witch who couldn\u2019t keep it together.<\/p>\n
The commonly known identities of the drunks hung shamefully as warning signs on the medieval walls of our town: the neighbor Tatiana, Jolanka\u2019s dad and later my dad.\u00a0 I only heard people asking who was an alcoholic, but not how or why we all drank. These feral people were unable to tame their spirits like the ordinary citizens. Being an alcoholic felt almost intrinsic to character. Considered a middle-age identity, teenage drinking didn\u2019t constitute a substance problem. How many drinks did we have left till we would fall over the walls with the unleashed drunks?<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
Jolanka\u2019s mum gave us a copy of We Children from Zoo Station<\/i> in an attempt to scare us. I read the book three times in a row. The Berliner Christiane F. fought with her boyfriend a lot and went to a David Bowie concert in Kreuzberg when she was 14. Walking our streets, I imagined living the glamorous parts of Christiane\u2019s F drug addiction lifestyle. I wanted Berlin, I wanted Bowie, I wanted to be Christiane.<\/p>\n
When I visited the local library, I requested all available copies of national and international addiction biographies. I was proud to discover that one of them was set in our town, Heroin, druggies and the end like sweet nothing<\/i>.\u00a0 By the age of 12, drug memoirs had become my expertise.<\/p>\n
Around the same time, our school made the unwise choice to entrust our art teacher Plachy (translated as \u201cShy\u201d) with the drug prevention program.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd you\u2019ll be silent, finally!\u201d, he\u2019d shout, his pointer enchanting us like a magic wand. It never worked – the class wasn\u2019t shy, but disinterested.<\/p>\n
The pointer pierced the repulsive pictures from rehabs that hung on the chalkboard. \u201cWho has heard of barbiturates?\u201d, he asked. His look fell on me in the first row and my overconfident 12-year ego flared up. I recited their substance and effects, the calm, the numbness, the low of the heroin high. Like Christiane F. explained.<\/p>\n
As a part of the addiction prevention scheme, our class was invited to attend the screening of a true-story film, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker, a former heroin addict. \u201cWith music by Vasek from a famous boy band trio\u201d, the poster read.\u00a0 And yet the story-telling was so predictable that, by the time Vasek showed up on screen, I fell asleep. The pale-looking filmmaker came on stage and finished the projection with a dull sentence: \u201cDon\u2019t do drugs, kids, they will ruin your life.\u201d We couldn\u2019t wait to escape the boredom into the summer day. It turned out that not every addiction made for a good story.<\/p>\n
My literary interests quickly moved on to something else, yet my fascination with Christiane F. hasn\u2019t. I had two years to try all the non-heroin options our town offered before going to Berlin.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
I was hypnotized by the selection of colorful cocktails shown in the menu card of the Italian pizzeria. \u201cJust take one of the lighter ones,\u201d Mum said while spying over the menu over my dad\u2019s shoulder.<\/p>\n
The terrace of the newly opened Italian pizzeria overlooked a baroque fountain and the plague column at the main square. A slender sandstone figure in a simple, yet elegant dress formed from the centerpiece of the column. While we waited for my very first alcoholic drink, I made eye contact with her. She was the newly re-erected Maria Immaculaty, the ultra-clean depiction of Mary.<\/p>\n
In the 17th century, Maria Immaculaty was installed on the pedestal by an unknown sculptor as a gesture of thanks for stopping the plague that wiped out half of the town\u2019s inhabitants. Maria had the world literally at her feet: standing on a marble globe, looking up to the sky, her hands in prayer, a star nimbus in her wavy hair. I was wondering how she came to these super powers and saved the town.<\/p>\n
When my Tequila sunrise arrived, it looked like a sling dairy-less version of an ice-cream sundae. At the first sip, I felt disappointed by the juice taste. Then the alcohol froze my tongue for a second like a bee sting.\u00a0 I drank until the last drop. I even ate the disgusting neon-colored cherry. I waited to see how the alcohol kicked in. I chewed the edges of my pizza Hawaii \u2013 together with the chicken and peach steak, an invincible survivor of the meaty fruity Czech 90s, the era of the sticky and fruit and meat combinations, the more exotic they were considered, the better. I took my sunglasses on and off. Nothing, the saint at the plague column looked as bland as before.<\/p>\n
After that, I sipped cocktails every now and then with mum. In a couple of months,\u00a0 I figured out that four drinks was my limit without getting wasted.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
The last day of April, the Central and Northern European witches flew to their sacred stone. When the witches arrived, they prepared their signature cocktail: aloe, aconite, Datura, belladonna, aka the deadly nightshade, dissolved in the fat of an innocent boy.\u00a0 Then the devil showed up in half-human, half-bock form. The witches changed their suit, dog to wolf, or ordinary mortal, and gossiped about their malevolent actions over the last year. The witches, the devil and their friends became more intoxicated on the stone and pursued their activities. They fornicated and worshiped each other.<\/p>\n
And so on the Witches Night\u2019s afternoon, Jolanka, Anezka and I were headed to a party. Dressed in Vans and a Fishbone jacket, I led the way through the high grass alongside the train tracks. The hour\u2019s walk got shorter thanks to cola mixed with boxed wine and clove cigarettes. The Witches Night was going to be our big night out.<\/p>\n
