Rob For Real

17.09.// 20:00  DJ Premier & His Live Band - Live/ NEUE HEIMAT

Live: DJ Premier & Band (Gang Starr Foundation/ NYC)

KD Supier - Mint (Green EP Trailer)

Hey y'all. Here's the pickle I'm in at the moment I'm writing this: in less than 4 hours, I will be taking a bus to Tegel Airport in Berlin. From there on, I'll be flying to Amsterdam where I will be in transit for about 10 hours. I will then board a plane to Bejing, China - ETA 12h30 local time, that's another 10 hours of flying. Then I'll be in transit for another 4 hours before boarding yet another plane to Qindao (700km southeast, give or take) where I will be picked up at the airport by a local liaison and driven by cab to a club where I will do a soundcheck followed later that very same night by a 2-hour dj-set in which I will perform the role of 'master of ceremony' for a US-based DJ I've never met before ( Thankfully he seems to be a nice guy and mailed me to say that everything will work out just fine). 

Sounds like a burdening experience? Wait till you hear the punchline. I will be doing all this by my lonesome because my good friend Grizzly Adams was banned from Chinese soil for a few years after politely declining to kiss the ass of the Embassy Witch that was pissing in his face while screeching with evil laughter and scratching her scurvy skull with boney fingers. So Monday was definitely not a good day for us: not for him because he's been working hard as fuck to get to the point where people want to bring him all the way across the planet to play a dj-set - not good for me because he was the man with the plan, whereas I was the man drowning in financial quicksand trying to keep his brain from falling apart on the streets of Wedding.

So my personal preparations for this trip have been a bit minimalist, what with my life currently spread out around Berlin stuffed in cardboard boxes - money is short, time is fleeting and to add to the consternation, it is now starting to look like my camera has been stolen from the apartment where I am currently sitting, along with the laptop of one of the residents. I am filled with disgust and despair. I don't know what tomorrow will bring but the weather forecast predicts one giant clusterfucked shitstorm over my head and something called a thundershower in Bejing. So to wrap things up: it is now 6 hours till take-off and I don't really have the energy or clarity of mind to figure out how I'm supposed to feel about leaving to China for 10 days knowing that my only source of income is sitting in a pawnshop in Neuköln. 

'The Chinese character for opportunity and crisis are the same' - a great motivational quote for when hardship presents itself. Unfortunately, this piece of wisdom works both ways - what started out as a great opportunity has at this point transformed into a crisis that is cracking my skull open from the inside out. 

PS: in China there is no Tumblr, FB or Twitter so don't expect any updates. Besides, with the good fortune that this trip has brought us so far, I expect to either end up in a Chinese forced labor camp or wake up in a hotel with a bag of dry ice over a hole in my back and a note in Cantonese saying 'thanks for your kidney'.

So I went to the club on a Sunday night because it was easy to do: guestlist +2, couple of free drinks and no Monday-morning obligations that couldn't be put off until the afternoon. One of my friends is a bartender at said club so yeah sure, why not let's do it. Let's stroll in around 3h30 and check the late-weekend action. Get a taste of life.

Of course, horror ensued. You could practically smell the despair on the air walking in - a whiff of sweat, stale alcohol and low-grade perfume swirled through the room, mixed with a cloud of cigarette smoke and cheap reefer. This had to be the ugliest crowd I had ever seen in all my years as a semi-professional nightlifer. Male/female ratio: 75/25, all Omega's - physically repulsive or otherwise dysfunctional specimens from both genders engaged in an awkard & vile 'last chance' mating ritual. The weekend's leftovers, resigned to each other and disgusted with their own reflections in each other's eyes. A chunky cocktail of deprivation-driven lust & denial with a thick slice of self-loathing to top it all off.

A  fat pasty blonde in pink tanktop and checkered stretchpants sneered at a tall skinny black guy who listlessly put his hands on her (blubbery) thighs - she mimicked him to 'talk to the hand' with what I assume was supposed to be a look of defiant temptation. All around, clusters of wasted omega males were drooling over the last remaining pigeons to pluck - inbred peacocks fanning out shit-stained feathers in a failed display of male dominance. 

In a way, it was one of the most pathetic things I had ever seen in my life. There was no pride in this room, there was no pretense of seduction or attraction, no flirtatious eye-contact or witty pick-up lines. Just a room full of undesirable prey, rejected by predators and praying for the vultures to swoop in - just to feel wanted by somebody. My drink ran out. That fat pasty blonde left with that same tall skinny black guy. 

Normal is defined by the dictionary as 'lacking special characteristics or unique traits'. Going by that definition, anybody trying to lead a normal life is basically living less than they could. According to its own definition, normality doesn't add anything - it just strips away all the rest until there's nothing left to recognize you by. 

People have started to ask me whether or not I miss my hometown. Fuck no I don't - it's nothing but a big heap of bricks and fizzled-out dreams. But I miss a lot of people a lot more than I would care to let them see or hear.

A not so close friend laughed at me this week because I bought a new sponge for the shower. Coming out of the bathroom after taking a piss, he actually pointed and laughed - holding the still plastic-wrapped instrument of personal hygiene in one of the hands I was sure he hadn't washed before engaging in his mockery of my apparently girlish taste for cleanliness. Or as he put it far more and succintly and provocatively: 'Haha, what are you, some kind of woman?' He then pointed and laughed some more before proceeding to ask me where I kept the antibacterial cream for my 'ladyparts'. Lastly, he accused me of being a 'Spongebob Vaginapants' before giving me a last snickering sound like an abusive quotation mark, a mid-pitched bitchslap of a laugh, resonating and hanging in the air as if amazed at being uttered in the presence of the kind of man who uses a sponge.

Let me explain why I have that sponge: I have a friend - let's call him Fred - who can sometimes carry with him a certain smell. It's not really a smell - it's more like a sweaty tropical cloud that envelopes his entire body like a deadly atmosphere on a rocksalt planet - an offensive blur of sour viscosity grabbing out with slimy, greedy fingers that stretch out into thin, stinky strings that reach for my nostrils as I back away in revulsion.  A really good friend would tell Fred that a shower does not do the job if you just stand under the water for a short period of time - some scrubbing in strategic places sometimes is in order. Unfortunately for him and me, I'm not that good a friend. So now, he remains a sweat-drenched pig while I retain a 15° backwards slant in my stance when I talk to him. 

The thing is: I don't know for sure if my friends feel comfortable enough to give me a heads up in case I smell like a bartenders armpit. So I keep a sponge to prevent this particular social embarassment from presenting itself - just to save everybody the potential - even if altogether unlikely - awkardness. It takes a certain kind of trust to tell your friend that he or she needs to work on his/her personal hygiene and frankly, I don't trust most of you nearly enough to take that step when it needs to be taken.

My head spun a little last night as I was falling asleep - one of those moment where life dangles you by the skin of your neck, feet looking for solid ground in a cloud of 29 years of trying to look in control - just to show you who's boss. The accumulated hubris of your life, scraped together and coldly scrutinized from the Fourth Dimension - a right kick in the teeth. I was thinking myself to sleep in my usual fashion - running the pro's & con's of the course I'm sailing and projecting future results based on the progress of things I have in the works - when my foot crashed through the floorboard and sank into the gaping abyss that lies beneath my ability to tell myself I know what I'm doing.