I’ve started a newsletter at Ghost. You can sign up here if you want more like this. I’m keeping these here for history’s sake.
Neukölln Dreams
Note: Some folks have quite reasonably asked me – wait, what is this newsletter you want me to sign up for again? So here is a preview of my newsletter, which talks more about what I am doing in Europe, and then my adventures in writing after that. If you want to read more and support me in this trip, you can go here to sign up ($5 a month or $50 a year). If you want to read more and can’t swing the fee, feel free to send me a message via the contact form below. If you do not want this newsletter and want to continue receiving my free newsletter, which is just sporadic events and publications, then you can sign up at the same link.
Welcome!
(And Entschuldigung.)
I’m finally walking upright, after the jet lag, and thought I’d send my first full newsletter!
So, perhaps predictably, due to a relatively mundane and boring series of jet lag-related mishaps, my first struggle here in Berlin was figuring out how to apologize.
In German, apologizing is harder than you think – not because of a lack of words to apologize, but because of a surplus of them. So, for example, on the U-Bahn back from an extraordinary night seeing music, I stepped on an old man’s toe. Like, not a minor toe tap, but a major step, an accidental stomp. The man, who had my uncle and father’s exact red frizzy hair, the same red splotches on his skin, was also wearing an expression I’d often seen on my dad’s face, a sort of flat-lipped disappointment that I often took to mean I had failed morally. I started to apologize, but then I froze.
Beginning German learners like me are taught two main ways to apologize: Entschuldigung, a lesser form of I’m sorry that also means excuse me, and es tut mir Leid, which is more serious. Thinking “excuse me” was the way to go, I eventually said, “Entschuldigung.” The man just looked at me, shook his head, and puffed out his cheeks, an expression that my father also gave me very occasionally, and which I took to mean I had disappointed him, and that he was starting to think I was beyond hope.
When I came home, worried I’d used the wrong form, I looked up the difference. Then I asked my friends. I found no clear answers. The fact is, I think, that apologizing doesn’t translate well. But I did find some clues: Entschuldigung literally means “deguiltification.” It is about asking for your guilt to be removed. Es tut mir Leid literally means “It gives me sorrow” – it is about commiseration with someone, either about your bad actions or about something that happened that isn’t your fault at all, like a death in the family.
So did I use the right word with the gentleman whose toe I stepped on? I still don’t know. One seems like too much, the other seems like too little. But I do wish English had these different versions of I’m sorry. I think it would’ve made the reckoning of the past decade or so much clearer for us.
Which leads me to what many of you may be wondering: what is the point of your trip and this newsletter? Why is it called “It’s Gonna Be Different This Time”? What did I sign up for?
Why Am I Here? (The Short Version)
The official answer is that I received some limited funding to go on a research trip to Germany to do some fact-checking and further fact-seeking on my book. Maybe to find material for another book, too. I’m investigating the possibility of EU citizenship. I’ll also be spending time with long-lost cousins, trying to gain access to archives, and researching queer history in Berlin (which, by the way, is incredible). I’m then going to a residency in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where I’m also going to check out a queer refuge that is trying to reclaim rural spaces for queer people. And then I’m going to Edinburgh for a week to visit a couple friends and see the Fringe Festival.
The real answer, though, is that I’m here because I find something about this place calling me. I’m here because America has ceased to feel like home, if it ever did, and I want to explore places that might feel more like home for both me and my partner Ashley. I’m here because I’m going to finish my doctoral program soon, and I’m wondering what comes next. I’m here because I know so little about my family’s past, and learning new things about it feels like learning new things about myself.
Neukölln Dreams, or Why I’m in Germany Through Extended Metaphor
I’m staying in Neukölln, a queer and/or Turkish and/or North African and/or white working class neighborhood which is near Tempelhoff, the old airport that they turned into a park. I love that this airport, which was once famously the site of Himmler’s and Hitler’s massive Nazi rallies, is now a queerborhood full of immigrants.
Anyway, it’s the kind of neighborhood with posters like this.
Which is all just to say that I’m starting this newsletter by talking about Nazis because that tends to be the question everyone asks when I say I’m going to Germany, or when I say that I’m thinking of applying for citizenship here: aren’t you scared of the Nazis? Or rather, that’s the question everyone eventually asks, once they work up the nerve. And the answer is that yes, I am terrified of Nazis, but sadly, they are everywhere, and they are resurgent here just like they are everywhere, and it is a little bit more frightening that they are resurgent here, because of history. But I also feel a little bit more hopeful here because from what I have seen, Germans are always thinking about their history, because there are reminders everywhere, because every child is educated about the holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. I walked by a star of David in front of a Jewish restaurant the other day, left there by the owners just to remind us. There are parts of ruins of burned out temples. Reminders everywhere that you can touch. Reminders that, I hope, alert people to the dangers of extreme right wing ideas and policies.
But what I am also learning here is that Germany’s history is more complicated than just the Nazis. To be honest, I think I inherited my father’s and grandparent’s shame about the country we came from, which means I am learning about German history like a fresh eyed student. I just sort of avoided learning about it, because of the shame. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to be ashamed of. But also, there is more to investigate than just shame. For example, yesterday, I hiked to the spot where Max Hirschfield once hosted the Institute for Sexuality Studies. Hirschfield created the first ever organization to argue for gay rights, in 1897. This wouldn’t happen in the US until 1924. Later, he founded the institute, where, among other things, he and others created a social and community space for queer people that helped create the openness that existed in Berlin in Weimar Germany. He performed the first surgeries for trans people. He had an extended library on issues of sexuality, which was burned by the Nazis (intriguingly, many of the most famous photos of Nazi book burnings are of his library, a fact that is often left out of the history books.) He traveled the world, inspiring people everywhere. In other words, there would be no queer movement like the one that exists today if there were no Hirschfield, if there were no Berlin, if there were no Germany. (If you want to learn more about this, you can watch the Netflix doc Eldorado: Everything the Nazis Hated, which is pretty good, h/t to my friend Kyle for pointing me in that direction and for much of this information.) When I went there, I found no sign commemorating the Institute (though I believe there is one further away.) I did, though, find these two rabbits humping.
Which is all just to say that today, a hundred years later, I find myself trying to figure out what comes next at the same time the world is trying to figure out what comes next. It’s a scary time to be about to graduate with a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature with a certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies. It’s a scary time to be an educator and a writer in the US. Colleges are closing, cruelty is en vogue again, Christian nationalists are banning books, trans children and adults are under attack by everyone from right wing demagogues to famous childrens’ book authors, Andrew Tate has become a hero for many young boys. It’s a scary time to think about history repeating. It’s a scary time to think about what the second half of my life will look like. All of these things are true everywhere, but this doesn’t mean I shouldn’t look to other lands and my family history and other histories for guidance. It doesn’t mean history has to repeat. So here I am, looking for the right sorts of questions, and these posts are going to be about what I find.
NOTE: If you made it all the way here, and you liked what you read, please tell your friends about this newsletter! It’s already gone a long way towards helping fund this trip, but I am not all the way there yet.
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