Communism, Sex and Lies Read online

  ‘I suggested that instead of lunch, we could smoke a cigarette together in the toilets, because I did not want my new supervisor to see me smoking. That was, of course, a trap, because once we were in the toilets we made love, ‘she told me without a hint of embarrassment.

  This incident did not surprise me at all. Olga had a license for love at first sight and did not worry herself if it flourished the same day. Sex had become an outlet for her, because sex was the only thing the communists could not control. Only this way could her free spirit be expressed. Her life existed solely of commitments and paying attention to what she could and could not say, but in love she could be herself, she could turn it to her advantage, she could experience the strength of her own mind and the freedom of her fantasy.

  The lucky man found her behind the counter quite often the coming weeks. They had been an item for quite a while, even though they did not know anything about each other. I couldn’t imagine Olga enduring the stinking toilets for so long. The rows of people waiting at her counter grew longer, but she did not need to worry about this. In a communist country, you don’t get the sack easily. Olga shrugged her shoulders with the words: ‘They pretend to pay me and I pretend to work.’ The customers didn’t dare to think about complaining that the counter was closed during opening hours.

  ‘Aren’t you curious if the man of your dreams is already married?’ I asked her, after I had tried to understand my friend’s relationship without much success.

  ‘That’s not going to help me, Mer.’

  ‘Then you know if you have a future with him or not.’

  ‘I don’t want to know. I am enjoying the moment. Such an all-consuming passion is the best thing that can happen to you. Most women could only dream of this. Thank you for your concern, but I know what I’m doing.’

  I was worried about Olga. She had had enough problems in the past since the day her uncle fled to America. He was one of the few Bulgarians who wanted to see the West with his own eyes. Once he had crossed the border such traitors could not even think of coming back to their father land. Their whole family was targets as ‘enemy of the people’, even though they had nothing to do with it. Olga’s father was jailed and interrogated several times each year. The officers threatened him that they would open up a secret hatch under his feet so that he would disappear under the ground and never see his daughter again. He just had to give them some details about this brother’s flight to the West, details that he did not know.

  Olga was therefore an ‘enemy of the people’, even though she could not do anything about her uncle fleeing to the West. When she was still at school she knew this would impact greatly on her future career. Some teachers always gave her lower grades because she did not come from an impeccable communist family. Olga has resigned herself to this fact, because she knew the bad grades were not due to her intelligence level, but due to the bias of teachers who had read the information in her file. In the end. she was not allowed to go to university and she had to settle for a job as a clerk.

  I hoped she would have better luck since then, but I feared the worst. I was almost sure that Olga’s lover was married. He didn’t wear a wedding ring, but there were so many men that did not wear a ring when looking for an adventure. If he was not married, then he would have invited her round to his place ages ago. Instead they had quickies in stinking toilets. Did Olga not realize this? Perhaps she did, but she cherished her illusions for as long as they lasted.

  A packet of butter

  ´May I have a packet of butter?’ I asked after waiting for a while at the counter of the grocery store.

  The saleswoman pointed to the telephone. Of course, I had seen that she was on the ‘phone, but from what I heard it did not seem that important. She continued her telephone call without batting an eyelid and turned her back to me. The salespeople had become so powerful in Bulgaria because of the scarcity of products that they could afford to do anything.

  To kill time, I studied the products on display, one by one. They all had boring packaging with a simple caption. Rows of green bottles with washing up liquid, white soap, boxes full of laundry detergent, milk in plastic bags (which I always found difficult to open). Not one thing on the half-empty shelves looked particularly attractive and yet all these products sold well. The secret of the planned economy of the communist party. The party that thought they could predict the needs of the consumer and in turn produced just as many products as they thought were necessary. Usually the prediction was on the low side and the products sold without any problems. Unlucky people who came too late had to do without or borrow from the neighbour.

  I never managed to fathom the logic behind our planned economy. Why were staplers on sale everywhere, but not the staples? I stared for a while at the grey floor in the grocery store, at the beige walls, at the yellowed white ceiling with fluorescent lighting which only seemed to add to the cold atmosphere. I only knew of one store which looked even worse: the large children’s store in the city centre. The salespeople never smiled and they stood like soldiers to guard the toys. The little one were not allowed to touch anything. The grumpy salespeople only allowed the parents to hold the toys for a little while before buying them.

  After I realized from the saleswoman’s voice that she still had no intention of hanging up the ‘phone, I tentatively asked again: ‘May I have a packet of butter?’.

  The older, rather stout woman, had apparently had enough of my moaning. With a gracious turn, she put a sign saying ‘closed’ in front of me. I would not have sought such graciousness behind her blunt exterior. I felt completely powerless. I had been stupid. If only I had stared at the walls and floor longer, I would have been holding the packet of butter now.

