Derek Barton                                                                                           about 3,300 words

1322B Milton St.

Tallahassee, FL 32303

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derekbarton@derekbarton.org

The White Room

by Derek Barton

The white room was my refuge, my release, until you came along.  Lord knows worse things have happened in Berlin, more savage things than happened in that room.

I met you at a party, one of those “meta-parties” as Ute calls them, that one finds his way to only via other parties, never directly, and whose invitation is a tap on the shoulder and a whisper in the ear.  You were there alone, and seemed to be enjoying yourself, an American reveling in the desires that boil and fester in Berlin after dark.  Ute was with me, ever the attention getter, ever soaking up the adoration of men.  She wore her white vinyl suit and a pair of wings, her hair braided into twin ponytails that popped out the sides of her head.  She walked among the sweat-covered, undulating, muscular bodies, reveling in the charged aura of sex and drugs, grabbing whatever took her fancy.  Everyone loved her.  I was watching you, standing at the bar with a fluorescent green drink in your hand, looking somewhat out of place and not seeming to mind.  Your shirtsleeves were tied around your waist, and your chest was gleaming, smooth-shaven, in the changing colored lights.

You seemed oblivious to the stares you were getting, and avoided my eyes almost instinctually—the detachment of the true tourist, so refined as to be unconscious.

“Ute,” I said.  She smiled at me, handed me the glittery little scourge she had been using on a jewel-like black ass.  “Look at this one,” I said, pointing at the tourist.

“Cute,” she said.  “I bet he’s strange, though.”

The black man was looking around the corner of his ass, wondering why the punishment had stopped.  I flicked the scourge idly against his ass again.  “Why don’t you go talk to him?” I asked Ute.

She parted her bruise colored lips.  “Why can’t you go?” she said after a moment.  “You’re the hottie.  You’re what these guys want, not me.”

“But you’re so much better at picking up guys than I am.”

She smiled.  “Just wait right there,” she said.

She went over and chatted with you, and I looked around the party, not wanting to seem too interested, or to seem like I had sent her over to you.  I saw many familiar faces there.  Berlin is a big city, but this hardcore crowd is pretty exclusive, and ruled by a few older men who like to keep their pets in one place.  I was a favorite of several of these old patron saints.  I don’t know exactly what it was that drew people to me, especially those sorts.  Maybe they could sense how truly abnormal my tastes are, even though I never joined in that much at parties like these.  That wasn’t my style.

I looked back over to the bar.  The big beefy guy standing on the bar was dancing near you.  Dancing for you, obviously. Even though Ute was chatting you up quite well, you were glancing around at that brown-skinned track and field star.  I saw that if I waited much longer, I would lose my chance.

Everything went in the usual way.  I walked up and said something to Ute (I can’t even remember what anymore, and of course its not important) and then wedged myself into the conversation.  Ute disappeared shortly after, leaving me to talk with you.

“I’m just in Berlin for the weekend,” you said, looking around as if you couldn’t let your eyes rest for a moment for fear of missing something.

“Are you staying with friends?” I asked.

“No, at the Hotel Sachsenhof.”  It was only the most notorious hotel in Berlin’s gay triangle, whose hallways were lined with doors open just a crack, like spiders’ dens.  “I’ve never seen anything like this before!” you said.  “I don’t know whether to stand against the bar and giggle and blush, or to join in.”

“Well, that depends,” I said, “on whether you’re a watcher or a participant.  I like both, sometimes.”  Your eyes stopped on me for a moment, before resuming their circling of the room.  “Have you seen the whole party yet?”

“You mean there’s more?” you asked.  “I’ve just seen this room.”

“Of course there’s more,” I said.  “Come on, I’ll show you.”  I took your hand, and felt your strong grip, not recoiling from mine.  You seemed happy to finally be touched, here where so many others were enjoying that pleasure without you.  We walked across the dance floor, weaving our way through hard blank-eyed bodies.  These perfect men seemed so far away, so lost in their own minds, in the twistings and turnings of whatever drug was in their blood, that only the bodies were left, groping blindly out for other bodies, clinging to whatever they found, or perhaps turning into a spiraling dance with themselves, hypersensitive, whirling, imploding.  Black angels swooped from the ceiling, muscular, fluid, coming together in mid-air over the dance floor, swooping apart again.  Iridescent drag queens clambered on top of speakers, screaming, crying, dancing in a revelation of glamour.  The men’s eyes were drawn from each other and toward them, mesmerized.

