10-X-1977.
Ljuba and I are roommates again. The room is somewhere on Telep, perhaps two blocks away from the place where I was roommates with Franci. In between there's some space, crossroads like, where once railway passed and almost nothing was built, except there's a little tavern, „New life“, which looks exactly that, the place where they start afresh after jail time. During the year while we lived there, they changed the big window glass at least three times.
The room is a refurbished shed, low ceiling, damp, but at least we have a basin and a tankless water heater. We repeated the maneuver - I took the bus to his place, we took his dad's stojadin*, loaded the oil heater and a 50l canister for heating oil, brought over. We installed it in the room and had to refill the canister perhaps twice for all winter.
V.J. also drove a stojadin, so we took one nice afternoon for an outing on Fruška Gora, to just muck around and take pictures. The shots were sheer posers, mocking all the way. His dad being an university professor, some grammarly subject on philology (doctoral work „Usage of imperfect in the works of Jakov Ignjatović“ or some such), the stojadin was a de luxe, even had foglights and, moreover, they were in the same color as the fuselage.
Ljuba got menthol in a tiny box, such as was used for packing the „grape grease“, the lip balm that was often needed in winter, when the dry cold air would make any moisture evaporate rapidly off the lips, leaving them dried up and prone to cracking, creating tiny wounds. Everyone had such a tiny box somewhere. It was less than 30mm in diameter and not taller than three stacked coins.
The crystals would go on the ember of a burning cigarette, and the next drag would cool your mouth all the way to the tonsils. This time we bought short domestic, the finger thick short cigars made in Zrenjanin, no longer than 100mm, and these would fit much more menthol on the tip. A good drag would cool you to the balls. Just for kicks, we stopped by somewhere to have a vinjak, and would dip the near end of the cigar in it. That was some experience, I still remember the taste and fragrance.
The landlord was an older lady with two daughters, college age, thin blonde and long haired. There wasn't much contact, he was married and I was not far from that. The room before ours was occupied by a young waiter and his wife, them we saw even less.
And if we had the washbasin and the oil heater, the toilet was an outhouse, back in the yard. Every trip there was accompanied by very loud barking of neighbor's pooch, one Riki. I'd often hear in my head the then popular „Rikki, don't lose that number“ by „ten cubics“ (of whom we also liked „old wild men“ and the overhanging majority of the rest of their stuff was just plain raw shit), but not the other way round, when I hear that song I rarely think of an outhouse.
All walls and ceiling we soon plastered with pictures from Playboy, Lui and Start. Exactly under the ceiling, in the corner facing my pillow, there was a Levi's ad. One perfect butt, with a drawn pocket seam. Unforgettable, and the gentlemen who created the ad have hit the essence of it.
(Found this eventually, in november 2025. This was at least third attempt at search and it was just nowhere to be found or to be something else. This had some japanese writing around itself. And it doesn't seem so perfect anymore, I've seen prettier, this one is somehow held too tight.)
There were two dogs in the yard, one Astor, a year old big... whatever brand, what Dennis the Menace had, exactly the same model. The other, Čibi, was a 14 year old tiny female, a cross between a pekinezer and a transistor, so small... Seeing him try to fuck her, with his dick dangling at about twice her height, was to burst at the seams from laughter. She'd just lose patience in a minute and walk away, while he still kept rocking for another couple of minutes, just in case.
And yes, if then on Petrovaradin at the butcher's we had to watch our step against chicken shit when going for a pee, this time it was dog shit.
Mentions: Franc Bauer (Franci), Ljubivoje Tomić (Ljuba), vinjak, in serbian
11-IV-2023 - 27-XI-2025