Author: Kaloyan Yavashev

Raising offspring is, as we have come to understand, a process that takes efforts and all your energy. Life has suddenly turned into a soulless desert and we tirelessly drag ourselves through it. We spend our days afraid of being angered, and angry at the fact that we are afraid of being angered. In our family, we fill in the pauses by shouting. Life with children has changed us, given us some, and taken from us many other emotions and feelings. I, for example, am constantly unhappy. I am missing something, some essential part of my life has gone away. In the short moments, when I am alone and staring in the void, I try to remember what it was, but all I achieve is to fall asleep. I feel uneasy if no one is pulling my plate and stealing my food when I eat; if no one is climbing on my head while I drink coffee; if no one is kicking me when I sleep; but there must be something more. What was it, that they took away, what was the thing that was making me happy and soar with happiness?

Today was the day when I remembered. The alarm woke me up, the baby is snoring rhythmically, its mother comatose in her sleep, and I have 10 minutes to prepare for the waking up of the twins. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and sit on the toilet to perform the holy morning ritual. Naturally, the door swings wide open and, with a plush toy in hand, in strolls my son and halts right before me. This is God's punishment for me not listening to my wife, who has nagged me for 2 months to fix the damn door lock. Wordlessly I push him back, hoping that he will show some respect to the circumstances, but he is not moved at all. We stare unblinkingly at each other. We are like two gunslingers in the wild west, but I feel naked and vulnerable. I give up first and answer the unasked question: - I'm pooping. Our children like to seek certainty in all facts, so they state ad nauseam the obvious.

- Pooping?

- Yes.

- Pooping??

- Yes!!! - Poo...

- YES!!!

This meaningful dialogue attracted his sister, and now I have a decent audience. My daughter points at me and with a tone, worth of a prosecutor, half questions, half accuses:

- Pooping?

I, already losing hope of that action, reply impatiently:

- No, dear, how did you even think about that? I am just sitting here waiting for the mayor to come so we can discuss the new public improvements and transport plan.

The twins are looking at me with suspicion. They do not understand my extravagant idea to relieve myself in the toilet. Well-raised people, as themselves, do that in more suitable places, like under the table, or in front of the oven.

We stay the three of us, observing each other. It's quiet. The lack of action, and possibly mayors, overwhelms them and they decide to leave. I concentrate in what I have to do, because I know I don't have much time. The sound of tinkering, coming from the direction of our new dryer, serves as a horse dosage laxative and 20 seconds later, underwear around my ankles, I am in the corridor hissing threats and ultimatums. My intestines cooperate, and I manage to resume the previous status quo.

Today I am taking them to an event in the kindergarten. I am fixated on the clock hands, and count the minutes, biding my time as a psychopath. On the way to the kindergarten I jog behind them and for the first time in their conscious lives, I am not shouting for them to wait. I am considering the idea to toss them in through the kindergarten window, backpack and all, and not even bother with the front door. We enter successfully, the teachers are happy to see them. What time must have they started drinking, these women?

I run out because I have a plan to achieve. This morning, when I woke up, the skies opened above me and spoke to me. This is the answer to what was missing and making me sad.There is the way to be happy again. Hallelujah! I will make love today, I will pollinate the flower, I will have sex!

Thousands of years have passed since the last time, I feel substantial quantities within my depths, not to mention the lowered quality control, making my libido rage at the insertion of the key in the keyhole. Pheromones are forming an aura around me, a dense fog, pulsating and spreading. If you transform my sexual energy into electrical, it would feed the grid of Beijing for a year. I wirelessly charge all phones within a 150m radius. I can wake dormant vulcanoes and reverse the magnetic poles of the planet. I can erect straighter the leaning walls of our building. I have a contract (marital) which must provide me with a minimum amount of caresses per year. I start warming up in the elevator, to avoid an accident. Push-ups, sit-ups, neck stretches, two straight uppercut punches. I try to remember some wrestling moves, because it is possible that from all the tension my jaw will lock, and I won't be able to explain what I mean so that my wife will have to get orientated in action. After all, the most exciting thing I have done for Rossi in the last year is taking the twins to the zoo by myself. My glands are pumping my ego up. I am the alpha male! Who dares to keep me in a state of celibacy? I will kick the door the down, I will tear clothes off, straps and panties! I will roar like a lion, and lunge like a jaguar! My inner animal is on the loose!

However, I go in quietly, because the baby may be sleeping. It is indeed sleeping.

Come on, woman, your man has booked you a flight straight to Heaven! Enough with our neighbors hearing only children screams and scandals. We will melt their earwax with moaning now and bring tears from envy in their eyes. I sit next to her and naughtily raise eyebrows. I whimper, I wag my tongue and shake my pelvis like an imbalanced ventilator. She is startled at first, unsure of what is happening. I feel like an overexcited male bird, performing its mating ritual in front of a completely unsuitable partner, let's say, a washing machine. Her instincts kick in, and she raises eyebrows to acknowledge. Naturally, I say the stupidest thing ever I could possibly say in such a moment:

- I will make you twins, babe!

