I was born in 1981 in Czechoslovakia, the most developed country in the Socialist Bloc. For an average kid like me this meant flushing toilet, electricity 24 hours a day, 10-inch black-and-white TV set with two channels, landline telephone, and if you counted each sock separately, I may have had 100 pieces of clothing at any point. Mostly socks.
Life was good: you couldn’t criticize or mock our political leaders, couldn’t own a business, couldn’t travel abroad without convoluted paperwork and vetting, going to a rock concert or church was strongly discouraged. You could (and should) only work, drink, and create more Czechoslovak citizens.
Information and training in school were accurate, except maybe for the nuclear attack drill. We were to turn off the lights, pull down the window blinds, and sit really, really still. The idea was that if the enemy thought we weren’t there, they wouldn’t bomb us. There were no Marxism lessons, they just said it was a better, more virtuous way of running things, and that the Americans would implement the system soon enough.
My parents seemed like a nice, compatible couple, even though they fought regularly and noisily about a multitude of topics, for example, they accused each other of taking lovers. Mom claimed Dad hit her. Dad claimed Mom poured a pot of cold water on him while he was sleeping on the couch. He also said she stole from him. She would call him names not present on his birth certificate. As of 2026, they are still together.
My dad liked drink and company, he would puke into the flushing toilet about three times a year. My mom beat me with a cooking spoon about four times a year. Mind you, I deserved it. When I was 10, she switched to scratching my forearm with her fingernails. Blood was drawn on occasion. By 20th-century standards, I was spoiled like milk in the sun.
Speaking about milk, when I was born my mom didn’t have any, so her hospital roommate offered to feed me. I don’t remember them, but when you start with four bitties and then don’t have any for 20 years, you become crazy.
After the Iron Curtain fell, I had satellite TV, game consoles, rock posters, and comic books. I even had a hamster for one day because I completely forgot I also had a cat.
Dad then went to Germany for five years as an undocumented worker. He would come home every three months for a week. One time he broke his wrist and had to stay for six weeks. Mom called him an “irresponsible lazy freeloader”.
I learned to read when I was four. I liked fairy tales and encyclopedias with pictures and stats on Roman legions, Egyptian pyramids, and dinosaur sizes. My parents were Catholic, but they appraised correctly I wouldn’t be interested much. They gave me a children’s Bible and said the book was special because these tales were true. The skepticism surfaced immediately: “All animal species on one boat? 900-year-old men? Parting of the sea? Curing blindness? What is a virgin?”
When I was six, my parents told me they had bought me a brother. And they did, but they could have bought a bigger one. He was probably on sale.
When I was in 6th grade, there was a conspiracy theory floating around that girls had an extra hole in their bodies, which could accommodate fairly large tubular objects. My initial opinion was similar to the one I had about the Bible.
One of the more scientific friends of mine showed me a human-interest stories magazine. Man’s penis was huge and there was hair on the base. Woman’s extra hole looked like a disheveled wallet. Unsurprisingly, man decided to accommodate his object in woman’s butthole. For a while I thought the wallet was only decorative and everybody had sex in the bum.
Shortly afterwards, a cousin played me the same activity on VHS. In this motion picture, men impaled the wallets, and everything looked and sounded very enjoyable. I was determined to give it a try as soon as possible. I waited 10 years.