We finally made it to the other side of the room, my hand still gripping yours.

“Where are we going?” you asked, not apprehensive but expectant, aroused.  I pulled you into a dark hallway, around a corner where the lights of the dance-floor were cut off.  We were alone there for a moment.  I gripped you, held your body against mine, felt the hard planes of your chest, kissed you.  Someone passed us in the dark, his arm hair brushed against my back in a deliberate way.  I pulled off my pants, hung them on one of the hooks I found in the dark, got yours off too—you didn’t resist.  Naked we stood together in the dark.  Still gripping you, my hand found the door that I couldn’t see, but knew was there.  Steam billowed out and around us, a dim illumination emerged, and we passed inside.

“This is the labyrinth,” I whispered to you.  “Stay with me.”

“OK.”  I could hear the excitement in your voice.  We groped our way through the dark, steamy maze, past still, silent figures that were only suggestions of people, of presences in the faint light.  Sometimes our hands met something wet, something warm, firm or yielding, still or in motion, hairy, smooth, that retreated or came nearer.  The only thing that we held to, the only fixed point, was my hand gripping yours.

You became aware of it first, the moaning, the furtive movement.  Where I had led you, now you were guiding me, down one corridor and then another, turning, shouldering past damp forms that yielded and disappeared, and then we were there.

It came from the darkness directly before us, though we could see nothing.  But we could hear the quickened breaths.  There was a strangled moan, a shuffling as of feet seeking purchase.  I was behind you, and I pressed myself against you, reached around you.  Others were pressing near, drawn by the breathing.  Hands, pressure, movement, breath, encircled you and I and time and substance gave way and there was only the touch of a hand or a body or a feeling of hot breath, your back against the cold wet wall.  The whole body poured into fire-soaked fingertips, into a few burning centers. 

Later, after the mass of bodies began to splinter apart, we found our way out breathless, laughing.  We reclaimed our clothes from the dark hallway, and went back to the dance floor, for the moment content to just watch the dance.

“That was amazing,” you said, your arm around my waist.  “And we’d never know which of these guys…” You gestured out at the dance floor, trailing off.

“This is an eye-opener for you, I think.”

He smiled.

We ordered some drinks, sat down, and cuddled for a while, kissed, talked, and enjoyed the eyes that were on us.  We were two beautiful guys, greater than the sum of our parts in a place like this.

After a while you seemed restless again.

“Well, have I seen everything now?” you asked, fixing me with your watery blue eyes.

I was silent for a moment, didn’t answer you.  I thought about the white room, whether or not I should show you.  I decided.  “There’s something else I want to show you.”

We got our coats from the Garderobe and climbed the steps up to the street.  We came out on Leipziger Strasse.  The air was gray, and our breath fogged out before us while we walked quickly against the cold, our shoulders hunched.  Double-decker buses lumbered by.  A green polizei van was parked at the curb.  Behind the severe gray buildings, great metal cranes rose over Potsdamer Platz, picked out against the sky in sodium light, like a forest.  Only a few people passed us on the sidewalk, human forms wrapped in gray wool, with only eyes visible, peeking out above heavy scarves.

We found a Döner Imbiss, and in the stifling heat of the kebabs turning behind the counter, we ate our döners: flatbreads filled with spicy lamb, cabbage, and sheep’s cheese.  The three men behind the counter talked animatedly in Turkish while they worked, and halfway through our meal the oldest man, who was chopping lettuce with a huge knife, started to sing.  It was in Turkish--a wailing, ululating song.  We fell silent along with the other late-night costumers, listening to the unknown words, their agony and longing.  A boy brought us tea in little curved glasses.  It was hot and neon green, and tasted sweet, like fruit candy.

After the Imbiss, we found our way to the U-Bahn station, and took the train to Prinzlauerberg.  We crossed the street, where only taxis were to be seen at this time of night, and plunged into an alley.  There we came into the reality of Berlin: pock-marked stone, rusted iron, graffiti, metal shutters pulled down over shop windows, cigarette machines, empty bus stops.  We had to squeeze through a hole in the fence, clamber across a weed-clotted pair of railroad tracks, onto the crumbling, unused platform.  Beneath a faded sign with the word “Ausgang” in black letters, a flight of steps led down into the dark.

“Come on,” I said to you, and started down the stairs.  To my surprise, you followed without hesitation.

We descended a long time, moving cautiously on the damp, slippery stairs.  “Stay close,” I said when I sensed you were a bit above me, and waited for you to catch up.  “Just a little farther.”  We descended a few more stairs, and then we were in the white room.