WTF is wrong with me? Is my brain second-hand found, third, fifth even? I believed my mother when she assured me that falling with the overturned stroller at 6 months of age did not leave me with serious debilitation. I could have gotten her name wrong, sang a Kanye song, sold the baby, it would all have been forgiven, but not this. Rossi froze, a jug of water could have more sexual desire than her in that moment.

She elegantly slips from under me and runs to the bathroom shouting - 5 minutes shower! Apparently, I am spared, she wants it too! Oh, darling, I am ready to mount an oil cistern, and you want to get yourself clean. I am mentally trying to break the water main and shorten her shower. Finally, she appears, fresh and willing. I feel as virgin as an 8-year-old, but some biology lessons memories surge and we enthusiastically get on with it. On cue, the babyphone comes alive with a screaming baby. No.....! It's like a candid camera show. Like a third-class soap opera. With a refined and passionate move, I clamp my palms on her ears. Since she has become a mother, her senses are werewolf-grade high. She can hear ants conversing in Karnobat. She immediately halts and asks:

- Did you hear anything?

I wrack my brains for sounds reminding a baby cry. Found one.

- It was a seagull. That's their mating call. - I mean, birds are my business after all, and there are no ornithologists nearby to prove me wrong. We scrutinize each other like poker players, but my bluff passes and we resume. The babyphone erupts again. Another halt. I clarify, full of hope:

- That was the female, giving him the green light.

This time I lose dramatically, and she swiftly gets up to drag the intruder from the other room. He must be hungry, and completely oblivious to my desires. I don't give up and mime my intentions. I flutter around her like a deaf bat. I try to find a position allowing him to feed and us two to continue. Now Rossi is glaring at me like a ravenous werewolf, whose dinner I have stomped on and pissed on for good measure. I am reading the signs, and the phrases "Are you out of your mind? How did you even think this can happen?" make me realize it won't happen.

The baby is sucking with its usual growling, and I must distract myself somehow. I turn on the TV. The tiny passion-killer is thrust into my hands for a pause and burping. I make a mental note to stop its pocket money allowance for a month when I eventually start giving him one. The TV is showing a recording of the tennis finals from Rome, 11 years ago. Great match and the hard victories of Nadal are like testosterone shots for me. 5th set, they go in a tie-break, and after one of his forehand shots I leap from the sofa and with a mighty VAMOOOOOS accidentally stick the baby's head in the hanging ceiling light. And now I am facing the ravenous werewolf, whose dinner I had stomped and pissed on, and in addition whose little one I am apparently trying to kill. I hand back the baby with an apologetic smile, though according to my reflection in the glass door I look like a smacked pervy coyote.

I switch the channels. Jennifer Lopez is shaking it in some music video. I feel hot, I've always liked her. Changing the channel, this is torture. There Taylor Swift is eyeing me with desire and wet lips. Well, it seems we won't have trouble finding a rod to hang the sausages to dry this season. No, no more music for me. Next is a movie with Monika Belucci. I seriously suspect I'm in a candid camera show. I desperately switch to Eurosport, hoping for a chess match, curling, or a funeral. Wow, that's a hot Czech biathlon athlete!

Fuck, my eyes are getting blurry, my pulse is going high, as well as my blood sugar and the blood pressure. I turn off the TV. The little one has finished with his meal, and our time with his mom is on. We restart, and one minute later her phone rings. I threaten to swallow it if she answers. Her phone stops ringing, but mine starts. Must be urgent, we have to answer. The kindergarten announces that our children have runny noses and a cough. We must take them back. I stay silent, trying not to scream. Rossi philosophically consoles me that in the evening the children will go to sleep and we will have our fun. I don't really believe it, but what choice do I have?

It's 1 AM. I have put the twins to sleep at 8.30. I went for a drink to the neighbors upstairs, Rossi was supposed to follow after feeding the baby. The little brat decided that he will eat and hang on his mother's boob the whole 4 hours. I return home and carefully open the bedroom door. Teeth flashed from inside and I heard:

- Get him and get out!

Now the baby and I are watching tennis. After everything that happened today I don't even know who's playing. Might be some women. I am calculating the chances of the ravenous werewolf, whose dinner I have stomped and pissed on, whose baby I have tried to kill, and who has breastfed the said baby for 4 hours, to agree to have sex with me. I approach the door to pose the question, but the sound of snoring from inside makes me abort the mission. Is she snoring, is she growling, I don't dare check. I sit back in front of the TV with the baby and explain to him what is a double fault, demi-vole, backhand slice, and how the greatest tennis player Rafa Nadal (he probably has sex whenever he wants to) has gotten where he is. Because he does not give up, and he fights the fate, the bad luck, the contusions, the same way as your father, baby, is fighting his fate of being sexually abstinent till the end of days. I smile and gather forces for tomorrow's day - VAMOOOOS!

The original version in Bulgarian you can read here.