Free Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. by Christiane F., Christina Cartwright Page A

canrecognize how ridiculous and stupid these common people are. That's kind of what I was thinking. And I had the same sequence of thoughts on later acid trips, too. Then I started feeling terrified by those faces again. I looked at Piet. He was also somehow uglier than usual. His face was really small compared to the pig faces. But despite that, he still looked kind of normal.
    I was so glad when we got out in Rudow, because by that time I was really tripping. All the lights were insanely bright. One of the streetlights above us seemed to be even brighter than the sun. In the subway, I was freezing, but now I was boiling hot. I thought I was somewhere in Spain, instead of in Berlin. It was like in one of those beautiful posters in the travel agency office in Gropiusstadt. The trees were all palm trees, and the street was a beautiful beach. Everything was unbelievably bright. I didn't tell Piet that I was tripping. I kind of wanted to be alone on my crazy but awesome trip.
    Piet, who was also tripping, said that we could still go to his girlfriend's because her parents weren't there. He loved this girlfriend of his. We walked into the underground garage of his girlfriend's house. He wanted to see if her parents' car was there. But the garage was something out of a horror movie—at least in my eyes. The low-hanging ceiling seemed to crush us, bulging further and further downward. The concrete pillars swayed back and forth. The parents' car was there.
    Piet said, “Man, what a crazy fucking garage.” And then he must have suddenly felt self-conscious, thinking that he was the only one tripping and asked me, “So where did you throw that pill back there in the club?” He looked at me and said after a few seconds, “Whoa, baby girl, I shouldn't have said anything: Your pupils look like they've been sucked into your eyeballs!”
    Once outside, everything was beautiful again. I sat down on the grass. The wall of one house was so orange that it seemedto offer a reflection of the rising sun. The shadows all seemed to move away to make room for the light. The wall bulged out and suddenly seemed to be devoured by flames.
    We went to Piet's house. Piet was an incredible painter. In his room, he'd hung up one of his paintings. It was a picture of a skeleton riding a really fat horse, and wielding a scythe. I was obsessed with that picture. I'd seen it a couple of times before and thought it was just about death. But now the painting didn't scare me at all. My thoughts were all much simpler now, almost naïve. I thought, There's no way that that skeleton would be able to control such a big horse. It seemed like the horse was already in command. We talked a long time about that picture. Then Piet gave me a few records to listen to. He said, “This stuff is amazing when you're tripping.” I went home.
    My mom was still awake, of course. She started in with the usual questions: Where had I been, what had I been doing, and things could definitely not go on like this, etcetera, etcetera. My mom seemed completely ridiculous to me—all fat and dumpy in her white nightgown, her face distorted with rage. Just like all of the other losers in the subway.
    I didn't say a word. I wasn't talking to her anymore. Even when I did say something, it was only about the most necessary and trivial things. I didn't need any love or affection from her. Sometimes I even believed that I didn't need a mom or a family at all.
    My mom with her boyfriend lived in a completely different world from me. She didn't have the slightest clue as to what I was up to. She thought that I was a completely normal kid, just going through puberty. What could I have said to them anyway? There was no way they'd get it. They would've only told me to stop. That's what I thought at the time. The only thing I felt for my mom was pity. Pity for how stressed out she always was whenshe'd come home from her job and then immediately throw herself into her housework. But it was her own