The night the Weirdo's won

The importance of one random encounter can affect the course of the rest of your life… Or at least the course of your night.

What is it that draws one person to another? The person you spend the rest of your life with could be one coffee stop away. The best friend you’ve been waiting for could be waiting all your life for is waiting at the same bus stop. Even the prick who needs to be told to ‘fuck off’ is waiting enviously for you to fulfil your life’s destiny. All it takes it a situation for your top both spark a conversation. That unpredictable and spontaneity of life is what makes life so rich in colour. Colours of vivid, lucid creeps who need someone else in this world to bare witness to the being that they have cultivated and nurtured within themselves. I think we all crave and desire someone to bear witness to the person we’ve become. We crave it every day by answering question’s “What have you done today?”. Sharing moments and seeking gratification for decisions made and lessons learnt.

When your away from home things are intensified. I think the lonesome local drunks and oddballs alike can smell the optimism and hope in your sweat. Sniff it out like mad dogs to the feast of mutton. A fiesta of friends for tonight were all eating. momentary magnets and midgets all waiting for an Ewok suit to play in this wild fantasy we’ve constructed for ourselves.

The night started like any other, looking out from a fifth story balcony out onto the berlin cityscape. Train, people all flying past at a million miles and your there still in the moment with a cigarette hanging out your mouth. A brief moment of tranquillity. The chaotic world moving so fast around you all you could possibly do is stay completely still and hope that it doesn’t see you.

I hear a knack on the door…. It’s found me. My moment of peace is over. My friend Angus is stood there and he’s Answering the call of the night. We move swift through the street of berlin like a rumour. Hitting bars and keeping the alcohol levels to a healthy level. Nothing out of hand yet and a good buzz fills the air thick with laughter and the right type of vibe. We find ourselves sat at the bar of a corner speakeasy. Paper plains hanging across the ceiling and beautiful red lighting in all areas of the room. The vibe was flourished, and we were fitting in well…Maybe too well. A older married couple sitting next to us. I notice them looking at us and a start a conversation. “How are you guys doing tonight?”

They look over slightly confused.  For a moment I complexly forgot that I was in berlin and just assumed that they spoke English. A mutual silence fell, and I could feel that conversation starter really sank to the floor.

“We’re good”. Thank God. The women spoke English. The awkwardness shrank and it blossomed into a lovely conversation. We talked about their passion for sculpture and the German exhibition ceramics. A lot cooler than I ever expected. And I told them about some obscure part of my life and Newcastle. It must have resonated because what was an empty “fancy joining us.” Turned into the first recruits of a small army.

And then there were four. The couple had latched on somewhere between shots of something neon blue and a heartfelt lecture from an gay Australian bartender about finding the “real Berlin.” We all fell in stride, dragging our way to the next bar with the lazy magnetism of people with nowhere better to be.

That’s when we met Tyler. American. A very Suttle gay. Very quiet. Dressed like in dark and very nonchalant. He appeared mid-cigarette, and what looked like a long few days of partying for him. They were handsy but chill, leading to one or two awkward yet hilarious moments for Angus. I think he imagined they'd met on a Tantric retreat and never looked back. Fantasies and Fillises. Nice guy, meant well. Also, he said he could get us weed, no problem. So that solidified my opinion of him.  Just needed to make a quick stop at his “friend’s place”—said “friend” in air quotes, which we ignored because why not?

So, we followed. Through underpasses, trainlines and side streets and into one of those Soviet-era concrete tombs where everything echoes, even your thoughts. He buzzed a door and went in. Leaving us to wait in the stairway. We speak with obvious nerve about the situation we lead ourselves into. Following a random dude into a secluded place. Shit, what had we done. Tensions were rising but before they popped. Tyler was back and with a big bag of weed. Brilliant

We didn’t even wait. Rolled up in the stairwell, right there on a milk crate, while someone held a phone light and someone else told a story about a haunted hostel in Prague. We sparked up. The joint lit our little circle like a campfire, everyone hunched and grinning, the kind of closeness that only comes from shared experiences like this one we were currently knee-deep in.

High, half-lost and entirely invincible, we spilled back into the streets. Every bar blurred into the next—a parade of cracked tiles and sticky tables, 2-euro shots and one-ply toilet paper. The group grew.

Then came Theo. A proper cockney prick.

Theo was the kind of guy who entered like a question mark. He ordered a single red wine and drank it like a pint. He had round glasses, turkey teeth, and the posture of someone perpetually on the verge of asking if you’d ever truly felt. At first, he was good craic in a cockney-way. Asked strange, probing things like, “Any of you’se got any coke?” People humoured him. For a bit. But then he didn’t stop asking. Diverting every conversation towards. Getting or doing some coke.

But Theo didn’t let up. He steered every conversation toward death, regret, or Baudelaire. Laughed too hard at his own cryptic jokes. Took three minutes too long to answer any question, like he was pulling the words from an underground vault of wanker. I honestly couldn’t believe this arsehole.

It happened gradually—the exodus. First the couple vanished, maybe back to Norway or just into the mist. Then the Australian left mid-sentence, muttering something about “the moon not feeling right.” Tyler offered a final flamboyant bow and disappeared in a glittery puff of contempt. What a guy. I wish him well wherever he is right now.

That’s when I knew the night had died.