Jela Krecic Read online

  ‘What would you like me to be called?’ he smiled, teasing.

  ‘Wow, some people have brought too much testosterone into this place,’ she jibed, casting him a well-meaning smile.

  ‘Why? Are you looking for some?’ Matjaž laughed gormlessly.

  ‘Why? Are you offering some?’ She looked at him defiantly from beneath her eyebrows.

  ‘Maybe. What are you offering in return?’ he asked, pretending to be secretive and leaning clumsily at the bar.

  ‘Something similar. It depends if you’re going to tell me what your name is.’ She winked at him. And he was confused.

  ‘What has that go to do with testosterone?’ he enquired.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe!’ she jibed in her high-pitched voice, which wasn’t entirely repulsive to Matjaž.

  ‘Fine, my name is Elvis, Elvis Presley,’ he finally said.

  Stela shook her head, dissatisfied. He furrowed his brows, racked his brains and gave in to associations. ‘Buddy Holly,’ he tried, but a look of reluctance settled on her face.

  ‘Bond, James Bond,’ he tried a reliable name once again, but she just coolly shook her head, now clearly unimpressed with his lack of imagination. He thought for a while and then fired back again:

  ‘Bill Gates!’ He hoped that money would count for something with this girl, but she merely responded with an appalled ‘Eugh!’ Which he thought was adorable.

  ‘Bill Clinton,’ he tried, convinced that she wouldn’t be able to resist an American president, but she wearily rolled her eyes. He sensed he was losing her attention.

  He shrugged his shoulders, once again falling into his own confused thoughts, and then half out of desperation said, ‘Louis Armstrong.’

  That name was the key to her demanding heart. She said, not without elegance, ‘I’ve never been able to resist a black man.’

  ‘And why would you resist?’ He looked deep into her eyes and spun her around.

  Matjaž didn’t really know how they had ended up on a lone bench in Metelkova. But he was glad that Stela didn’t want to waste time chatting. He was quite tired from the long night out and he feared that excessive deliberation would drain his motivation for action – or motivAction, as the life coach Smiljan Mori had once beautifully coined. So they familiarized themselves with one another through kisses, gentle caresses and more. Perhaps because of this fervent passion, neither of them noticed that it was actually incredibly cold and that there was not a living soul around. At some point Matjaž realized that he was capable of exposing a world of wild and passionate love in this girl. Her occasional gasps of ‘Louis, Louis!’ and her deep breathing seemed like some of the most feverish Matjaž had experienced with recent women of note. He invited her home. They didn’t have much to say on the way there, but he did notice that she stroked his hair while they were walking, and every now and again said, ‘Oh, what beautiful curls!’ At the time he wasn’t too concerned that Stela probably wasn’t marriage material; he just knew that he found her relaxed naivety and her genuine youthfulness completely disarming.

  When they arrived back at his place, they poured themselves a glass of wine each and sat on the sofa. All the while her long legs and slender, exceedingly slender, elegant ankles maintained their connection with his feet. Her pretty head looked around the flat and she complimented the rug, the odd neglected bunch of flowers, the pictures and the soft lighting. Perhaps out of discretion, she didn’t note the dust on any of these objects. Meanwhile the gentle caressing of each other’s extremities soon led to another frantic embrace, so frantic that it made Matjaž think, in his still-foggy head, that he had never been kissed so forcefully, so decisively, by any girl. He started to stroke her hair, and then when she started to kiss him even more ardently, almost aggressively, his grip became stronger too. He pulled her hair, making her head tilt back. She unbuttoned his trousers and had already seized his masculine asset with her hand – she did it so meticulously and so attentively at the same time that he started to shudder with desire. How long it had been since he had surrendered himself like this, surrendered to these measures so completely that he heard his own gasps of pleasure. Stela aroused him with her motions, and when she touched his pride with her lips he thought he was going to explode. In a rush of passion he grasped her hair sharply, forcefully, roughly, and she released a piercing shriek. As the shriek faded away, he saw a bouquet lying in his hands . . . not a bouquet – a wig! Matjaž shrieked himself and looked at his bald-headed lover. Stela, Stela . . . He was momentarily paralysed by his realization. Then, a few seconds later, he said stoically, ‘Well, so here we are.’

