Sex21

By Valeria Jaker

Short, light texts about sex, growing up and ways to survive a male menopause. Recipes to negotiate the postcoital depression, methods of searching for a reason of being in the forty's. A divorce, fainting fits, obsessions, waiting for vengeance and the importance of synanthropic organisms while choosing a partner. The awkwardness of live women and a navigator with a vulnerable soul. An attack in a lift and a girl's honor as a variable value. Love with no point, life with no mercy, passion with no indulgence.
Beautiful, laconic prose. No post-modernism, without charm, to be read in queues, planes and in the office.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496980564

Valeria Jaker

Russian journalist and scriptwriter living in France is exploring a new literature field of short stories about sex. Translated from Russian to English by Miles Monroe

Book preview

SEX 21

VALERIA JAKAR

TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN TO ENGLISH BY MILES MONROE

COVER and ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARUSHA KUZIK

A NOVEL ILLUSTRATION BY FORCE GENERATOR

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AuthorHouse™ UK

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Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2014 Valeria Jakar. All rights reserved.

COVER and ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARUSHA KUZIK

A NOVEL ILLUSTRATION BY FORCE GENERATOR

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/09/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8055-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-8056-4 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

The Fly

Rendez-vous

The Boxed Lady

The Ten Days Diary

The Robbery

The Coma

The Maiden Interview

Three Seconds of Happiness

The Curse

Love 21

Grand Slam

6.tif

The Fly

What strange and terrible power drew me to you? How did it come to pass?

The attraction of the weak to the strong? That of the fading life to that of the rising?

Or was it love? Is that what love is?

Do you even know what love is at all?

August Strindberg

Miss Julie

Below the bluish dragon tattoo on his arm, lay the pale scars of a failed suicide. I am standing behind his shoulders, but it’s as if I didn’t exist. He is looking through squinted eyes at a piece of cardboard holding watercolor mixtures. He holds the brush with great precision and then dangles it into the jar of lilac tinted water and then dresses it with watercolors from the board. The brush moves to the piece of board and the outlines of a male figure take shape there. The color drips and the picture become wet—it’s as though some rain had fallen and the drawn figure has got his feet wet. Now he introduces some sharp lines of definition with one brush and then lays it aside taking another, even finer one. He puts it to his tongue for a lick and then on the drawing the most minute details appear: the hands on the clock, the slight fold of a pair of trousers, a few wrinkles at the edge of an eye. I am watching him work from behind one shoulder, and I see the fine point of the brush touching his tongue and I am thinking that I wish he would lay this drawing aside and come fuck me.

He is silent, then frowning looks around at me as though noticing my presence for the first time.

You want a little juice?

Sure.

Try not to stand behind me it breaks my concentration.

The watercolor brush splashes in the jar and he exits to the kitchen, opens the fridge and pours some juice into two white teacups.

Here ya go.

Thanks.

I am holding the teacup in my two palms and drink.

He plugs in his earplugs and once again is diluted into the world of the picture.

Opening the little high vent window I slip onto the sofa, take the book Witches’ Hammer and pretend to be reading.

A fly enters through the open window—a big black manure fly. Bulky and heavy, it’s flying around bearing some hideous dirty substance—can barely keep in the air. Darkly buzzing, the fly starts making circles trying to gain height towards the ceiling. The buzz the fly makes is oddly annoying and yet comforting.

Today I dreamt of a black and white painted clown, and he is blowing into my mouth through a flute some kind of bright, shining powder. In the dream I have long hair. In reality they are short now since I had them trimmed, this I did to please Maxim, who likes my hair that way. I thought that the clown in the dream is certainly Maxim and that the powder is my dependency on him. But maybe that’s not it… . just another way of interpreting it.

I will tell Maxim about the dream and right now I am thinking it through choosing the words I’ll use to express it so that I don’t stutter and feel silly—I want to tell him about it when he finishes this drawing. It’s been a year since I started coming to see him, and just about every time the scenario turns out more or less the same: I read for a bit or watch him, he draws and listens to music, then we fuck, fall asleep and the next morning wake up and fuck again after which I leave and wait for him to call me the next time. I never know what to talk with him about. Today for example we only exchanged a few words.

This fly, spikey and black is wandering around the room now and the buzzing is getting stronger each time it flies into different objects or obstacles. It’s an unpleasant monotonous sound.

I was just remembering how I came to be in this apartment for the first time.

As I said, it was more than a year ago now. Exactly in fact the 16th May. I was riding home towards my station in the metro from the shopping mall near the Kremlin. At Kropotkinskaya station, about halfway, a tall guy got on wearing green jeans. Sat down just across the car. I was watching him with a glance from below the brow. He had shortcut hair, was wearing earphones and had lettuce-colored Converse shoes on his feet. Size 45 at least, I thought to myself. I couldn’t lift my eyes from his hands; they were hypnotizing to me by the elegance and precision of their gestures, a kind of brutal grace. His fingers moved to the beat of the music, movements like the extended suction cups of the octopus. He had a distinct movement that laid his hand on the raspberry colored knapsack by Jansport and then was still. I was observing him now through lowered eyelashes. I could see that under the sleeve of his jacket around the wrist he had a dark colored tattoo. He turned a sharp gaze in my direction then and I was embarrassed and turned my eyes away. He folded the little straps of the knapsack together to one side and changed seats to be sitting next to me in a single movement. He said with quiet assurance:

Hey there.

