My Image Among Women

One day I found myself gawping at the telly. An interview with a VIP – a singer – was on. They asked her about her childhood and it was as if that was all she'd been waiting for:

• “Oh, it was wonderful! I played all day long!”

• “With dolls and your girlfriends, I suppose?”

• “No, I didn't play with girls or with dolls. The only doll my parents ever gave me, I handed straight over to my cousin.”

• “So who did you play with?”

• “With the boys, of course. My knees were always grazed, just like theirs.”

• “And what did you play?”

• “Mostly dodgeball. They fought over whose team I'd be on.”

• “You didn't play football too, did you?”

• “Naturally. But don't go thinking I was the goalie. I was best as an attacking midfielder who scores goals, too. I played with real fire and often got into fights with some boy if he did something unfair. I admit it, I was a bit of a wild one.”

• “And what were you like as a pupil?”

• “I never had any trouble with my marks. I remembered everything while still in class. My only problem was discipline.”

This programme cheered me up a bit. I remembered an earlier “talk show”, also with a VIP chick. It was some 6 months before.

The channel, the journalist and the VIP were different, but the answers were almost the same. There were some differences – playing marbles, stealing cherries, jumping over fences, climbing on roofs, shooting slingshots /not the sexy slingshot bikinis, but those wooden forks with a rubber band, into which you put a pebble or a wild plum and take aim at birds, windows or rotters/. This one, however, had given away two dolls, not just one. Besides, in the football team she'd been centre forward, not midfield.

Clearly both of them were working hard on their image. The men were doing the same. They too were big on reputation, making up quite a lot of things and believing them.

Only poor me had so far done nothing to create a more attractive image for myself, especially in front of the fair sex.

I realised that the main thing women knew about me so far was that “he'd step aside even for an ant” – especially if the “ant” was female. If somebody had to walk a plainer girl home after a party, it was me. Sometimes two, and on the student work brigades – even more. I'd drive them like a shepherd his flock along the dark village streets and drop them off one by one at their lodgings. And all the while I'd tell them jokes, without huffing and puffing with boredom. If a female colleague was upset, the only colleague who tried to calm her down was, once again, me. In their eyes I quickly turned into a sort of harmless, no-strings friend whose shoulder they could lean on. They'd talk to me quite calmly about all kinds of problems of theirs – cold sores, painful periods, constipation and so on. They'd even ask my advice – “as a man” – on what they should change to make men like them more.

“My women” were united in this: men didn't appreciate them as they deserved. Some also confided that men just had sex with them, but they would like a spiritual connection too, and that never seemed to happen. Then they'd look at me as if I barely understood the meaning and significance of the word sex, and ask me rhetorically:

• “See how freely I can talk to you? So the problem isn't me!”

This is the moment to point out that this plight of mine could easily have been explained if I'd been unattractive, but that was far from the case.

I was already working when I tried to sum up why, despite having lots of contact with women, I still had no serious relationship. Sadly, I pictured the reasons. To them I was probably like a stew that had chopped its own onions, come to the boil quickly, fried itself and finally switched off the hob. A decent dish, but bland and with hardly any spicy seasoning. I was also like a fisherman squatting by the river hoping to catch a fish, but who hasn't put any bait on the hook and relies solely on the fishes' conscience.

Sadly, I told myself that women are from Venus and men are from Mars. And I, the Martian, had never so much as hinted to them how out of this world I was, so they just saw me as green.

Clearly I'd also got it wrong in thinking of women as flowers. Figuratively speaking, they expected me to water their garden with the watering can of my soul, while the digging they left to other male hands. Evidently, that was how I'd “positioned” myself. I also imagined what would happen if I kissed one of them. If she then decided to boast about it to her girlfriends, it would probably go:

• “On the forehead?”
• “No! He even used his tongue!”
• “Was he really that drunk?”

The one who'd spoken up would add nothing to her image, quite the opposite. My conclusion was dead simple – I'd have to build myself a new image among women, even if it meant telling the odd fib to do it. Only human, after all.

Around that time there was a bit of flirting going on between me and a female colleague I liked a lot. So far I'd limited myself to inviting her for coffee and telling her jokes. I had ambitions regarding her, but I feared she had already filed me under “harmless”.

