Tales from Berlin: Laboratory

In 1929, Christoper Isherwood—author of A Single Man (yes, that Tom Ford movie with the same name)—left England to spend a week in Berlin and decided to stay there indefinitely. It was a time when Isherwood “fully indulged his taste for pretty youths. He went to Berlin in search of boys and found one called Heinz, who became his first love.”*

I went to Berlin in search of boys but did not find my first love. Instead, I went to Lab.oratory.

Lab.oratory or Lab for short is one of the most popular gay sex clubs in Berlin. I read about it from my gay travel guide, and my fuck buddy also recommended it to me when I asked him for recommendations.

The Lab is located at the former power plant building where the other famous club, Berghain, is in.

Where Berghain’s entrance it at the front, the Lab’s entrance is at the left side of the building.

I would’ve had a difficult time finding the Lab if not for a Berliner who agreed to meet me and take me there. At the side of the building, there is a tunnel-like entrance and beyond that, there is a little plastic sign almost the size of an A4 paper that said something like this, black print over white background:

LAB.ORATORY
Play safe. No camera.
No drugs. No perfume.

I was wearing a concentrated Hermès scent that night and the Berliner, upon reading the sign, said, “Good luck to you.” Beside the sign were the door and the bouncer who was in charge of it.

My fuckbuddy told me that 1.) I should only go on a Friday and 2.) that I should check the website because there are specific opening times. True enough, it’s only on a Friday that I can go in. The theme on Fridays is called Friday Fuck 2-4-1, which means that you can buy 2 drinks for the price of 1, and there’s no dress code. Thursdays are usually reserved for Naked Sex Parties—which naturally means you’re required to strip down and only the shoes should remain. Saturdays and Sundays have themes such as piss, deep throat, fisting and bondage, often with appropriate dress codes. Opening times vary, but the main concept is, the door is only open for a few hours—that night it was from 22:00 to 24:00—and then after that, no one is let in.

If you are going, I suggest you go 45 minutes before the closing time, especially on a Friday, because the line gets long and you might not be in time.

Anyway, the Berliner I met was kind enough to invite me to have beer with him before we go to the Lab. We went to this beer garden behind the Berlin wall and near the river. He bought me my drink.

It was almost 23:30 when we finished—or rather, I reminded him that the Lab would be closing in half an hour. He said he was not in the mood to go to the Lab but he’ll take me there anyway. I thought he’d just take me to the entrance but since he’s been there once before, he still paid the entrance fee and showed me inside. Fortunately, I was let in despite smelling like orange leaves and wood.

The Lab’s number system is a bit complicated. You’ll be given a number in a tiny, laminated cardboard. If you need to deposit some stuff like clothes and shoes, a plastic bag will be marked with your number and you put your things inside it. The same number is used when ordering drinks. You order and then give the bartender your number; you don’t pay yet. When you’re about to leave the club, you use your number to get your stuff where you deposited them, and you go back to the bar again, show your number and pay for your drinks. You get a receipt and only then you can get out of the Lab by giving the bouncer your number and your receipt.

After showing me around, I thanked the Berliner for his kindness. He told me he’ll go to Berghain and if there’s anything I need, that I should give him a call. I thought that was very sweet of him.

So I was there, in a sex club in Berlin, in my white, slightly fitted Zara T-shirt, slim, black shorts and gray Chuck Taylor sneakers. There were a few condoms in my pocket. I was nervous, even if I have been in a sex club once here in Copenhagen. When I’m nervous I get really thirsty. So even when I already had a bottle of water at the beer garden, I went to the bar (one of the bartenders was wearing nothing but a white apron) and I asked for water. Since it was 2-4-1, I got two large bottles of water and I don’t know where to put the other one.

The bar

I stood near a pillar where there is a sort of ledge that acted as a sort of a mini-table and put one of my bottles on it, drank from the other one and stood awkwardly. The Berliner was right: there are many good-looking guys that go to the Lab. Sure, there were old guys and guys I won’t bother having sex with even if I was paid, but the majority of guys were Caucasian, muscular and shirtless. And there were a lot of them.

When I got tired of standing, I found a seating space in one of those four-poster-bed-looking things:

I took my drink and sat down beside a shirtless guy wearing rubber chaps and a rubber jockstrap. He was not really my type but when I saw his hand reaching for my thigh, I said, “Hi there!”

We chatted and I found out he was also a tourist. More surprising is that where he came from was near where I live. He’s a Swede from Malmö, about half an hour train ride from Copenhagen.

It was getting hot so I loudly wondered whether I should take off my shirt. The Swede said that I was cute and that I could definitely get away with it. I probably shouldn’t have listened since the rolls of fat in my midsection made their presence felt when I sat down.

When I came back from returning my shirt, the talk became dirty and the next thing I know is that we looked for a place “where there are few people” (he said) and ended up in this area:

I thought of writing a blow-by-blow (pun intended) account of what actually happened to me in that place but I realized it would be too tedious. I will just put in record that I played safe and that I had four guys in total: a Swede, a German (tourist from Cologne), a French-speaking guy who cursed in French while he did me (which I found sexy), and a white guy (I didn’t ask where he was from) who came too early.

Condom available at the Lab

So instead of enumerating what happened to me, I will just write some observations while in the Lab:

1. I am a voyeur and an exhibitionist. It turns me on to watch gay guys have sex in front of me. In the same way, I am turned on when guys watch me and they are playing with their dicks while I am getting screwed. I feel sexy.

2. People in a cruising, labyrinthine place like the Lab are like ants: there is a steady flow of people going to and from locations and it’s quite funny to know that they are just going around in circles.

3. I wonder who thought of the brilliant idea of red lights in sleazy places. It’s appropriate. It doesn’t hurt the eyes and it makes a lot of people look enticing.

4. Even with the advisory of playing it safe and having plenty of condoms around the Lab, a lot of people still insist on doing bareback.

5. There was no dress code that night but there was this short, Chinese-looking guy with an average body who cruised around naked, clutching his white briefs in one hand. He did not turn me on but I truly admired his self-confidence. I wish I could do that someday.

6. There was this tall, muscular, good-looking American guy who sounded nelly when he spoke. He annoyed me not because his actions betrayed his looks, but because he had the habit of walking away when the guy blowing him is obviously having fun. I assumed I was not his type because he never offered his dick to me, which is just as well.

7. There was one lovely couple—I assume they’re American, too, because they spoke to each other in American accent—which looked so much alike they looked like twins, and I think they just went there to satisfy their exhibitionistic tendencies. I did not see them play with anyone else but themselves.

8. Fred Perry piqued shirts in black or white are fetish gear.

I left around 4 am, when the club had very few people left and my eyes are begging to be shut. Took a cab and it’s amazing that I was only charged 10 EUR from that place to my hotel.

A friend of mine called my promiscuity “an exploration of my sexuality”. Probably it is. And I don’t think there’s a place more fitting for an exploration of my sexuality other than a sex club in Berlin called Lab.oratory.


LAB.ORATORY
Am Wriezener Bahnhof
Berlin - Friedrichshain
S-Bahn: Ostbahnhof


*Source