by Adriana Bărbat
excerpts Crina: Very few people on the trolleybus. I take a seat and as always I get to be on the sunny side. I prop an elbow in the curved rubber of the windowsill. White with powder and fingerprints, it is filled with seed coats and a used ticket. Gusts of wind carrying a lot of dust get into my eyes mouth, ears, nose, and hair. I look out of the window, at hands holding wheels – a woman's hand with long red nails rings bracelets fine skin dabbed with cream delicately holds the wheel with her fingers as if ashamed to use her whole hand. Alma: Ha! Crina: Fine hand of a man with a signet ring and heavy bracelet arm hair removed perhaps gay. Cars Thermopane windows vertical shutters in gaudy colors.His delicate hand pushing my thighs apart. I haven't done it standing for some time now; I feel his heavy body prop me against the wall; I expect to have him inside, to get my entire body compressed, to no longer worry about anything between my cunt and my brain, to have only sensations and no questions thoughts expectations, my flesh to quiver with pleasure and my feet to tremble, like a chicken with its neck cut and warm blood gushing out in a tin basin. Alma: !!! Crina: Thousands of cells are coming alive; I am sprawled on the smooth sheets; I feel my body to be younger than myself, fresher; his moves, his liveliness, his relentless efforts to experience pleasure. I feel redundant in my own skin and I look from above down on our two entwined bodies – one massive heavy not so elastic hairy tanned sweaty and the other frail yet strong athletic yet delicate. My hair wraps our contorted bodies as if playing hide-and-seek around my slim waist (see article How to have a wasp waist – Recipes Advice Suggestions in any magazine for women.) Miruna: You're mocking us, right? Alma: I've put on 10 kilos and you dare mention a wasp's waist? Crina: I have entire collections! I can lend them to those interested; locks of hair like choking snakes arms neck waist nostrils pillow. I'm in his arms; everything I dreamt on the road remained a dream; Miruna: That happens to me, too! Crina: Reality amazed flabbergasted me; I like it that at times he is more tender than I dream, that my bones crack under his weight and I am left breathless. Now he was on top leading an endless waltz and I remembered that he hadn't kissed me when we walked through the door. I reviewed the scene in my mind over and over as it was, as I would have wanted it to be. I felt all the bed springs under: they too quivered, fed up with so many generations' fucking. I made up my mind to tell him afterwards that I needed more affection – when I was eight years old I got into a skirmish with a boy my age and my mother told me that girls should be more sensitive more delicate that it wasn't nice for me to pick up fights like boys do – that I would have liked him to kiss me when we had entered the room, that I gave myself out of love, that for me our relationship was everything. Meanwhile he finished his business, writhed like an epileptic rooster and came out (of me). He lit up a cigarette and I remained motionless, his warm sperm running between my legs on the shiny sheet now wet stained. Along with his sperm there flew out of me thoughts, words turned upside down, sentences arranged in a certain order holding hands. I looked at the ceiling with the inherent imperfections – cracks from the last earthquake, humps, swollen plaster, traces of dead moths crushed with the fingers; in one corner an unraveled cobweb flipping in the draft like the tongue drooling in the wind of a dog running in melting heat. He lay on his back close to me; he enjoyed his cigarette in silence and put out a hand on the breast of mine closest to him. I suddenly got nauseated; I wanted to tell him to keep his hand to himself, that I wasn't his property. The words sounded too aggressive I didn't intend to offend him perhaps he didn't mean it he surely didn't realize it. He turned to me and kissed me and said it'd been super. I lit up with a smile, I cuddled in his arms, face against his chest. I regretted having made such a fuss.I fail to understand why I don't trust him, us, more, why I always expect him to do certain things instead of letting myself be surprised (pleasantly). I got back by trolley. It was crowded. To begin, I sat on a step of the stairs – in front of me a hunk of a man who didn't care to make room for me. I couldn't shove him or tell him to move on for I had again that soft voice that could never get imposingly heard. The doors suddenly closed behind me – I felt myself driven like by a judoka into the mountain in front of me. My breasts tensed up immediately just like my nipples neck lips in a reflex attempt to reject that forceful contact. He found it to his taste for he furtively looked at me and smiled. We remained stuck to each other until the next stop when he got off and I got off "to make room for those who descend". I stared at him defiantly he chuckled confidently taking me for a softie. When I got on again I furiously climbed first this time trying to advance as far from the door I could. I did not manage this very well but still I breathed relieved for the chunk had not managed to squeeze in after me. I felt him searching me with his eyes. On the seat next to me a young Gypsy woman with a baby in her arms, looking uncertain, frightened. On my left, her tiny mustachioed swarthy hubby. I considered them one by one fugitively then my glance rested on trees cars Thermopane windows flowers in balconies. I did not manage to let myself go with my thoughts I felt the Gypsy man staring at me, I sensed his body fretting, moving as if somebody were pushing him, making him uncomfortable. A strange feeling like "what the hell is he gonna do?" I clasped my bag in my hands, close to my body, checked the zip and fret, too so that I prevented him from getting to my nearly empty purse. He was now behind me, squirming; I tried to extricate