Emotions rule

‘Ok, we’ll stop for now,’ said Tanya gobbling up her breakfast, ‘And… Don’t touch my cup, I’ll finish it after the shower,’ warned Tanya as she sipped her coffee with great care so as not to burn her own bad-words-dirty tongue. In a couple of minutes, she vanished in the washroom with her green towel. Did they bring red, yellow and green towels on purpose to hang it on the balcony strings symbolizing traffic lights? Red- don’t disturb! Green- welcome! Yellow- hell, beware!

Soon they got used to their new morning behavioral system. Katya remained responsible for breakfast. Yulya was to wash up after breakfast and Tanya after dinners. Who made dinners? Whoever wanted or whoever was the hungriest. Being at their language school till one p.m. they had only apples perhaps or yogurts they’d brought with them. Until dinner, they hung around in the city center.

Alexanderplatz was their most frequented metro station. They window shopped and sightsaw a lot.

Once they went accessory-shopping. And Tanya didn’t pay for nail polish by accident. She felt somewhat ashamed at first, especially with the super moralised Blondie beside her. But then Yulya repeated the trick and from time to time Fringe and Red-haired went shop-lifting. Katya didn’t preach morals to them but just refrained from their new entertainment.

After that, they always headed to net supermarkets such as Aldi or Espar to buy food to cook at home. Evenings were always party time for them. The girls drank cheap wine, met their language school friends, hung out in the parks playing silly games, singing songs and going wherever they were invited to.

Every day they went out and saw an ever-growing row of their wine bottles standing near a garbage container, wondering why they were still there. No one bothered to tell them there was a special container for glass.

It was one of those days when they got together with the whole crew of international students, those who were also learning German. Before going to a club, they popped into a tiny liquor store, places mainly owned by Turkmen or Arabs. One could buy drinks, chocolate and some snacks in the middle of the night there. Everyone was already out of the kiosk with their bottles of beer, but Tanya and Katya were still thinking about what to have. They just didn’t like beer.

‘What an attractive back and cute curly hair he has,’ thought Katya to herself when she was passing a guy standing in front of the beer fridges and felt a strong impulse to brush against his back but held herself back. Finally, the ladies agreed to beers as the wine prices were higher than they’d expected. Why couldn’t they have what they wanted? A perpetual question. To have or not to have was merely the question of money. No money- no desires to fulfill. Forget your desires till you earn… or steal… or maybe an opposite sex will provide for you? These were the thoughts to consider.

When they strolled out of the kiosk with the bottles of their disliked drink, a friend of the cute curly hair wondered whether the girls were Polish. Why is no one capable of telling a Pole from a Russian? Perhaps for the same reason not many can tell a Portuguese from a Spaniard. Being polite girls they answered the question and kept on walking.

‘Why don’t we talk to the guys?’ ventured Tanya addressing Katya. ‘Maybe we’ll get some wine after all,’ Tanya winked at Katya.

Na?ve Katya wondered, ‘How?’

‘The guys! If they consider us bedworthy, we might have a chance,’ lectured Tanya with her eyes full of wisdom.

‘But I don’t wanna go to bed for a bottle of wine,’ warned Katya mockingly scared – fun of adventure was only in her head.

‘Me neither, silly. Let’s just have a talk first,’ replied Fringe.

Simultaneously they turned around and joined the guys. A lovely talk with Sven (an outgoing young man with tangled hair and fogged grey eyes, the one who asked if they were Polish) went in English. Why English? The girls were simply experiencing a psychological barrier with the German language. And, vice versa, Mr. Curly Hair had problems with speaking English, didn’t he? Or was he just shy? No matter what it was, he looked so important standing there as if he was the President of the Dominican Republic or something. Filip was his name. Realizing that their small talk was stretching to a common small biography about Tanyushka and Katushka (Russians prefer to ‘colour’ words showing their attitude towards them by adding all sorts of diminutive suffixes, so Tatyana might equally be called in a diminutive way Tanushka, Tanushkin, Tanchik, Tanusik, Tanechka, Tanyok and so on, depends on how rich your imagination is), the ladies decided it would be better to meet up the next day. And right now they had to produce, ‘Sorry, but we need to catch up with our international buddies.’

‘So if you’re not coming along, give us your phone numbers and we’ll get in touch,’ Blondie finished Tanya’s thought in a hurrying voice.

A moment of silence stood within the Germans staring at each other in bewilderment.

Mr. Curly Hair blurted out, ‘I thought GUYS are supposed to take girls’ phone numbers’.

Everyone burst out laughing. The thought ‘When you make up your mind to ask for our phone numbers, sweet hearts, we’ll be already heading back home to Russia to drink tea out of samovars in frosty winters with valenkis on,’ was distinctly read in the Russian laughing eyes.

Finally, the phone numbers were exchanged, and the females headed towards the having-fun rest of the eve.

The next day they met, Mr. Curly Hair was ten minutes late. Who said that Germans were punctual? Raise your hand!

Hungry, so hungry everyone was. Walking the district in circles they finally managed to pick an Italian pizza place and share two Margaritas and one Diabolo pizza.

‘Geee, it’s so damn spicy,’ said Tanchik breathing like a locomotive.

‘Diabolo means devil, it’s supposed to be hot, like in hell,’ hinted the waiter overhearing the comment and asked if they wanted a refill.

‘Oh, that is very good to know. Thank you,’ replied Katya with a little irritation noticing that at the moment she reminded herself her own mother who didn’t like when people answered questions that weren’t directed to them.

