YANA. Three…No. Why would I? What’s in it for me? And then one day we are on a bus together. And I want to bug him. So I ask: “Want me to make the turn ups for ya?” I test everyone like that. Normally they laugh and say no. And he quietly goes, “Go ahead.” Full bus, I’ve got a backpack. So I bend down to his knees, laughing, of course. The other passengers are watching. And I turn up one of his pant legs. And see his hairy naked leg above the sock. I’ve never seen a man’s leg so close before. Maybe just Dad’s or granddad’s, but that’s different. I always thought it was disgusting. And now all of a sudden it seems cute and touching.
MARK. So how about a walk?
YANA. Okay. And to myself on that day I said that you never know what a walk may lead to. We have no foresight. That’s the point, saying yes to things you don’t yet understand.
So we started dating, just kinda naturally. Soon I couldn’t remember how I had lived before that. We became one of those school couples always drifting along the halls like Siamese twins conjoined by their fingers.
Mark was such a poser at times. Would make me blush on public buses, not holding on to the bars and reciting the Silver Age4 poets, aware of my and other people’s reactions. I would forgive that, I loved the poetry. I felt like I knew him, like under the rags, under everyone else’s stares, under his self-admiration was a pure and unguarded heart. Not like the rest. And at times he showed it to me. He said…
MARK. I want to see people and not asses sticking out from under skirts or stoned eyes. I want to live for real. You see?
YANA. I was doing my best not to disappoint him. He had a thing about me being his girlfriend. HIS girlfriend. We’re together, and everyone should know. Because we’re serious, you see, like adults. And I’d better wear my heels and stuff for him only. I didn’t argue. We decided to be together and I was supposed to lose my virginity after marriage. First we finish school, I go to the university and then, once there’s money to rent a place…. I didn’t object, it was a nice plan. Not like everyone else’s.
9.
MAYA. Oh, virginity, great theme! It’s hard to believe a guy like that actually exists.
ANYA. Well, we’re all different, can you imagine?
MAYA. And he would also lose his virginity after marriage? In my school we were all afraid to lose our virginity at the gyno.
ANYA. That’s right.
MAYA. That place basically has a bad aura. Think of something about it…
ANYA. I remember a long hall and everyone sitting there stressing out.
MAYA. The camera follows every glance, the look on every face, every half-phrase – a whole story. A young girl, eyes empty, head shaking slightly, playing out the upcoming dialog in her head.
4 Silver Age is a term traditionally applied by Russian philologists to the last decade of the 19th century and first two or three decades of the 20th century. It was an exceptionally creative period in the history of Russian poetry, on par with the Golden Age a century earlier.