Then we saw it, between two flashing strobes of white, her mamka kissed my mamka on the lips in a quiet, lag way. They held each other, with their mouths pressing together, as around them hands and elbows jutted into the multi-coloured flashes. It looked like forever, but before we could say anything out loud, it was done. Our mamkas parted and soon they were dancing with our daddies. I climbed out from the table and stood there, wanting to run around their legs like the Malá Narcis that I was. I could feel it swelling up in me, I could have even given my pee trick a go, but that stunt was old news. Janka climbed out and stood next to me. She pulled out her hand and I reached it and took it. We were anonymous pillars, standing the test of time.
I followed my mamka into the shared kitchen and stood behind her until she turned around. Then I asked, “Why did Mrs Táňa kiss you on the lips?”
Her eyes flashed.
“It’s not what you think,” she said and began to feign rubbing a stain out of her dress.
She stopped, looked up at me and said, “If you must know, your father is going to die.” She took a breath and I kept looking at her, so she said, “He is ill and he’s going to die young and I will be left all alone.” Her eyes began to heat up, then she grabbed her skirt again and began rubbing, like sparking the fabric against itself.
“It’s awful, awful, the diseases that climb into your body and putrefy the organs. You think it can’t happen, or someone else, or later, but it swells right up inside you, deep inside and makes room for itself until you’re wheezing for mercy—” then she just stopped talking.
I knew what it was. My index finger was high and snug in my nostril, grabbing at something promising. She slapped my hand out from my face and screamed, “Don’t pick your nose when I’m explaining death to you! Bože na nebi, Zorka, you’re almost a woman!”
My nail scraped the inside of my nostril, and a ring of blood and some nose hairs pulled out.
My mamka looked at my finger, then at my face, then pulled me into her chest with a frantic grab, my forehead bumped into her collarbone.
Yeah, she was trying to hug me.
She began murmuring in her silky voice, “Please, please, please, my love… don’t be weird.”
She let go of me and walked back towards the party. At the doorway, she stopped, two men shouted her name at the same time. She bent her knees and shook her ass, holding the sides of the door, then propelled herself forwards and was dancing inside the strobe-light colours that were tearing holes into the room. Everyone danced like bodies being resurrected in gunfire. I licked the blood off my finger and told Janka to come dance with me.
So our pubic hair had begun to grow in enough to shave it off. Jana did like I asked her and stole her dad’s razor.
We took turns with it in the bathroom, sliding the razor in and out over our cunts and all the way back to our assholes, and all around, pulling the lips out one by one to get it good. We wiped away the flecks of blood and looked at the curled black and brownish strands floating in the toilet bowl, then flushed and faced each other, with our underwear and jeans still down at our ankles.
I ran my hand over my bald cunt and said, “Agnus Dei.” Like the Lamb of God, like they were teaching us, in the Book of Revelations: “Slain but standing”. That was my cunt’s name.
Jana did like me and ran her fingers over hers and thought about it. I thought about it too. But we couldn’t think of a name for hers. I crouched down and looked at it head on to get some ideas, pulling apart her cunt’s lips with my fingers and having a good look around and then I saw it!
“Woah!” I announced. “It’s the Jan boys in there!”
“What?”
“Jan Palach and Jan Zajíc, you know! The divine heretics, hello, our shooting stars, our punk meteors, our—” I plucked the air like an electric guitar and sang out “great balls of fire!”
I reached out my hand and Jana helped me up.
“Agnus Dei and the Jans,” I said. “That is, number one, a great title for the past and the future, and number two, an even greater band name, which is our cunts, Janka, jamming like—” I crunched my eyes and got the high notes of the air guitar, “like… hell no, hell nooo, Hell FUCKIN NOOOOOO…”
“Agnus Dei and the Jans,” Jana repeated as she hit some air drums around her.
Then we straightened up and took each other by the shoulders and leaned in close. Our jeans and everything were still bunched at our feet, it was just us, all bare, all shaved, just in our jumpers, me in my bright red turtleneck and Janka in her blue and tan striped. I told her to close her eyes and I closed mine.
“You see us?” I whispered. “We’re floating above, you see it?”
“Yeah…” Jana whispered back. “Above… everything…”
“Below us… everything’s in flames…”
“Yeah. I see it.”
“See our ugly apartment building there…?”
“Yeah… there’s fire… in the windows…”
“And our ugly school…”
“The side just collapsed.”
“And our ugly kolotoč in the park…”
“The horse leather is broiling and the wooden bodies are splintering off their poles…”
“And look!”
“What?”
“You see it?”
“Yeah… I think so…”
“The Vltava…”
“The river…”
“The water’s even on fire!”
“And… the trees too!”
“And the birds.”
“And the gravel roads…”
“And even us!”
“Us?” Jana asked.
“Yeah us… You see us?”
“Sure… where are we?”
“Look… There we are… I mean just our ugly bodies that is…”
“Yeah… our ugly bodies.”
“They’re burning. You see that?”
“There’s flames on my eyelashes – but it doesn’t hurt.”
“We’re running across Wenceslas Square…”
“And all our ugly limbs, like hands like shoulders like knees, and our ugly clothes, all on fire…”
“There’re the benches… and the row of yellow taxis… and the Saint on his horse in front of the National Museum… And there’re people all around us, stupid people, flocks, people and pigeons and cars honking. And the stupid police blowing their whistle…”
“And we’re running across in flames…”
“And the more we burn the higher we get! Look now: There’s our ugly city, and our ugly country, and our ugly world!… Even the stuff we thought was okay or even nice or really beautiful, it wasn’t, it’s not…”
“It’s all the same. It’s all on fire.”
“And now we’re just… finally… essential…”
“And it feels good…”
“It feels so good.”
“Fuck off ošklivý svět… ugly world, peace out. Agnus Dei and the Jans have risen, baby!”
When I opened my eyes, we were already kissing. Maybe we were doing that the whole time. Janka’s tongue was strong, I remember. I thought, wow, so that’s where she keeps all her strength then. I remember it, strong, in my mouth.
Girls only
0_hotgirlAmy_0 has joined the group <GIRLS ONLY>
Dominxxika_N39: Hey hotgirlAmy, A/S/L?
0_hotgirlAmy_0: 15/f/Milwaukee. U?
Dominxxika_N39: 35/f/Prague.
Dominxxika_N39: … too old?