I hug him back, strong for strong.
Missed you.
You too.
My other friend, another skinny longhair motherfucker, though Greg’s hair is thick and brown and he looks more like Paul Bunyan than a rock star, stands, speaks.
You look awful.
I laugh.
No healthy living for me.
He laughs, another strong hug another strong friend. We separate, they pick up their backpacks, which are the size of small houses, we walk past the mailroom through the courtyard upstairs to the apartment. I have a couple bottles of cheap red wine and the cocaine they want to see some of Paris so we walk bring our treats with us through the 6th to boulevard Saint-Germain to rue des Écoles to rue Saint-Jacques to le Jardin sit in the grass the royal motherfucking grass. We drink the wine, dip filterless cigarettes into the cocaine and smoke it a poor man’s freebase, they tell me about the end of school my disappearing act created a little drama and slight disbelief, they both spent the summer working in bars in Aspen before coming to Europe. Kevin hands me a piece of paper I ask what it is, he tells me that my ex called him this summer and asked him to give me her number if and when he saw me, I thank him and put it in my pocket. They ask me about life in Paris I ask them about their travels, my life and their travels aren’t that different from each other girls and booze and drugs and adventure and stupidity, though my life also has art and books and writing and self-inflicted misery and self-inflicted ambition. We sit in the park until the sun goes down and we’re driven out we’re drunk and wired Kevin and Greg both have pockets full of money and want a night. I take them to all my spots, dinner at Maison de Gyros, beer at Texas Star, whiskey at Stolly’s, sangria at Bar Dix, absinthe at Polly, we smoke cocaine all night Kevin finds a girl and disappears Greg and I walk home at dawn sleep.
We’re woken by someone banging on the door. Sun streaming through the windows, Greg is in my bed and I’m on the floor. I walk to the door my head is pounding and my lungs hurt I open the door. Kevin is smiling, not wearing a shirt, he steps inside, speaks.
Hey dude.
Where’s your shirt?
No idea.
Where’d you spend the night?
Girl’s apartment.
Where?
No idea.
How did you get home?
Walked.
Just walked around until you found my street?
A sympathetic German who felt sorry for me gave me directions. It wasn’t that far.
Not that many Germans in Paris. A Frenchman wouldn’t have helped you, or would have sent you the wrong way.
We walk into the living room. Greg is sitting up, he speaks.
Fuck.
Kevin and I laugh.
I feel like I died.
If we had kept going we might have.
Kevin sits on our little sofa, I sit on the floor. Kevin speaks.
This German dude that helped me get back here had a good idea for us.
Greg shakes his head.
No ideas right now. Please, no ideas.
I laugh, speak.
What was it?
Kevin speaks.
He saw me looking at one of those street maps, asked me if I was lost and I said yes. We started chatting and he said if I liked getting drunk and lost I should be in Munich right now, not Paris.
I speak.
I like being drunk and lost. Why Munich?
Kevin smiles.
Oktoberfest.
Greg groans.
No fucking way.
Kevin nods.
The biggest drinking festival in the world. Right now. A train ride away.
Greg shakes his head.
No fucking way.
I smile.
Let’s do it.
Kevin stands, smiles.
I’m taking a quick shower, packing a little bag, going. I’d like you both to join me.
I smile.
I’m in.
Greg groans.
Fuck you both.
We take showers, pack small bags. Kevin looks at his Eurorail schedule there are trains between Paris and Munich every hour we go to Gare de l’Est, another beautiful old French gare in a city full of beautiful old gares. We buy our tickets each get some canned beers to make some of the pain go away and prepare ourselves for the pain to come, we find our way to a little cabin. We play cards and talk about old times and old friends I read for a while Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse appropriate for a trip to Germany it’s a beautiful and brilliant book, intimidating as fuck, I could spend a million hours working and I know I will never write as well as Hesse.
