By Mike Marino Chapter Three
Fishnets, Garters and Gangsters
We were now dressed, me in my faded jeans, grey wine stained sweatshirt and my old Salvation Army field jacket, Sibyll in her cutoffs as it was warm today, and a t-shirt that fit snugly to her body with the famous JFK message 'Ich bin ein Berliner'...not East...not West...just ..BERLIN!
We grabbed my canvas daypack, loaded it with Agfa black and white film to photograph the recent construction of phase three of the Berlin Walls Darwinian evolution from a mere tangle of barbed wire to a wall of concrete, rebar, and a crown tiara of concertina wire.
Quickly Drained a quick last drop of left over warm wine from the night before and opened the apartment door ready to dash about where before our eyes stood in a ready to knock pose, a one legged dwarf with an Errol Flynn Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckling pirate patch over the empty socket of what would have been a perfectly good left eye, lost in an altercation during a knife fight in a bar brawl in Hamburg during a Rory Storm and the Hurricanes show. The purple fez upon his head made him look like a Turkish Pez Dispenser.
“Good morning, Sir,” he spoke in broken English with a gutteral German accent. “I was sent by a gentleman, who would like to meet you this fine morning, and you too ma’am. He is a certain Mr. Sydney Australia,” he said with his voice raising a pitch as he spoke the hallowed name. “My name is Joel Faberge. Mr. Australia would like the pleasure of your company Sir, along with your lady friend to discuss, um, a matter of a mutual and beneficial nature to both parties, n’est-ce pas?” First he fractures English, and now plants his linguistic flag on sovereign French soil!
He was indeed a Pez dispenser dispensing dialects and phrasing as easily as a the little tart candies themselves. Strange little fellow..downright creepy in fact...reminded me of someone I knew in the past. A bookish fellow, yes, an immigrant from Borneo who owned a bookstore and was arrested for selling the Alice B. Toklas Anarchist and Chocolate Chip Manifesto Cookbook, and primarily for taking hidden camera movies of 8MM sex in hotel rooms.
We followed the little fellow down the Yellow Brick Strasse to the luxury apartment of one, Sidney Australia. The Lollipop guild was alive and well I thought. Sibyll held my arm tightly. Something was wrong here, but we were both curious and forgot that curiosity killed the cat, not to mention the milk truck that ran it over on Easter Sunday.
Something wasn’t sitting right with me about this. I had heard of Herr Australia before, and none of it good. Black marketing in vice. White slavery, dope dealing, some even said he smuggled toilet paper to Moscow at one point and provided Stalin with Serbian hookers who used bikini wax on each other in public at train stations. He also mainly was afflicted with a love of the arts and gambling.
Going to meet him against my better judgement was a gamble in and of itself. Loved those huge Rubenesque paintings where the women had breasts the size of large bowling balls and enough flesh on the fanny to accommodate the entire range of the Alps.
We finally arrived at Thirteen Otto von Bismarck Strasse and the elegant if not over ornate Hotel Eva Braun. My first impression was that we had entered a time warp of a bunker of tawdry, faded Weimar Republic wallpaper and dusty chandeliers . All that was missing was a few suicide victims.
Let me paint this picture for you. (Takes a deep breath) Sidney Australia was the Genghis Khan of glitz and glitter holding court with his mincing minions of Mongol malcontents. He was the gangsters gangsta. He would trade in white slavery, illegal Ukranian drugs, murder for hire, blackmail and extortion. He would play both sides and there was a price for everything….a steep price.
His apartment was, well, gaudy as hell, with a decadent overkill feeling of a faux Ottoman Empire Sultan. His penthouse overlooked the elevated metropolis cityscape of the art decadence Fritz Lang inspired Berlin. The decor was a cross between an old 19th Century Turkish harem and a cheap shag carpeted motel room that charges by the hour found in North Beach in san Francisco. You know the place, we all do. A real Motel Six for sex. Everything was done with an overabundance of chintzy purple haze curtains, The kind aging strippers emerge from after the dirty comic finishes his routine and the Tenderloin losers hide their masturbation under cover of a raincoat.
