LESSONS FROM FUCKING IN YOUR CAR

by Dora Šustić 

 

There was a familiar smell of self-pity and boredom in the air that night, and I was wearing the dress I wear every time I miraculously happen to have a one-night stand. The streets were overcrowded with people and empty beer cans, and my inner voice—the voice of no reason—was carefully whispering in my ear the words of wilderness, a sort of confidence-boosting mantra I repeat to myself on journeys from clubs to random flats.

My friends were already gone, god knows where; some of them had probably passed out in that small corridor in our favourite bar, between sofas and the toilet door; some were already asleep at home, praying for the tranquility of the soul, in order to be able to carry out the daily miseries of tomorrow; some were lost in the streets, wandering like gentle headless insects full of toxins and fear of loneliness.

I was lucky, having managed to meet a man in the club all lost rave ghosts flock to in the early Saturday morning. He was almost perfect-looking one-night stand material, with dark, attractive eyes, strong arms covered with stick-and-poke tattoos and long black hair carelessly twisted in a bun. His smile was provoking me to smile back—I felt like a little girl with him, a little horny girl desirous of a movie adventure.

I don’t have the exact remembrance of the chronology of events due to a substantial amount of drugs and liquor, but I am still amazed at how smoothly he charmed me.

— Let me buy you a drink.

— Thank you. But I have my own money.

He nevertheless bought me a beer. I took five euros from my pocket and bought two tequilas.

— I hate men who think they can buy sex with a bottle of beer.

— I don’t buy sex. But I do buy beers for the lonely people sitting at the bar.

Disarmed by his confidence and gaze, I decided to play along with his outrageous drinking plan. My transcendental Friday-night cocktail of everything had started kicking in by now, which explained my self-confidence and spontaneity. I gave him the tequila shot and stared daringly, with a sexiness I had never felt within me until that moment. He smiled like a boy and confessed he had spent the last forty-five minutes picturing me naked, with nothing but a joint in my hands.

The bartender turned away from us to serve other customers, and my new friend drew an equity symbol in cocaine, right next to my elbow which rested on the sticky counter. One thing I have learned on my regular ventures into little-known city centre clubs is that you never say no to a free blow.

Soon we were making out on a sofa and speaking Spanish (and I don’t speak Spanish), and he kissed me with the tip of his lips on the bone behind my ear, the bone directly connected with my vagina, the chamber where my lust and love for life reside, the spot of no boundaries which, when tackled gently with saliva, awakens my soul and forces me to bite the person sitting next to me. Bingo. A stranger I had known for exactly twenty minutes had discovered my secret. For the first time in my life while kissing a man, I wasn’t thinking about my round belly or hairy arms; I wasn’t calculating on a scale from zero to ten how much he liked me, how many women he has slept with, or if it was going to be so damn obvious that I didn’t have as much experience as him; I wasn’t focused on whether I was I going to be remembered and marked with a special golden star in his clubbing memoires, in his book of sexual escapades, or whether he was going to say hello to me if he sees me accidently in a supermarket. I normally become so tragically worried that my non-existent penis shrinks to the size of a chia seed. But this time I was thinking solely about how I wanted to make him cry after having orgasm.

He was one of those people who pushes the untamed, uncontrolled, natural, you to the surface; one of the triggers that makes you spit on the norms and restraints suffocating your spirit, and grabs the very core of your person with his lustful, crude hands; someone who makes you see and feel your wonderful female body and who can drive you mad simply by looking at you; the one who can make you masturbate in the public—the sex mentor.

With him, I felt ashamed of the fact that I was once so unfriendly with the word sex. With him, I didn’t have problems with my small breasts, which he was soon touching in the middle of the club without even thinking that it might be inappropriate. The very first lesson I learned from him was that attraction between two people should never be hidden, camouflaged, or suppressed, that human connection is the most powerful weapon against the system, and that shame is our ultimate weakness. Immediately after the first drink, while still sitting at the bar, he asked me, “Why do we live in a world where it is more appropriate to throw ashtrays on people peacefully protesting than to kiss in public?” I remember that I had wanted to explain to him that ideology and economy are to blame, but he didn’t care about my response or how smart I was; he whispered into my ear that he sees in my big green eyes how badly I want to fuck him.

