panic attack! red carpet! berlin!

A true sto­ry about mak­ing shit up.
 

She holds me down by the wrist,

while the oth­er one grips my an­kles and tick­le tor­tures me with her end­less scrap­ing, scrub­bing, dig­ging. The feel­ing starts as prick­ly heat in my scalp. It ra­di­ates down my fore­head and sinks through­out my vi­brat­ing be­ing. Sweat builds in my armpits and springs from the pores on my face. My fin­ger­tips are numb, my heart has sped up like it’s at a rave, and my vi­sion goes wobbly.

“I’m hav­ing a pan­ic at­tack,” I say in slow-mo­tion like I’m speak­ing through drain‑o as I at­tempt to wres­tle my limbs from their strong, cal­loused hands. They don’t un­der­stand me. They speak no Eng­lish. None. I speak no Ger­man. They won’t let go. I wig­gle and they grip tighter.

“You VIP. Must fin­ish,” she says like a Ger­man robot.

“No VIP. Freak­ing out,” I re­spond, try­ing to do deep breath­ing. They plow through my pain, buff­ing and fil­ing vi­o­lent­ly, as if they’ve for­got­ten I’m a real per­son. I writhe in the chair and the en­tire back of my shirt is drenched down to my ass, and I’m hop­ing I don’t puke.

“I have to fin­ish! Be still! VIP!” She yells at me again, dead-eyed and straight faced. She ap­pears possessed.

Just twen­ty min­utes ago, a pub­li­cist brought me here, to the base­ment spa of the Soho house in Berlin be­cause I said I need­ed a mani-pedi. She told the nail techs that I was a VIP and to take care of me and do an ex­tra good job. She said it in Ger­man, then trans­lat­ed for me what she’d al­leged­ly told them, but I’m start­ing to won­der what was re­al­ly said be­cause it seems they hate me. Then she promised to re­turn to pick me up when they were done.

My lug­gage was lost, so I’ve been wear­ing a weird ten­nis out­fit for the last day and a half that I bought from the store in the ho­tel lob­by. We ar­rived on Sun­day and shops aren’t open, which seems counter in­tu­itive to me as an Amer­i­can con­sumer. I was wor­ried I’d have to find some­thing else to wear to tonight’s pre­mier but my suit­case mag­i­cal­ly ap­peared just as I was head­ing out to the spa. Now I have a new wor­ry. How will I make it to the red car­pet with­out dying?

Sweat pools in my crotch and I’m ter­ri­fied it’s go­ing to look like I peed my­self and, holy shit, is that blood? Yes, that is blood – she has cut into the mid­dle toe on my left foot, the big toe on my right, and my heart is a bad dancer with no rhythm, just fast and wild and then I re­mem­ber … I am a VIP. I can’t es­cape but I can or­der what­ev­er I want, I bet. Gold­en hand­cuffs in a gild­ed cage, we must make do.

“Cham­pagne!” I say fran­ti­cal­ly. “Please can I have champagne!”

They un­der­stand, thank all the gods, they un­der­stand. They sum­mon a woman who walks by, and say things in Ger­man and a mo­ment lat­er an en­tire bot­tle of Veueve Cliquot ar­rives. She pops it, she pours, and I drain the flute in one large gulp and ask for more. Please. Danke shön.

Warmth spreads up from my stom­ach and across my chest and the rac­ing or­gan with­in seems to pause, and take a deep breath. I take a deep breath, fi­nal­ly I’m able to. I’m still sit­ting in damp­ness but my ex­te­ri­or cools as the gold­en cham­pagne fizz re­places the icy fear and it seems we’ve nar­row­ly avoid­ed a grand mal pan­ic at­tack situation.

The woman at my feet holds small cot­ton clouds that turn from white to dark crim­son as my wounds gush, blood thinned. The one at my fin­gers is metic­u­lous­ly go­ing over them again with an­oth­er coat of shiny black, and I still long to es­cape so I take an­oth­er swig of the bub­bly. Then I re­mem­ber, I’ve got to be perky for the red car­pet, so I ask for a cappuccino.

Up-down-up-down-up-down, I think about be­ing a kid, that was my fa­vorite hair-do, the “up-down”, half up, half down and this is life now. No one knows how bad it’s got­ten. Up-down: A self ful­fill­ing prophe­cy in a pony tail hold­er. How will I wear my hair tonight?

 

In the back of a black car,

my hair is in big, boun­cy curls and I’m wear­ing a white jump­suit so the fact that I’m sweat­ing again is par­tic­u­lar­ly trou­bling, but it’s un­sea­son­ably, un­rea­son­ably hot here in Berlin, like 95 Fahren­heit. We pull up to a crowd, and a hap­py faced man with a lam­i­nate around his neck opens the door. As I step out of the car, in a thick Ger­man ac­cent he says, “Hol­ly, we have a sur­prise for you!”