Six maybe seven hours and six maybe seven beers later we arrive at Munich Hauptbahnhof a giant train station in central Munich it’s not as beautiful as a Paris gare but it is practical and efficient as fuck. The train was relatively crowded, clearly others coming for Oktoberfest, Kevin and Greg and I follow the crowd through the station, no dirt anywhere, no garbage, nothing out of place, nothing other than exactly what is needed and required. As we pass a few shops, all selling practical and necessary products, such as deodorant and toothpaste and potato chips and soda, I notice one selling lederhosen. I stop and stare and smile, getting to say the word lederhosen is worth whatever they cost lederhosen. I turn to my friends, speak.
Boys.
They stop, see what I see, lederhosen.
If we’re going to do this, we should do it right.
We walk inside the shopkeeper is getting ready to close but he is German and thus always prepared to do some business, especially with dumb, drunk Americans. I tell him we need some affordable and durable lederhosen, that we are in Munich to show people how dumb, drunk Americans come correct to Oktoberfest. He doesn’t really understand what I’m saying, which is cool, but he understands enough to know what we want and to guess our sizes within a reasonable margin and sell us what he says are three sets of affordable and durable lederhosen. Mine are a little big, a little loose, I wear them with black socks and my battered combat boots, a white long-underwear shirt. I debate whether to buy an alpine hat with a little white feather, or rock my beret and give a nod to my current place of residence. The beret almost always makes me look like an idiot, and even more so with the lederhosen, so I put it in my bag and add the alpine hat, which is a lovely shade of faded pine-tree green. Kevin and Greg go the same route, and after fifteen minutes we are ready to go to Oktoberfest in proper beer-drinking attire.
There is a flow out of the train station we enter it and move with it to a taxi line we get into a cab the driver is an old German he laughs at our clothes and welcomes us to Munich. We ask him where we should go he tells us the tents at Theresienwiese, the ancient fairgrounds of Theresa, that the entire city is there drinking great steins of lager. We ask him what we should do while we’re in town he says drink beer, eat pretzels, dance and sing and have long friendly kisses with beautiful German girls. We laugh we are absolutely fucking down for that plan he asks us if we know anything about Oktoberfest we say no and he becomes a jolly encyclopedia of facts. Oktoberfest, he says, is the biggest funfair in the world, with more than six million people attending every year. It was started in 1810, when, on October 12, King Ludwig married Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen and invited the entire city to the wedding festival. The citizens of Munich had so much fun, they just kept doing it, and today there are Oktoberfests all over Germany, though Munich’s is the original, the biggest, and the best. There are rides, games, concerts, contests, and beer, millions and millions of liters of delicious German beer. As we near the site, the traffic gets bad, he tells us to get out and walk, just follow the crowd. We thank him for the ride and pay him and follow his advice. The closer we get the larger the crowd. We can see the lights from the rides Ferris wheels and twisty-turny vomit-inducing spin machines and bumper cars, we can hear the intermingling of music mostly polka, we can smell food roasting chicken and pork, popcorn and baked pretzels. We decide on some rules: if we get se
parated the entrance of whichever tent we enter first will be our meeting place every night at six o’clock, if two or more of us like the same girl we all walk away from her, we take turns buying rounds.
We enter the fairgrounds there are people everywhere, tens of thousands of people, they are drinking beer from huge steins, eating roasted pork legs, pretzels, and chicken, walking and talking, standing in lines for rides and games and entrances to tents, yelling and cheering and being filled with some jolly old alcohol-induced happiness. We work our way to the tents there are ten or twelve of them lined up in two long rows with a central thoroughfare. To call them tents is an understatement, the understatement of the fucking century. They are massive, the size of enormous warehouses, the size of Walmarts in America, the size of gigantic airplane hangars, they hold thousands of people. Some appear to have more than one story, and all of them look like they are permanent structures, built of wood and steel with tiled roofs, enormous temples devoted to the joys of beer in Germany in the middle of autumn. I laugh at the spectacle of it all, at the scale of it all. I am an alcoholic, and it is simultaneously an alcoholic’s most magnificent dream and greatest nightmare. There is an endless supply of alcohol here, more than I could ever drink in a thousand lifetimes, and I plan on drinking absolutely as much as I can. At the same time, I know I am going to fuck myself up, fuck my body up and my mind up, and even though I know what I am doing is fucked, there is nothing I can do to stop it. So be it. It’s been this way for a long time, since I was fifteen or sixteen years old, and it will continue until I either figure out how to stop it or it kills me. I see one as a far more realistic possibility, and it is not the one that involves stopping. I just hope it doesn’t happen here, while I’m wearing cheap lederhosen and a green felt alpine hat with a fake white feather in it.
