Naked transvestites and giant gummy bears (unfortunately not at the same time)

So once again I'm in Europe, traveling on business, and I decided I should make some sort of attempt to document my adventures, trivial or otherwise. I came away from my last major trip to Europe - some five years ago - wishing I'd kept a journal that I could look back on years later. This time I'm going to do it - or, try, at least (my ambition may never make it further than this entry), and this is much more for me than it is for you, so don't bitch at me if the entries to come are less ridiculous, mean-spirited, or entertaining than what you've come to expect.

With that said, I'm somewhere in Germany today - exactly where, I'm not sure. Outside the window of the bus I can see a lot of trees, and the occasional cow. It's a cold and gray afternoon outside, which is nothing less of what I've come to expect from Europe in the summer. Walking around earlier reminded me of the that first Autumn day in New York when you have to put a sweatshirt on to go out for lunch, and on the walk back your fingers are getting a bit numb, and you realize that the beautiful warm afternoons of early Fall have come to an end and the long, cold winter is just around the corner. Except, of course, that it's June right now.

The other night I went out exploring in Hamburg with a couple friends, and after several failed attempts to find entertainment at local bars, we found ourselves wandering the sex district of Hamburg - specifically, a large street (the name of which escapes me) well known for porno shops and strip clubs. Hamburg is one of Europe's capitals for all things seedy, and is apparently the origin of all those disturbing German porn clips you've seen on the internet of girls farting on each other and the like. Naturally, then, we were in heaven perusing the German video stores, and came out with a stack of hilarious DVDs which will likely get us arrested passing through customs. There is one called "FREAKYDICKS," which features men who have mutilated their penises beyond recognition (and the women who love them). Another, "Extreme-Power-Video: Scheiss- und Fickorgie," is mostly old people taking dumps on each other.

Still, it was the theatre that proved the most entertaining. After popping our heads into a couple of very underwhelming table-dancing clubs, a doorman persuaded us to enter his theatre, which he guaranteed would give us a show we would not soon forget. He told us that the boring table-dancing places we had been "are kiddy familyshow! Not even vagina in those place! Mine show is German sexyshow! It is everything! Vampire! Dildoshow! You will not disappoint!" Wait a minute... Vampires? Dildos? Curiosity got the best of us, and we went in. The place was small and dark inside, with a little cabaret stage and a seemingly inappropriate audience of mostly businessmen and middle-aged Asian couples. On the stage, a woman with short, dyke-ish hair dressed in lingerie was doing an uninspired lip-synced performance of "All That Jazz" from Chicago. We took a seat in a dark corner on the left side of the stage, and a grumpy old lady came over to take our drink orders. "What to drink!" she shouted at me. "Diet Coke?" I requested. She just looked at me, and said "Beer?" "No, DIET COKE." "Beer?" "No... COCA. COLA." She just looked at me angrily. "Okay, fine. Beer."

Meanwhile, the woman on stage was slowly removing her lingerie in a fashion one might describe as "teasing," were she even mildly attractive. It was typical burlesque crap, nothing bizarre or exciting as we had hoped to see in a seedy theatre in Hamburg. She reached full nakedness at the end of the song and the curtains closed to a gentle applause, with no sign of vampires or dildos. Perhaps we'd been ripped off. We contemplated leaving, but decided to give it one more chance. After a few minutes, the lights dimmed, the curtain opened, and a mediocre German girl with bad teeth stepped out, wearing a sort of stylized school girl costume, again performing a song by way of lip-syncing to a tape. I recognized the tune as one of Janet's songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and sure enough, out came Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry's famous drag queen character from the film, for those unaware) to join in the performance. Oh, and what a sight he was. He was a hideous, fat, 40-something German drag queen with shaved eyebrows, a bad wig, and a DIY make-up job not worlds away from that fat secretary's on the Drew Carey Show. He was wearing a tiny speed-o, a garter belt, high-heeled shoes, and half of a corset which his flabby man-tits spilled out of. His entire body appeared to be freshly shaved, giving his lumpy skin an odd sheen under the stage lights. The speed-o, at least two sizes too small, wrapped like tightly-stretched cellophane around his manpackage, displaying with perfect clarity an oddly-shaped lump which protruded awkwardly from beneath his corset-restrained belly. It looked as if he was either stuffing his speed-o or had a bloated, lumpy penis worthy of a scene in "FREAKYDICKS." His only real resemblance to Dr. Frank-N-Furter was that he was a drag queen, but he performed the character's titular song from the film nonetheless, prancing around the stage as he did so, and then stepping into the audience, where he lap-danced a couple of German businessmen and even kissed a bewildered Chinese guy (whose wife laughed and clapped with delight) before returning to the stage to finish his performance. It was like watching a trainwreck, this fat old German dude with his mysterious penis bulge, his wig occasionally falling off to reveal a shiny bald head. But it got even weirder.

"Janet" re-appeared on stage, and the two of them did a duet - another song from the film. By the time they reached "Creature Of The Night," Janet had been stripped naked, and it became painfully clear what was about to happen. Frank-N-Furter laid her down on a prop couch which decorated the shoddy stage, and then he fell to his knees and buried his face between her legs. She, looking as bored as you might imagine, continued to lip-sync "t-t-t-t-t-t-tooouuuch meeee" as the fat bald transvestite lapped away at her beef curtains with the tenacity of a thirsty dog at a water bowl on a summer day. This went on far longer than it should have, and then Janet sat up, and Frank-N-Furter took position in front of her, his lumpy speed-o at eye level to her. The music blended out of Broadway cabaret and into bad German techno as Janet reached her fingers around the elastic of Frank-N-Furter's speed-o, and slowly pulled it down. What emerged from beneath the black spandex was a horrifying monster of a penis. It was not particularly long, but it was fat and lumpy at the base - probably as wide as a fist. It looked as if a thousand bees had stung it, or elaphantitis had just set in. Oddly, though, it tapered off significantly towards the end of the shaft, ending in a floppy, uncircumcised nozzle of squishy pink. All I could think about were the giant sand worms from the movie Dune, burrowing out of the ground to attack their prey, much as Dr. Frank-N-Furter's underpants worm had now burrowed out of its sweaty home to feast upon its own prey. The girl took the flaccid flesh lump in her hand and awkwardly stuffed it in her mouth. She bobbed back and forth, attempting to lure it into an upright position - and, like an unholy demon awakening from slumber, it began to rise. Frank-N-Furter, meanwhile, held his head back, making forced grunts and moans of pleasure.

Throughout all of this I sat in jaw-dropped horror, occasionally exchanging glances with my equally horrified friends. I had seen a show similar to this, years ago in Amsterdam, although it lacked the Broadway pizzaz and was kept at a fuzzy distance by virtue of my being incredibly high on mushrooms. This time, however, I was stone sober and a mere seven or eight feet away from the action, incredibly disturbed and yet utterly transfixed. By now Frank-N-Furter had mustered up a crooked boner, his little purple helmet peeking out from behind a blanket of puffy foreskin. He laid his victim down on the couch, climbed on top of her, and began thrusting away clumsily, while Janet feigned interest, holding on to his flabby sides.

So at this point I'm thinking: I've been in Europe for half a day, I'm jet-lagged and delirious, and suddenly I'm watching a skanky girl and a very ugly transvestite have awkward sex on stage in front of me to bad techno music, while middle-aged Asian couples watch with great interest. How is this my life?

The on-stage fornication continued for an ungodly amount of time, changing positions occasionally, until "Let's Do The Time Warp Again" crept up out of the thumping techno beats, and both cast members resumed lip-syncing, this time in the midst of their uninspired love-making. It had transcended from gratuitous to absurd, and I couldn't help laughing. As the song came to an end, Frank-N-Furter removed his creature from its den, helped Janet to stand up, and both of them took a naked bow to a golfing round of applause from the delighted crowd. The curtains closed, and I could do nothing but look at my friends in disbelief, and we all just started laughing. There was clearly another show on the way, but we decided one was probably enough for a night. On our way out, the overzealous doorman stopped us, asking "why you leave so soon? It was not good?" No, no, we assured him, it was very good, but we're tired, and need to go home. "But you cannot miss vampireshow! It is next! It is the star!" He pointed to a photo on the outside window of the theatre, which showed a pony-tailed man in a ridiculous vampire costume, fake blood running down his chin, his wide eyes peering at us. As tempting as it was, we told the doorman we needed to save something for our next trip to Hamburg. Whenever, if ever, that might be.

The next morning was far more mundane. I spent some time walking around the city, and quickly remembered that metropolitan areas in Germany are about as interesting and exotic as Cleveland, Ohio. Most of Europe is like a bootleg version of America, anyway. It's the same shit, but not as good. Nothing works quite right, or tastes quite right. CD's cost too much, movies come out months too late, the power outlets are cumbersome, Coke is always warm and flat, television is shitty, phones are weird. Nevermind that Americans are arrogant, fat, lazy, white trash pigs - at least we've figured out that warm soda tastes like wet balls, and you have to put more than two ice cubes in there to keep it fucking cold. Europeans can bitch about America all they want, but when you come over to Germany and everything is McDonald's and Burger King, the latest Brad Pitt movie is playing, CSI is on TV, 50 Cent is topping the charts, on and on down the line... it makes this place feel irrelevant. Make your own movies, and cook your own fucking hamburgers, or shut the fuck up about how much you hate us and continue to happily mooch off of our pop culture.

I did, however, come upon at least one fantastic thing that you don't see in America: An entire store devoted to gummy candy. They had every kind of gummy you could imagine, and in massive quantities. They even had my new prized possession - THE WORLD'S BIGGEST GUMMY BEAR!!! Behold its glory:



Okay, so maybe it isn't the biggest in the world, but it's the biggest one I've ever seen, and I'm happy enough with that. I also got several gallon-sized bags of fruit-shaped gummies for only a couple bucks each:



Or, at least I think they were only a couple bucks. No one really gave me a solid answer on what the conversion is over here, so I either spent twenty bucks or two hundred bucks at the gummy store... Either way, it was worth it.

Time to bundle up for another 45 degree summer evening in Germany!