I GET TO SEE TITS EVERY DAY


Pink Floyd was performing in Venice. Can you imagine a floating stage and countless boats carrying the audience? I couldn't have.
I wasn't actually there. Only saw a video. More and more little lights kept appearing as the sun sank behind the horizon and the band played the songs from "The Wall". It's Pink Floyd's best album ever.

The only time when I had been in Venice briefly, it had been hot midday under a scorching sun. What I remember best, I'm sorry to say, is a huge square full of pigeons. People were actually standing among them and letting the abominations sit on their heads and shoulders. I almost puked at the sight.
It was very fortunate that Anne wasn't with me on that trip. I didn't have to find out whether or not she would have dived headfirst into that perversion.

Most times we traveled together, such as to Rhodes one autumn. There was a small zoo and they had ostriches. They were taller than humans and Anne went to the fence and almost kissed and cuddled one without any fear of getting bitten or hit with that horrible big beak. I photographed her from a safe distance.
We had the time of our lives driving around the island in a yellow rental car. Anne adored yellow cars. Wherever we walked or drove, she would exclaim every now and then: "Look, a yellow car!" Never in my life have I seen anyone with such an abundant source of happiness at hand, day in, day out.

Most of my maternal relatives live in a township bordering our country's biggest nature reserve. The locals say the way they're treated by the environmental authorities is real fascism. When a rare bird deigns build a nest in your back yard, you're screwed big time. And that region is apparently a hotspot for various protected bird species during migration seasons. Unsurprisingly, they don't care if they land on the territory of the reserve or outside.
Anne and I used to do a lot of bird-watching there. It bored me to fidgets. I can't sit still doing nothing. Meditation is my idea of hell. Fortunately, while bird-watching with Anne, I could at least feel her up and stuff. She would be cross with me because of the noise. Which was illogical and unfair. As if I had made the noises.
Eventually I stopped going there with her.

Anne occasionally baffled me by remembering our conversations which I had completely forgotten. I, in turn, remember every second of the first time we had sex. Between you and me, it's not such a big feat because there weren't too many seconds to remember. But I've never cared about that nonsense they write in adult magazines. There's only one thing that matters: is she coming back for more? And Anne kept coming back. Then one day I realized she was actually living in my apartment, washing my clothes and demanding we buy a new refrigerator. Honestly, I don't know how it happened.
Years later when we talked about our beginnings, she said she had somehow sensed I had potential for a lot more. That's why she couldn't let go of me.

You'd be wrong to think our relationship just happened, though. It took me many months to seduce her. Wasn't as bad as it sounds, because Anne was never a pain to make conversation with. Ever since we first met, we could chat away for hours. And I was dying to see her stupefying breasts. When I finally did get to see them, I learned she had a good reason to be so self-conscious. The only woman I've ever been with who looked more attractive with her clothes on. I never said anything, but I always agreed to turn the lights off.

Her leaving me was just as sudden and unexplainable as her moving in had been. In hindsight I guess it was my fault. I kept demanding things from her.

She got a job in Brussels, she said. I hope she's happy.

The concert video from Venice made me dust off that old LP "The Wall". It used to be hers. She left me the record when she left me. The black disc of vinyl and her face on my computer's wallpaper – that's all that I've had of Anne for 10 years, 5 months and 14 days now.
I've taken to feeding sparrows and tits in winter. And whenever I see a yellow car, I smile happily, almost hearing an ecstatic "A yellow car!"

I know I should move on. I will. Soon.



(C) Olavi Jaggo
First published: 2021-12-22
This version: 2022-09-24




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