This first appeared in Skive Future Magazine

When the Doctor blew into town he phoned right away, as I knew he would, his cool, boarding-school drawl tickling my ear. ‘You’ve got to let me show you the town,’ he said. I knew better than to argue with him. It was early summer and the lilacs were blooming in vacant lots all over the city, in the overgrown bomb craters and on the edges of building sites where the cranes growled and bit great holes into the earth all day long. But we met in the peaceful twilight, just outside the U-Bahn at Savigny Platz. ‘You’re looking good,’ said the Doc, from behind his dark glasses. He sounded surprised. I was wearing a black dress, a little Audrey Hepburn number I keep for such indiscernible occasions, and a lot of pearls, some of them real, white gloves. ‘Come on,’ he said, taking my arm forcefully. ‘I want to show you a thing or two.’

          We went to a literary café and sat under the chestnut trees’ heavy odorous blooms, we ordered white wine and small, pink and green sandwiches. The Doctor, voracious as usual, and I waiting for some invisible signal before I could eat, drinking the cold wine slowly but not carefully, clinking the pearls, my small globules of personal moonlight, upon the marble table. ‘I missed you,’ said the Doctor. He said the people in China were very appreciative of his sixteen string violin, which struck me as a good thing. ‘What’ve you been up to?’ he said, raising those eyebrows of his.

          ‘I go to the opera a lot,’ I said. ‘Nearly every night.’

          ‘Still with the opera singer?’ he said. I shrugged and looked at the thick, waxy chestnut flowers falling into my plate. I wasn’t going to talk about that to him. Very slowly, the darkness was closing in, first pale blue, then violet, then a warm, even blackness you could almost stroke.

          We went to a club where they stamped small spidery characters on our hands. Inside the air was the colour of winter twilight over snow, a jazz band was playing very loud music that made my eyes hurt. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ said the Doctor. I said I’d have a Mineralwasser. ‘You can’t have water in a place like this,’ he said. Disapproving stare over the top of those glasses. ‘I can have whatever I like,’ I said. This is what it’s like to be a beautiful woman – you can have whatever you like, at least in the drinks department. The Doctor was drinking absinthe again. ‘Can you get me some pills?’ I said.

          ‘What kind of pills do you want?’

          ‘The kind that put you to sleep, the kind that let you die,’ I said.

          ‘Don’t be stupid. I’m not going to help you die,’ he said.

          ‘Why not? What is it your business? Why can’t I die if I want to?’

          ‘You can do what you like. I’m not going to help you,’ he said. It seems nobody is going to help me. They all say the same thing.

          Then out into the night and a personal tour of the dark side. He took me to Communist Headquarters and kissed me on the mouth saying, ‘You are so beautiful, you are incredibly beautiful. You know that, don’t you?’ Yes, I know. There’s not a whole lot I can do about it though. He showed me where they used to torture people, the empty cells still clanging with pain and fear, bells tolling in the omniscient night. ‘No more wall,’ he said. ‘One day it was just…all over.’ He seemed almost sorry. On the empty street a small girl approached, carrying a balloon, an older, bearded man held her tightly by the hand. She stopped for a moment to stare at us. What’s she doing up so late? ‘The lady has gloves like Mickey Mouse,’ she said to the man. I had not thought of the resemblance before, but it’s perfectly true, Mickey Mouse wears white gloves at all times. If I added a pair of mouse-ears the resemblance would be even more striking.

          The Doctor took me in his arms and began kissing me, pressing his long, hard body up against me as if he were trying to merge his flesh with mine, his face a little stubbly, and the stubble scratched my cheeks while he kissed me deeper and deeper, so deep I thought – I am falling, falling off a cliff and I’ll never hit the ground. With his hands he caressed me, my back, my arms, my hair, while my hands wandered over him, the back of his head, grasping his thick, spiky albino hair, feeling the tense muscles at the nape of his neck, the strong flat surface of his back, his hard little ass while he kissed me and kissed me. Later he pointed a camera between my legs and took a photograph. ‘For your collection?’ I said, and this made him very angry. ‘You don’t understand - there’s no collection - I need this, need to have it with me all the time.’

          Somehow we ended up about three o’clock in the morning at the Friedrichstraße Bahnhof. Nobody around but the rats, a couple of policemen in drab green, and the two of us. The rats swarmed over the empty tracks, tearing bits of discarded food packets with their sharp little teeth. The Doctor pointed to a giant Coca-Cola sign that hung directly above the railway tunnel. ‘In the old days a guard used to sit right there, with a machine gun,’ he said. ‘They’d shoot anybody who tried to get on a train – bang! no questions asked.’