On Witches Night, the villagers climbed the hills and set fires, throwing into the air burning broomsticks that looked like flying witches. For a long time, the Catholic church in the Czech country tried to reclaim the local celebration for apostles, such as Philip or James. Yet the celebration of burning witches might even be a story popularized by the church itself, in later centuries burning women and queer people, calling them witches. The Witches celebration remained pagan and popular. I never understood why the church chose such a spectacular, showy execution of the misfits by fire.<\/p>\n
During the spring that followed my cocktail inauguration, our town was burning witch effigies for Tibet by selling beer in plastic cups, while the Tibetans were fighting for the existence of their country by self-immolation. The sheer absurdity of using every opportunity to get wasted didn\u2019t make up for the few Czech crowns that might have been sent for charity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not a party, it\u2019s a solidarity event to support the independence of Tibet. Even the nuns are joining. It\u2019s run by the monastery\u201d, Jolanka half-lied to her parents about the attendance of our teacher. Jolanka\u2019s dad, the alcohol-loving reporter, threatened to join. But then her mum made him prepare the wood for the witches in their garden instead.<\/p>\n
Anezka lied and said she was staying overnight at our house.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t ask my parents for permission, I asked them to drive us all home from the party. I had the strange privilege of conservative, yet lenient parents. In the midst of their arduous divorce, busy fighting each other, they started to apply a Buddhist \u201clive and let live\u201d approach to my upbringing. They didn\u2019t care, and I pretended I didn\u2019t care either. A 14-year-old grown-up. I gained personal freedom by becoming self-sustainable, not showing, not telling, and occasionally guilt-tripping them into small favors.<\/p>\n
On the fortnight of the Witches Night,\u00a0 the villagers stood on crossroads; cracking whips, ringing bells, clanking pots and pans. They feared the spells that the witches cast to amuse themselves during their long commute to the stone. It was believed that the spells sent the enchanted villagers wandering, plundering the crop they sowed themselves months before.<\/p>\n
We arrived at the empty industrial location on the outskirts of town during the sound check of the metal band. The sun of the Tibetan flag was flying over the bonfire and music stage. The cool kids from our school were there \u2013 heavily made up punk girls and metal head boys, everyone older than us. In the crowd, I noticed Theo, the pale kid from my theater group who ate a bag of licorice on the bus trip to Prague to see the Witches of Salem<\/i>. I inhaled my real cigarette exactly like they taught me at the camp, and finished the bottle of the wine and cola drink. Theo smiled but turned away.<\/p>\n
Jolanka, Anezka and I cruised around and got some beers in plastic cups. After that we just stood around like lemons. I was so bored that I accepted a drink from someone passing by. Waiting for something to happen, I said yes too soon when Anezka\u2019s neighbor Bohus invited me to smoke a joint.<\/p>\n
We sat down on a big stone behind the stage. He rolled the joint, thicker than a broomstick.<\/p>\n
\u201cMom\u2019s coming, \u201d I said. I held my very first marijuana smoke in my cheeks like a squirrel.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d He took the joint from me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI smoke weed all the time!\u201d I tried to convince him and myself that I didn\u2019t use the beginner\u2019s smoking method of calling mum to make yourself scared and inhale the smoke.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you\u2019re still calling mum?\u201d Bohus didn\u2019t believe a word.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course not!\u201d I dramatically exhaled, my voice scratching like a broken record. He leaned back, squinting his freckled eye-lids in the orange ball of sunset.<\/p>\n
\u201cEasy on that rocket\u201d, I heard Bohus saying. I laid down on the stone and kept inhaling.<\/p>\n
The last thing I remembered was bending over to not to puke on my Vans and Bohus holding my hair. The second last thing I remembered was waking up on the stone alone, dirt in my mouth, messy hair-<\/p>\n
When my mum picked us up, her eyes glanced over me. She shook her head and then searched for the others. Anezka, Bohus and Jolanka were sitting at the fire, making sausages on a stick and singing along with the guitar, like the rest of the country on Witches night.<\/p>\n
On the way home, we stayed silent.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
On that Witches night, I had built an internal wall to protect myself from my feelings. I learnt a spell to set myself free, in the limited sense of freedom of a central European teenager who drinks her messy feelings away, allegedly to support Tibet. On many nights that followed, I rehashed feelings with beer, vodka, cocaine, and let them all out before I forgot everything.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
I had a new boyfriend who was a beautiful boyfriend and a beautiful girlfriend.<\/p>\n
I met Theo again on the bridge on our way to school, our Dr. Martens marching in opposite directions. I was proud of the fact that my hair color matched the wine red of my boots (that were fakes, by the way). Jolanka and I composed the first message on my Nokia. \u201cWould you like to meet for a jamming session?\u201d It said and they took upon the signal.<\/p>\n