As the waiter turned around, Katya’s eyes slid to his butt. Addressing the girls she said in Russian, ‘А у него классная попка! (Meaning ‘What a nice ass he has!’)

The waiter turned around and said in pure Russian, ‘Спасибо!’ (meaning ‘thanks’)

Katya turned red like the tomato sauce on the Diabolo pizza.

In a couple of hours, they appeared at Filip’s place, under the pretense that they needed some German magazines or books to make a project for their German course. The girls didn’t feel uncomfortable about inviting themselves to somebody else’s place so fast. Could their way be described as chutzpah?

Filip’s flat. All white, same as theirs. Again they felt like being in a hospital. Only later the girls learnt that almost all German apartments were white, rented ones in particular.

Wow, so many records here! Filip was crazy about music. Most of his records were old-school hip-hop. Frankly speaking, the Russian ladies couldn’t tell one vinyl from another, but they were still marveled by the amount of them. So when Mr. Curly Hair asked what they would like to listen to, the girls felt at ease answering in unison, ‘As you wish’.

All of a sudden Sven did a headstand.

‘Um, is it what Germans do when they listen to hip-hop?’ wondered Yulya to herself and asked out loud, ‘Can I use your washroom?’

Filip waved his hand in the direction of the washroom.

As the Red-haired reached the secret room she opened the cold water tap to prevent others from hearing her toilet procedure sounds. How inventive she considered herself every time she did it, and how wasteful Europeans would consider her doing so.

Chapter 3

One week had passed. What would the other three weeks bring? The girlies were eager to visit different places in Europe. Since they had classes on workdays, only weekends were available to hit the road. Their only plan was to see Amsterdam. They bought the cheapest train tickets they could find and headed for Amsterdam with no particular plan. They could walk along the Red Light District, perhaps admire sexy ladies in the shop windows and just sightsee whatever there was in the guidebook.

‘I would not want to stand out there and seduce passing-by men. And hope that my next client would be just a jolly healthy young stud longing for a healthy sex, not a fucking maniac or something. I wonder what made them take up such a job?’ Yulya finished her monologue of wonder, pity, and disgust while staring at the window ladies.

‘I bet you don’t really wanna know this, hun. It’s not the good life, not the happy circumstances that persuaded them to do the first step in this direction. But who knows, maybe some girlies do love their occupation and treat it like a hobby,’ summarized Tanya nonchalantly in a low voice watching the half-naked bodies. Fringe seemed to enjoy the talk and kept speculating, ‘I heard bisexuality is pretty common in Europe. So these ladies might even take care of women too.’

‘Are you serious?’ exclaimed Yulya raising her eyebrows.

‘Yup. Say, a man wants to fuck, like really, really badly, he can’t help it. But he doesn’t have a constant partner. What should he do? Go masturbate? Hire a hooker? Or just go to a bar and maybe find someone who wants to fuck also really, really badly? And it doesn’t much matter what sex the person would be as long as he is satisfied in the end… or in the end, it doesn’t much matter for these ladies,’ Fringe waved in the direction of the window girls, ‘who they’re going to deal with as long as they get paid… it’s just a routine job for them, no feelings involved,’ finished Tanya with an air of an expert.

‘Ew, you are always so harsh in explaining things, sweetie,’ commented Yulya.

‘But that’s the case,’ Tanya defended herself.

‘Or… the man should just go and do sports instead of screwing hell-knows-who when his hormones are playing dirty tricks on him. Otherwise, one might end up developing some perverse habit or even some unhealthy mania. It’s so unnatural in my opinion. Men have penises, women vaginas, a simple puzzle like that. A stick fits into a hole. What are they supposed to do when it’s two penises or two vaginas?’ Yulya expressed herself vigorously.

Tanya seemed to ignore Yulya’s comment and proceeded with an air of a news presenter, ‘But the same happens with animals… Say, cattle are grazing and nature is calling some cows to have sex, in other words, oestrus, when their organism wants sex to make offspring, but, unfortunately, there are no bulls around. What are the cows to do when they are itchy inside? They mount other cows…The same with people. Itchy inside, why not have sex with anyone around.’

Katya finally interfered, ‘Yes, Yulya, arses for men, fingers for women as a helping aid. But if you wanna know the procedure, perhaps you should try it with a girl, she will be your manual. Anyway, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone and both sides are willing, I see no harm in any possible variation. Yes, there’re cases of the same sex who feel love emotions to each other, so just accept it, sweetie.’ She produced a long sigh, noticed her comment made no particular persuasive effect and pushed the two speculating friends of hers farther, ‘Come on, we have lotsa other things to see, not only playboy girls.’

With a sour face, Red-haired shrugged her shoulders to the unsatisfying answer. On seeing the strengthening disgust on Yulya’s freckled face, Fringe changed the topic asking, ‘And what about coffeeshops then?’

‘I thought we’ve talked it through, ladies,’ reminded Blondie pushing them gently forward.

‘I know, but I still don’t understand your point. We are in Holland. And who knows maybe we’ll never be here again. We must have a smoke. I know you think it could be dangerous, but, come on, almost every Dutch does it. Look, they are still alive! Americans even consider marijuana a medicine,’ Tanya was waving her arms trying to persuade prudent Blondie.

‘I don’t wanna do it, cuz I’ve heard stories. Besides, a person can have a lot of fun without drinking or smoking or getting high. And yes, it can be dangerous,’ Katya explained herself.