We look at a map the only tents we’ve heard of are Hofbräuhaus and Löwenbräu-Festhalle. Hofbräu is where Hitler liked to have a beer, and we are not fans of Hitler, so we take that off the list and decide to go to Löwenbräu, which we have heard of because they make cool TV commercials that run during football games in America and because, whether it is true or not, we perceive it to be fancy, way fucking fancier than Budweiser or Miller Lite or Busch or Pabst Blue Ribbon or Milwaukee’s Best. We walk toward the Löwenbräu-Festhalle. It is a mammoth fake A-frame ski chalet painted blue and white with a couple flags out front, a logo above the door, a giant wooden statue of a lion holding a stein of brew on a platform below the logo. We walk inside the Festhalle our hosen in full glory there’s a polished hardwood floor, a giant arched ceiling at least fifty feet high, enormous ribboned chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, row after row after row of polished hardwood picnic tables and benches. There are probably five thousand people inside the Festhalle, every bench full, there is a polka band, a dance floor, waitresses in dirndls, which are magnificent beer-drinking Oktoberfest dresses, the yin to the lederhosen’s yang, they are rushing around with six eight ten steins of beer in their hands, I have no idea how they hold all of them and move at the same time. We stroll through the aisles until we find an open spot on one of the benches. The table is all Germans, a couple in their twenties, another couple in their thirties, a group of men in their fifties laughing smiling talking drinking. We sit down say hello to them they ask where we’re from we tell them America, they are all from Munich. We order some steins and a waitress brings them we raise a toast with our new friends to Oktoberfest!!! We drink the steins quickly and efficiently in the spirit of the host’s traditions we order another round do it again. We sing traditional beer-drinking songs we get up and try to dance the polka we learn how to order in broken German it’s fun and cheerful, an evening of joy and comradery and raised glasses and high-fives we drink stein after stein after stein of delicious golden foaming lager stein after stein. At a certain point my mind goes black and my memory disappears I wake up the next afternoon in some bushes in a park near Theresienwiese. I still have my money, a pack of cigarettes, and a lighter, my lederhosen have what appears to be a giant ketchup stain on them and there is a half-eaten bratwurst in my pocket. I’m hungry, so I blow the lint off of it and I eat it and I don’t know how I thought it tasted last night, but at the moment it is delicious. I walk back to the tents look for Kevin and Greg there are people everywhere it’s a fool’s errand to try to find them so I walk into a tent order a stein and start drinking. I meet two couples from Cologne who invite me to visit and see their magnificent cathedral and the Shrine of the Magi maybe some of the Magi’s wisdom would rub off on me, I meet four girls from Athens who love to dance they stand in a circle around me and laugh at my pathetic and terribly awkward polka moves. I meet a group of Canadian backpackers they are only willing to hang out with me because I live in Paris we have two steins together and raise a toast to the Great White North, I meet some Dutch who say their beer is better and offer to show me where the best weed in the world is sold if I ever come to Amsterdam. I go to the entrance of the Löwenbräu-Festhalle at six o’clock Greg and Kevin aren’t there I wait for an hour they don’t show up. I go inside find a table I sit with some American sorority girls on a semester abroad in Florence we talk about art and drink until I’m so drunk I can barely speak I think I make out with one of them maybe two I black out and wake up the next afternoon facedown on the floor of a hotel room there are two girls and a guy asleep in the bed I see Swedish passports sitting on the nightstand. I go back to the fairgrounds my lederhosen are covered with beer and food stains and I smell like a run-down brewery, I think about getting a shower somewhere or getting a hotel room and sleeping, even though I just woke up I want to go back to sleep. I feel like death. My heart is pounding my stomach burning my head feels like there are spikes being driven into it, my hands are shaking and I know there is only one way to get right and though I hate myself for it, I do it. I walk into the closest tent and order a beer, drink it as fast as I can. I immediately vomit, and there appears to be some blood in my vomit, but enough of the beer stays in me to slow down my heart and ease the shaking and quell the pain in my head. I order another beer I drink it as fast as I can. Heart slows, hands still. Another, and I’m better. I eat a pretzel to absorb some of the alcohol I don’t remember the last time I ate, maybe yesterday the bratwurst from my pocket. I drink another stein, wait for six o’clock, walk to the entrance of Löwenbräu-Festhalle, Greg is waiting for me. His lederhosen are covered with mud, on the front and back, and his long hair is tangled and there are flecks of dirt in it. I laugh, speak.