The first time I went over to check the guitar at their house on the hill with a wild garden, their dog didn\u2019t want to let me in. Theo\u2019s room was painted all black, like a chamber. Theo lied down in bed, crossed their arms over their body, pretending it was a coffin. We started jamming. I was a better guitar-player than Theo but I didn\u2019t dare to start a band.<\/p>\n
I started to wear all black, too. I threw away the burgundy Dr Marten shoes that my dad bought for me just several months ago, but my dad didn\u2019t seem to mind. Theo and I walked our sleepy industrial town with Slipknot playing simultaneously on our CD-Walkmans, trying to hit the beat at the same time. The first time I came with them was close to the train tracks across the Elbe while we listened to \u201cWait and Bleed\u201d.<\/p>\n
The month after, they changed the o in Theo into an a. When we were alone, they let me call them Thea. I was the only one to know, which meant this was love. We made plans to see David Bowie in Berlin in the autumn. My summer job in the fish factory would provide for a return ticket and a half.<\/p>\n
On a stormy night when they were at a summer camp I got woken up by a call from Anezka\u2019s brother. Theo was involved in an accident, he told me. They were hit by a train and were now lying in a hospital bed. It wasn\u2019t so bad: they would survive but there was blood. When I asked for more details, he hung up. The next ten minutes I shivered, going through my options.<\/p>\n
Anezka\u2019s brother called again .\u201cPrank!\u201d, he laughed, \u201cWe called the whole class and you were the only one who believed us.\u201d<\/p>\n
I cried myself awake to blurry bloodshot images of Thea every time I shut my eyes. Then over the summer, Thea\u2019s metal taste darkened. She attached a ragdoll to her backpack by a string from the toy\u2019s neck. On our six month anniversary, she broke up with me. The message was delivered through Bohus. I thought it was a prank.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
They were a boy again when I met him a year later at an emo punk concert they would have mocked before. The spark in his eye was paler than ever when he approached me with a succinct but sincere apology in front of a music club in the basement of a Calvinistic church. \u201cMy grandfather\u2019s madness might have skipped a generation\u201d, Theo said. \u201cI drank two bottles of potato rum a day till they kicked me out of school\u201d. I nodded. We hugged and minded our own business.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
I imagined my first time in Berlin rather differently to spending it accompanied by a group of nuns.\u00a0 I wanted a bit more than two sweaty hours at shitty Alexanderplatz, which felt like I hadn\u2019t yet left the Czech Republic. The only thing I saw was the socialist Palace of the Republic and the TV Tower, with the sun shining a cross on its silver globe.<\/p>\n
I traveled to France with the Christian youth that I wasn\u2019t even a part of. The trip happened on behalf of Sister Frantiska, who promised me a whole day in Berlin. She proposed to my atheist parents the offer to teach me French in the local monastery out of goodwill, and I had been taking French classes with religious vigor since I was 12. I loved French but really didn\u2019t feel like spending my summer with her. I held tightly on to my mum\u2019s coat, hugging her as she was standing in the open door of the train coach. She almost fell down on the platform when the doors closed and the train coach took off.<\/p>\n
On the train to Berlin I tried to hash out my second thoughts: I flashed my pentagram to provoke my peers and shared a bottle of vodka with a future priest I had lent my Station Zoo<\/i> copy to a teenage nun-to-be who never gave the book back.<\/p>\n
We finished the second bottle while we were walking around Alexanderplatz and then waited for the rest of the Christians and the bus. \u201cYou\u2019ll see Zoo station on our way back from France\u201d, Sister Frantiska repeated at my insistence, her ultramarine eyes lighting up her face.<\/p>\n
We opened the third bottle as we boarded the bus. We passed only green lights at the junctions in the west of Berlin. I sensed my final destination was near. I looked up to the angel of the Victory column, who was guarding the city, and prayed.<\/p>\n
As if by fate, there was a hushed sound and the bus halted. Something from under the bus was fuming. One of my catholic peers couldn\u2019t hold the vodka and the sudden stop. The drivers and Sister Frantiska were calming the chaos and the puke on board, while the rest of the nuns gathered outside to examine the bottom of the trunk.<\/p>\n
I slipped out of the coach without anyone noticing, just like I prayed for. I memorized the whole way back to Zoo station with the instinct of a kidnapped cat. I walked enchanted through the park till I reached the station. It was dirty and magical, like Christiane had said. I listened to the punks playing music, sat down under the bridge, and waited until someone found me.<\/p>\n
###<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our town was boring, historical, post-industrial \u2013 both pretty and hideous, a drunk town. A tall gothic cathedral, a baroque square, a castle-turned-brewery-turned nothing. A closed-down chicory coffee factory and other food imitation factories on the outskirts. Their buildings slowly deteriorated, patiently waiting to become Nestle. Train tracks wormed the historical center; connecting us with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":18112,"template":"","categories":[50,12],"class_list":["post-18448","stsp_text","type-stsp_text","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-22","category-non-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n