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DANA

Jaroslav Bálek

Contents

Dana the first

Dana the second

Dana the third

Dana the first

Pavel saw Dana for the first time at a large party. She caught his attention; she was a blue-eyed blonde, which he had always liked. Some people like black or darker types, whether it's hair, eyes, or skin. Pavel, however, was the opposite type; the lighter the woman, the better. They say that men inherit their taste from their fathers. And Pavel's mother was indeed a natural blue-eyed blonde, and like his father, she was probably fascinated by these types. On the other hand, Dana seemed much younger to him; she was still in college, which he had left behind quite some time ago. He also had a serious relationship at the time, so he didn't even try to get closer to her.

He didn't see her for some time, until one day he went with friends to a popular dance bar, where he discovered that Dana had also been invited. She told him that they hadn't danced together yet, which was true, and more or less asked him to dance. On the one hand, he was happy about this, but on the other hand, he was also a little worried because she was a perfect dancer who loved to dance, and he, on the other hand, was not particularly good at dancing, quite the contrary. He had read somewhere that in order for a man to impress while dancing, he must not let the woman lead, but rather he must be the leader, thus showing a certain decisiveness and dominance. With his musical ear, this was always a problem. He remembered how he once danced with a woman who constantly directed him, telling him when to go faster and when to slow down, when to step with his right foot and when with his left, which made him very nervous and completely annoyed him. Sometimes men are also advised not to use the usual invitation to dance with the words: May I have this dance? This is because it is a question and therefore expresses a certain uncertainty. It is better to say: "Let's dance!" In other words, not a question, but an announcement or even a command. Here, it probably also depends on the strength and intonation of the voice, which must be chosen according to the specific situation. Take her by the hand, and before she knows it, you're on the dance floor. The fact is that Pavel was a stickler for good manners and was quite conservative, so he almost always asked girls to dance in the usual way: may I have this dance? But it seemed to him that some of them looked at him as if he had fallen from the moon or, at best, had come from somewhere in the First Republic. This was not even the case in the then popular film Kristián. The dance with Dana went well and everything was quite pleasant. However, Pavel did not ask her out on a date because he still had that girlfriend, or perhaps someone else entirely.

After some time, he met her again at a small ball. He had a busy day at work the next day, so he had to take the midnight subway, even though he didn't want to. She was surprised that he was leaving already, and he saw disappointment in her eyes, tinged with a certain shamelessness that promised a lot. Her expression seemed to suggest a night of intense sex, passion, and pleasure. He remembered a quote from his favorite German writer, singer, and composer Bettina von Arnim, that love is born in the moment of organic connection between two eyes. He paid a lot of attention to women's looks and facial expressions. That's why he often preferred women who weren't exactly the most beautiful, with bodies that weren't quite perfect, but with a certain perversity in their expressions, to classic beauties with stunning bodies, whose looks and expressions were boring, empty, meaningless, and completely emotionless. He didn't know how long he would stay or where they would end up, and work was really urgent at the time. Then he regretted it to a certain extent, but certain things cannot be taken back, and unfortunately, they may never happen again. That's life.

Her workplace was close to where he lived. He sometimes met her in the morning on the street when he was going to the subway and she was coming from the subway. They always exchanged a few words. It was pleasant, and in the morning he would also meet other girls he knew who worked in the city center, while he commuted to work from the center. It was a nice change from the inhospitable morning, and he was always curious to see who he would meet.

Then Dana started dating one of their mutual friends, Zdeněk, who was two years older than Pavel. He was about 18 years older than her. Her parents divorced when she was little, and her mother never remarried. In such cases, women tend to gravitate toward older partners because they find in them a kind of substitute for their fathers. That was probably the case here as well.

Later, she told Pavel that she had met Zdeněk on a vacation where there were shared showers for men and women. She was particularly attracted to him because he had an oversized penis, and that was the reason she chose him.

Zdeněk, however, was no genius, quite the opposite in fact. Interestingly, women often don't mind this; on the contrary, it can sometimes be a source of success for men. Pavel heard with his own ears that Zdeněk often told crazy nonsense to women who were no longer young and, moreover, quite educated, such as various associate professors. Pavel would be ashamed to utter such nonsense. But those women looked at him with their mouths open and full of admiration. They didn't take it as him talking nonsense, but rather as him saying something real and amazing. It turns out that sometimes great intelligence isn't exactly important for a person to achieve success. It is even said that in certain professions, it can be more of a hindrance, because a person thinks unnecessarily and excessively instead of acting more or less mechanically. This is said, for example, about stock market trading, where too much thinking can slow down and question decision-making. There, it is necessary to proceed directly from the graphs that appear on the screen and perform the appropriate operation without thinking. Winston Churchill also said that cleverness is not a necessary trait for a politician. And we can see this for ourselves very often today, as many of them are not particularly clever. And in the army, in most cases, soldiers are not allowed to think at all, so they remember that it is usually a matter of automatically following orders without any initiative of their own. And this probably also applies to conversations with women, where it is often not a good idea to think too much or for too long. In this case, however, it is sometimes necessary to replace intelligence with considerable audacity. They say that women like simple things—for example, men. And popular wisdom also says that the dumber the farmer, the bigger the potatoes.