  I left the store with my head bowed and sauntered home. I felt terrible, even though I didn’t really know why. The rudeness of the saleswoman was after all not that uncommon. All the other salespeople were also rude to their customers. They were not paid to be polite. Some of them explicitly tried their best to chase the customers away, because the less customers they had, the quieter their day. That way they could read a book and at the end of the month they received just as much money.

  Being a salesperson was actually not a bad job, but I suspected this was not meant for me. My parents had raised the bar for my future much higher than that. They left it for me to decided what I wanted to become, but this meant hundreds of jobs could be discarded right away. In any case I was expected to make a career and find employment in which I could intellectually develop myself. To be honest at the time I did not understand why I could not be a saleswoman. That way I would have lots of time every day to telephone them and the other hours I could of course spend on reading books and other forms of intellectual development.

  My mother nodded in understanding when I told her the story of the packet of butter.

  ‘Mum, I will go back to the store in half an hour,’ I promised. ‘I hope the saleswoman will have finished here telephone call by then.’

  ‘If she’s still on the line, then wait for a while, because I don’t have any butter left for dinner.’

  Sometimes we would stand in the queue without knowing what they were selling. Of course, we could ask the people in front of us, but they often did not know either. There was even a joke about a grandfather who stood in a queue under the assumption they were selling pastry. After waiting for a while it’s his turn. ‘How many packets would you like?’ the saleswoman asks. ‘I’ll have ten, because my wife has a large baking tin,’ the old man says. He still does not realize that they were only selling sanitary towels.

  In reality, the salesperson hardly ever asked you how many you wanted. I remember, after waiting for nearly an hour, asking for three packets of sanitary towels. The saleswoman looked at me like I had gone crazy.

  ‘I only give one packet per person, because otherwise there will not be enough for everyone,’ she barked at me.

  ‘But there are three of us at home. My mother and my sister
also need sanitary towels.’

  ‘Then they will have to come back themselves,’ the saleswoman replied dryly.

  I gave up and walked home. Once there I quickly put on other clothes, changed my hairdo and ran back to the store. I was determined to get another packet of sanitary towels for my mother. She was at work and by the time she came home, everything would be sold out.

  Luckily my parents were well-connected, which meant we rarely had to do without. In her spare time, my mother gave piano lessons and her pupils would bring edible gifts. Some of them were farmer’s daughters and if their father had slaughtered a pig or chicken, our freezer was filled up. Networks of reciprocal services created a second economy in the country and my father had ‘friends’ all over the place who would save scarce good for him behind their counters. Of course, they wanted something in return, but that was never a problem. A gigantic circle of vague acquaintances ensured that you could always refer someone to the right person.

  The scarcity of many products also had its positive side. Life was uncomplicated: no advertising trying to seduce you into buying unnecessary products, no cars with flat tyres and because there was never anything interesting on television, this left you lots of time to visit friends. If your television broke, even that was not much of a problem, because due to a lack of competition nearly everyone had the same television set and you could ask all your friend for advice and help.

  Competition was a Western fabrication that only complicated life. We were not interested in comparing packets of laundry detergent, toilet paper, soap, oil, butter and milk. Most products only had one type and that was more than enough for us. I only had issues with the Bulgarian sanitary towels. That was so large that it reached from my belly button to the small of my back. This meant I could not wear trousers, because I did not want everyone to know when I had my period. The worst thing was that the towels moved so much when you walked that every now and then I had to check if I had not lost it along the way.

  The problem with the system was that you never knew if a product was going to be scarce or not. For some items, such as good quality toilet paper, you expected this might be the case, but how much toilet paper could an average person stockpile in their Bulgarian home? The regular toilet paper could not be any stiffer. My grandfather wiped himself with a newspaper. He saved the old newspapers, squashed them into large balls and then carefully flattened them out. I also used these pre-treated newspapers at my grandfather’s, even though I did not find it hygienic. I had to agree that the newspapers were not any stiffer than the regular toilet paper.

  I preferred to vest my hope on my parents, who managed to get a supply of toilet paper every now and then through their connections. In the meantime, I tried to decipher the secret of the planned economy together with Olga. We done this by making up a game, in which we had to react quickly to the other person’s thoughts.

  Olga got to go first.

  ‘In our country, there is no official unemployment, but no one does any work.’

  ‘Even though the people do not do much work, we always have a record level of production.’

  Olga: ‘Despite this record level of production there is nothing for sale in the shops.’

  ‘Even though there is nothing for sale, we can get anything we want.’

  Olga: ‘Of course we can get anything we want, but we would rather steal it from the companies we work for.

  ‘People steal at work, because no one is every arrested.’

  Olga: ‘No one is ever arrested, but because so many things are stolen many companies cannot continue work.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter, because after all there is no unemployment.’

  We would burst out laughing. If two young girls could complete the wondrous circle of the communist economy, then it was a breeze for the party leaders.