I launched my image campaign. I shared with her a made-up episode from my life in which a former girlfriend of mine had, as a result of our relationship, become a sex maniac, and how it still weighed on my conscience. The whole time I spoke with a very repentant air and looked down at the floor.

The next day I invited another chick I also liked for coffee. I told her about my “travels in the Himalayas”. And how, in the thin air up there, the only thing that helped me hold out was thinking of my girlfriend back here. But when I got back, it turned out she was already with someone else – and with my best friend at that. A little tale that even I myself was moved by.

After that I let things ripen. I was hoping at least one of the two had been impressed, and it turned out that very soon my only worry was how to keep the two babes from crossing paths in my “schedule”. By now my relationships with them were no longer just spiritual. I started to sense that other female glances were darting my way too, and what's more, the way you look at a man, not just at a friend.

My personal opinion is that in bed I'm nothing special. I may be the first man ever to say so, but it's true. I'm normal and I see nothing wrong with that. I assumed my “normality” would get around sooner or later, but I discovered that, contrary to my expectations, my fame as a “stallion” was already spreading among women.

And a kind and considerate one, with a soul to boot. Something like a Centaur – the head of a man with the body of a horse. It seems “my two lovelies” had been fibbing a bit, and a new proverb, entirely my own, came to mind: “Image does not eat image.” It would have been stupid, and difficult too, to start refuting such rumours about myself.

At first I liked my new Image among women, but I began to get fed up with it. At its core was something I'd made up myself. I had succeeded in my experiment, but I didn't feel happy. I took some leave to isolate myself and rethink what I wanted from life. I didn't answer the phone and didn't go anywhere.

One day I went for a walk in the nearby park, something I hadn't done in ages. Before that I shaved and dressed decently. I asked myself – and who for, I wonder? But Fate had decided to step in. In the park a dog barked at me. A young lady could barely hold it back on its lead. She looked familiar to me, and so did the dog. The fog in my head lifted a little when she shouted at it:

• “Bubi, can't you see it's Bogo?”
• “Do we know each other?” I asked her, but then I looked more closely. Good Lord, it was my classmate whose escort I'd been at our prom night 5 years earlier!

Memories came flooding into my head. One of them was that when I walked into her yard to drive her to our prom, this dog barked at me so hard I nearly bolted back to the car, bouquet and all. Back then too she had asked the dog:

“Bubi, can't you see it's Bogo?”

We went for a stroll. I also remembered what our classmates used to say about her – that she was the most natural person they knew. The two of us laughed a lot. When at the end I said to her, out of old habit, “Bye, it was nice seeing you,” the dog Bubi barked at me furiously and only stopped when I asked for her phone number. She wrote it on a scrap of paper and pressed it into my hand.

At home I left the scrap of paper on the table. Every evening I had a ritual – I'd pick it up, look at it and finally put it down again. When would I ever dare to ring her?

My former classmate might well be married, and I wouldn't have liked that. I didn't dare dial her number or go for a walk, in case I didn't see her or put my foot in it somehow. One evening I plucked up the courage to go out and I met her. I invited her round to mine. After a brief hesitation she accepted. At home I fed the dog. Not only did it not bark at me, it even licked my hand. I made coffee and we got talking. More memories and laughter. This time I was more practical and asked her whether she was married – without asking the roundabout questions so typical of me, along the lines of “how's life treating her”. She wasn't married. I told her I was single too and that I'd like to get to know her better.

She said nothing in reply, and she and Bubi left, at which point the dog barked at her, not at me.

Over the following days I felt what a wonder it is to be in love. It turned out to be much better than I'd imagined, but also pretty confusing. I didn't want it to end, and once again I stayed at home. On the third day there was a scratching at my door. It came from the claws of the dog Bubi, which was on a lead held by my classmate. She excused her “cheek” in coming to see me by blaming the dog itself, which for days had kept pulling her towards my place, and she'd grown tired of holding it back.

After a few months during which the world around us seemed not to exist, we got married. I didn't even try to build up a made-up image in front of her – she saw in me only what I really was. After quite a while I even began to get slightly annoyed by that.

Two little ones were born to us, and as they grew they “seasoned” our life.

The dog Bubi had disappeared almost immediately after our wedding. My hypothesis was that it is still out there to this day, looking for other couples to bring together.

Years later we had grandchildren too, who from a very young age started calling me “Grandpa Bubi”, without ever having heard of that dog.