#

As far as I knew, Ute and I were the only ones that knew about it.  She had shown it to me, and I suppose someone had shown it to her; I can’t imagine how she would have found it on her own.  Still, we didn’t know of anyone else that went there but me and her, and we never went together.  We had sworn never to tell anyone else about it, and to never to talk about what we did there.

I’m not sure why I broke that promise for you.  Maybe I wanted to show off, and make you feel somehow indebted to me.  I think, more importantly though, that I sensed in you one of those rare people who can push themselves to the edge of experience, someone who life flows through but does not touch—someone like me.

There was no door, no transition between the pitch-black stairway and this glaring white room.  From one moment to the next, we simply arrived.  I was glad to see that you took it in stride.

There was a young man in the room, that glaring white room with no doors.  The young man smiled as we crossed the room.  He wore a black beret, but his skin was pale and even his eyes almost without color.  His lips were red and glistened.  He held a book in his lap, and put a silk bookmark over the page.

“Have you come to visit me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “We have.”

“Good, good.”  He closed his book. “Sit down. Can I have Joseph fetch the tea?”

“Here are the rules,” I said to you.  “We can’t leave anything in here, and we can’t take anything out.”

You looked at me thoughtfully, and nodded.

“Rules?” the young man smiled, laying his book on a shelf.  “I do love games.  Shall we play a game?”

I was already unbuckling my belt.

#

“What do you do here?” you asked him.

“I live here,” the young man said, as if it were obvious.

“And when we leave?” You were improvising restraints on the settee, binding his hands to it and tying his ankles together above his head. “What happens when we shut the door and leave you like this?”

“Then I shall have Joseph untie me.”  He grinned at you.  “But you won’t be leaving just yet, I think.”

“No,” you said, “not right now.”

#

“You don’t remember us?”

“No,” he said, putting his book on a shelf.  “We haven’t met.”

“See,” I whispered to you.  “Do you believe me yet?”

“What’s your name?”

“David, and yours?”

“Abel,” you lied.  “Tell me, we’re not from here.  Where could we find a good pub?”

I walked behind his chair, put my hands on his shoulders.

“Well, Derby’s is probably your best bet—what are you doing?”

#

We had been going to the white room together every few days for almost a month, and then suddenly you didn’t want to anymore.  You wouldn’t even talk about it.  I thought maybe you were hanging out with someone else.  I was jealous, but I didn’t say anything about it to you.  I thought I would wait for the right time.

Then there was the night Ute showed up at my apartment.  I had a place in Kreuzberg, a cheap apartment in one of the old brownstones that used to be worker housing under the old socialist government, before the Wall came down.  It was grim, but clean.  You climbed up a dim stairwell to my door, and inside were a few small rooms with concrete floors and narrow barred windows.  It was warm at least—the heat came from the coal oven standing in the middle of the living room.  And there was a shower, one of the old freestanding kind that I had set up in the corner of the room.

I was asleep when Ute knocked.  It was around 4 in the morning.  I found her on the landing, shivering in spite of the long coat she wore.  Her face was white, and her pigtails were coming unraveled.  Her makeup was smeared down her cheeks.  She had been crying.

“What happened?” I asked with concern, leading her inside to the couch.  She just sat there staring at the TV screen, though it wasn’t on.  After a moment, she stood up and, without saying a word, slowly took off her coat.  The front of her pink top was wet and darkly stained.

“What is that?” I asked shrilly. “Blood?”

Heavily, she sat back down on the couch.

“What’s going on Ute? What happened?”

She didn’t say a word until we had the shirt off of her and had put it in the coal oven to burn.  Standing next to the oven in her bra, with her coat thrown over her shoulders, she told me that she had been to the White Room.  That was all she would say, and based on our agreement to never talk about what we did in the White Room, I didn’t press her.  We had some tea, and I brought blankets and told her to spend the night here, that she could sleep on the couch.

“Oh!” she said as I turned out the light, “I saw your friend, the American.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, feigning only casual interest.  “Where?”

“At Lehrter Stadtbahnhof,” she said, “squeezing through the fence.”

I didn’t see you again until the night of the Cocker Party.  I had called and asked if you wanted to come with me, but you told me you were sick.  And then I saw you dancing on the stage with some blond-haired god of man.  You glanced at me and looked quickly away.  I walked up to you anyway.