myself but I found it impossible to move. Not even a small step. My body was like paralyzed. I felt something small and hard between my buttocks shoving vertically. I could not budge – his wife looked at us, lost; I turned in an attempt to catch with the corner of my eye the gaze of the dirty mongrel as he stretched his neck across my shoulder as if continuing to watch my bag. With a last effort I faced him while wrapping myself in the wide robes of the lady on my right and the bag of the woman on the left. A terrible look stamped all the traits of my face. Miruna: A terrible look on you? I fail to imagine that! Crina: I didn't manage to say anything my lips were clenched my teeth stuck one on one filling on filling tongue on the roof of my mouth and saliva under it, in the empty space between the lower teeth. He considered me in amazement as if I was standing in his way; I tried to make it to the door and I straightened my back amid shoulders elbows wet buttocks smell of perspiration and cheap sweet spray. Alma: For the wedding party take care what deodorant you wear if you don't want it to curdle under your arms! Crina: I arrived home, I went to the bathroom; it was I within and I without – beyond the wide open door, looking at myself furtively; I was alone at home and from time to time I sensed another glance at me. Miruna: When I was little I used to hide under a blanket and timed myself, to see how long I resisted! Alma: And? That's why you're afraid to put your head under water? I was in a sauna only once! Enough is enough! To feel you don't have air, that you breathe in as hard as you can until the hairs in your nose stick together, to get the sensation you have a plastic sheet on your face – your eyes are immobile dry pupils dilated lips swollen and slippery with spittle. Your body is heavy; it drips like a spring of water between the planks of the wooden benches.You are not able to put two words together – the heat melts away all connections with the brain!There's this porno film with two guys screwing in a sauna – the ideal place to do it (provided your body can take it); the mind is virgin, ready to receive all bodily sensations!!! Miruna: Am I to understand you're tempted? Alma: Somewhat! Yeah! Crina: When I was little and one of my parents would lie next to me to lull me to sleep in the afternoon, I used to adjust my breathing and stay in rhythm (the length of the inspiration and the quivering silence of the expiration) with mother or father; a difficult game that I played fearing that after a too long expiration I would no longer be able to inspire, fearing to break the rhythm and be cheating thus.In the leap the body takes to the fresh air of the room I see again (for the umpteenth time) the scene of last night, only that the light is stronger.He smokes in front of the open window – the dark profile of a man against a dazzlingly bright background, as if drawn out by a few rings of smoke. He is pensive and, looking at him, I mellow; perhaps I'm acting up, perhaps everything happened only in my mind. I feel much better this morning, rested – it's amazing – and very loving. The light that creeps round him invades my body and pacifies me, relegating all the worries of the night. I tiptoe; my toes spread out and between them I feel impudent threads of the creamy fluffy carpet – like a steaming caramel pudding. What sensation of freshness this walking barefoot on a carpet! Alma: I like to walk in mud, on the bank of a river. It's incredible to feel other toes growing between your own, to feel your soles plunging deeper and deeper – you can never tell how much – or that your heel slips like a raindrop on the window pane and you definitely get the impression you can't keep your body in check. Crina: I lean my belly against him my outright arms dangling restlessly along my body my legs making an X – like a bashful girl scuffing her shoes. He turns his head to me, and his gaze is quizzical confused disappointed tired. I look down I play with my fingers I kiss him on the lips all of a sudden. His lips are softer than ever. He jumps on me and I feel my entire body twitching, my heart pulsating madly in my underbelly – a stone cast in the middle of the lake. A sensation of listlessness, of sheet crumpled under one's back, of parted sticky thighs, of overflowing vagina, of broomstick shoved between the legs, the edge of the bed against which I strike my head rhythmically, he trying to penetrate me fully, mucous membranes trembling like jelly.We shower. Alma: Ho! Ho! Don't' forget to send me, too, that jelly tart recipe! Sorry! Crina: Water prickles our languid flesh and skin. We use a shower gel smelling of almonds we soap each other; our hands intersect they search they navigate through the suds; our body of uneven contours – of crushed balls houses caps with tassels meringues eggs sizzling in the pan – seemingly an endless puzzle. Water is now hotter the skin gets red screams. We dry rub ourselves on only one towel (lack of hygiene, eh?) and our body leaves the shower cabin – two legs come out and then other two – two bodies detached from one – optical illusion! I return home alone – after I am no longer interesting; Miruna: This has always been so! Crina: I take a cab and I get off a little before the park. Alma: You said before…!!! In Talk Show (Paralela 45, 2004), "Adriana Bărbat is exigent over style, yet couldn't care less about 'forbidden' topics and words. Her look is ferocious and merciless, as may be seen in the chat among the three female characters caught in the web of words and experiences. The young authoress does not overlook any significant detail, feels the psychologies and the frames of mind, and is cynical down to caricature… She is not afraid of the ugly, grotesque, promiscuous side of life, preferring the peripheral, distorted spaces of existence, and x-raying the themes of female sexuality and Eros." (Gheorghe Crăciun)
by Adriana Bărbat
by Adriana Bărbat