What the fuck happened to you?
I hooked up with some girl.
Was she wearing a dress made of mud?
We went out behind the tents and rolled around in the grass. I was pretty fucked-up.
I laugh again.
Where is she now?
Inside with a few of her friends.
We joining them?
Yes.
Seen Kevin?
No.
When did you get separated?
Yesterday afternoon.
Where did he go?
We were with some older German ladies. I went to the bathroom, when I came back, he was gone.
That sounds promising.
They were in their early forties, really gorgeous.
Dirndls?
No, but they might have had them in their closets at home.
I laugh, he speaks.
Where you been?
Not sure really. Blacked out both nights.
We hear Kevin before we see him, his voice cutting through the crowd.
Motherfuckers!
We turn, he’s walking toward us. His lederhosen are clean, he looks showered and rested, a big smile on his face. I speak.
What’s up, where you been?
Met a beautiful German woman. Maybe the most beautiful woman I have ever met. We drank some beers, she took me back to her place, rocked my fucking world all night, cleaned my clothes and took me out for lunch. I think I’m in love.
; I speak.
Why you here with us?
Her husband was coming home today from Berlin.
Greg and I laugh, Greg speaks.
That’s kind of amazing.
Kevin nods.
She kissed me good-bye, told me to have a wonderful life, and to never forget her. And I won’t. Ever.
I speak.
You getting fucked-up with us tonight?
That’s what we’re here to do, right?
Let’s go.
We walk into the Festhalle, as always it’s bright and loud and festive and joyous and crowded, people drinking talking singing dancing new friendships being made, new love affairs being started, even though I’m half-drunk and feel like a piece of shit and I’m exhausted, it is hard not to be happy and feel good. We find a spot on a bench there are three old couples on the other end of the bench. They are all wearing wedding rings, two of the three are holding hands, the other sitting side-by-side their bodies touching each other. While Kevin and Greg order steins and look around the surrounding benches for girls to flirt with or friends to make I watch the couples. They seem happy, content, serene, there is a conversation among all of them, they’re laughing, smiling, animated, at one point they all stand and lift their steins and raise a toast and click glasses and drink and sit back down. I can hear them, but don’t understand a word they’re saying, and don’t need to understand their words to see and know that they’re blessed. They have lived a large part of their lives. They are married and still in love. They have friends. From the clothes and jewelry and watches they are wearing I can see they have achieved a certain level of security. I’m jealous. For whatever dreams I might have, that’s the real dream. A long happy life with someone who loves you, a long happy life with friends who make you laugh, a long happy life where you’re not shitting your pants over money every day, a long happy life where you can raise a glass and give a toast and laugh and have some idea what you’re saying and maybe even remember it the next day. I’m happy for the couples at the end of the table. Bless them all. I hope someday to have something remotely close to what they have. If I’m lucky. If I even live that long. If I figure out how to do what I want to do. If I find someone who can love me, if I can learn to love myself.