Tiger Milk by Stefanie de Velasco

out I call Amir but he doesn’t answer. I go and ring his doorbell but when nobody answers there either I take the bus to the planet. On the way I see that Nico has painted a new sad at the Yorckstrasse S-bahn station right where the homeless guys beg for tickets. I’m kind of excited. I know that it stings when I cut my thumb, that it throbs when I stub my toe and that it turns blue, I know that it burns when you fall down and skin your knee, but I don’t know what the pain is like when you sleep with somebody or even why it’s supposed to hurt. Maybe it’s not even true that it hurts and anyway it’s pretty unlikely that it will happen today.
    Still I did put on my white knee-highs with the little black bows on the them and the underwear Jameelah gave me for my birthday last year, the checkered ones with hearts on them. For a second I feel like stupid Frau Struck in her stupid dress. She must have done it for the first time too, why doesn’t she just teach us about it. Actually I can’t picture Struck in bed with some guy. It was probably like one of Rainer’s pornos with pubic hair all over the place and red lingerie and crumpled sheets and right in the middle a big red stain.
    Written in thick sharpie ink on the telephone booth at the planet it says Party and concert at Viovic’s rehearsal studio!
    While I’m reading it I realize that the whole booth is shaking like it’s excited about the party and is trying to lift itself off its base so it can come along. I can’t see who is moving it around from the inside because it’s filled with smoke, but I can guess who it is. I crack the door open and a hand reaches out and grabs me and pulls me inside. I squeal but then Nico whispers close your eyes and shuts the door quickly behind me. It reeks of hash inside.
    You could suffocate in here, I say, help.
    Nico says that’s the way it’s supposed to be, I hear Jameelah say next to me.
    Yeah that’s right, says Nico, this is our opium den, don’t worry just close your eyes and breathe deep, you’ll get used to it.
    I squeeze my eyes shut and inhale deeply. After a few breaths my legs start to feel like jelly, my head feels heavy, and the telephone booth starts to shake again like an old lift that doesn’t know which way to go, lurching up and down. Nico keeps blowing fresh puffs of smoke into the air and otherwise it’s silent, like we’re in a cave.
    Somebody coughs.
    Who is in here, I whisper.
    Me, says Nico.
    Me, says Jameelah.
    Me, says somebody else and when I squint I see Lukas’s closed Bambi eyes through the fog of smoke, he’s smiling and his long lashes nestle against his white skin. It must be weird for him to be here with us so far from his wide-open habitat, I think, flying ever farther from his green surroundings travelling through the galaxy in a phone booth and even though I don’t feel one way or another about Lukas I think it’s pretty cool. Who knows maybe his green habitat isn’t so green at all, maybe it’s not the way I picture it and maybe ours isn’t so hot and sharp-edged either, no idea, when you’re fucked up life is soft around the edges and everyone’s surroundings are the same colour.
    Nico and I sit in the back row for the entire bus ride, totally high, singing we R who we R . Nico holds my hand with one of his hands and with the other he scribbles sad all over the seatback in front of us. I find it hilarious because Lukas and Jameelah are sitting in front of us playing rock paper scissors and the whole thing with Jameelah and Lukas really is sad though maybe I’m reading too much into it all which I often do when I’m wasted. When we hop out at Grunewald there must be twenty of us. Anna-Lena and Nadja prop up Tobi who felt so ill on the bus that he had to puke under a seat.
    What did you do to him, says Anna-Lena to Nico nodding at Tobi.
    Nothing, says Nico, why is it always my fault?
    You don’t have to get so fucked up all the time, says Nadja.
    Shut up, says Tobi