Kim&Jean

I knew them by chance. A social network or something like that. Jean invited me to join a yoga class and I, conscious of my strong limits in the practice, accepted anyway. When I arrived, obviously in late, I discovered a beautiful apartment with huge rooms and in one of those there was the yoga group. It was a super strong experience, intense, tragic in a way, but so powerful that I decided to join the class again. After few times, I just felt the right energy, so I asked Kim and Jean if they would have liked to be part of a shooting. But not a classical one, shiny, poser or whatever, just some real pictures taken in thier home and whitout posing or acting. Just them, just Kim and Jean, just their real love, just during their last day in that flat. The answer was: “Yes, why not?!”.
So, we joined together and made love. All the rest is in the pictures.

Who are you?
J: I’m french, born in 1974 in Dijon, in a couple of months I’ll be 40. I lived 11 years in the US where I became a yoga teacher and massage therapist.
K: I am Kim. I’m a 36 years old British-Italian bohemian with a passion for politics and chocolate.

How and where did you meet the first time?
J: We met on gay romeo and then in person in Berlin on June 13th. 2013.
K: We met briefly in Berlin, through a dating site, and I invited Jean over for dinner one night just before leaving for England. We stayed in touch and I invited Jean to join me in England at a friend’s stately home in Oxfordshire. I picked Jean up from the station by boat and rowed him home across the Thames. It was the afternoon of the 9th. of July 2013, the hottest English Summer in over a hundred years, and I’d like to think that our meeting had something to do with it… We’ve been a couple ever since and moved in together that very same day.

One thought you’ve never said about your country.
J: France could be a land of opportunity…
K: I am quite sure that I have exhausted all my thoughts about both Italy and England.

How much is important for you money?
J: I need enough to eat, to take the train to go visit my family and go to the movies!
K: Not much. It has always been a secondary worry for me. I came from a family with very little money and we always did fine, hence I have never prioritised earning money over other activities that were closer to my heart. I realised through experience that money always comes to me when I need it.

What do you love the most in your partner.
J: His sensitivity.
K: Too many to list, but first and foremost his patience, as there wouldn’t be a relationship without it.

What do you hate the most in your partner.
J: How he gets agitated when a crititcal situation would require to stay calm.
K: There is nothing I ‘detest’ about Jean, but his poorly time-management skills have been know to create havoc in the relationship.

A song or a rhyme you sang when child.
J: Whistle Flute Concerto by Vivaldi.
K: I used to love singing Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro”: “Figaro qua, Figaro là, Figaro su, Figaro giù, Figaro, Figaro, Fiiiiiiiiigaro!”… You get the idea of what kind of child I was!

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Clothes by:
Diesel
Levi’s
American Apparel
Daniele Alessandrini
Gallo
Zara
Versace
Kim’s and Jean’s own

Interview: Antonio Moscogiuri

I know that now you are far from Berlin, what did it mean for you this city?
J: For me, Berlin meant focussing on the priority of working to improve my relationship with myself, the communication with the heart and the positive aspects of my personality. In Berlin, I found the help and the motivation I needed. However, the city was too intense for me and it was necessary to leave.
K: Berlin changed my life and profoundly changed me inside. I have lived all over the world but no other city, with the exception of New York perhaps, has been as intense, stimulating, challenging, emotionally exhausting and esoterically magical as Berlin has been. Its turbulent history, its unspoken pain and its incessant celebration of life, its post-apocalyptic aesthetics, its über radical politics, its strong sex appeal, and – needless to say – because of Berghain!

How and why did you have the idea of creating Kreuzkoelln Yoga Collective?
J: The idea came from Kim who had had a similar experience in his previous apartment. With other yoga teachers, we create this structure in our Neukölln apartment to allow the people who couldn’t pay 10 € or 15 € in other studios to gain access to the benefits of yoga too. Kim also created the collective to allow me to work from home, use the beautiful space and have an income this way.
K: I had the idea of starting a yoga collective in the flat as I always believed in challenging the privacy that is often associated with the hetero-normative conception of the ‘home’. Like many of my yoga teacher friends in Berlin, Jean was looking for a space to teach and the size and location of the flat lent themselves perfectly to the idea of hosting a yoga collective.
Moreover, Kreuzkolln had recently been hit by a wave of gentrification that was leaving many of its immigrant and bohemian inhabitant homeless, including many of the yoga studios that had popped out in the neighbourhood and catered for a more middle-class clientele.
As a progressive household living in one of those (now) rare huge Berlin flats, it wasn’t difficult to convince my housemates to support the idea of hosting yoga classes in the house. By running the collective on a donation basis (some people would bring us apples or incenses as a form of payment), it took us just two weeks to fill the classes and we were encouraged to increase the number of classes to the point of running classes on a daily basis (sometimes twice a day) and hosting workshops at the week-end. It was a pity that eventually we too had to leave as a result of the ridiculous rent increases (by € 1000 a months in our case) that were transforming Neukolln overnight.

A sexual phantasy you still didn’t explore.
J: A huge gang bang.
K: Fisting.

Hands or feet?
J: Hands.
K: Hands.

Chest or pube?
J: Chest.
K: Chest.

Your favorite pizza?
J: Fresh tomatoes, rucola and fresh parmesan.
K: Napoli, but with buffalo mozzarella.

Omnivorous, vegetarian or vegan?
J: Vegetarian, I love cheese too much!
K: Ideally vegan, most of the time vegetarian, and occasionally “fishetarian”, but never carnivorous.

If Jean could be Kim and Kim Jean, what would you do with the other’s body?
J: Give him the experience of enjoying bottoming.
K: No comment!

Are you able to imagine you both within thirty years?
J: Yes, the perspective of aging together suits me well.
K: I do it all the time!

The first three things you do when awake.
J: Say good morning my love, kiss and hug.
K: I search for him with my hands and feet under the duvet, with my eyes still closed, I then look at him and when he looks back I smile at him. It has been like this every morning since we first met.