I am so con­fused. “What? Me? Why?”

I am not the star of this show so I’m sur­prised he even knows my name.

“We have been plan­ning it ever since we found out you were com­ing. We are just so, so ex­cit­ed for you to see your surprise!”

 

There are cam­eras flash­ing every­where,

a good set up for a seizure, and peo­ple shout­ing as we are ush­ered onto the red car­pet, blind­ed, and pushed into dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions and for­ma­tions of pos­es with dif­fer­ent pals from the show, all smil­ing, laugh­ing. I won­der if they feel self con­scious too, or if they’re used to this. I can’t imag­ine ever be­ing used to this lev­el of en­er­gy com­ing at you.

I drank more cham­pagne while I got ready so it’s safe to say I’m pret­ty lit and I try to be charm­ing and not slur and my heart jumps around in my throat and I’m glad my nails look good, de­spite the blood. The flash­es are in­ces­sant, we’ve been stand­ing on this car­pet for what feels like hours and there is deep fear in the pit of my stom­ach that I will google my­self lat­er and see that it ap­pears as if I peed my pants.

Fi­nal­ly we’re ush­ered into an old church where the screen­ing will be held, and what do you know, no AC, right, cause this is Berlin and it nev­er gets this hot here. I feel drips down my spine as the hap­py man with the sur­prise ap­proach­es again, and guides me to stand be­fore a group of robe wear­ing Ger­mans on ris­ers. Sud­den­ly there are three cam­eras in my face, like tv cam­eras and the hap­py man says, ex­u­ber­ant­ly, “It’s for you! A Ger­man gospel choir!”

They be­gin to sing.

“It’s your song! They learned your song!”

I am so moved and also be­fud­dled by the idea of a Ger­man gospel choir and the cam­eras are rolling and everyone’s faces are ex­pec­tant as they stare at me. But by the sec­ond or third note, I un­der­stand they are singing the one song in the whole en­tire se­ries that I did not write. They also have chore­og­ra­phy, mar­i­onette-like with lots of dra­mat­ic limb drop­ping, heads falling and com­ing back to life me­chan­i­cal­ly as they sing in per­fect har­mo­ny, the song that is not mine.

They fin­ish and the cam­eras in my face draw clos­er. Ex­pec­tant faces, clos­er as they wait for my re­mark. My heart is do­ing some­thing weird again and I don’t have the heart to tell them their blun­der so I muster my bright­est smile and jump up and down and squeal with de­light at what a won­der­ful sur­prise this was for me. I gush about how beau­ti­ful­ly they sang the song. I cer­tain­ly am surprised.
 

Af­ter the screen­ing there’s a par­ty,

and at this point I’m on the edge of black­ing out. I drink an­oth­er vod­ka soda. I chain smoke Ger­man Marl­boros with a hor­rif­ic im­age on the pack­ag­ing of a gory hole in a neck, ex­pos­ing the in­side of a black­ened throat and some words that I bet trans­late to “YOU’RE GO­ING TO DIE”. But hey, I made it here, to the red car­pet, to the pre­miere, to the af­ter-par­ty, and maybe I’m al­ready dead be­cause this is so surreal.

I’m still sweat­ing, drunk enough that I feel maybe it’s more of a glis­ten, and then there are cam­eras in my face again as I’m in­tro­duced to – oh yay – the sweet, sweet choir di­rec­tor. He’s telling me about the process of learn­ing “my song” and ask­ing if he got the lyrics right be­cause Eng­lish is tricky for him AND they’re not avail­able on­line yet. I play along and tell him he nailed it and smile again for the cam­eras as we take a thou­sand pic­tures together.

But that’s not enough, he wants more. Re­al­ly wants to get into the nit­ty grit­ty of the songs mean­ing, how I wrote it and what in­spired it. The air goes still as every­one waits for my re­sponse. There’s no turn­ing back now, the choir director’s face looks so sin­cere so I have to keep up the ruse. My ten­der heart has run the equiv­a­lent of fifty marathons to­day and I can’t bear to em­bar­rass or let them down so I just start mak­ing shit up, make it all up, this is all made up any­way. The whole rea­son I’m even here is made up, and ul­ti­mate­ly, it is be­cause I am good at mak­ing shit up.

Though, this sto­ry is true.

 

—hol­ly solem

Flom­mist Hol­ly Solem is a singer/songwriter, mod­el, ac­tress and writer known for her work on Amazon’s orig­i­nal se­ries Hand of God, as well as play­ing, tour­ing and writ­ing with nu­mer­ous bands and artists. Copy­right © 2024 Hol­ly Solem. Art: Werks of George Grosz.

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