You enter carrying a whole lot of bags. You’re wearing flat shoes. Soft, almost like slippers. You kick them out anyway. Cause this is Slovakia. And this no shoes indoors policy was most likely adopted from the Turks in these parts. You’re 50 percent Arab, so it’s in your genes anyway, Slovakia or no Slovakia.

You put vegetables in my fridge.

‘The loot from your raid on the south of Slovakia?’

‘Yes, yes, yes. They are soooo good. Greens from the south. You have to try all of it.’

You avoid my star struck puppy eyes. You nibble on your own lip. You like things rational, and I guess there’s not much room for rationality in my greenish, yellowish eyes whenever I look at you.

I hug you from behind. I love how you have the shoulders of an Olympic swimmer. I love how you are that one or two inches taller than me. I feel myself fading into you. Like that song on our playlist. ‘Fade into you’, by Mazzy Star.

Our playlist with its 400 songs is playing right now too, but the song washing by is a song by Lenny Kravitz. Quickly followed by a high energy song like ‘King of the road’.

It fits, cause you like to drive very fast. You’re a good driver. You’re good at many things. I try not to remind you too much, cause even compliments can be too much of a good thing.

400 songs clocks in at about 20 hours of music. Somewhere on your bucket list (always referred to as Amphora list, cause bucket sounds tacky) there’s the point about me performing the noble art of cunnilingus on your Tahiti (we have nicknames for absolutely everything) all the way through the playlist, but that could cause bleeding, neck cramps and jawlock. Not to you, but to me.

I keep hugging you and you kinda just stand there, but you do put your big hands on my much smaller hands. I have small hands, so it’s not so difficult for yours to be bigger. Those ravenous bantam sized hands are now right in between your breasts somewhere near your sternum. I feel like am drinking from the fountain of life, but at the same time also injecting my own life into it. Ya hayati I call you. My life in Arabic. Am not touching your breasts, cause I don’t want you thinking I want to jump your bones right away.

You whisper ‘Williamsky, Williamsky, Williamsky’

This highly unusual Siren like tone of yours conveying how you are overwhelmed, how you are happy, worried, mad at me for making you happy, not understanding what the fuck keeps happening and wondering if you can even trust this much happiness. Cause your mum was once in love and it ruined her. Williamsky, Williamsky, is this some cruel prank? You don’t say that, but I can hear you think it.

It’s not a prank. I let go of you and we go to the living room.

‘Show me what you bought’.

Now you get excited. Your body immediately stops being a little bit like marble whipped into shape by Michelangelo himself. Your face lights up like the tallest Christmas Tree on Times Square.

‘This is a custom made shampoo.’

You slip me a leaflet.

‘And that’s what it’s for. I don’t need it, mind you, except for the two last points.’

It’s a long list of everything that is not wrong with your curls.

You don’t need it for the last two points either, but I don’t comment, cause you’re the most stubborn woman I have ever met.

You are Scarlett O’Hara without the ruthless and mean manipulative designs. And without the romantic afflictions.

Am not exactly Rhett Butler, but frankly, my dear, in my opinion we got it going on.

You show a new Yoga mat.

It’s very pink.

‘Do you think people will stare?’

I ask: ‘Why would they stare?’

‘It looks like a vulva if I roll it up.’

‘Maybe for an elephant dick. But not all people have dirty minds like we do. They won’t stare.’

‘It’s just that I don’t want to use one of the mats they have there. I need my own. Am I weird?’

You can’t step into a shower that’s just been used by someone else. You freaked the first time I touched your hair. But no, I still wouldn’t say you are weird. Weird to me is trying to make a vegan out of a cat. And you don’t have a cat. And you’re not vegan.

‘Can’t imagine you using a yoga mat other ladies have sweated on.’

‘This is a bottle of Tokaj. Cause my friend Helena is coming over from Vienna tomorrow. To talk about her boyfriend . He’s a trader in Switzerland. His name is Siebe. We’re going to drink lots and lots of wine, sing to an entire Stromae album and talk about life.’

‘Siebe means victory in old Germanic’.

‘How much are you going to charge me for all this stuff you’re trying to teach me?’

‘Five drops of Tahiti per new word.’

‘That’s before or after inflation?’

‘Your currency is not affected by any inflation. It’s just very very hard to come by.’

You dip into another one of your bags and say: ‘No drops today, cause the Red Army attacked me a week early.’

‘it’s bad?’

‘Just cramps. I took a pill against them, even though I hate taking painkillers.’

‘Ok, I don’t mind a taste of the Red Army. The Russians are easily brushed aside as recent events have proven.’

‘Yeah, but I don’t feel comfortable with you having a go at my Red Army. Look, these funky things I am going to sow onto my yeans shorts. My bad bitch disco shorts.’

‘Very glittery.’

‘Am gonna be very brave wearing this in a club in Vienna. It’s not too much?’

‘Depends on how many drooling men you want chasing you.’

‘Just a few. To know am not getting old. Cause this morning I found a white hair!!’

‘Maybe it’s mine.’

‘No, sadly it was definitely mine.’

You’re not joking now. Your shoulders are slumped and you stop rummaging through the content of your fancy paper bags. They all have some famous brand written on them. Not one of them I know.

I put my head on your thighs and look up at you.

‘Lagertha on Vikings had completely grey hair at the end of the series and she was still hot.’

‘I don’t care. I am not going to become grey. I will not allow it.’

‘Have you read The Picture of Dorian Gray?’

‘No, I don’t like horror.’

Am smelling your 250 euro per bottle perfume and there is an arousing hint of the iron like flavor of the Red Army, currently battering your gates.

‘So I can’t get drunk on you tonight?’

‘You’re not going anywhere near there tonight. Not for another three days at least. But maybe I will be ok with other stuff. Just not yet. Need to keep my cool. Not lose control. You can’t make me walk on clouds all day. I have to focus. Stay down to earth.’

Children of alcoholics have this drive for perfection and extreme stability. But I don’t say that.

I kiss your thighs. If kissing is the right word for it. Feels more like I want to stitch them to my mouth forever.

‘Stop, stop. This is doing stuff to me. First tell me about your day.’

I tell you about how my lessons went.

‘You’re very creative’, you say.

‘You know how uncomfortable I get when you give me compliments.’

‘Maybe I enjoy making your uncomfortable. Your handwriting is very sexy.’

‘Compliments about sexiness I can easily accept.’

‘You are a walking version of Wikipedia.’

‘Ok, that does make me very uncomfortable.’ And I mean that.

‘I can’t stay that long. Need to prepare food for tomorrow for Helena and I have my evening rituals, etc, etc.’

‘Suggestions?’

‘The Red Army hasn’t occupied every crucial location. So you can slip behind enemy lines if you are very careful. Let’s just not make that a regular thing.’

‘Ok, I will meanwhile fight off and distract the Red Army on the front line with my bare hands.’

‘That sounds good.’

As soon as you leave I sit down to write, cause I punch the keys of my computer with the most relish when your smell is still stuck on me.