There is one single exception to the format of my MILF calendar of runners, and that's the month of June. Not only because there are two MILFs on it, but also because they aren't runners.
Yes, I couldn't resist playing with the idea of putting twins on the month of Gemini.
After all, last year I was much more naive than I am now, and I lived under the fairy-tale delusion that the MILF calendar would sell mainly to women. And most of us women are mad about star signs, aren't we?
After the buyers of my calendar turned out to be over 95% men, it became clear to me that I hadn't planned things well – neither my audience nor its motivation to buy. According to my simple-hearted little head, this calendar was supposed to help us women get inspired by our own kind – or, in other words, by other women.
(And the 15 or so women who bought copies will forever hold a special place in my heart!)
But maybe the photos inspire men more, while what makes up the essence of these women, which can be told in a blog rather than reproduced in a photo, will interest the women themselves.
That's exactly why I decided to write this blog month by month, long after the calendar stopped selling. To fulfil its original idea – to show these inspiring women in their entirety.
Anyway, Niki and Rosi weren't planned in the original version of the calendar, since it featured only amateur-runner mums with interesting and exciting professions and hobbies. The two of them ticked every box except the first one.
In their place I had “booked” a fantastic runner. Even if Michelangelo had tried to sculpt her, he wouldn't have managed to achieve her perfect proportions. Every time, I was struck dumb by the magnificence of her figure. She's reminiscent of a marble statue, where the sculptor's genius has chipped away everything superfluous, and from under his chisel only perfection is left to shine.
This runner, to my greatest joy, had agreed to take part in my project. We even got to my favourite moment of the whole process – coming up with a slogan connected to her (she works in pharmaceuticals). Some of the girls insisted on coming up with their own slogans. But I was happiest when my models let me come up with their slogans (well, with a little help from Nakov, of course). That lit the fuel of my creative energy and I felt like a rocket.
In the case of the Runner-With-The-Perfect-Proportions, I managed to come up with a slogan that was both cheeky, in line with the overall concept of the calendar, and indirectly connected to pharmaceuticals, namely – “I never have a headache.”
As pleased as I was with the originality of the slogan, the runner's boyfriend was just as displeased when he found out that the fact she never has a headache would become public knowledge.
And not only that, but for a whole year it would adorn hundreds of Bulgarian homes (or, as far as I can tell from the buyers – rather hundreds of Bulgarian offices and garages). I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Ministry of Defence, which is the headquarters of our calendar's biggest fans, where almost every office is crowned with a copy. Great is our soldier!
Two days before the shoot, in the name of domestic peace, the Runner-With-The-Perfect-Proportions withdrew from my project. And I, having organised everything (the models being in Sofia in the middle of summer, plus KrisoK, plus a make-up artist), had to find some rapid-fire solution to the critical situation. While I was digging through my contacts on Facebook to think of a worthy replacement, Salvation, in the form of my friends from Year 1, rang me to say they were in Bulgaria for a few days.
These girls and I have known each other for almost 40 years now. We met in Year 1 and stayed inseparable until Year 12, when they left for Italy and I – for Australia.
They had a particularly strong influence on me during my teenage years. I was with them all day at school, and when I got home after school and finished my homework, we'd ring each other on the landlines and keep talking for hours. And it was the two of them who opened my eyes to how great it was to go to Yalta every Saturday night.
Once I'd had a taste of the glittering disco “lifestyle”, 17-year-old me couldn't go back to the grey existence of a person-who-doesn't-go-clubbing. The only obstacle in the way of the glorious life I had chosen for myself was my parents. Their, in their view, boundless generosity regarding my disco escapades was contained in the wisdom addressed to me:
“If you feel like going to a disco 3 times a year, go once.”
I immediately took advantage of the “once a year” permission and was left with another 51 Saturdays on which I had to find a way to go to a disco that year. If it couldn't happen with the parental body's permission, it would happen with its permission all the same, of course – I'm not a person who does forbidden things.
It's just that their permission would be given for something else. Like, for example, a camp at Semkovo/Kovachevtsi/Dobrinishte etc., where my parents would think I was, while my friends Niki and Rosi and I were dancing on the podium at Yalta.
Every weekend I'd pack my bags for one of those idyllic pastoral destinations where, in those years, I wouldn't have set foot. My mother was very glad I was going “for some fresh air” with my class and filled my bag with yoghurts, frankfurters and bread, so I'd have food while I was on my healthy walks. One day I'd just slipped through the door with my rucksack when she called me back with the question: “Aren't you forgetting something?”
In my guilty head the alarm went off for the danger of my real weekend activity being exposed, namely – a whole night at Yalta and then surviving somehow until 9–10 in the morning, when it was a vaguely acceptable time to come back from the “excursion”. Assuming we'd set off from there at 6 in the morning, of course. (Later it turned out that it was precisely my early returns from the countryside that contributed to my lies finally being exposed.)
Just as I was about to spill the beans and confess – “yes, I'm forgetting to tell you the truth – I'm going to a disco again, MUM, UNDERSTAND ME – I CAN'T LIVE without discos” – my mother waved a pouch full of forks, knives and spoons.
“How are you going to have a picnic at Semkovo without cutlery?” my dear parent added yet another item useless for a disco to my stuffed Salomon rucksack and sent me off safe and sound to another weekend of getting to know the motherland in the fresh air.
As much as that bag got in the way of my styling, it also helped me with other things. It got me VIP passage through the security at Yalta. In the turbulent years of the '90s, at the entrance to Yalta everyone had their bags checked for weapons. Everyone, with one single exception – when my turn came, one of the security lads would just gesture to the other to let me straight through:
“That's the one with the frankfurters, the forks and the yoghurt, let her in. No point rummaging – it's the same thing every time.”
Why am I writing all this? To emphasise the peculiar ability of my two twin friends to motivate me to fight for things I wouldn't have the courage to fight for on my own.
Well, yes, going to a disco every Saturday is a stupid goal, I admit. But for my 17-year-old self it was the centre of my life, and all my actions were focused on one and the same climax – Yalta. And in that context, if it weren't for them, I'd have been left with one disco a year.
And from Year 1 until now, when I talk to the two of them, or even just one of them, I feel myself filling up with courage and I start getting on with my tasks. Just knowing they're nearby, I start being braver. Because they, especially when they come as a set, are unshakeably self-confident and give the impression that everything is easy – and if not easy, then at least achievable. Absolutely everything.
But back to the case in point – Yalta: even back then, the three of us successfully achieved our goal.
Since Niki and Rosi themselves weren't allowed to go to the disco every Saturday either, they used their own tricks too. More precisely, on Saturday nights they would simply wait for their parents to fall asleep and walk out of the flat in their pyjamas. Out on the landing they'd change into their disco gear, and in the morning, before going back inside, they'd change into their pyjamas again, unlock the door and go to bed. And no one the wiser.
One fine Saturday night, their mother got up in the middle of the night to tuck them in. Now that I'm a mother myself, I imagine how I'd feel if I went into my children's room, teenagers by now, and in their place in their beds found only carefully arranged pillows in the shape of my children's bodies. In the middle of the night. And with no mobile phone to call them on, since in '97 we didn't have such things yet.
Niki and Rosi had at least made an effort to disguise the pillows well, crowning them with blonde wigs (left over from a fleeting whim of theirs to get blonde dreadlocks). But my boys wouldn't even bother to do that much.
Their mother made up for the lack of a mobile phone with strong intuition and a complete lack of naivety.
She rang my mother on the landline. The conversation went roughly like this:
“Hello, Rosi. Do you know where Nia is?”
“Hi, Tanche. Of course I know – she's at Semkovo, the school sent her.”
“Aha. And how often does Nia go to these camps?”
“Every Saturday. Finally that la-di-da school has come up with something good for them. Let those children breathe some fresh air.”
Fresh air and sleep have always been my mother's number one priority:
“Now, if you don't mind, let's hang up, because it's 23:30 and I'm sleepy. Oh, and now I remember, Nia told me she'd be in a room with your young ladies.”
“She's with them, all right, but my young ladies aren't at Semkovo. I don't know where they are, but I reckon they're at a disco.”
They mulled it over a bit more. My mother remembered that every Sunday morning I came home suspiciously early from my fresh-air walks up and down the length and breadth of my motherland and then slept until dinner. And so, piece by piece, the puzzle came together.
The next morning I came home around 8, dead tired. Almost groping my way, I headed for my bed.
Before going to bed, however, I had to face my oh-so-curious parents and tell them how I'd got on at Semkovo and why I was home at 8 in the morning on a Sunday. Did that mean we'd set off from there at 5 in the morning?
This unprecedented interest on their part did not bode well. I made up a story about how a classmate had got very drunk.
And because of her, to take her to the “drunk tank” in Sofia (I thought there was an institution called “The Drunk Tank”), the whole camp had left at 5 in the morning. Simply to get to the hospital as fast as possible and save her life.
“All the classes from Year 8 to Year 12 were woken up in the middle of the night, loaded onto the buses and brought back to Sofia so you could all hold her hand together while she was admitted to toxicology, is that it?”
“Well, yes, but she's the headmistress's daughter, that's why.” I was still managing to hit the ball back into my parents' court with the odd lightning-fast fabrication. But I could feel them running me ruthlessly from one end of the court to the other with every word. Until they wore me out and things came to their natural conclusion.
I went through a softer and more benevolent version of the People's Court, namely the Family Court, since after all it consisted of my own family. And unlike the People's Court, this one, most unexpectedly, ruled in my favour, even though all the circumstances pointed to my being guilty.
My mother and father decided it was better to let me go to discos as much as I liked, with a view to my own relative safety. Because, and I quote, “it's better that we know where you really are, since once you've set your mind on something, there's clearly no force that can stop you.”
Well, that's not exactly true, but let them, let people think there's no force that can stop me – look how it changes their attitude towards me.
It's one thing for people to think they're dealing with someone nothing can stop, and another for them to think they're talking to some soft little coward who won't have the strength to stand her ground (whether her ground is right or not doesn't matter in the present context).
As for these two, though, when they set their minds on something, there REALLY is no force that can stop them.
One of them, Nikolina, is a financial auditor of big corporations in Italy. And as a side business (an extremely lucrative one at that), she organises language camps teaching English to school-age children.
The other one, Rositsa, holds a director's position at a big airline. Her hobbies are varied and successful. She has published a series of children's books on Amazon, where to this day she's trying to teach me how to deal with the platform's algorithms and make them work in my favour, so I can sell my English-language books on the global market too. She has also developed a series of training materials on optimising your Instagram profile – she'd analysed the algorithms there too, how they work, how they change with the updates, etc. Clearly she finds algorithms interesting; she's always been strong at maths.
And lately, and this is the most impressive bit, she's become something of a star in Italian political life – thanks to her ability to influence public opinion, well-known Italian politicians seek her support.
And in fact, this calendar was created precisely thanks to them, albeit indirectly.
Back in my teenage years, when they were the top influencers in my life, they taught me something very useful. And that is to make conscious efforts to build closeness with women who are more popular, more attractive and more accomplished than me. However unpleasant that may be for my ego.
Why? Because, as the two of them argued in chorus back in Year 12: “Because you've got much more to learn from them.”
When you're the most successful person in a room, you've got nothing left to do in it – a maxim whose truth I became convinced of from personal experience a few months ago.
