A Love Letter to Berghain (Part 7/8): Sugar and spice in Berghain's darkrooms
On sex-positive culture, animal desire, and discovering gentleness in the dark heart of Berghain.
(This is part seven of an eight-part series published at magicaldancefloors.com/berghain.)
IīīīīI Breakthrough
It’s been a year since I started this series, and I won’t lie, it’s been hard to write this one. I’ve procrastinated because, in part, I got so much wrong in my first experiences and I didn’t have the advantage of being able to go back to Berghain over and over to figure things out in person. Instead of going back again and again, I’ve instead had to play the movies back in my head over and over.
That all changed a week ago, when I flew again from California to Berghain and figured some things out in the way that works best for me: experientially. I won’t be writing about that most recent trip in this note, but the trip allowed me to break through my writer’s block and complete this post, which has been sitting in drafts for about six months.
IīīīīI But First, Face Control
Like my other post on the darkrooms, this post is paid because I don’t want this writing floating around freely online without some sort of filter separating the curious tourists from the committed partiers. If you’ve made it this far in the series, you’re committed for sure, but the paywall you’re about to meet is a secondary safety measure that ensures a bit more discretion and privacy as we bump around in the darkness, with at least one of us figuratively (and at times literally) naked.
To set expectations, the visits to Berghain’s fabled darkrooms that I write about in this post were quite tame compared to what was happening all around me in that space. So any shortness of breath, any tightness in the pants, or any dampness produced is a mere side effect, not the main point of this writing. I’ve been encouraged to write erotic fiction, but this isn’t that.
And to be clear, I was (and still am) in a committed monogamous relationship, so I didn’t engage in the full gamut of darkroom activities at any point during my first 30-hour Berghain weekend.
Which begs the question: why even go into the darkrooms if you’re not going to use them to fuck strangers? The even bigger question is why write about the fabled darkrooms of Berghain at all? Should some places or things never be written about?
This post is an answer to all of these questions. But in short, for those who don’t want to continue reading, I think the darkrooms are an essential ingredient in the cocktail that makes Berghain such a heady and intoxicating life experience. I don’t think you can understand Berghain without understanding the darkrooms.
The other answer to the question is artistic. One of the authors I admire most, Karl Ove Knausgård, describes his commitment to the truth via unflinching honesty as an “act of love.” This article series is my act of love -- there’s no building on this planet that I love more, and I hope my obsession with it might contribute to greater love, understanding, and respect for the place.