  ‘Where?’ a masculine voice asked him.

  ‘Well, there, where else,’ said Matjaž, now slightly confused again.

  ‘But what has changed? I’m still me,’ said his lover who never was.

  ‘That’s debateable,’ said Matjaž, and sat beside her.

  ‘Oh, you men . . . you only judge on appearances, that’s your problem!’ said Stela, becoming rather feminine once more.

  ‘And you women, I mean, men – whatever – it’s all a performance to you!’

  ‘That’s not true!’ said Stela hysterically, with tears welling up in her eyes.

  ‘It is true!’ Matjaž said, with the same hysteria.

  ‘But you should have known, you were in a club called Tiffany!’ she protested.

  Matjaž clutched at his hair. ‘Oops, I clearly missed that fact. But anyway, normal girls go there too,’ added Matjaž.

  ‘But I’m not a normal girl,’ she sighed, clasping her hands in torment.

  ‘Me neither, and therein lies the problem!’ said Matjaž, attempting to compete with Stela’s strange logic.

  ‘And what’s wrong with that, are you really that macho?’ She looked at him, hurt.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no. I’m not having that! Just because I like fanny, no woman – or man – is going to make me out to be a misogynist.’

  ‘But are you as rude to fannies as you are to me?’

  ‘Even ruder!’ Matjaž blurted out resolutely.

  ‘Well, then you’re even more of a misogynist!’ Stela lost her temper.

  ‘Yes, that’s probably true,’ he said, lost in thought.

  ‘Well, I’m not actually offended now that I know you’re a misogynist. You just prefer fannies,’ Stela said, wiping away her tears.

  ‘A pity,’ Matjaž said quietly.

  ‘Why is it a pity?’ Her big, bright eyes turned towards him.

  ‘Because you’re pretty, because you have really good legs, a woman’s legs.’

  ‘I know, right?’ giggled Stela, stroking her face as if wanting to emphasize her other features, and stroking her slender extremities, too, just in case. ‘And what now?’ she asked him, a little bit frightened.

  ‘Hmm, I don’t know, when I come face to face with a woman like this, I mean, with you . . .’

  ‘With a penis,’ interrupted Stela, with a playful look on her face.

  ‘Erm, no,’ Matjaž laughed. ‘There’ll be none of that – of the two penises thing.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Stela, wiping away her tears with a hanky when they started to roll down her cheeks again. ‘Well then, I’d better go,’ she said, a little offended, and started to gather her things, including her wig.

  Matjaž was overcome by a feeling that he was not entirely used to. He felt sorry for Stela. Really sorry. With her bald, shaved head, her long eyelashes that combined with the tears on her cheeks to leave black traces of mascara on her flawless complexion, and oh, those soft ankles at the end of those skilful legs. And that was without even thinking about those lovely heels.

  ‘Well, maybe we can watch a few episodes of Seinfeld together, then go to sleep – but without any kind of you-know-what.’

  A wide grin flooded over her face. ‘That would be great. I’m knackered, though, completely knackered . . . I don’t know if I . . .’

  ‘Pst!’ said Matjaž. ‘Drop any ideas of romance!’

>   Stela simply nodded, knowingly.

  ‘But when you wake up’, and here Matjaž’s tone was almost fatherly, ‘you have to go home. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ she confirmed obediently. She went quiet for a while, as if battling with her thoughts, and then eventually asked, ‘Can we be friends on Facebook?’

  ‘Ahem,’ Matjaž coughed. ‘Firstly I should say that no woman has made me feel like you did tonight, not for a very long time. But wouldn’t it be more romantic, more in keeping with all the passion of this evening, if we parted without the need for letters and Facebook contacts? And you know what, “We’ll always have Tiffany!’”

  It didn’t take long for this conclusion to satisfy Stela; she felt as if she were in a movie. They both stretched out on the sofa to watch the television. Their eyes slowly began to close as they watched, and with their arms around each other they fell asleep.

