Transitions №5

Author: Dinara Rasuleva

 
The peeing chapter and also the first one.

 
„He hates swans. He calls them ducks with snake heads“
A girl at the next table petted her friend‘s dachshund puppy intensively. The vegan donut place started cleaning and gave the rest of the donuts to charity. Charity consisted of three men — with hiking backpacks, on old rusty bikes. One of them had a transportable fridge.
I thought that my 3,25 for a donut and 5,20 for a bagel were a waste. I could have registered on one of these food sharing apps and come just 15 mins later to get loads of donuts for free. Then I imagined that I had a vicious snake head trying to deprive poor people of vegan donuts. I had a poisonous tongue, split into two. The tongue tried to grab as many evening vegan donuts as it could, and poison them so that poor people would not be able to feast on them. Cause I just can’t have so many donuts on my own.

illustration by Zoé Kulsariyeva

 
 
The place closed and they asked me to leave. I was starting to get cold, but I had to continue writing, so I decided to walk and write. Walk and write. On my way I found a female head. I would have attached the photo, If books worked that way. Cause I took a photo. The head was with a nicely shaped chestnut eyebrows, dark red lipstick. Very old-fashioned way make-up. She was bold, and obviously used for demonstrating wigs on the shop windows.
I couldn’t stop thinking about snake heads. They could have matched her as a wig, if there was a Medusa wig without the murdered snakes. I did not want to murder snakes for a wig for the same reason I ate vegan donuts. The story is substantial.

The whole idea of writing a book was frightening and discouraging: just imagine that you’d have to leave something unfinished every day without even a possibility to close that gestalt in any near future. I knew that it would torture me and would not let me come back to the yesterday writings: it’s like yesterday donuts should have been given to charity.
Poems are easy: you start them from the phrase or thought, you sit at your sofa for 2 hours without peeing, almost hearing your bladder creaking, as if you‘re 16 again in 2 hour traffic jam in a bus riding you home from the Uni. But then it’s a relief, it’s a finished piece — not until you click „post“ though, and you can go pee for as long as you wish. As an alternative you can write from the toilet. While I was writing this, at this exact moment I met a peeing big dog, and it peed as if it was in a 2h jam or writing a long poem before.

With these novels it’s all different: you need to abrupt it all not even in the middle, but in some of unknown yet piece of a percent, knowing that there’s a huge vague future upfront, also knowing that you could throw it all away in a dumpster, also needing to always remember what is going on there where you’re writing. And I have problems even remembering what’s going on in my life that I’m living. You won’t believe, but writing that I passed a peeing lady. It was such a nice experience given that I meet peeing men literally always, and this was my first peeing on the street lady. I managed to walk by before her stream reached my boots. The neighborhood I’m living in is very anarchist. Today they were protesting the police raids and evictions in the squats next door. They also make vegan donuts 2,95 each the other door, so very diverse class also.
Maybe I need to finish this peeing episode with the couple of personal stories, otherwise it’d be not so clear why I pay so much attention to bladder matters in the very beginning of my first serious novel (not-so-serious novels are those I wrote when I was 10, there’s a three piece sci-fi about my dead cat’s adventures in an outer space). Well, I always was a hard laugher. When I was the age of my first cat novel it did not work well with my weak bladder. Once I peed myself in a teen summer camp, and had to go secretly wash my linen at 5am before the roommates noticed. I don’t know if they did but they never said a word. Might be that they were just no bullies in my room.
The next day it turned out I had a serious food intoxication, temperature of 40 Celcius, had to skip the sea trip. Yes, that was a fancy sea camp. My parents saved money for a year to be able to afford it at my 14. Then they died. And this is actually the story about that, not the pee thing. But have some patience.

Once I blacked out. It was my first summer without parents at my 19, I tried serious non-beer alcohol for the first time, we had parties every night after 12 hour work shifts. The state was Rhode Island, the smallest state in the US. Isn’t it funny that I am writing this in English, neither my first nor second language. However that was the language I used the night of my black out. I don’t remember the liquor exactly, but I was dancing in a pajama and peed myself. Maybe there was something funny, don‘t remember — as I said it was a blackout. Someone was filming it, but I’ve never seen the video ever since. Might be that I just shared the house with no bullies decent people.

That was my last episode. I also remember my best friend peed herself in front of me once — I visited her, and she was dancing in front of me, that was kind of a game, then it got funny, then wet. We became closer since then. Now she has two adorable daughters. I am using adorable just because I’ve heard this word used for cute kids and animals, but her daughters are really sweet and cool.

While I was writing all this my sock slipped down and now there’s a blister on my sole. I hate short socks, and for a reason obviously. The good thing is that the walk made me warmer and now I can afford a short bench sit. Isn’t it weird that bench is so close to belch in its spelling? They both give some relief though. Anyway.

My biggest fight today is leaving this text where it is, in the middle of the pee-ful beginning. My biggest fight tomorrow would be picking it back up. Pray for me.

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Dinara writes a novel as a public performance act, sending out the new chapters to anyone who applied. At the moment 77 people are receiving chapters. If you want to read the novel on real time as well, apply by sending an email to: dinararasuleva@gmail.com