GREETINGS FROM PRAHA Story 1 | Pt. 3

Opera

We arrived too late to read the program, but I got the gist.
It was Italian, a woman loved a man, consequential pain ensued.

Outside of the theater, Amy places me in a cab aimed for the Globe coffee-rave.
I am a ball of beige layers, a tube skirt, and shit-kickers.
I have not packed for love, only for cold.


The Globe-Rave

Our couch is filled with of other couples, a fact I quickly forget. He is as pretty as I had thought.
A French mother and Czech father, he glows with the beauty of youth, health, and a life not-yet-tarnished.

His arm expanse is wide as he leans into me to speak. He talks a lot. Maybe as much as I do. He is a radio DJ and translates movies on the side…wants to move back to Paris. The talk is all about him and I start to worry he’s all ego and the new will wear off soon. But it doesn’t. It occurs to me that he is trying to sell himself. Or he’s nervous.

The more he talks I think I’ve met someone honest and in his revealed form, Yirka is a total surprise. He is buoyant and playful. A thousand expressions a minute, his spirit is alive and right on the surface. We talk about bands and he amps up just like I do. It’s an animation that some find annoying and I get that; the volume, the squeals, the gesticulations. We only-children learn to entertain ourselves and hope to entertain others. In this, we two have met our matches. We let our hair down and ramble like girlfriends on the phone.

We are big-mouths and have conjured ourselves into a trance, pulsing and fast.
I am in a nook, we are in a groove.

A girl comes around with Valentine's freebies.
A woman’s lip-sticked lips drawn on a small pink box.

I pull out the condom I expect to be chocolate.
“Look what they gave us!”
We kiss on the couch and leave.