Hey, I answered.

We passed through the next station and he told me that he was an artist and was on his way home to a place near Frunzenskaya Station.

Maxim, he said.

I was still playing around in my head with some cute enticing phrase in my head about how I never give my telephone number to strange guys, when he pulled out a small yellow post-it from his backpack, wrote seven digits on the sticker and stuck it onto his index finger, and pushed it in my direction.

We’re filming a music video until tomorrow. After that I have some free time. Call me the day after tomorrow, then.

The doors on the car were closing and his silhouette was already passing me but I said Yeah sure, maybe I should call right away? I always had this belief that only losers and airheads go for pick-up scenes in the Metro.

I have no idea what happened, but waiting for that day after tomorrow was like waiting for your period after sex with a former boyfriend. I kept remembering his long, pencil-like fingers. Though tormented by terrible qualms of self-esteem, I decided to call him no matter what, and to do this I found a phone box, thinking this would add a conspiratorial side. I wandered over to the free-phones that are on the hall of the Metro station. Pulled out the slip of paper and noticed the handwriting and the beautiful 4—written with artistic flourish. No doubt a graphics artist with such a calligraphy-like handwriting. The phone buzzed at the other end and my heart was pounding. More rings. He’s not picking up. He did say to me call the day after tomorrow". I fantasized about how he was fucking someone, hears the phone and doesn’t pick it up, yet the phone ringing excites him somehow and he comes at that moment.

Once that entered my head, I started calling him every day from different phone boxes.

Every unsuccessful try, made me swear to myself that it was the last time I would call. Tomorrow, one last time, I decided.

The next day I was at Uni and asked a friend for her mobile and pulled out one more time that bit of paper—it looked pretty worn out now and the glue side of the post-it had got covered in grains of dust and dirt. The line was ringing and ringing forever. More rings. Suddenly there was this voice. Deep and drawn out… slow. Hellooo the voice said with clarity, not slurring or saying yeh?, but a clear crisp Hello. My heart jumped out of my shirt and broke on the floor like a shot glass.

"Shit, what do I say now?—Maybe he won’t even remember me. He has no idea—I didn’t even tell him my name.

Hiya, uuh it’s Lena we met in the Metro a while… .

Hey there; I just started answering the phone again today… . the music video thing took a while longer than planned. We were pulling round the clock shifts. Now I’m on a break… . he said this yawning, as though he was certain I had been calling him like a jerk every day for a week. He must really think he’s some hot shit!

Well I got free at the Uni ahead of time today so I just found that sticky note you gave me and decided to ping you… . That’s all… .

I didn’t know what I could add… He said nothing. I could hear him taking a drag on a cigarette.

Come on over. Be here tomorrow around 6 pm.

I should never have gone over there to see him. Although at the time I didn’t even think twice about it… at 6pm I was pushing the doorbell on the flat he had indicated. His one bedroom seemed nice enough, but you could tell he was just a tenant in the place. The floors were cheap pine panel. Old TV on a stand and a sofa in fabric of puke ocean color. A Soviet table lamp with a creased lampshade. Paints everywhere… . paints and brushes, paper, canvas, paints, painting board, cardboard, pencils and pens, paints. The walls were hung with paintings resembling characters out of Spiderman or Batman. A smell of incense in the place.

These all yours? I asked.

Who else? he said.

Look this one here won the Berlin Comic Festival Prize he pointed to a picture of a very scowling clown wearing a green jesters hat with many hanging bells.

And what’s this one?

There was an unfinished drawing on the table of a man wearing a suit and sitting at table surrounded by orange bubbles floating about.

That’s actually a design for a décor for a piece that is going to be on television. Buddies of mine are doing the show and asked me to lend a hand on the design.

So cool.

He was softening up a cigarette he pulled from a blue colored package labeled Belomorkanal This reminded me of Granddad’s war photos.

Want one?

Uuh for me, no, no need.

He put the cigarette up to his lips and then leant over the trash bin, suddenly blowing with force into the cigarette: the tobacco inside came flying out in a stream into some crumpled paper. He then took out of the plastic pocket a little green clump and flattened it out with a ruler then chopped it up fine using a letter-opener as though he was performing neurosurgery on a miniscule insect. Picking up the Parliament cigarette, he took out the tobacco inside and mixed it carefully with the green flakes. A cigarette in his hands looked as elegant an object as a paintbrush or a monocle. He struck the a match, took in a draft, holding the joint with stiffly straight upright fingers and then handed it to me. I sucked in the smoke, but my throat reacted in an aching spasm and I started coughing.

Swallow the smoke, just a little at a time, he coached in a disappointed tone of voice.

I held my breath. He stuck in the earplugs to the iPod and pressed the play button. Music came out of nowhere, the sound spreading into the room from the speakers like a flood.