  ‘What? You slept with a man?’ shrieked Aleksander, who could not get his head around the idea. There was not a single soul in Bar Činkole. Even the barman had sneaked off somewhere, so on that Sunday afternoon it was just the two of them sat there, around a welcome heater, with a coffee.

  ‘No, we just slept. Together,’ Matjaž said frankly.

  ‘And after that?’ Aleksander persisted, still overwhelmed.

  ‘Ah, after that. Why can’t women be more like Stela? She went to the shop, prepared breakfast with croissants, orange juice and coffee and everything. She even brought me the papers; Delo and Dnevnik for me, and a copy of The Lady for herself. Isn’t she a gem?’ Matjaž smiled at the thought of his morning. ‘We ate croissants and read. We chatted a bit about the papers. I read her the editorial in the Saturday supplement, she filled me in on celebrity gossip – did you know that Scarlett had a baby? Or is it that she’s going to have another – I forgot, but anyway, it’s not important.’ The sour look on Aleksander’s face signalled that not only was the celebrity gossip too much for him, he refused to accept that it was of interest to his best friend either. He wiped his perspiring forehead, and Matjaž carried on, ‘We talked about cosmetic surgery. Stela thinks about it, she’s completely obsessed with it, but I warned her against it because she really doesn’t need it. You should see her skin, those animated eyes. Surgery – as if!’ Matjaž waved his hand in a manner that was unusual for him.

  ‘What about a sex change?’

  ‘No, she’s not thinking about that,’ Matjaž continued enthusiastically. ‘She’s heard some gruesome stories, about how hormone therapy somehow fails or affects your libido. And she’s proud of her libido, she told me, it would be hard for her to separate herself from it. I have to say that I’m completely with her on that one.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus!’ came a shrill exhalation from Aleksander. ‘Why are you talking about her as if she’s a girl? She’s a he!’

  ‘I don’t know, Aleksander – he, or she, is a woman and a half, I’m telling you!’ said Matjaž, as if unaware of his friend’s agitation.

  ‘Yeah, she’s a woman, and then there’s another half there. You know what I don’t get, is how come you’ve got so much compassion and patience for this guy. I don’t have anything against gays, I don’t have anything against heterosexuals, nor anything against men or women or anyone in between, as long as people decide what they are once and for all and stop mixing up worlds like this!’ Aleksander shouted, flying off the handle.

  ‘You really are conservative, aren’t you!’ exclaimed Matjaž as he wound a curl around his finger, as if he’d been taken over by the movements of his beloved from the previous evening.

  ‘So, how did you leave it?’ Aleksander asked, somewhat resigned.

  ‘When we’d finished eating and we’d chatted a bit about the celebrity gossip and all that, she left.’ Matjaž said, looking at his friend melancholically.

  ‘And she didn’t force you into anything, or cry, or anything like that?’

  ‘No, she left with her head held high.’

  ‘She didn’t want your number or anything?’ Aleksander still went on.

  ‘No, last night she wanted to add me on Facebook, but I said maybe it was best if we kept the evening as a nice memory – like in Casablanca,’ Matjaž said dreamily. ‘Maybe that was a mistake, maybe we could be Facebook friends, but I don’t even know her, I mean his, real name,’ he said worriedly. As if in despair, he cried out into the winter’s day, ‘Stela, Stelaaaaa!’

  Aleksander quickly glanced around to see if anyone was listening or looking at them, and gestured to the barman that his friend was a bit confused. ‘Calm yourself down, mate, you’ve had a nice evening without any post-coital agonies . . .’ he finally said.

  ‘Well, that’s because there wasn’t any coitus . . .’ Matjaž corrected him.

  ‘Anyway. There wasn’t the usual agony after an intimate evening, night and breakfast. You do know it doesn’t get any better than that?’ Aleksander said, almost sounding envious.

  ‘Exactly! Maybe we’re going after the completely wrong sex,’ Matjaž added, ever so slightly embittered.

