Emotions Rule. Ira Lav

us for a moment,’ said Tanya to the guys and addressed Blondie with a wink, ‘Come with me to the ladies room.’

      As they reached the toilets Tanya said with a grand smile, ‘Honey, you don’t go around hinting everyone that you are a virgin.’

      ‘What? I wasn’t hinting anyone. What did I do wrong?’ asked Katya perplexed.

      ‘You were going to ask those two men what funny fart was, hel-lo?’ Tanya reminded her.

      ‘And? What is this damn funny fart? I have no idea, so I asked,’ Katya defended herself.

      ‘Damn, Katya, funny fart is the sound of the air escaping from the vagina when having sex. It’s like a burp from out there. Got it?’ Tanya explained with a look of an expert.

      ‘Eew,’ the voiced air escaped Katya’s mouth, ‘Thanks. I would’ve felt embarrassed hearing this from those two men. And anyway, if I weren’t a virgin, I would not know what this is, cuz we don’t have such an expression in Russian. I wonder why you know it in English.’

      ‘I heard it in some TV series, I think,’ Tanya explained herself.

      ‘Tell me, if this funny fart is..? I mean, does this creepy fart happen all the time when having sex?’ wondered Blondie with a worrying look.

      ‘Hell, no, sometimes, depends on your vagina muscles though,’ Tanya was to explain again, ‘Mostly mamas have those funny farties as they have given birth already, so their muscles are pretty loose.’

      ‘Damn, I have to learn a lot. Keep me informed,’ Katya pleaded and said letting that funny fart topic drop, ‘let’s go back I will keep my mouth shut and just listen.’

      chapter 2

      Beforehand, in the plane, the trio had talked over their new household routine, now they were to practise it. Being students, having not much money to give away, though sponsored by their parents, the girls decided to see a bit of Europe so they were not to lavish about eating out, but spend money on train fares getting around. Thus, they did shopping in supermarkets, cooked themselves, each of them had brought a kilo of buckwheat from Moscow, a pretty cheap corn back home.

      Being an early bird and responsible as a Soviet comrade, Katya was the one to cook their breakfast. Katya was supposed to be the first to get up, have a shower, wake everyone up and cook buckwheat.

      When the next morning Blondie stepped into the kitchen with a red-towel dress round her waist humming Guten Morgen, Sonnenschein, she was surprised to see Tanya sitting at the table with a notebook, pencil behind her ear, a stab in her right hand. Boiling buckwheat blobs could be made out in the background.

      ‘Wow, is anything wrong? You’re an early bird today,’ said Blondie as her morning greetings.

      ‘Everything’s cool. Just after yesterday’s British vibes am in the mood of speaking BBC accent. Am actually trying to remember the tongue twisters we played with at our Phonetic classes.  I just adore them,’ Tanya finished her speech and tried to have a drag, but there was just a filter left.

      The red-toweled girl sat beside and started reading, ‘Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,’ she began aspirating the ‘p’s and ‘k’s sounds, but the voice from the bedroom finished the tongue twister for her, ‘blah-blah, Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?’ yelled Yulya with the BBC accent as well, ‘Make up your own tongue twister, Tanushka, I’m fed up with the old ones!’

      ‘Yup, good idea, try with the word fuck, f sound,’ suggested Katya standing up and let out her usual, ‘Oh, how I hate this smoke, smoking cows,’ she looked at Tanya with a reproach and headed to get dressed.

      ‘As promised, I smoke out of the window. That makes it one cow,’ protested the red-haired Yulya as she passed to the washroom with her pointing finger drawn vertically along her freckled nose, a yellow towel in her other hand.

      As Yulya stepped in her underwear out of the steaming washroom with her pink face, yellow towel on her head sponging her hair, she heard Tanya thoughtfully pronouncing, ‘Wait, wait, let me read it all over again,’ and she began monotonously,

      ‘Phil the fucker fucked the fluffy fannies of funny females

      If Phil the fucker fucked the funny females with fluffy fannies,

      Where’s the fuck-’

      ‘Has all the fluffiness from fucking gone?’ finished Blondie triumphantly as she placed the last plate on the table, ‘have a seat, ladies, breakfast is ready!’

      ‘I like it. Yulya, have a listen!’ began Tanya turning to Yulya.

      ‘Eeeeww, I’ve heard it all, gross, disgusting, you are perverts! Don’t read it ever again, chew up that paper and swallow it. And never ever repeat these lines,’ said Yulya with her theatrically disgusted lemon face expression and went to the wardrobe to get dressed.

      ‘C’mon, don’t be a nun! We are just practicing sounds. Don’t dwell too much on the meaning!’ Tanya defended her masterpiece with a crooked smile.

      ‘Gee, you know, I visualize everything. How can I not make a meaning, if words bear one? You created your own meaning. Yuk, let’s change the subject,’ said Yulya sitting down in her jeans shorts; a green tank top matching her green eyes.

      ‘Ok, let’s take another word. How about a cunt?’ Tanya did try to change the subject.

      ‘G’od, take a good word, why a bad one?’ proposed the Red-haired’s plump lips.

      ‘Clumsy cunt couldn’t contact,’ Katya blurted out holding her cup of coffee before her mouth and had a sip, ‘Fuck, I just burnt my tongue.’

      ‘What can I say? Be careful next time, silly, it’s karma. You’ve joined me in my bad-word tongue twisting,’ exclaimed Tanya with a voice of a ghost and added, ‘A damn quick computer you have in your head, by the way.’ Fringe instantly wondered, ‘But why could it NOT contact? Cuz it was clumsy?’

      ‘Could not BUT contact, choose any variant,’ said Katya as-matter-of-factly.

      ‘Will you two, please, stop this yuckiness! Though, I must admit, you are quite good at making up. Maybe you just switch your imagination into a good-words mode?’ suggested Yulya with a funny look of despair chewing her spoonful of buckwheat.

      ‘Ok, we’ll stop for now,’ said Tanya gobbling up her breakfast, ‘And… Don’t touch my cup, I’ll finish it after the shower,’ warned Tanya as she sipped her coffee with great care so as not to burn her own bad-words-dirty tongue. In couple of minutes she vanished in the washroom with her green towel. Did they bring red, yellow and green towels on purpose to hang it on the balcony strings symbolizing traffic lights? Red- don’t disturb! Green- welcome! Yellow- hell, beware!

      Soon they got used to their new morning behavioral system. Katya remained responsible for breakfast. Yulya was to wash up after breakfast and Tanya after dinners. Who made dinners? Whoever wanted or whoever was the hungriest. Being at their language school till one p.m. they had only apples perhaps or yogurts they’d brought with them. Till dinner they hung around in the city center.

      Alexanderplatz was their frequented metro station. They window shopped and sightsaw a lot.

      Once they went accessory-shopping. And Tanya didn’t pay for a nail polish by accident. She felt somewhat ashamed at first, especially with the super moralised Blondie beside her. But then Yulya repeated the trick and from time to time Fringe and Red-haired went shop-lifting. Katya didn’t preach morals to them but just refrained from their new entertainment.

      After that they always headed to net supermarkets such as Aldi or Espar to buy food to cook at home. Evenings were always party time for them. The girls drank cheap wine, met their language school friends, hung out in the