no.2 “the last adult toy store”
If there’s anything I’ve learned from being raised by parents who were constantly divorcing it’s this: How to lie. Mother lied about how many new expensive pairs of jeans she bought and Father lied about seeing another woman. Even Brother was a natural: The amount of exams and swim classes he got out of by feigning stomach cramps is beyond comprehension to me to this day. There is no question: the art of lying runs in the family. I lied, too. Number one was actually number two. The real number one - my first sexual encounter with another human being - happened way before technology and apps entered my life and was something else entirely. And it all started with the eternal dharma bum: Jack Kerouac.
Like many young men I was devouring On the Road shortly before graduating High School. I wanted to do just like Jack did and travel the big ole United States. As a German citizen I needed a visa, and the nearest place that issued them was Frankfurt am Main. Germany’s only real big city with high rise buildings and a bustling drug market seemed like the perfect place to send an 18-year-old to brace himself for the New World. And Frankfurt lived up to its reputation as the modern German Babylon in every possible way. The first doorway I passed after stepping out of the train was inhabited by two small creatures heating up heroin on a piece of tin foil and the second one by a giant turd comfortably bedded in a merino scarf. It doesn’t get more Frankfurt than that.
Ten years after 9/11 the U.S. Consulate General had long established a rigid security routine that was completely natural to everyone who worked there. But for a naive country boy the measures applied seemed like that of a dystopian high-level-security-murder-prison, like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie. Since you were required to bring certain documents, but were not allowed onto the premises with anything other than those specific documents, you had to get rid of any bag, backpack, or even your house keys before entering. And since there was no wardrobe space inside the building - again, this was before you could enter the premises - you had to stop by a privately owned bakery (!) across the street to leave your bags and house keys (!!) with a random employee who gave you a handwritten number on a piece of paper as a security to get them back later. Besides this obvious madness things went pretty smoothly once inside; a three hour wait, ultra-expensive water bottles and someone in line farting in front of me notwithstanding.
With a brand new visa in my bag I took a cab back to Central Station and felt absolutely marvelous. I was a citizen of the world after all. There was still some time left until my train back arrived, so I had about an hour to kill but no clue about what to do in Frankfurt am Main. Walking towards Central Station, ready to settle down with a book on a park bench, I was stopped short by a big flashy sign that seemed not to belong to Frankfurt in the early 2010s but New York City in the late 1980s. The sign read: „Doktor Müller - Erotik Shop.“ Never since have I seen a sign that intriguing. What sort of a doctor was she? And what role did she play in the running of this sex shop? Naturally I went in. I came for the title, but stayed for the toys. It was pretty exciting to see nipple clips and silicone vaginas up close for the first time, but anyone would have been awed by the sheer quantity of dildos this place held. I had a feeling Doktor Müller’s heyday was long over, and her erotic shop was more of a storage space than a mercantile establishment. There were rows and rows of gigantic veiny plastic dicks, mostly in pink and dark orange, and hundreds of boxes of VHR tapes teaching me that „Icelandic Otter Boys“ were a fetish item. For all I knew all the other sex stores in the nation had long since closed and sent all their merchandise to this last stronghold of lust with only this one stubborn medical specialist remaining to guard the treasure and keep the failing body of sex shops alive.
As fascinating as it was, I had soon seen it all. I waved the very nice yellow haired Loveparade clerk goodbye and left. With one foot already out the door I turned around and realized: There was an upstairs. Right behind the counter there were steps leading to a dark red glitter door. The stairway was decorated with silver foil, so it reflected back your steps as you walked up. This must be a magical place I thought to myself and paid the entrance fee to what naturally turned out to be a pretty sleazy porn theater. I went in and sat down - there was not a soul around, it was about 3:30 PM on a Wednesday - watched for a couple of minutes and decided it was not for me.
On my way out I saw there was another room. This one was again disco-themed like the stairway. But among the shiny mirrors and silver applications there was a single blue table standing in the middle of the room. I got curious. By the time I had circled the table twice and looked under it so as to check if it was part of some magic trick, a young guy came in. He was shorter than me by a foot, wore thick rimmed glasses and a blue basketball shirt. He looked like he had just skipped Algebra 2 and was being a bad boy. When he came closer I realized he was well over 30 and had the Down syndrome. I stopped in my tracks. Should I just go? Is this okay? Or are my thoughts what’s insensitive? By the time I asked myself these questions the man had lain down on the table and unbuttoned his pants. Leaving now would be insensitive. So I did the manly thing to do and took my first dick into my hands. I stroked it for a good minute and the guy seemed to enjoy it. I wasn’t really feeling much. Then I looked around at the silver walls, the 90s game show vibe of it all, and Suzi Quatro faintly roaring through the speakers downstairs, and suddenly I got very scared by that big city and by myself in it. Was I really The Wild One from the song as I liked to think? Or just a confused kid magnetically pulled to very heavy candy I wasn’t sure I could stomach? I took my hand away, left the poor aroused man on the table, stumbled back down the stairs out of the store and never turned around until I sat on the train back home.
If the American Government sent me to Frankfurt to get a visa and grow up a bit before I entered their challenging continent it may have worked a little too well. I see it as the equivalent of a father gifting his son a prostitute for his 18th birthday, which was once considered healthy for a young boy becoming a man. But what do I know, I’m not a Doktor Müller.