We were kissing for what felt like an entire millennium. Suffering dehydration, we stopped, and high as a kite, crawled to the taxi stop, rolling one more joint for the road. I convinced the taxi driver to lower the price of the ride, and despite the fact that we looked like we were either about to have sex or puke in the back of the car, the taxi driver agreed to take us wherever we were going. I was intoxicated with life and chemical derivatives; he was intoxicated with my dress and sense of humour—I don’t know if it was coke or life itself, but I could see it.

We fell onto the back seat, and he told me his name.

Without a word or touch, we laughed endlessly. I was so confused— I couldn’t talk or understand very well what was happening. My jaw was in another galaxy, my mind hibernating. I felt like I was in a movie, only without a script, director, time, or place; I was wandering through someone’s life, cold, alone, my friends lost, my family in oblivion. Every weekend was just the prolongation of the previous one, nothing new ever happened, until now. All of my parties were actually one long, utterly boring and foreseeable weekend, the dance floor–toilet route. I have always felt like I don’t belong to this circus of savages and future desperate housewives, that I also, like him, live for the madness of the mind.

He took me to his cave. When the cab dropped us off in front of the building, the realization of not having a single cigarette struck us both. We were falling on the crooked streets, firmly holding each other, glued like Siamese twins under a pink sky, while decent working class folks passed us by with looks of condemnation and jealousy. An elderly homeless man, sitting in front of the 24/7 shop gave us a sip of šljivovica, my homeland drink. Alcohol had the lightness of apple juice by now. We bought two packs of blue Lucky Strike, a bottle of the cheapest champagne, and two beers for the kind homeless bhikkhu in front of the shop. At that point, it seemed like we were madly in love.

— I want to show you my paintings first. Then cover you with paint and watch a movie with you.

— The world is a horrible place when people don’t love each other.

I was talking shit by now.

 — Let’s have a shower first, I want to wash your hair.

I stopped and threw my bag on the floor in the middle of the street, between two grey cars.

 — I really need to pee.

He laughed sincerely, perhaps having realised that he is dealing with a girl twenty years younger than him.

— Exactly here, next to my car? My flat is fifty metres away from here…

— I really need to pee right now.

I took off my panties, lifted my dress and relieved myself after six hours of being unable to pee. In the meantime, he unlocked his car and threw my bag and the bottle of champagne inside, grabbed me with my panties halfway slipped and violently shoved me in the car. I was calm, but my mind was a battlefield of contradicting thoughts: I wasn’t sure if I should be afraid of him or if I felt uncomfortable with him in the daylight; I had just remembered that I hadn’t shaved my legs. I wanted to fuck his brains out, but at the same time I wanted to cut off his penis because he pushed me so aggressively into the car; I wanted to be free with him, bearing in mind the possibility that this could be the start of my sexual awakening; I wanted to scream and run home and crawl in my safe zone and never do drugs again and never go out again, and be a little girl dressed in pink, pink as the sky, and forget my fears preventing my soul from breathing properly.

I wanted to be with him so badly, but I was confused: Why is it so hard to be free as a woman? Why is this seed of hypocritical politeness blocking my natural craving for life? Why can’t I erase the imprints of society from my own skin, these violent rules of how to be a good girl, how to be kind and sweet and quiet, how to hide yourself underneath the mask of a polite woman? I am my own mind’s slave, crucified between nature and nurture, between my friends and my mother, between idols and institutions, between dreams and reality, between hormones and regulations. In order to be free, I need to deprogram myself. I was losing touch with reality. He thought I was gone from drugs, blankly staring at him, paralysed and mute. But I was on the verge of a ground-breaking change, the reformation of my soul.

He thought we were just two strangers sitting in the back of the car with the purpose of fucking—I knew we were something else. The revelation of truth hits at the least expected moments; I had tingles around my clitoris not from him, but from enlightenment. I wasn’t afraid anymore of my ego, of failure or imperfection; I wasn’t ashamed of my femininity or age; my vagina made peace with my brain, finally, making my blood rush madly through my veins.

I saw what liberty looks like. I beat the conformist, the shy girl, the polite woman. I was free and happy with my body. I was beautiful, and in the middle of the street at seven in the morning, I had the wildest sex of my life.♦

 —

“Lessons from Fucking in Your Car” is from our Sex Issue (winter 2014/2015)

 

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