1
I heard the word cock for the first time in 1982.
We were at the seaside in Bečići in Montenegro, at a school vacation center.
The organizer of those vacations was the late Vojo Rmandić, a math teacher, a towering figure. He always reserved a part of the center for orphans and the children of his friends who applied for the vacation too late. It was an utterly illogical fact that his friends' children should be put there – that part of the building was the worst, swarming with rats and insects, cracks and the stench of dampness. A single bathroom for the whole floor, ruined and broken beds and walls written over with colored vulgar messages.
As most children in a small town, my sister and I always applied for this vacation last, counting on our parents' acquaintance with Vojo Rmandić. As my sister was all grown up, she was put in a decent room with six beds and a bathroom, while I ended up in a ghastly room with, above all, strange female roommates.
They were in the third or fourth grade, and I had just finished the first. It was only me they had housed there on the basis of a late application,while the other girls had been sent there by social workers, children's homes, or even correctional institutions because they were from strange and broken families. During the day, they usually told stories of their families and day after day they exaggerated their tragedies. A girl named Kaća was the only one to stick to the same sentence:
-When Dad left home, he started smoking.
And so we bewailed Kaća's daddy, a smoker, a pioneer in his old age, just after lunch, at the afternoon rest. Kaća never changed the sentence or the grieving period.
All of them looked much older than all of the girls from my sister' s room, and they won something between admiration and fear in me. They asked each other daily how old they were, which was also commonly done by the teacher in charge of that room, because each of them had repeated a class at least once. Still, none could have been more than 12 or 13.
The separation from my sister was a nightmare for me already, let alone the stay in that strange room.
I remember well, when we came from the beach by day, they would take turns taking a shower, and then put cream on their skin sitting naked with their legs spread, analysing their bodies. I would sit on my bed watching them timidly. Nobody, of course, expected me to do the same. They acted as if I didn't exist.
Fifteen years after that, at a winter workshop, I saw a photo from a porn magazine, which was put there as a joke, of a woman, stretched and wide open, penetrating herself with a beer bottle, and it was obvious that she could use five more. Suddenly, I seemed to recognize all of my almost forgotten seaside girl friends, together. Something between disgust and a world beyond me.
Something as an evil phenomenon.
In front of our windows, the room being on the second floor, there were always many boys, mostly from the eighth grade, who shouted, called out, threw beer caps at the window. Then, one of them ran out to the balcony wrapped only in a towel, quickly unwrapped the towel, appeared stark naked, ran inside again and started giggling frantically. Later on, when they went to lunch or dinner together, some of the boys, hidden in the bushes, would literally jump on the back of one of the girls, lustfully and brutally, without a bit of tenderness; sometimes a whole pack would start pulling their breasts, almost tearing them off. They would cry then and were truly scared and miserable. An hour or two after that they would go out, run out to the balcony to provoke them, flaunting their towels.
In a corner of the balcony they found a chocolate doughnut, nibbles and a juice-box, which were given to us before we went to the beach.
Once, what happened was that my sister came to my room. I remember her putting something on the dresser to the right of us. We were both sitting on the same bed. The other girls, gathered on a bunk bed, were chattering around a plush toy-monkey.
Then, a girl put the monkey's tail between its legs and pushed it ahead. She said:
-Look, like it has a cock, - and the other girls laughed.
- What's a cock? I asked.
I could have sworn that I had never heard that word before.
It was then that they burst into laughter.
-She doesn't know what a cock is?! She doesn't know what a cock is! Tee-hee ...
Well, yes. Of course I didn't know.
I turned to my sister again and asked her completely stupidly and bluntly:
- What is a cock?
-It's a male tool- she said discretely, probably trying to think of a way to explain it to me most quickly and to alleviate the oncoming embarrassment before a bunch of girls in heat.
I was ashamed. Endlessly.
Of course I understood that the meaning of those words was not meant to be asked about aloud. I was even more confused. A tool is a tool. It can be male, or it can be female. What does a cock have to do with anything ?! It more resembled a washing machine spare part, a part of a windshield, a weather forecast factor, whatever, something strange and concrete.
But, male tool, hello, I wasn't born yesterday!
XXX
I first encountered the word impotent in 1980.
We were seeing the New Year in at the apartment in Užice.
There were two or three families, a table set in the living room, full large plates, a feast. Decorations hanging from black wooden shelves.
We never decorated a Christmas tree. That was why we placed the decorations all over the room. We were watching TV, drinking, eating smoked ham. My mom never knew how to cut ham in thin slices, and, yet, it was her that always started the business. Then, my father would go over, saying with a pinch of scolding and sympathy that she cut the ham as canned meat; so, he would take on the cutting, doing it as in the commercials, and thin ham slices would fall on the chopping block.
