November 17 is a public holiday in Slovakia. It’s called “Struggle for Freedom and Democracy Day”, but what it’s actually supposed to be called is “Secret police stole all the money, companies, and real estate and told us to go make love to ourselves Day”. But that would be too long for print calendars.
Many have complained about our plun… privatization process, but were ultimately bought off or befallen by the most unfortunate mishaps. Somebody pooped on their porch, the car stalled on the railway track, a toffee slipped in the wrong pipe. I too wanted to express my discontent and my political career lasted 36 hours. I wrote one satirical open letter to Bardejov City Hall and received one credible death threat… from my mother.
You see, after the Velvet Revolution, the State Security announced that they had seen the error of their ways and would dissolve. And so they did and joined the new government, police, judiciary, and business. That’s the problem with velvet, it’s a delicate material, you can’t hang anyone with it.
Ten years later, if a girl went looking for an oversexed turncoat with a bit of money, that’s whom she would find. He’d tell her she was “so smart”, “different”, and “my wife and I are over, I’m staying just for the kids”.
Before you enter the nightm… the world of dating, you see men as a bunch of people around you. The second you’re interested in any woman, the same men become thugs from the old regime, affiliated country robbers, shockingly untalented artists, unconvincing impostors, inept social climbers, and miscellaneous assortment of white-collar criminals. Every one of them has character traits you abhor and facial features that make you heave. It’s uncanny.
LOOPY GROUPIE took phone calls in my presence. The voices were muffled but easily identifiable as rudimentary innuendo and perverted laughter. I also read her diary, which she gave me for safekeeping, a desperate measure on her part. Yeah, give a book to a bookish guy. The handwriting was atrocious, I couldn’t decipher half of it.
I really loved her like I had never been hurt because I hadn’t. I don’t know what she thought, she said she loved me once or twice and even wrote it in a text, not afraid to leave a paper trail. Most of the time she would ask if I loved her. I always did. There were positions, oral accession, sounds of agitation, and coarse language. We were tight, every moment together, breakfast, lunge and sinner. Her girl friends watched us with great concern, but one of them told me later she was relieved: “Finally, SMARMY CHARMIE has a normal boyfriend. Young. White.”
I accepted it was going to be like this from now on; I’m adaptable. But as soon as I did that, it all came undone. She started dining out and shaving above the knee before the meals. She would come back late at night, or in one instance, the next afternoon. I’d give her the silent treatment and she’d go to sleep. That’s the kind of team we were.
Then came the unusual requests: “There’s this friend who’s just a friend, but I don’t want him to know I’m with somebody. He would be sad.” She asked me to walk separate ways in town, on the slim off-chance he could be around and see us. I didn’t have to go far, just on the next parallel street.
I did what society taught me: looked the other way and kept my mouth shut. Soon I began to feel sick to my stomach. For two years I was 150 lbs on 6′2″ (68 kg on 188 cm). My junk looked huge.
I honestly thought she would stop. She just needed to tie up some loose ends and then we would be together. But she kept behaving very casually and independently, and I was exhausted by all the mentioning and praising of others. I warned her I was going to break up with her. I remember telling her on a bus: “If you go with him, I’m getting off this bus as a free man.” She smiled sheepishly: “Please do.”
Two weeks after our final falling-out, I saw her from a distance. She was wearing a crop top and a newsboy cap. How many more lucky bastards have I created? You’re not welcome!
I think I know what went wrong. One day she was scribbling something in a repetitive motion. I glanced over, she was trying out her “Šothová” signature. She probably realized she couldn’t carry a name like that and decided to scuttle the whole operation. Well guess what? I don’t want her stupid peasant name either. Or read her chicken-scratch longhand.
So on every November 17 (and every other national holiday), I set my alarm to 6 AM, get up, wash, dress, go to the shops that stayed open – petrol stations and foreign food joints – gorge, come back, and work like a Stakhanovite. On the remaining days of the year I’m a slacker.