Men's Secrets

‘Women used to have a feeling about machos’, the old colonel sighed. ‘There was a time when the woman’s dearest wish was to get married to an army man. And today – to a businessman. How ideas has been distorted…’

‘Women have a feeling about money’, his friend, the diplomat, objected as always. ‘Long ago military men used to be among the best-paid people in the country, including training, night alarms, which meant more freedom for their wives. Today it is the same with the businessmen – they have to make money, not sex’, and he looked around, but there was no one else listening to his words except the colonel just as long ago when ambassadors, their wives and spies under cover being attaches gazed at him.

‘Staying abroad so long made you shaky, my friend’ the colonel nodded his white head and took a sip of his tea. Unlike the time of his youth, when he pluckily poured in his throat the content of the same cup, but then it had been full of fifty-degree brandy.

Aside, but close enough to hear them, their wives were sitting. They kept silence wisely, watching their husbands and smiling – no, their boys hadn’t grown yet. No.

‘I got fatigued listening to him for thirty six years’, Galya, the diplomat’s wife, whispered with a tired voice.

‘Men are mad to talk nonsense’, Vesela, the colonel’s wife, confirmed.

‘Behind every master lover there is one unhappy marriage’, the diplomat gave a word to his next brilliantly formulated phrase. Both women heard him and winked at each other. Their laughter was about welling up.

Galya gave Vesela a post card. The two women exchanged glances and burst into laughter. They remembered the love roundabout, when they had almost worried the life of one ambassador.

The three families had gathered together at the diplomat’s house, and John had fascinated Galya and Vesela long before. The ambassador’s wife was a disdainful, skinny and plain woman feeling offended that her husband had not been sent to one of the famous world capitals. She answered with one word never hiding her contempt toward the surrounding dull and wild world. Probably, she was same in bed, Galya supposed. The ambassador was brimming with energy and loved to make experiments with cocktails, and in bed too, as the rumours said.

Upon their arrival, John declared he would be responsible for the drinks. The bar was inside the house and they were sitting outside under the huge elm-tree. The ambassador rushed to the bar and his wife muttered affected, ‘Oh, John!’

As a good hostess, Galya followed him. John feasted on the bottles, clicked his tongue with admiration and got down to work. He assigned Galya with the supporting role of being an assistant.

She used to despise such puerile boys, whose life continued with the games from their childhood. No matter what they were doing – diplomacy, military, business, they devoted to it with boyish enthusiasm. Most of them were professionals, but somehow inferior as men. So she very irresistibly wished to humiliate him – before he had realized she loosed her low neck and her breasts discovered almost in full. When in a moment John tried to catch a glass with his left hand, he touched them instead of the glass. He got confused and she with simulated astonishment and well-played surprise blushed with pretended embarrassment, arranged the dress to hide her breasts. John’s boyish mind had discovered a toy, which immediately was hidden, and that was the most awful thing for a child, wasn’t it?

Galya served the cocktails together with the ambassador and soon the colonel like a real warrior flourished his empty glass. John grabbed it from the colonel’s hand with an Indian cry of admiration and walked to the house. Half the distance, he stopped and shouted:

‘Please, the assistant follow me!’

Galya stood up and followed him. On her crossing the threshold, his hands gabbed her – it happened so suddenly and unexpectedly. She had neither time nor desire to resist. She was amazed of his mastery, obviously the boy was a professional in this field, too. While he was making the colonel’s cocktail with shaking hands, he asked perkily, ‘How many cocktails can the colonel drink?’

‘A lot’ Galya answered laughing. ‘Slavs are unbeatable in the art of drinking.’

‘Anglo-Saxons are champions in sex, though!’, John declared cocksure.

So they had two competitions at the same time – the colonel demonstrated the power of the Bulgarian army and the abilities of its soldiers, and the ambassador had to prove the endurance of the Anglo-Saxon race. After the second cocktail, Galya, in high spirits, passed the position of an ‘assistant’ to Vesela. They negotiated after a brief whispering. Although John was astonished, he accepted the change with childish enthusiasm.

The evening finished with a final victory for the colonel who sang a few war marches, which particularly filled the ambassador’s wife with indignation, because while he was singing the colonel showed expressively what the destiny of his enemies would be. And John, satisfied many times, hardly stood on his feet.

Soon John was recalled and transferred to one of the European capitals, and he got pensioned a year ago. More than fifteen years had passed when the two Bulgarian women had engineered that love roundabout, but he always sent a post card to Galya on that date. And it always contained special regards to the second assistant, Vesela.
Today they have received another card and it was the reason for their laughter.

‘What’s this?’, the colonel asked suspiciously and pointed a finger at them.
‘It’s a post card from that ambassador who used to come home and loved making cocktails, do you remember him?’, Galya smiled.

‘Such a fool!’, the colonel stated cheerfully and grinned.

‘Don’t you think you may be wrong?’, Galya asked crossly and Vesela laughed with contempt.

‘Recently I read an interview with him’, the former diplomat said pensively.

Both women gazed at him.

The colonel stood up groaning and walked to the house, obviously he went to the bathroom.

‘In ‘Playboy’, the diplomat continued. ‘By the way, he told the story that he had met two beautiful women in a Balkan capital. The only Balkan capital he had been accredited was ours. And what had happened when he met him’, he stopped mysteriously, with mockery even, and as it seemed to both woman, somehow awaiting.

‘What?’, Galya and Vesela asked at the same time stunned.

‘Well, you know better. But, I guess, you don’t suppose that his play with you had been filmed and forced him to become our good helpful friend and well-regulated, I would even say, enthusiastic assistant’, the diplomat said in a teasingly smiling manner.

Both women bowed their heads and didn’t notice when the colonel had come back.

‘No, I don’t believe that behind every master lover there is an unhappy marriage’, the colonel said sitting down with groan.

Both women turned towards him together at the same time.

‘Your position required believing in nothing, my friend, military reconnaissance is not a joke. And foreign ambassadors were also your responsibility’, the diplomat agreed smiling cunningly.

‘You, in military reconnaissance?’, Vesela asked shocked.

‘If you mean the second salary, I’m sorry’, the colonel laughed in boyish confusion because of his wife’s angry look. ‘They were for the ‘And I’m a Man Too’ Fund.

Both women tucked their shaking legs and sat together right on the grass. They felt themselves deceived and mocked.

But also shaken up for the first time in so many years, as if meeting a stranger who spellbinds you at first sight.

All content on this site is subject to copyright © 2000/2006If you wish to use anything either text or graphics please ask permission

All content on this site is subject to copyright © 2000/2006
If you wish to use anything either text or graphics please ask permission