Lou Reed
Berlin

THE REVIEW

I had always imagined it so desperate. Desperate and unique because that's the only way I thought a love story could be. Sure, Rome is not Berlin and, unfortunately, at that time I wasn't using drugs. But it was close.

I was past my twenties and the seventies were just a memory since I had nothing left from my life back then except for a handful of records when I met Chiara. From Friuli, she loved photography, and when she smiled, Rome, slyly, stood to attention to applaud her so radiant in showing off her perfect teeth.
The infatuation was as mad as it was sudden. I was surprised and at the same time scared: besides a few records, the seventies had left a hole in me and a great unease. Like a paranoid, I spent most of my time alone, at home listening to records or walking aimlessly for hours. I had no stimuli or expectations and my life was beginning to be a burden, something gone bad and needing discarding before I went completely mad. It felt old. Hardly a splendid opportunity!
Sometimes I didn't sleep for days.

It lasted seven months, like the lives of cats that die every thirty days. Seven months during which my life and the whole world seemed to have finally aligned on the same track without delays. I could even listen to Leonard Cohen without crying. But July came.

Her birthday had just passed a few days before, and on the eve of a Sonic Youth concert, she left me with a phone call that allowed no replies.
Desperate, I mounted my Vespa and raced madly under her house to shout to her that I loved her and wasn’t willing to give up. I stood for hours in front of her building until I saw her leave in the company of Gianluca, a dull thirty-five-year-old with fewer hairs and ideas in his head than I did, and whom I always hated for his arrogance and pretensions of grandeur. Almost a photographer, he called himself. A jerk. I approached, headbutted him, and Chiara left my life forever.
Because I tried calling her again, of course, but she never wanted to know about me anymore.

I had too many problems and she didn’t want to be involved. She was tired of being with someone who only played the role of the loser. I needed a mother, not a companion. And if she suddenly died? How would I cope? She seemed to know more about me than I did. All I have left of her is a photograph.
I sank into a terrible depression and for many years my only companion was a nearly empty bottle of whiskey. Maybe it was the only thing in which I could see myself. Apart from Jim.
I hit rock bottom.

One evening I put on "Berlin." It was raining outside. I floated in a shabby and dusty leather armchair and in the dark, I listened in reverent silence, when I understood. I was wrong. The headbutt had been a resounding mistake: I should have given it to her.

This review is emotionally dedicated to Gianluca. You're a jerk, but I’m sorry for that headbutt.