EAST BERLIN
by Benjamin Graber
Now what am I going to do? I came over here knowing everything. I mean it’s easy, right? America the big bully, the new colonial power, acting like it’s out to save the world when we know the truth. We know that it’s an avaricious, capitalistic, monopolistic, empire-seeking behemoth that thinks it can make Rome and Greece, let alone the Great British Empire, all look like kids’ play. Show up the French, that’s what we thought, no Dien Bien Phu for the big bad Yanks. My hair had grown long. I was several baths short of tidy – no “Clean for Gene” over here. We anti-American Americans here in Europe could care less about trying to work within the system. Tear the sons of bitches down. Take it into the streets.
So now what do I do? Because I have seen the face of communism, and it sucks, it’s not fair. I was minding my own business, stealing little pastries from the coffee stalls, basically having a grand time in West Berlin. Then, for reasons no longer recalled, I decided I should see East Berlin as long as was here and all. So I did my thing with the trains and crossed in at the Freidrichstrasse gate, figuring I’d sneak a peek at old Checkpoint Charlie on my way out of the Eastern Burg. I got out at the station and, oh my goodness – no goodness, it's all gray, man. I mean not even black and white. I couldn’t write propaganda depicting it that could match how ugly and barren it was. I guess I can sort of understand leaving all the war-rubble for a while, but, over twenty years later, you can’t do a little pick up? Guess they were showing them Krauts who lost the war, had to make sure this next generation pays for all the Russians killed. That kind of logic did great things after the first war. It really helped prevent the next one, right?
Jeez, how is one supposed to like these people? My friends and I never really got into liking those Soviet idiots up on the parade thing, watching all those missiles and almost goose-stepping troops flow by. But they were just the political idiots like ours, right? Everyone knows socialism is different from communism anyway – and socialism rocks – it’s the future.
Yeah, well flash me elsewhere, folks. Gray, I tell you ... it was all gray. And there were lines for food. The restaurants were the saddest looking things I ever hope to see and shopping, yeah right. Forget about it; it’s not happening. I gotta tell you, there's a reason they put up that Wall, and it wasn’t just to keep folks in. They didn’t even want them to see what was over there – a modern city with neon lights and people actually smiling.
I guess you can understand, then, why I freaked. I mean, I got to Checkpoint Charlie and planned to stroll on out and think this all through, and they told me I can’t leave. There, a few hundred yards across No Man’s Land, was the Stars and Stripes, my flag. Yeah I know, I never thought I’d say that either. And these guys in green uniforms were telling me I couldn’t leave.
I started poking them right in their brass-buttoned chests. And I wasn't even stoned; that’s what’s funny. I guess they had a minimal sense of humor because, while no one laughed, they did get some jerk to explain to me that I had to leave by the same gate I came in. That’s freedom. Freedom to do it exactly their way, or not at all.
I groused my way to the Freidrichstrasse Station and now I am sitting here. I guess I should be grateful I'm not stuck in some Eastern German gulag. My heart is pretty much back in my chest now, but my head, my mind, that's what’s lost. Me a patriot? Nah, it’s not going to happen. But what am I going to do? I got to think about this. I need some smoke.
END
Benjamin Graber (Bjm) lives in Omaha, Nebraska where at 60 he has reincarnated as a fiction writer. His short stories have been published in F2K-zine, Fine Lines Journal, Uber, Another Realms, Defenestration and Anti Muse. His poetry has been published in Fine Lines and an anthology of Nebraska poets, Annex 22. In a previous lifetime he was a psychiatrist and internationally recognized sex researcher and co-author of Woman’s Orgasm celebrating it 30th year in print in 2005. For the last year and a half, he has been studying in Alex Keegan’s Boot Camp.
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