They were showing some American series, and the main character, after being released from the hospital, said to his lover that they had to part because the accident had left him impotent.
The lover dwindled, it was obvious that she was upset, but she paid no attention to that with dignity, and said she loved him as he was and that THAT didn't matter to her.
What the hell was THAT? For the first time I ignored that strange foreign word, but they kept repeating it stubbornly. Then, the brother of the main character, the owner of that unusual trait, found out about the consequences, and told him not to despair since, well, his wife had accepted him. When they repeated the same word for the fifth or sixth time, I turned towards my sister, and, naturally, asked her in front of everyone:
- What does impotent mean?
...there was noise at the table and not everyone heard the question. Somebody still did, laughed, and went on watching the series.
The discrete laughing guest had no idea how persistent I could be. He also didn't know how I could be tickled by a word. Seeing that I would not let it go, my sister told me quietly:
-That means that one can't have children.
Hem, it didn't work. Forget it!
Well, this time I said it quite loudly:
-What's the idea here when they both have grown up children? They didn't want to have children! They didn't mention having children! They didn't even...!
There I lost control completely.
However, some of the old folks at the table said utterly authoritatively and calmly:
- Well, true, they do have grown up children, but you never know when you may want to have more...
The explanation somewhat pacified me, but I still felt there was a certain problem there.
XXX
I heard the word fuck for the first time back in 1979.
Grandfather Radič talked about politics and used fuck veryoften.
I liked the word a lot. Doubtlessly it was a word of feminine gender, a strange utterance which points to bad luck, helplessness, inconveniences, dark forebodings. That is, when things are going badly – Fuck has come.
Later, in similar situations I experienced the presence of that evil lady myself and noticed that it sounded logical to everyone. For example, they say we can't go out because it's raining. I say »Fuck«, and the other kids look at me and say: »Quite, fuck...«
The magic disappeared when my mother overheard me. She was washing up, turned to the hall with surprise and said:
-Why do you swear, do you know what it means ... fuck is a swear word.
As Mom said that, clearly separating the words, I suddenly felt awfully disappointed.
As if someone had stolen a word from me.
My beautiful Fuck.
XXX
I first heard the word orgasm in 1981 or 1982, I am not sure.
I know it was summer and we were in the cottage on Zlatibor.
I remember readers' letters in the papers, mostly female readers, and I was reading them.
Almost every letter contained the word orgasm.
I remember a letter starting with a lady having a sexual problem. Namely, her problem was in her screaming and falling from bed when having orgasm. The screaming lasted a minute at least, and when she fell from the bed she could not move for ten minutes. Her partner didn't know what to do then and he was confused.
The experienced psychologist answered to the woman that it was not common and she had to try to control her reactions, for it was not easy for the poor partner. Yet, he sympathized with her, because »orgasm is not easy to predict, it can come all of a sudden«.
And so I started being strongly afraid of having that horrible orgasm where I should not.
I didn't quite know how and when one could have it, but I saw that it was a very frequent phenomenon if everyone wrote about it in papers.
I was thinking about what to do if I happened to have it in a store. I am buying croissants and yogurt, then a chocolate banana at the other stand in the store, then I start screaming and fall to the floor, not being able to move ...?
I began to realize that orgasm was an extremely twisted thing not to be played with.
Then, it happened that someone had sent a letter saying that they didn't know what to do because a twelve-year-old child had asked them what orgasm was, and the parent had been very embarrassed.
The psychologist explained again how there was no reason to be embarrassed, and the girl would soon be close to it, for the young matured quickly nowadays, soon she could experience orgasm, so it was important that parents should talk openly to their children in puberty.
Oh, how pleased and saved I felt! From that letter, at the last moment, I concluded that you shouldn't ask anyone about it, because they would be embarrassed and wouldn’t know how to explain it. And I was much younger than twelve. From then on orgasm seemed further in my head. And the sound z buzzed in the word. It resembled organism, but that was not it, it sounded shorter.
They insisted on calling it a climax. And then once, I clearly remember, in the issue of August 12th, in his answer, the psychologist used the phrase »the climax of sex«.
So, there we were. Well, that could look like a key. Downright.
Then I read some women having written that they had a problem, for they were fifty already, and they had never had orgasm. Truly, I could not understand them; I thought they should be happy for not having experienced such a terrible thing!
Since the August 12th I had never been afraid when buying croissants and nibbles.
xxx
Most people I know say that »things have gone to cock« when they want to say that they are in deep trouble, or when nothing is going well.
And each time, each and every time, I imagine how a certain thing, or a person speaking, grows wings, how they easily fly towards the tail of the plush monkey which is squeezed between its legs, and starts entering the material the toy is stuffed with.
I don’t know when I first heard the word sex, but I am aware of the word just as I am aware of myself, and undoubtedly, I knew it in 1978 or at the beginning of 1979.
|