In fact, Dana, as he knew her, chose types who, while she may not have dated them, she surrounded herself with, who did not exactly overflow with intellectual inventiveness and were certainly not, to put it politely, great thinkers. Perhaps she did this to have a certain superiority over them; it probably made her feel good.

What's more, Zdeněk wasn't exactly handsome. He was quite bald, with only a few gray hairs around the edges of his head, which seemed rather premature for his age. Many pretty girls don't date handsome guys; sometimes it's said that they're afraid of them because they think that pretty girls will stick to them, and therefore they might be unfaithful or leave them. It's as if they were saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It's a strange kind of female logic. Although perhaps not so strange, it may be because they want security in a relationship, which is certainly understandable. In this context, he remembered Francois de la Rochefoucauld's statement that a woman is like a lily, a gentle man does not dare to touch her, but a donkey comes and eats her.

On the other hand, less attractive girls often show interest in handsome men, either because they have great self-confidence and a certain boldness, or because they want to boost their self-confidence in this way. Some may not want a partner who is too smart or rich, so as not to upset the balance between them or have to change their established way of life. For example, two apartments, two houses, two cottages—which one to choose is a dilemma. As Maugham said, with women, you never know where you stand. They don't think like people at all.  

Zdeněk then told Pavel that he took Dana to a big and famous ball. Considering that he was an excellent dancer, he also performed in some dance classes and was very successful. He drove her home from the ball in the morning and she invited him upstairs. He said she didn't make a fuss at all and immediately undressed. The dancing, which put her into a trance, probably did its job.

She dated Zdeněk for about three years. In the meantime, she also became closer friends with Pavel. It gradually became apparent that Dana and Zdeněk's relationship would probably not last long, especially on Zdeněk's part. Even though he liked dancing, he didn't want to overdo it and didn't need to dance all the time. Dana, on the other hand, considered every moment without dancing to be wasted. She was also a little crazy and quite active, while Zdeněk wanted his peace and quiet. A certain amount of activity is certainly fine, but it must not be too much. She also wanted to have sex all the time, as Zdeněk said, it had to be all the time, from morning to evening and from evening to morning. But he had diabetes, so it probably tired him out.

She was quite thrifty, so she went to Pavel's garden for cherries, apples, pears, and nuts. She then used them to bake strudel, buns, and various cakes for Zdeněk. Even though men usually prefer meat, they always appreciate it when women feed them such delicacies from time to time. But she didn't even let Pavel taste them. He used to walk her through the forest on her way back to the train station. Once, when her relationship with Zdeněk was apparently coming to an end, or perhaps had already ended, she asked him in the middle of the forest: "Shall we do it?" That surprised him. He didn't know if she was serious or just joking. He didn't react quickly enough. The correct answer was, of course, yes. But he was so surprised and so slow-witted that he couldn't come up with an answer, he just smiled and continued walking. On the other hand, it must be said that he preferred a more intimate setting for such pleasures, and the suburban forest was sometimes as crowded as Wenceslas Square. He also found it interesting when the time between meeting and sleeping together was longer, because he found the process of getting to know each other quite exciting.

One day Dana showed up with bruises on her face. It was clear that she was not so much physically distressed as mentally. She sadly said that she and Zdeněk had broken up, but she did not report the bruises anywhere. It seemed that the breakup had been very stormy. She did not want to talk about the cause.

One of Pavel's acquaintances, Tomáš, who had also known her for some time, saw this as an opportunity for himself. So he immediately took her on a boat trip on the Vltava River. They probably started to become closer friends, because after a while she called Pavel to tell him that Tomáš was organizing a potato harvest in the countryside and invited him to join them. Pavel didn't want to go, so he declined. Tomáš would have been a good match for her, as he was also an enthusiastic dancer. He lived just outside Prague, where Dana's mother had a small cottage, and he sometimes did various jobs and repairs for them there. But it is not known whether he would have satisfied her allegedly nymphomaniac tendencies.