I have to be drawing now, tomorrow I got a deadline… . if you want you can sleep here on the bed… no worries, I’m not going to bed at all tonight anyway.

He moved over to his drawing table and forgot about me. Setting down on the sofa, I laid back and closed my eyes. The music was like a perfect crystal shape, you could have described it in algorithms. It built up into layers on layers, each one covered in a new colorful tapestry of sound and then flowing one after another across my brain into a mixture that resembled the paints dissolving in the jar on Maxim’s drawing table. The whirlpool of feeling pulled me in and I let myself drift into this multi-colored substance and disappear.

When I opened my eyes with a squint it was around 6 AM, the sun was burning bright. Maxim lay next to me supported on his elbow and was looking at me with an dagger-like expression.

I felt his second hand was squeezing my hip.

Jeezus, the light is right in my eyes, can’t you close the curtains… I want to sleep still. I turned away and fell back asleep.

When I woke the next time, he was drawing at the table.

Hello there I chirped smiling.

Hi, he said flatly without looking over at me.

I went off to the bathroom and came back in with the idea of starting a conversation.

You got anything to eat around here? Maybe some eggs or bread?

Nothing

Ok, cool, well guess I’m gonna go on home then.

Just let the door slam shut on your way out.

Standing a bit shell-shocked on the stairwell, it hit me—he’s moody because he didn’t get any sex is all. Amazing, showing he’s upset about it as though it were understood and what’s more feel he can make me feel bad about it. What was I supposed to like just offer it on a platter? What an asshole, he can go fuck himself.

That evening, I figured out that I had left my rings in his bathroom that morning. Tough, no way am I calling him. I thought, angry even at the idea. He might have tried calling me though, even just common courtesy… . just to offer to give me back my things. Every day that went by after that, my anger about it grew and I even picked up the phone a few times, but forced myself to calm down and not call him. A couple of weeks later, the hurt I felt dwindled to nothing. In my head I had buried Maxim together with the rings and forgotten.

More than a month had passed. One evening as usual I was on my way home from the College.

At Lenin Library station I was changing to go to the Park Kultury stop and suddenly the announcer said that the train was terminating here and all passengers must leave the cars. I came out and stood waiting in the middle by the stairway, putting my elbows for support on the ornamental wall and opened my book—it was Aristophanes, the classical literature exam was around the corner and every moment was precious.

But I didn’t feel much like reading, and I started watching over the top of my book the movement of the great mass of people swirling by. It was like Brownian motion, people moving every which way. I thought about the patterns and the order in chaos. Suddenly, a bit of a ways down the hall, a dark, short-cropped head appeared—his. It seemed to float above the crowd and was coming towards me.

It didn’t actually seem startling, seeing him again; on the contrary, it felt somehow expected. I came out from under the stairway and caught his eye. Maxim walked right up to me and pressed into me, I could fell his ribs with my breasts. His earphones let out a regular rhythmic music. I looked silently up at him from below. He gave me that smirky smile of his around the corner of his lips and suddenly put his mouth on mine and put his tongue into my mouth between my teeth. For whatever reason I felt like crying. I wanted also to be like that forever. The human river of people split in two and flowed around us, reuniting on the other side to flow farther in a single stream.

I pushed away and got my senses.

I left rings at your place.

He took out his earplugs.

Whaddyou say?

My rings—I left them at your place.

"Gimme a call, come on over and pick them up.

He took a few steps onto the staircase and then dived into the current and disappeared.

Later I called of course and went over. Nothing in the apartment had changed, just the pictures with the guy in orange bubbles was gone and on the table was a squarish lady with very short hair, done in a graphical portrait.

Who’s that?

Oh, just some gal I know.

He sat down next to me and gave a kiss on the cheek. I understood that it was a moment of now or never. I hesitated a little but then chose to go for now. Kissing him on his mouth and then he was grabbing my arms in a rough move and biting into my neck. I struggled, but there was no way I had not enough strength to get out of his grasp. He was holding my wrists and pulling off my jeans already. As I was then lying under him I thought he would tear me to shreds. Suddenly he stuffed is hand into my mouth and started fucking me, the whole time his gaze riveted on my eyes. I was moaning and biting into his fingers in my mouth when he came. I lay prostrate on the sofa with my leg kind of uncomfortably bent and with no strength left to move further… but he just got up and stepped back, closed the zipper on his jeans and headed toward th kitchen where he put on the kettle.

Want some tea? he asked.

Yeah I guess so, I murmured.

He put two bags of Lipton into the teapot and took his cup of tea to the drawing table to begin working. This all happened so quickly that from fear and pain I hadn’t even come, but he didn’t seem to even care. He didn’t offer to have me stay over and I just got up and left, leaving my tea on the table untouched. The subway was empty and I sat in that state of reflection after sex, thinking about what I would wear the next time I go to see Maxim—certainly not jeans—I’ll wear a skirt for sure, and best of all without knickers. For whatever reason I was thinking about his eye, that green eye with a kind of chestnut sliver in it and