tuckova

"Great tits!" he said. I was standing at the bar waiting to pay for my
liter and half of wine, this is the bar down the street where they have
it on tap and you bring in your empty water bottle and they fill it up.
I wanted a bottle of red, and the tap had run out so the bartender was
in the back hooking up another keg or whatever. A cask, maybe.

I
took a step back and moved my arms out, palms out. "They’re not even
tits, really," he continued. "They’re breasts. Full, round, round
breasts. They’re perfect." I hate this, I hate this so much. I want the
quick retort, the one word. The one that shrivels him, and all I can
think is phrases in English. Spoken like a true gentleman, I
have, and a few sailor’s greetings, but I can’t twist the idioms into
Czech somehow. Come on brain, move. "Of course partly it’s probably
your bra, but it’s also just that you have such big tits. I mean
breasts." I start wanting him to make a move to touch me; the people
around us are starting to watch and I want it to be clear that he went
to touch me and that’s why I had to hit him. I’m looking at a picture
to the right, one of those old cigarette ads, maybe from the 1940s or
maybe made to look that way. It’s framed and I can see his reflection
in it. He’s a lot taller than me, which means I’d have to get him on
the ground before i could smash his head, which is what I want to do,
but he’s drunk enough it wouldn’t even occur to him to block a solid
punch in the belly, and I’ve got rings on.

The bartender comes
back in, sees me being towered over, yells SIT and the man sits down
like the slobbering dog he is and we all turn leisurely away. I pay
four dollars for the wine and go.

It takes every bit of my
effort to focus on the bartender, to focus on the parallel between a
drunk man and a misbehaving dog, both needing to be trained. I do not
believe that in spite of everything people are good at heart but I know
that I am already wildly disinclined to leave the house and that if I
think about any part of this story other than the bits that are funny I
will entirely shut down. Later that night over the wine I explain to
Marcela about space, the assertion of, and detach from the story enough
to tell it.  Laughing because he was, after all, right, although
completely unpoetic and rather smelly besides. And this is how we
re-enter the world.