1. Berlin Brandenburg Airport

I don’t care that I’m half-German. I don’t care that my mother named me Gerhard after the German painter Gerhard Richter. I don’t care that I was raised on a steady diet of wienersnitzel and sauerkraut while listening to Wagner’s interminable Ring Cycle playing in the background. I won’t even attempt to speak a word of this incomprehensible language while staying in Germany.

“Don’t think I’m going to be your patsy and translate everything here in Berlin for you,” Franz insists while flashing his inscrutable grin.

“I’m not asking you to my sweetmeat. Just teach me the proper German words for condom and suck and I’ll get by just fine.”

“You hardly need words for those simple universals,” Franz offers me a wry side-glance as his rollaway luggage tips over while coming off the moving sidewalk. Rolled up socks and boxer shorts and a shaving kit filled with miniature shampoo bottles stolen from our Amsterdam pension spill out onto the floor and go scattering in every direction.

“You should have zipped up better baby.” I’m laughing as I pull my own wheel-away off the conveyer belt.

“That’s what my mother told me, but did I listen?” Franz heads towards a newspaper kiosk to retrieve his spilled stash, while I head for the restroom. I pull my carry on next to the urinal and quickly realize there is more than just peeing going on in this public restroom. There is an engorged uncut pecker to the left of me and on my right, a burning stare grazing my own stiffening cock.

I live for these moments of spontaneous combustion, as my two unnamed partners and I reach out for a friendly but discrete whack. What astonishes me most of all is that men come in and out of the latrine and go on whizzing right next to us, oblivious to the frenetic gesturing that’s going on just a few steps away from them.

The rhythmic motion of our open masturbating reminds me of Franz’s violin bow. Back and forth, the wand divines the secret code written into his quirky compositions. The to and fro of Franz’s arm reaches a frenzied pitch, particularly when he is playing in concert, and all at once the musician has alchemized into the music itself. I love to watch him close his eyes and get lost in the drone of those taut strings. I live to watch those tiny beads of perspiration that form on my friend’s forehead, the way his head falls back and his body trembles with the rising chords of the composition.

I think of his passionate playing as I spew into the drain and watch as my jizm is gently sprayed away with the whoosh of the urinal water. I make my way back to my companion who has gathered up the contents of his boarding tote. His Stradivarius case is strapped tightly around his shoulder and he’s looking hungrily at some svelte blonde crewcut.

“You’re insatiable,” I laugh, as I put my hand on his shoulder. Franz gestures at the masculine Aryan vision: the broad shoulders, the stealthy frame, and the eyes that suggest a complete detachment from the moment.

“Put him in a uniform and we could play all night,” Franz whispers to me.

The voice on the intercom is announcing flights to New York. For a moment I think of our apartment on the Lower East End and why we came here in the first place. I think of our dream to compose songs together, Franz writing the music and me scribbling at the lyrics.

“Oscar and Hammerstein.” I always say to him.

“No way,” he corrects. “Gilbert and Sullivan,”

I think of how we decided to wander through Europe to simply absorb the tumult of it all. To soak up inspiration wherever we might find it, be it in an opera house or a bathhouse. I think of the warmth we find in each other’s company. To simply snooze in each other’s arms, while sharing a bed together in some foreign locale with no formal attachments to one another, no false dependencies. Or so I tell myself.

I’m wiping the dried residue of my tearoom encounter off the crease in my khakis while Franz seems lost in his cruise.

“Franz, how do you say the word wantonly in German?”

“My darling, why say it, when you can make your whole life into that fatal gesture?”

 

2. Volkspark Friedrichshain

I don’t know why all the beautiful men in Berlin seem to linger near the Fairy Tale Fountain at the entrance to Friedrichshain Park, but this neo-Baroque structure made up of characters from Grimm’s stories, seems to be whispering to amorous strangers from everywhere in Europe to connect. Franz and I are seated near a water spraying limestone frog. I’m eyeing the cruisy promenade of hunky potentials who make their connections then disappear down a crooked hedge path. Franz seems more annoyed than anything since his pen won’t write.

“Why is it when I’m completely inspired to create music, I can’t seem to locate any free-flowing ink?” Franz dabs the tip of his leaky ballpoint to his tongue.

“Check out the melody that’s passing by us right now.”

All eyes are on the striking man in tight tan jeans and tank top. Like a caricature from one of Tom of Finland’s drawing boards, the brown haired stranger with the exaggerated bulges seems to be magnetized by Franz’s subtly erotic movements. Maybe because my companion is entirely absorbed in finding a pen that will create a correction mark rather than drooling over this sexy man’s visage, the swarthy presence leans on a railing that places him directly in Franz’s sight lines.

“I think you’ve got a potential new boyfriend darling.”

Franz glances up rather abruptly, then turns around to shade his notebook and hunches over to scribble notes onto his lined paper. “Amuse yourself Gerhard, my musical muse is calling.”

“I don’t think you understand,” I caution. “Your muse is pointing straight out at you and I’m telling you it’s not his finger.”

The well-endowed cruiser adjusts his shorts several times, pulling at the ever-growing outline in his shrinking pants, before finally heading over to the other end of the water mélange. I toss a schilling into the central fountain where Hansel and Gretel seem content to float separately on the backs of two ducks and Puss-in-Boots seems ready to lick his whiskers, before I decide to wander down one of the narrow hedge lanes.

It’s easy to see the small breaks in the tall bushes where covert strangers can slip away. By following a small foot trail laced with condom wrappers and cigarette butts, hardly the breadcrumbs left by Hansel and his sister, I reach a small opening where Franz’s hopeful suitor is holding court. Leaning back onto the trunk of tree, the beautiful man’s shorts are now stretched around his ankles and his perspiration soaked t-shirt is hoisted above his thick nipples. A devotee kneels before the bejeweled royal scepter and takes slow, careful tastes of the rock hard phallus.

In the distance I can hear the trickle of water spewing from the mouths of lions and green weathered vases. I think of Franz and his hand drawing the silent notes onto a page. And in the shadow of Sleeping Beauty’s statue, I imagine that the notes are coming off the paper and taking flight over the captured storybook creatures.

Another hungry minion takes the captive stud from behind and I draw closer to touch one of his large, amber nipples. The licking and sucking braids into the gentle gurgle from the fountain, and I imagine again Franz’s symphonic score coming into being. Bluebeard and Red Riding Hood are beginning to awaken and suddenly the spring is alight with mythical heroes. The ancient spell that has kept them imprisoned in stone has been broken. Alive and supple and hungry for touch, the fairy world summons its inhabitants to join in a sensual dance.

“You like mouth to mouth?” the aggressor posits in broken English.

With that I begin kissing the handsome prince full on. He is probing the sweaty crevice of my ass with his fingers and moaning something that vaguely sounds like the word “baby.” I can sense the restless music in the trees enveloping us as he quickly gushes into the mouth of his kneeling servant. I leave his wet saliva on my lips and cheek as I make my way back toward Franz.

“Back so soon?” Franz hardly looks up from his writing.

I know something now about the enchantment that breathes in the arteries of a forest and about the winged creatures who watch from the balustrade of a fountain, spinning magical rings that allow men to be invisible to the patrolling security guards who walk amid the clandestine leafy paths.

Franz is still hovering over his work as I gently lean into his shoulder.

“Still with your other muse?” My voice is deliberately soft and faraway.

For a moment he rests his pen and sighs, letting his head sink gently onto my cheek, then resumes his careful notations, as though the whole world has simply vanished.

 

© 2007 Gerard Wozek - Contributor's Bio

Read an Interview with Gerard Wozek by Gregg Shapiro