  The meaning of life

  My first years at school were mainly spent fighting with boys. Later on, I realized this was not the only way to get them to do what I wanted. My new weapons were a deep cut décolleté and a seductive smile. I also paid a lot of attention to my hair and followed the latest hair fashion: a wild hairdo like Tina Turner which was a result of a lot of my father’s shaving foam and backcombing. Such a hairdo was forbidden at school, but no one could stop me in my own free time.

  My father was continually surprised by how quickly his shaving foam ran out, but I could not find any other alternative, because hair gel was not available. My biggest worry was that it would rain. Especially since that one time that I was completely soaked and my hair started to foam in the middle of the high street. Everyone stared at me in surprise, but most people had no idea what kind of chemical reaction was taking place in my hair.

  A whole new world opened up for me from the moment I was admitted to the selection group of a well-known tennis team at the age of 14. I played throughout the entire country, drank cocktails in hotel bars and would flirt with players in other teams until late in the evening. The trainers had great difficulty waking me up in the mornings. They never understood why, because they always personally switched off the lights in my room.

  I wanted to flirt, seduce and get experience making love. I had no problem sharing my body with handsome young men, but I wanted to save my virginity for someone special. I soon realized therefore what I wanted: to be an experienced virgin. Strangely enough, all the boys I shared my bed with agreed to this. It was wonderful to make out this way, because I could let myself go without having to worry about any unwanted pregnancies.

  It seemed like I was using the tennis as a cover for my romantic adventures and to escape from my parents’ control. Nothing was farther from the truth. I trained at least three times a day at a murderous pace. I enjoyed all those nice trips to unknown cities, but I was more interested in winning. It was just a nice coincidence that there was also time for flirting after each game.

  That was also how it went with Ivan, one of the best tennis players of my generation. From the moment we first met I found him attractive, intriguing and a little bit dangerous. He looked smug and did not even try to hide the fact that he wanted to get me into bed as soon as possible. When he knocked on the door of my hotel room after a game, ten alarm bells went off in my head, but I could not resist his tender and assertive approach. As an experienced lover, he soon had me undressed. Ivan then lifted me up and placed me naked in front of the mirror, following which he slid his hands along my body like a professional sculptor. I smiled at his reflection. It was both romantic and arousing at the same time how he admired my body.

  Ivan seemed to be the full embodiment of my desires. His nimble fingers tenderly touched the contours of my breasts. His lips followed the path his fingers had mapped. ‘I’m still a virgin and I would like to be one for a while longer,’ I softly said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mer. I won’t go inside you if you don’t want me to,’ he assured me.

  Yet he still tried to convince me to do so a while later and used every moment of bodily weakness. Only when we landed on the floor frolicking, did he realize that you could not simply penetrate an athletic and unwilling woman. We landed in an impasse, which was far from boring because of the still uncertain ending. His lips enclosed my fingers and he became tender again. Even though I was angry with him, he made me shiver with excitement again.

  ‘Mer, I want to taste you,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘Millimetre for millimetre.’

  ‘Are you sure? I’m over one meter and 70 centimetres tall and that could last until morning,’ I teased him.

  A while later I felt something come from afar like the thunderous roar of a heavy storm. My first orgasm. An almost simultaneous climax. The groan from Ivan still echoed in my ear when I showed him to the door. My gesture did not seem to register with him completely.

  ‘I want you to leave now. I can’t forgive you that you tried to force me, ‘ I clarified. ‘I didn’t feel safe in your hands and I don’t like that’.

  It surprised me that Ivan did not prot
est. He wished me goodnight and left the room. I felt relieved, because I knew this meant the end of our intimacy. I never went to bed with the same boy twice, because I did not want anyone to think I was their girlfriend. A steady relationship seemed a nightmare. It was stupid to settle for just one handsome boy. That is why I protected my independence like a weak candlelight against a strong wind. I thought it was strange that people entered into steady relationships at a young age then to separate because they were not mature enough. That would never happen to me, to squander a valuable relationship. I toyed with promising candidates until I was truly ready for more stability.

  In the meantime, I rushed to find out if boys were special enough and instead of being sad that they were not, my hart looked forward to the next romantic adventure. I was not obsessed by the male gender, but with looking for the differences between them. From the way they expressed their passion, to their reaction at my inevitable rejection. My courting was very much like my reading. First, I would look at the book cover and if I found that attractive I would begin to read. People are just like books: it’s all about the inside, but everyone sees the outside first.

  Sometime I would continue to read in the hope that the content would excite me after all. With some boys, I already knew that it was time to close the book on our relationship after just a few pages. This meant I read many boring texts, but I had no choice. If I stopped reading, then I would never get to see a masterpiece.

  Since I was fourteen years old I was asking myself what the meaning of life was and to discover that I devoured philosophical books that I found in my parents’ large bookcases. If I did not understand something I would ask my father. Dad was intelligent enough to explain it at my level of understanding. He called me ‘ant’, probably because I tried to gather all the information as carefully as I could or perhaps because in his eyes I was still his little girl.

  Yet his little girl had matured both physically and mentally at an early age. She wrote in her diary without hesitation: