Turbulent love: Jupiter Gatling and Adriana Roberts met in a Berlin club
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What is love? And why does it sometimes happen to us under difficult circumstances? In war on different sides, separated from religion or radical regimes, foreign and personal reservations or fear: We tell of couples who came together against resistance - and stayed together. Our first love story is about Jupiter and Adriana, who fell in love when Adriana was still called Adrian and was married. This is their story.
Jupiter moves from Munich to Berlin in 2012.
She is tired of the posh scene in Bavaria, she is in her early 20s, she wants to try herself out, throw herself into the nightlife.
Jupiter wasn't called Jupiter then - she didn't want to read her real name in the newspaper.
The new name developed in Berlin in the first two or three years.
More and more often she calls herself Jupiter, a reference to a character from the anime series "Sailor Moon".
She chooses Gatling as her last name because someone once told her she could talk as fast as a machine gun.
During the day Jupiter works in an advertising agency, at night she drifts.
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Adriana Roberts is American, she comes from San Francisco and is touring Europe as a DJ in 2012.
In spring she comes to Berlin.
She organizes so-called mash-up parties, mixing hits by Britney Spears and Nine Inch Nails into artistic reinterpretations.
One evening she spins at Cassiopeia, a subculture club on the party mile in Friedrichshain.
Flyers are distributed in the district: Those who dress up as a pirate do not have to pay admission to the party.
Nobody dresses up in Berlin.
Except for Jupiter.
You and Adriana are the only ones who appear in pirate guise that evening.
Jupiter likes Adriana's long, bright red dreadlocks, she speaks to them when Adriana has finished with her DJ set: "Do you like boys or girls"?
- "Both of them."
They kiss in the toilet for a long time, but at some point that evening they lose sight of each other.
A week later, Adriana hangs up in Munich.
She can't believe her eyes when Jupiter suddenly stands in front of her.
love at first sight
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They spend the night together, later they say it was one of those magical nights when you lie in bed whispering at six in the morning, telling each other about life, intoxicated by being suddenly in love and making crazy plans.
Adriana asks Jupiter if they want to spend the last days of the tour together, it's off to Budapest.
Their story feels like in the film "Before Sunrise" with Julie Delpy, they both think: incredibly romantic - and incredibly without perspective.
Because Adriana was still called Adrian back then, that's how she imagines Jupiter, actually lives in San Francisco and is married.
The wife is also her professional partner, together they founded the party series “BootieMashup”, with which they now go to clubs all over the world.
The marriage has not been going well for a long time, also because Adriana's ex-wife rejects plans for gender reassignment measures.
Adriana does not feel like a man, she appears female in public.
The wife cannot get used to the idea.
"She wanted to keep me as her husband, I was allowed to look androgynous, but not live my true identity," says Adriana today.
Gender is not a big issue between Jupiter and Adriana.
“It just never mattered,” they say.
Both see themselves as artists, free spirits, they say that they have little interest in dealing with narrowly defined gender roles.
It doesn't matter who you've loved before, it's less about sexual preferences and more about a love that hits both unexpectedly and with full force.
Jupiter dated men before Adriana, she gets to know them as a man, but she says: "Gender never had an influence on my feelings."
Love between two worlds
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That sounds so easy.
The world around the two of course sees the relationship differently.
Adriana's ex-wife freaks out when she learns of the affair, puts her husband under pressure with the joint venture, organizes Jupiter's telephone number, threatens her in long conversations.
Friends on both sides advise: Don't do that, this love has no future.
It is becoming more and more difficult not to lose hope in a common future, too many obstacles pile up: Adriana's marital problems, the distance, the impossibility to spend time together in peace.
"There have been moments when I wondered if this love only existed as a fantasy in my head," says Adriana today.
But Jupiter and Adriana cannot get away from each other.
"We broke up for two weeks, but couldn't stand it," they say.
They have never felt so attracted to another person, this is how they describe it to this day.
For Jupiter fate, for Adriana simply unbelievable luck.
They begin to organize secret meetings between Berlin and San Francisco so that Adriana's wife does not hear about the affair and disturbs the meeting.
Free at last?
Adriana finally files for divorce and it takes two years to go through the process.
After that she is finally free.
She is now even more conscious of her identity as a transsexual woman.
"At some point I thought to myself: Who am I actually trying to fool?", She says today with a laugh.
She starts taking hormones, arranges surgery appointments, has breast implants inserted, the jaw grinded and the whiskers removed - a laborious, painful undertaking.
Jupiter quits her permanent job in Berlin to take care of Adriana in San Francisco.
They only talk casually about Adriana's gender transition, it is clear that both of them can do whatever they want with their bodies.
"Yes, at first I was a little sad that Adriana wanted to change the face I fell in love with," says Jupiter, pausing for a moment, then adds.
“But in the end I found her a lot hotter after the surgery than before.” She grins.
Three years after getting to know each other, they are leading the life they wanted: They travel the world, hang up at parties together, they lead an alternative jet-set life between San Francisco and Berlin.
And then Corona came
They are happy - until Corona puts their love to the test again: Jupiter has to travel to Germany in March 2020 to extend their Esta travel authorization for the USA.
Shortly before Adriana wants to visit Berlin, the entry ban is imposed.
The two are separated from each other for five months, forging desperate plans over which detours they could meet again, in Mexico or Iceland.
"We've been through so much in our relationship, but this lack of perspective was really bad," says Jupiter.
A joint project keeps them in a good mood: They start to organize digital parties on the online platform “Twitch” and broadcast their music to the world.
In the summer, travel restrictions suddenly fall, and Jupiter and Adriana hug each other at Tegel Airport.
They are more sure of their love than ever before, Adriana will be leaving her apartment in San Francisco in the coming months and will move to Jupiter in Berlin.
You want to get married.
But only when it is possible to throw a really big party again: “Parties are our job!
We're not getting married on Zoom. "
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