Simona Popescu's Exuviae

About me:

"What did they understand by “talking about love” ? All they used to do was to gossip about the guys who were head over heels for them, to boast about their tactics for keeping a tight leash on them or making mincemeat of their rivals. Sometimes, they would get jealous of some girl or other who was itching at the thought of hooking (or nicking) those boyfriends of theirs. The latter, it seems, had varied qualities : either they would look like some actor or singer, or they would have death’s head key-rings, tee-shirts “from abroad,” thousand-lei Pumas on their feet, and bicycles, or else they would come first at running in sport. They would even go so far as to show me the love letters (somewhat ungrammatical and closing with a scrawled LOVE) which the poor lads committed the imprudence of sending them, unaware, poor things, that they were thereby entering straight into the wolf’s mouth. But that’s how they used to make a spectacle of themselves in front of each other, because otherwise each of them had come to me to babble her little secret about love. I knew what was in their minds. I knew all too well. Then, another day, on the bus, I overheard a conversation between two schoolgirls. One of them, a rather ugly girl, with her hair tied in a pony tail with umpteen elastic bows and a miniature panda at the end, wearing a plastic wristwatch, kept telling the other one about how Gabi wants to pinch Dorobantzu from her. She kept going on about this Dorobantzu, who, it was plain to see, was a bit of a skirt­-chaser. The wee girl was very upset. I eavesdropped for as long as I could, but I think that they must have caught on because they shut up and started giving me a dirty look, while I pretended to be engrossed by the brooch of some old woman, a sinister brooch in the form of a fat and ugly spider perched on her similarly fat and ugly bosom. Another time, I was to hear a similar conversation as I was queuing for some bread. My grown-up mind knows, knows all too well, what is in their minds, what they mean to say with their simple, straightforward language." (Excerpt from Exuviae, translated by Alistair Ian Blyth) Myspace 2.0 Layouts - Myspace Graphics - Image Hosting