The History of Sex: Berlin -- Into the Darkroom -- (Chap. IX, Pt. 2)

As in most gay bars here, though, the real action takes place in the all-important darkroom.

A door at the back of the pub marked FRONTIER ZONE opens onto a staircase spiraling into the basement, where men in various degrees of undress are having sex in concrete cubicles.

As humid as it is upstairs, the darkroom is a sauna of sweat, urine and alcohol.

Club Tropicana it ain't

A bearded staff member breaches the darkness with a small torch, discreetly flashing the light on the floor to collect dead beer bottles.

In one cubicle, a couple in leather police gear are kissing each other's nipples, while across the way, two skinheaded guys with their trousers down are snogging and masturbating, as a bystander turns their ministrations into a ménage a trois.

Bald and obese, the third man wears a dirty T-shirt over his pale, fish-belly skin, his tongue lolling around like Uncle Fester the Molester or Igor of the Darkroom.

Whether friend or freelancer, he's a bottom-dweller in every sense of the term, fingering one of the men's sphincters as he, too, wanks himself to completion.

Meanwhile, on the video loop upstairs, the male-maiming seductress is licking the blood from her fingers and masturbating, while across the street, at 'the gayest restaurant in Berlin' a liquid-crystal display flashes up paintings by the Old Masters, including Michelangelo's Adam languidly fingering the hand of God.