“You don’t look too sick,” I said, shouting over the music.

You smiled at me, and had the vacant sparkle in your eye of some drug.  “I just didn’t want to come with you,” you said.

 “What does that mean?” I yelled past the blonde guy’s shoulder

“It means,” he said, shouting, “that I didn’t want to come with you!”

The blonde guy looked over his shoulder at me.

“Look,” I said to the blonde guy, “this doesn’t have anything to do with you.  Why don’t you go look for a less complicated trick?”

The guy backed away from you, stood glaring at me.

“What the hell is your problem?!” you screamed.  “What the fuck is your problem!  I’m not interested, okay?”

The blonde guy didn’t hang around long.  After a moment of awkward silence he lost himself in the horde of bodies.

“I’m not going to stay here for you to have your drama trip!” you said, and started for the door.  I let you go.

I knew where you were going, so I didn’t have to follow you through the city.  I took a different U-bahn than I thought you’d take, and by the time I came to the right street in the right part of town, I saw you going through the fence.

When I came into the white room, you and the young man were already making love.  By the time you saw me, I was naked and positioning myself behind you on the couch.

You have to admit it was hot.  We moved around the room, from white chair, to white settee, to white ottoman, to white rug.  But there was something I started to notice—the way you focused on him, the way I was always left to find the third place, to twist myself or stand on my toes or reposition furniture to bring myself into the fun.  And then, somehow, it was just you and him on the rug, almost just like it was when I came in.  I was behind you and I felt, though I’m not exactly sure how--perhaps you pushed slightly with your feet, or maybe it was the way you kept yourself low to the floor--that I was no longer welcome, that I should go, or at least not touch you.  Instead, I forced myself onto you.  The gasp that broke from you thrilled me even more.

“What?” the young man said, suddenly pinned beneath both of us.  “Stop it.  That hurts.”  I put my hand over his mouth.  Then at his neck.  The other hand.  As I forced myself into you, I clamped my hands around the young man’s neck as tight as I could.  He coughed and gagged.

Though you squirmed beneath me, trying to free yourself, I somehow felt like you were holding back, as if your instinct were still to follow me, even into this lowest depth, this most horrible depravity.  I think if you’d tried hard enough, you could have broken free, maybe even stopped me.  But you didn’t.  And I didn’t let go of the young man’s neck until after I came.  And he had already died several minutes before.

“Get off me!” you screamed suddenly, as if you had just realized what was happening. “What the fuck?”

I stood up, sat down on the sofa.

“What the fuck?”  You were feeling young man’s throat for a pulse.  “Oh my fucking God!”

“I wanted to make the point to you,” I said, waveringly, “of what this place is.”  I put my hand on his shoulder but he shook me off.  “It isn’t real!” I said.

“Of course it is!  Why the hell wouldn’t it be?  I—“

“You what?  You loved that guy?  Well, bullshit!  You know what this is.  Why is it always the same when we come in?  Why is he always sitting there, reading the same book, doesn’t have a clue who we are even when we were here just a few days before.”

“Shut up!”

“No, you’ve gone too far with this, and I want you to see that it’s time to stop.”

“No!”  You struggled to get your arms under the young man’s, dragging him toward the door.

“Don’t go out with him!”

“He needs a doctor,” you said.

“He’s dead!”

“Then I want to have proof that you killed him!” you yelled back, glaring at me as you bent over him.

I couldn’t let you take him out of the room.  He would have been dead then if you had taken him out, and I would have murdered him irrevocably.  As long as he stayed inside the room he was only a possibility unresolved, my actions revoked as soon as we closed the door behind us.

So I punched you in the head.  You dropped the young man and turned, staggering.  I lunged for you, my hands reaching for your throat, but you knocked my hands out of the way.  A quick hard punch in my gut doubled me over on the floor, and you kicked me over and over again where I lay.  Lying next to the young man, his glassy eyes, only inches from my own face, were staring at me with dead fear.  Still you were kicking me.  I tasted blood, and at some point lost consciousness.

I awoke to find myself alone in the white room.  Both you and the young man were gone, and the door was shut.  Though I yanked at the knob, it would not open.  I rammed it with my shoulder until I was bruised, but there was not even so much as a rattle.   Finally, I sat down in the chair to wait, hoping that maybe you would come back for me.  I felt your presence though, as if you were looking in on me, even though the room had no windows.

I took up the young man’s book and read the first page. 

#

Hours later, I heard the door open, and looked up from my book.

“Ute?”