Emotions rule

Lav Ira

‘It hurts but I like it. It feels good, a bit painful and ticklish but good. The same feeling when your muscles hurt when you’ve overworked, but I adore the feeling,’ explained Katya, her voice as if coming from a deep dungeon.

‘Good for you. Some cannot stand the pain and plead me to stop the execution,’ Alexandre informed chuckling.

One song ended, and Teach Me Tiger by Marilyn Monroe filled the atmosphere around with its seducing, flirting, sexual vibes.

‘Didn’t know men listen to Marilyn Monroe these days,’ meowed Katya under Alexandre’s probing fingers.

He said as an expert, ‘Well, who else would Marilyn sing to… actually, it’s not my music. My sister borrowed my phone for one night, well, me with the phone, for her jazz party, cuz her phone had got broken. Good that I kept the music. It appears quite handy tonight.’

As the procedure was close to an end, Alexander placed his palms on Katya’s back and held them still. Then he took Katya’s T-shirt to cover her back.

‘That’s it. Lay still for a couple of minutes and only then get up,’ he instructed.

‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ she exclaimed turning over on her back, her T-shirt flying over. She held herself on her elbows demanding, ‘I would also like a massage on my front side, please,’ her no-longer-firm breasts exposed and her eyes boring into his pupils surrounded by light grey.

He stared steadily at her for a whole minute. Never losing eye contact, the masseur silently placed his right knee and right hand close to the opposite side of her body and sat on her like on a horse. He gave her a gliding but confident kiss. Was he still in the massaging mode? Or could it be simply his style? His feature? Confidence all around him as his aura?

‘Call me Sasha, Katya,’ he informed. ‘Would you like an inner massage too?’ he asked, his breathing deep and frequent at the same time, eyes half-closed.

‘Absolutely,’ Katya whispered in his ear and began pulling off his gym pants.

‘G’od, I’m nuts – he is a cute lil boy. He is nuts – I’m almost fifty-five, damn, almost a pensioner …but what a night!’ Katya exclaimed and sailed out of bed, drew apart the heavy curtains smiling to the morning sunshine. She couldn’t get herself together. No meditation she was to perform that day. Goosebumps all over her body, fire in her chest were making her smile like a baby. She could not keep still.

She turned on her laptop to find the Teach me, Tiger song and sat down silently listening to the beginning. Her pinky finger between her teeth. Her tongue somewhere in between. She got up and started floating across the room playing with her purple nightgown. Floaty dance was her meditation that morning.

Finally, she approached the mirror and looked at herself. What did the woman in the purple nightgown see? Did she see the real self? What kind of a woman had she grown into? And how had she been transforming into the one she saw in front of her?

There stood a tall, ripe woman. The wrinkles on her face and neck suggested she could be somewhere in her mid-forties. She took great care of her skin without any popular injections but with masks, massage, and facial acupuncture. She took hormones to boost her libido. She felt great! No one could ever tell her real age. She was slim, fit from swimming and her recent alfa-gravity classes. Hanging on ropes attached to the ceiling did its wonders to her body. She was proud of her looks. Ekaterina winked at her reflection and smiled. Her hair used to be blonde, but now she was dying it blonde to hide the white color of aging. Her besties had once nicknamed her Blondie, hence, she should remain so. What if they changed the nickname to White-haired? She would never like to be called so, would she?

‘Maybe I should stop dying it and let it be natural. Why should I hide age changes? Cuz everybody does. But I’m not everybody. Or am I?’ she asked herself roughly touching her strands making them fluffy from tangling. She danced more in front of the mirror seducingly showing off her hips. The aka stripper abruptly stopped and hunched theatrically when she remembered what day it was. The obligation of this day triggered a sudden lump in her chest which was about to ignite Katya’s whole anxiety of the day. She caught the hue of the thought. Why did the day promise to be full of anxiety? No, she was to tune herself on a positive breakthrough for both herself and her daughter. She sat on her bed. She placed her palms up on her knees and closed her eyes. Katya began her gratitude routine she’d started practising for quite a time already. She was grateful for her daughter, for her functioning body, for a tremendous sea of energy she had felt with Alexandre the day before. She was thankful for being alive. And she visualised the upcoming talk with her daughter to be honest and awakening.

It was her daughter’s birthday. Eighteen years before Katya had decided to tell her birthday girl about her Dad on her eighteen’s birthday. Back then Katya had named her Varvara, Varya (same as Barbara, to inject some wilderness into her character, some barbarian nature). Today was the time to let her little birdie fly out from under her mum’s wing and enjoy life and freedom. Easy said than done. Blondie still saw her daughter as her little girl. The girl whom she had breastfed, nursed, shared times of illness and success, failures and victories, whom she knew so well and would always care about her as she, Ekaterina Mitrofanova, was simply her mother.

Blondie had spent months thinking about what kind of present to get Varya. Finally, she had asked her daughter’s bestie, Lyuda. The latter surely had to know what Varya might desire.

‘Well, that’s pretty easy. I know what she really wants. I want it too, but we don’t know if you approve. I asked my parents a long time ago and they said yes. But Varya decided to wait till she entered a university,’ began Lyuda with her long introduction, ‘I hope she won’t kill me for telling you this.’

‘Of course not. It’ll be a surprise. A present she would definitely like, c’mon tell me, Lyuda,’ Blondie pleaded.

‘She wants to go to Cuba to learn how to dance Salsa, to learn Spanish. You know, see the world on her own, well, with me actually. The school years would be behind. We would have a month before we start a university, you know,’ giggled Lyuda nervously repeating herself.

‘You wanna feel freedom,’ finished Katya with a knowing smile. Somewhere deep inside she felt a hidden sadness. The sadness of realizing that her daughter was no longer a child. The sadness of realizing that time was running fast. The sadness of the worries she would experience when her Varya would be far away, on her own in this huge, enormous, big- big world.