  MINI

  The first few warmer days of spring coaxed out to Metelkova even those who had stayed at home through the cold, who had run away to go skiing or visited cultural exhibitions. After midnight, while a large proportion of the city slept, people gathered there, convinced that at that hour life was only just beginning. One of those people was, of course, Matjaž. As he thought about how he had always been prepared to go one step further in his quest for a good time, he remembered how Sara used to tease him about being a party animal. Paradoxically, this had now taken on a meaning of its own, as the appearance of a full and carefree life would hopefully now lead him down a path back to her.

  By his side was Jernej, known for his preference for drinking rather than talking; however much of a welcome and refreshing trait this was, in comparison with other members of his social circle, Matjaž felt at certain points that he’d actually quite like to be able to show off the finer points of his intellect, charm and humour, his sharp cynicism, on a Friday evening. At first he followed the debate between some of Jernej’s friends from afar, about how Metelkova had lost its subversive nature, and how the beer was getting more and more expensive although the place was as unkempt as ever. Some girl added that Metelkova operated exactly like a typical capitalist organization under the banner of ‘alternative’, then some metalhead picked up where she left off, saying, ‘The same dicks as the rest of them, just disguised in slightly scruffier packaging’. After him came some smaller, chubbier metalhead, swearing and complaining that the bar staff and bouncers there were arrogant snobs; and then some scrawny girl went even further and said that people in Metelkova were stupid because they didn’t notice any of it. Matjaž got bored and left the group, asking, ‘So why are you all here, then?’

  He cast his eye over the girls at Metelkova, and with his slightly blurred vision and a fresh dose of beer he discovered what seemed to him a promising female population. Then Katja thwarted his plans. The polite ‘How are you?’ was followed by a monologue: how good she was feeling since the weather had picked up, how she was a better person now – something they had also noticed at work, how she’d started a new weight-loss treatment – its secret was that you just ate greens for a week. Of course it was disgusting – green soup for breakfast was the worst form of torture, but that was the price you paid for being a woman. And it really was hard being a woman, much harder than being a man. As far as she was concerned, the emancipation hadn’t really got started yet; for her it would only be complete when men started putting on make-up before leaving for Metelkova on a Friday night, in order to impress the girls. She admitted that, naturally, she herself had become a slave to fashion and beauty trends, but people had to understand that we exist within a certain context, and therefore have to acknowledge the context in which we live – like it or not.

  Matjaž wanted to excuse himself and go literally anywhere else, but Katja drew herself in closer. ‘Anyway, I think I’ve fal
len in love,’ she said. Before Matjaž could ask who the lucky young man was, she was already describing him. He was a new intern at work, whom she was now supervising. He was really clumsy and weedy but he laughed at all of her jokes, brought her coffee even if she hadn’t asked for it, and he sometimes baked on a Sunday and brought the cakes into work on Monday. He didn’t know how to dress appropriately for company events; he wore his graduation suit way too often, for the most everyday occasions. He wasn’t very talkative, but then his eyes said a lot – ‘if you know what I mean,’ she said, staring deeply into Matjaž’s eyes. He nodded as if to say he understood, and congratulated her on the new catch. Well, for the moment nothing concrete had happened, she corrected him, although the last time they were at a dinner they’d organized for some company, it did seem like he had softly stroked her hand. But she wasn’t born yesterday, and she knew what these little gestures meant. Matjaž nodded obediently and looked around to see which one of his euphoric friends would be the least painful to say hello to. ‘Never lose hope!’ he heard her say, full of commiseration. Matjaž didn’t really understand the commiseration, and pulled a face. This made her laugh – she’d be so much prettier, he thought, if she didn’t talk so much. Then she said, as if he were in need of further punishment, ‘But we can agree that if we haven’t found anyone in a few years’ time, the two of us can just get married.’ Matjaž choked, and by the time he’d caught his breath he’d already started walking away and simply waved her goodbye.

  He sat down next to Suzana, who tonight was celebrating in the company of Mini, a journalist from one of those here-today-gone-tomorrow online news portals.