Lola Smirnova - Twisted

Demonstratively, he takes another girl upstairs. On his way past, he throws something like, ‘Venal two-faced bitch!’ at me.

I look at him and smile. ‘I know’.

I think to myself that even if he pours a barrel of crap over my head right now, I would still keep smiling, because there is only one cheerful thought that keeps swinging through my head – ‘I am not the one who has to go upstairs with him!’

Alleluia!

It is just another weekend when my sisters and I meet for our Sunday lunch, which we try to do regularly to catch up on the latest news, especially now that Lena is working out of town. Considering our habit of sleeping late, we never gather earlier than three or four in the afternoon, and we usually drag lunch out into the evening. As I’ve never had sushi before we decide to go to a nice little Japanese place not far away from where Natalia and I are staying. No cabarets are open on Sundays, so it is the only day during the week on which we can get together and totally relax without watching the time and worrying about when our shift is going to start.

‘I love this feeling,’ I say while Lena shows me how to hold the chopsticks, ‘of not having to rush to work after lunch… I wish I was the daughter of a millionaire.’ I sigh, losing myself in my delusional thoughts. ‘I wouldn’t need to work then…’

‘I’d rather be the wife of a millionaire’, says Lena, also with a dreamy look on her face.

‘Let’s say you’d rather be a wife, no matter whose,’ adds Natalia, and we giggle.

‘By the way, Nata, I hear from Jul that you are dating somebody now!’ Lena sounds very excited. She leans over the table and lowers her voice, ‘A black guy?’ A light blush covers her face.

‘I’m not dating him, I’m just fucking him,’ replies Natalia, and swallows a succulent salmon roll.

She explains that they met in the club. His name is Carlos and he is from Portugal. He plays semi-professional soccer, doesn’t speak a word of English, and his French is even worse than Natalia’s. He is good-looking, with a hot body, and is very young.

‘He is only 19!’ says my eldest sister. ‘It feels like I am taking advantage of the kid!’

He bought her a demi-bouteille and acted like a gentleman, without asking her for anything in return but half an hour’s company and a chat. Afterwards, he offered her €200 to join him at his place after work. Natalia agreed, telling us that he is so sexually attractive that she ‘would probably even go with him for free!’

Nevertheless, by the time her shift was finished, she was so tired that she regretted promising Carlos that she would go home with him. But the deal was done and he was waiting for her outside the club. Natalia jumped into the shower, fighting her tiredness using an old and proven method – converting the amount she would make into hryvni and counting how many months it would take her to earn that money in Ukraine. That always worked. Fifteen minutes later they were catching a cab together on the dark and quiet street not far from our club.

Carlos’s place was actually a small room in a lower-class apartment building that he was renting. It didn’t even have its own toilet. There was only a sanitation unit that the entire floor used. The only furniture in his room was an old cupboard, a chair and a double bed.

‘Disappointed, I thought to myself that semi-professional soccer doesn’t pay that well…’ continues Natalia, while sipping her drink.

‘And there it started – the best sex I’ve ever had!’ Her cheeks and ears are burning from the red wine and the memories of the passionate night. ‘We did it for three hours, with short breaks to take a leak or smoke. It was so good that I even forgot that I was tired. And, I’ve been coming back since then almost every night after work, ignoring my exhaustion. For free! I even pay for the cab myself. Can you believe it?’ finishes Natalia, with a contented smile on her face.

Lena and I nod, raising our eyebrows in surprise while ravenously chewing another piece of juicy sushi.

‘Nothing wrong with that, Nata. It’s called love! When two halves that are meant to be together, meet each other!’ exclaims my middle sister, and my eyebrows rise even higher. ‘I wonder what your children would look like… they say that mixed-race kids are very beautiful!’

Natalia starts choking, from the wasabi or most probably from what she’d heard. ‘Bite your tongue, Lena! It amazes me how quickly you turn everything into a serious relationship!’

‘Okay. I agree. I may be a bit too much of a romantic person. But you cannot deny the fact that that’s a woman’s purpose – to reproduce and continue the human race. And for that she needs to find a good man, marry him and give him beautiful children…’

‘Yeah, right! Stay at home, cook, clean up and wash his socks while he is fucking around with other women like us. How many of the men who come to the clubs are married? Your concept of life is a bit out of date, my dear sister. You’ve got to wake up. A woman is not a thing that has a purpose! She, like any other creature on this planet, is born to enjoy life, to be free and happy. People like you also think that a cow has a purpose of supplying humankind with milk for as long as it lives. You are wrong! They are only supposed to produce milk to feed their babies, like any other mother does, including humans. Things like coffee machines and hairdryers have a purpose. The first makes coffee, the second helps to keep you prettier. But don’t tell me that I was born with the purpose of getting married and becoming a baby-making machine!’

I stop eating and look at Natalia. Cows? Machines? Did I miss something? How did we get here?

The deeper my sister gets into the philosophy of life, the more emotional she becomes. Her sparkly eyes stand out starkly against her reddened face, and her intense gesticulations bring a lot of passion into her speech.

Lena is looking down into her plate. I can see the shade of regret of starting this conversation on her face. It’s time for me to break into my sisters’ discussion. I really don’t feel like listening to the theory of why we come into this world for the rest of the lunch, and throw in the first thing that comes to my mind.

‘And how big is his penis, Nata? I’ve heard black guys have huge…’ I say, with my mouth full of rice and fish.

Without even changing her pontifical tone, my elder sister jumps straight from women’s predestination to the sizes of men’s genitals.

‘It’s definitely bigger than normal… at least of all the ones I’d seen so far.’ She looks at me, smiles and adds, softening her voice, ‘You want to change the subject, Jul? Fine! But I don’t want to talk about Carlos either – too much attention for just a fuck buddy. How is it going with Michel, Lena?’

‘Oh, it’s going great! He sent me a huge bunch of roses the other day, without any particular reason – how romantic is that? And he is taking me out for dinner to a very fancy restaurant tonight!’ She is radiant with happiness. ‘He is young and handsome with a good job; he treats me well. And on top of that, he told me that he loves children. I think he is The One for me…’

‘Here we go again…’ sighs Natalia. ‘The fact that he loves children doesn’t mean that he wants to have them, and especially, it doesn’t mean that he wants to have them with you.’ She starts getting agitated again. ‘And I’m not saying it to upset you, Len. I just don’t want you to amplify Michel’s words with your imagination or fantasy. What I mean is, try to see the direct meaning of the words without adding anything to them. It will prevent you from being hurt in life. The problem with most women, including you, is that you draw your perfect picture, meet a man and then, by putting your meaning into his words, try to fit him into your picture, which usually makes your life more complicated. And even if he did say that he wanted to have children with you, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that he meant it, which brings us to another conclusion – don’t listen to his words. Look at his actions. The two unfortunately don’t always match.’