Public Republic

Kristin Dimitrova

Photo: arcticpuppy

It was love at first sight. Stooping, he entered the shop and threw a quick glance around, just in case. His coat collar was turned up and his hat was pulled over his eyes. As it closed, the door hit the little bell above and he flinched. For a moment I was afraid he would rush back out into the street before he had ever taken a better look inside. The bell was there, of course, for our shop assistant. Every day from 10 to 7 she would come to work with a plastic folder, produce a textbook of tourism economics from under the counter, and among bouncing dildos and black leather masks she would start taking notes. I sat in the shop window.

“Can I help you?” she asked, switching off her desk lamp. The desired semi-darkness settled in the room.

He panicked, grabbed the first box he could reach and handed it to her.

“A nipple enlargement pump, 95.50” she said and turned to the cash register.
“No, no” he protested and pushed his hat up to get a better view. His eyes were like undone glossy buttons. He balked. Then asked for some lube.
“Flavored, warming, glowing, masturbation, anal-specific?”

I could see she was in a hurry to get back to her textbooks and even glanced at her watch. And she won. The man waved his hands to erase any trace of his order and dashed to the door as if we were in a sinking bus and this was the only way out to the surface. I was desperate. I knew he would never find the courage to come back. On his way out he hit the silicon anus boxes, they scattered and he began to gather them. I kicked him tenderly in the face.
Then he saw me.
He touched my long hair.
I’d swallowed my mechanical tongue.
He slid his hand over my ciberskin.

“Do you have only blondes?”
I froze. I wanted to clench my hands over my water-filled breasts.
“Why, we have brunettes as well.”
The shop assistant bent to search behind the counter.
“I’ll take this” he hurried to say and pulled me towards himself. I knew his face mirrored itself in my glass eyes.
“Should I take her air out or you’d rather have a new one in a box?”

Some might say that letting your hot air out is not a big deal. It happens to everyone. You can live through it. For me it doesn’t work that way. Once I am out of air, I can never be sure that I’ll be blown up again. Tastes change, new models appear fitted with a realistic skeleton, a button for political opinions and Jenna Jameson’s vagina. He took off his coat and wrapped me in it.

We went out in the rain. By the time we got to his car my hair was totally wet. The neon signs glittered in pink, catching in their light the discrete shop window from where I looked out until recently. Without me it was empty now, but I had no nostalgia. Wherever he turned me around, I saw shop windows and streets. Perhaps every beginning looks like this.

During the first few hours of that romantic night we focused on getting to know each other. We started under the shower; then he panted, banged, screwed, thrusted, licked, rubbed, sucked and I realized that I was strong enough to support his weight. I noticed he liked to talk while exploring the crevices of my body but there was no way for me to warn him that “I’ll burst your hole” sounded like a death threat to me. Finally he got drunk, made me lie on the table and filled my mouth with champagne. I threw up, of course. I can take in only small amounts of liquids.

That’s how we started living together. Every morning before going to work he would serve breakfast for two and sit me across the table. He talked at length about his problems at the office, about his boss who always wanted more for less and shouted at people and everybody kept mum. I like the word “mum” in a strange kind of way. I hear it almost every morning. I feel a little sad for him but I am a good listener. We were born for each other, I thought at moments like this. Until he started coming home late at night.

The clock’s hands advanced minute after minute, hour after hour, and I couldn’t find the strength even to keep my body temperature up. I lay on the living room sofa and felt ridiculous in my black garters, in which I had been rolling about for three days. What’s the point of all those accessories if you are no longer noticed? The front door clicked open. Instead of one, two people entered. From the hall came female laughter. It consisted of fragile crystal sounds which I cannot produce. He rushed into the living room, grabbed me and took me through the side door into the kitchen where he stuffed me into a cupboard. Entangled in my own feet I heard them enter the living room and begin the familiar banging, panting and hammering. I knew that it was all over with me. My hair started falling out in clumps then and there and my throat turned on by itself, swallowing dryly. Soon afterwards, as a matter of fact suspiciously soon afterwards, somebody entered the kitchen. I could tell by the light steps that it was the woman. She turned on the gas ring and shouted out, “Where do you keep your coffee?” Instead of answering, my boy ran over to stop her, but by the time he reached the kitchen she had managed to open all the cupboards and I was in one of them.

I must have looked like a dead body because she gave a startled cry. Then she curved her eyebrows in all directions repeating “What? What?” as she pulled me out.

“Let her go!”
“Rotting pervert!”
“You don’t even know me, let her go” he shouted and tried to snatch me out of her hands. Instead, the woman threw me on the gas ring. My hand with its wonderful cupped fingers melted even before it touched the fire. While I was turning from a beauty into an invalid I managed to notice that the woman had wrapped her fat body in his violet shirt.

He told her to beat it at once. She threatened him that everybody at the office would learn. He pointed out that sex with her was not half as good as sex with me. And then there was a changing of clothes, a returning of shirts, a hurling of a shoe, a coming back for a mobile, the banging of a door. And he came over to me.

He glued my burned hand and bandaged it with tape. He blew me up with his own breath. He combed my hair. He covered me with his blanket and all night long he kept on telling me “You are my soul,” “You are the only one in my heart,” and other words like that which I had often heard in songs but never yet in a private conversation. Due to my frail state that night, sex was out of the question and he understood this. He cried on the pillow holding my good hand. I didn’t cry with him, though. Yes, my eyes are glass, but this wasn’t the reason. That night I realized I was not the only one. And that betrayal was in his blood. Even while the fat woman shouted around the house, her butt hanging under his violet shirt, I knew that every ogress had more to offer than me. Because, you see, I was his heart and soul, but he despised himself. I wanted to become a real person.

I had to find a way to become a real person. In order to learn, you might ask, how to love? What an absurd idea. I was made for love, that’s written on the package I came in. No, no, no, it’s much simpler than that: I must learn to walk by myself.
Then I’ll decide whether to turn his gas on or not.