Strobe lights pulsed suggestively from hidden recessed spaces in the room while a dozen or so strategically placed blacklight strobes undulated doing a pole dance on the black light enhanced walls. Sidney referred to his abominable abode as a cerebral antebellum….I looked as a William Burroughs pharmacological funny farm with a homosexual surreal reality.
The retro furniture was overstuffed, as was our host, so when you sat down you were immediately reminded of a suicide bean bag ride at the amusement park on the moon.
We were about to behold...behold? We weren’t quite sure what we were to behold. Also, I just like the word, no one says that anymore. It’s a crying shame.
Sidney’s bulk entered the room with I have to admit fabulous flair and fanfare, not to mention while he sang a syrupy selection of Broadway show tunes to music piped in karaoke style over loudspeakers hidden, decibel snipers waiting for a target for his butchering of the greasepaint greats.
Sibyll and myself were both startled. It was showtime as Sidney appeared from behind a curtain I hadn’t noticed before, dressed regally in a full tent Marlon Brando-Fat Elvis kaftan complete with a full face of makeover make-up singing popular show tunes.
Expecting to see an arch criminal with pinky rings, instead we came face to face with a rotund planet of man in spiked heels, a see through teddy with garters, and mesh stockings. I felt I was at a transgender summer camp of gender bending frivolity at Frankie's Fantasyland Bar and Grill!
He could have been a gay diva from Mars. He was bizarre, no question about that, and his voice I have to admit..stellar and faster than a speeding falsetto...he could bend a Ethel Merman high note in his bare hands.
He had an operatic rock and roll voice and was sporting a turquoise outer limits outer space high piled a mile high pompadour hair-do that looked like he just stepped out of flamboyant flying saucer cabaret with a cadre of gay aliens and bi-sexual bi-pods. It was the Mikado meets Hermann Goering in eyeliner in a Berlin Bunker. It's "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with Major Tom screaming at ground control. a It's Queer Eye for the Space Guy!
His kingdom was a fairyland...literally, no macho factory assembly lines in this place as it catered to an assortment of dykes who arrived by bike, intellectual drag queens, street people, the wealthy from the world of art , writers, drunks, junkies, who wandered in and out of lucidity among the collective mass of West Berlin’s social substrata of masturbation and creativity, and creative masturbation. You need to have your card punched to gain entree to this world.
He tossed in a few jokes with his routine. Why not? Jesus did stand up before Seinfeld, gigging at gatherings doing a magic act with parlor tricks and sanctimonious schtick, like that whole loaves of bread and fishes thing which led to a string of bookings and spoken word performances throughout the Roman Empire. (I heard he stole the Bread and Fishes routine from Rodney Dangerous Maximus who first wowed the crowd while touring Mesapotamia with Moses and Abraham, the first of the comedy trios, (pre-dating Larry, Moe and Curly) who played to packed houses of Philistines in their prime)
He waved us to sit down with a gesture of his hands that was more of a flourish than an invite.
“Thank for coming. I must say it is a pleasure to meet at last. I wish to speak to you about going into East Berlin for, ah, to pick something up for me of great importance. In return I guarantee your gallery will not receive any more trouble such as the nasty explosion yesterday.”
Son of a bitch! It wasn’t the skinheads after all. The wily old queen had us bombed and now was blackmailing us. Sibyll caught the same message and her eyes got as wide as the Danube.
“Of course there is some danger involved and you might if not careful end up in the Stasi Prison system which would be unfortunate.” Two of his thugs then emerged with Lugers in hand behind us wearing only fishnet stockings and chastity belts. We had been had.
“I will send along one of my agents to guide you so it should go smoothly yes?”
What choice did we have. We could die now in West Berlin or at least prolong our lives thanks to the wonders of torture at the hands of the East German police where torture was perfected to such a degree they were pure artists, Rembrandts all when it came to sadism.
“Appears we have no choice Herr Australia.”
“Ha” he guffawed….(guffaw … another word no one uses today!) No sir, you do not!”
