She’s the friend of one of my students. Would normally never go for her. She has the tattoo of a candle on her left underarm. Tattoos put me off. It’s unfair, I know. I hate it when I hear women say they don’t like guys with long hair. And still… Our appetites don’t know the concept of justice. This one has two strikes against her. She has a nose piercing. Those turn me off too. Luckily she’s not wearing plateau shoes or other clunky footwear.

Her hair is dyed black. I like black, it’s my favorite hair color, the most arousing one, I take it as a sign she’s not trying to be submissive. Unfortunately she has a small mouth, thin lips and a too small nose. I fall for women with special noses. She’s small. 1m61. Am ok with anything between 1m52 and 1m87. She’s wearing a flowery dress. Does some administration for an airline company. Hardly a dream job. She speaks slowly. There is some enthusiasm in her voice that is like bursting out, but she’s not letting it. She’s studying Spanish and Russian. She’s considering signing up for Dutch. Maybe that’s why her friend invited her to this party to close this school year of Dutch.

She proposes to play Dobble. I often have it with me. She has black nail polish, which I normally never like. Something in her smile and her body language overrules all this. She seems shy, but her foot is touching my calf and when we play Dobble we play hot potatoe and every time she hands me the cards she makes sure to grab my hand and squeeze it. She maintains eye contact for long stretches. There’s something about her that makes me want to be nice to her, though I can’t imagine us together. She’s constantly saying how much she likes to party. I write ‘bella mariposa’, beautiful butterfly, on a beer napkin and say that it’s her personal beer napkin from now on. The eye contact becomes so strong we’re not really playing dobble any more, we’re just using the cards to squeeze each others’ hands. People around us are in that mode of decency where they know they have been made redundant by the tacit decision of two strangers out to kill their loneliness together for the night.

She has a tiny room near Obchodna street, not too different from an other small room I know all too well here. We’ve decided to go here. She has some Samagon. Her grandfather is Ukranian and distills his own vodka. I had said I never drink vodka and then she mentioned the Samagon. That I don’t know what vodka is until I try some Samagon. Personally I won’t feel I have missed out if I never get to taste Samagon, but am now so curious about her, so grateful that this stranger walked into my life and with her defrosting female charm has livened up my sort of sad, wistful day, that I want to taste her. I want to lick her, just because am glad this sweet being exists. If everyone was like her there would be no wars. For that fact alone I like her and feel present with her.

The Samagon tastes like those things usually taste, like someone put rotten fruit on fire in your mouth.

She tastes far better when the black dress with pink and violet flowers comes off. She’s wearing simple black underpants, I like that. And hurray, she’s not completely shaved down there. I don’t expect to find a wilderness down there, but when everything is gone my first impression tends to be that am staring at a baby and not a full grown baby. She has very short labia. She’s very symmetrical. I was once told that this is typical for Slavic vaginas, but that opinion didn’t come out of the mouth of a gynaecologist, so am sure Slavic women have yonis in all kinds of shapes.

‘Maybe I should shower first’, she says when am kissing my way down from her forehead all the way to her belly button and lower.

When I take off her underpants, she goes on:

‘I only showered in the morning.’

In response I just start licking her. Up and down. In circles. Slow. Fast. Slow again. I hear her say, boze to je dobre, which sounds like a shot of heroin that could kill an elephant to me.

She has tiny breasts. The tiniest I have seen. Small bumps that barely fill the palms of my hands.

‘You don’t mind?’, she asks, lifting herself up from the bed to look at me. The question breaks my heart. I’m not a breast man, I’m a thigh man. I love breasts of course, but it’s almost never breasts that flash through my mind. Even when I am totally smitten with a woman I hardly ever notice her breasts until my lips are sucking on her nipples. Having said that, being not a breasts man, I must admit that even for me this is small. But who cares? Tonight is not about minding stuff. At this point I feel honor bound, out of common decency, to be happy with whatever she is and I am.

‘Really not?’

Like a dagger in my heart. I shake my head and lick her harder, and keep my hands on her breasts. She’s not going to enjoy this if she’s cramping up with insecurities. What do we do to women that they have to worry about this so much?

I don’t know her, I don’t know her well, but she starts arching her back, starts breathing heavily and I suppose she’s coming. Hard to say.

‘Don’t touch me there now.’

So I guess she did come.

‘That’s how they do it in Belgium?’

I lie next to her and draw the covers over us to keep her warm. She turns to me and wraps one leg over me. Her pussy is pushing against my thigh. My hands roam slowly over her back, ass and legs.

She looks very sad all of a sudden and ask why.

‘I failed an exam this morning.’

She starts crying.

She pushes her head against my shoulder, her hair covering her face and she is really sobbing now.

‘Am sorry’, she says, ‘am so sorry.’

It’s one exam that she keeps having to retake. This one exam that keeps her from getting her bachelor degree. She’s studying something to do with economics, on top of her full time job.

I say: ‘It’s good that you cry’.

She sits up to blow her nose.

Then she asks:

‘Can you take off your shirt? It feels weird to be the only naked.’

I take off all my clothes, except my underwear. There are condoms in my computer bag that I take out and put on the window sill next to the bed.

I lie down next to her again and with her hand she starts stroking my chest. She goes on for too long, but I don’t want to rush her. When she finally starts stroking my underpants, I go back to sucking and licking her nipples.

The first time with someone new I am always scared I won’t get an erection, but I have lost 90 percent of my nervousness, because of the intimacy.

‘I want to feel you inside me’, she says.

I know she’s sad, I doubt the exam is the only thing that made her cry today, it was just the trigger. This girl is not in the mood to be pounded in twenty different positions tonight. It starts out with missionary, then doggy style, not too long, I can feel she’d rather lie down, so back to missionary, but at some point I put her legs over my shoulders.

She puts one hand on my chest and one on my lower back and she’s indicating how she wants me to thrust, it’s a sign that she could be in pain from this if am not careful. I like how her breathing becomes much heavier than before, but otherwise this is a very silent lady. She could be a Native American Scout, so salient.
At 1.am we hear the news on the radio. Something about brexit. And perhaps it’s time for me to exit as well. I am not going to come from this, and this isn’t Fifty Shades of Grey, she’s also not going to climax from this. What are the statistics? 70 percent can’t reach orgasm through penetration alone?

I go down on her again. She comes exactly the same way as before. What put her over the edge is strong licking up and down, but under her clitoris, not directly on it.

She basks in the afterglow of her orgasm for a couple minutes and then gives me a handjob. I come in the condom, so the bed stays dry, that will make sleeping easier.

I almost crush her in my arms as I come, but don’t experience the raging need to look in her eyes as I come, the surest sign I have fallen for a woman.

She goes looking for her underpants.

‘I can’t fall asleep without them.’

She’s really endearing, so I hug her and continue to hug her until we fall asleep.

I get croissants in the morning when she is the shower, and while I am in the shower, she makes some sort of typical Slovak porridge that’s quite tasty.

We meet and have sex four more times in the course of two months, so not that much. In part because many Slovaks don’t spend their weekends in Bratislava but in the villages or smaller cities with their families. At the end of August she goes to the US for a month with friends and we sort of lose touch. She writes on my birthday and name’s day and I on hers. Until we stop doing that as well.

Funny or scary, or plain bewildering, how I lose touch with the people I am most grateful to have met.