Tomáš was very interested in Dana, so he let her convince him, seemingly with pleasure, to go with her to dance classes for the then extremely popular lambada and dirty dancing. However, Tomáš then had to go to the hospital for some kind of operation, so he could no longer attend the classes.

Pavel once invited Dana to the theater, and she accepted without hesitation. He expected that since she had agreed, she would repay him in some way, perhaps by inviting him somewhere, but he was sorely mistaken. She was the type of woman who would gladly accept an invitation but would not reciprocate in any way.

He remembered how he once went to visit a girl and brought a bottle of wine with him. She took it, barely thanked him, put it in the pantry, and offered him tea. Since then, he had been quite cautious, often hiding the bottle in his bag and asking the girl if she would like some wine or perhaps some champagne. If she agreed, he would ask for a corkscrew and two glasses, and only then would he take the bottle out of his bag, just to be on the safe side.

One morning, Dana met Pavel again and asked him if he would go to the ball with her. He found it a very interesting offer that he couldn't refuse. He knew it would definitely end in sex. So he took his underpants with him to the ball, as he always did when there was a chance he might end up in bed with a woman. It was a remnant from his early youth, when he ended up in bed with a then well-known but already elderly model who, when he undressed, said with a certain contempt in her voice: "Boxer shorts, I haven't seen those in a long time!" That left an impression on him, and he was careful to make sure it didn't happen again.

The ball was held at Lucerna in Prague. The hall was packed to bursting. They had a good spot right by the dance floor on the ground floor, where they had a truly unusual view of everything that was going on. The close proximity of the other dancers made Dana feel that she didn't want to miss anything, so she had to stay on the dance floor the whole time. This was not for Pavel, who liked to rest and replenish his sweat-depleted fluids. This time, however, there was nothing he could do; he was forced to comply with her demands.

Dana was really excited by dancing, which seemed incomprehensible to him, because dancing didn't do much for him. It seemed as if dancing was the most important thing in the world to her. Men don't usually get this excited about dancing. In the case of an exceptionally beautiful and exciting partner, it can certainly be the case. But otherwise, probably only in exceptional cases. He had an acquaintance who was rumored to be homosexual. He went to balls very often and usually didn't miss a single dance. He always had relatively attractive partners, a different one each time. But he always went home alone. They said that dancing excited him. Did he perhaps imagine that he was a woman?

In the distant past, the most primitive form of sexual courtship in the entire animal kingdom is said to have consisted of certain rhythmic movements and enticing sounds. Dance also originated from this. In the past, the two sexes rarely danced together. First, the men danced while the women watched, and then they switched places. Both the men and women watching showed clear signs of sexual arousal. To heighten this arousal, women learned provocative hip movements and rhythmic shaking of their abdominal muscles and rear ends. Men admire these movements, while women are said to be more aroused by music and musical expression. Even today, it seems that women are content on their own and do not need a partner to dance. That is probably why Dana did not mind dancing alone, placing great emphasis on the appropriate movements, which she experienced intensely. According to Pavel, with a large number of dancers and loud music, it could have been a case of mass psychosis resulting from the gathering of a certain number of people and their significant complex influence. In women, this can lead to orgasm. Such mass madness can be seen, for example, at concerts of certain music groups, where young girls go into a trance, tear off parts of their clothing, and with wide eyes, sometimes even foaming at the mouth, emit orgasmic screams. And this is also evident in dance. Women with hysterical personality traits are said to be particularly prone to such behavior. This was probably true for Dana.

Some say that this applies both to dancing and to bed. Pavel wasn't sure if that was really true. If so, he probably wouldn't be doing very well, or perhaps he would be the exception that proves the rule? Dana would have to be very good. Some women apparently test their partners this way, and perhaps some men do too.

According to certain studies, which Pavel found quite surprising, women are much more excitable than men when it comes to sex. Unlike men, they can be aroused by any sexual stimulus, which, according to some, also includes dancing. They can experience sexual climax based on psychological stimuli, such as the intense experience of certain situations in their imagination. They don't even need the slightest physical touch; the real or imagined closeness of their idol can be enough.

After the ball, he invited her to his place, and she said it was okay to go to hers. In the end, they chose Pavel's apartment, which was near Lucerna.

Then she called him soon after. Some girls, once a man sleeps with them, act as if they already have him in the bag. This often put Pavel off, and he would break off the relationship out of fear. But with Dana, he didn't mind.

They went to the movies together to see the then-popular film Dirty Dancing. Pavel wasn't interested because he had already seen the film several times. It wasn't that he particularly liked it and went to see it voluntarily, but he had some young female friends who wanted to see it at all costs. It was a kind of cult film for them. So he was always forced to go with them.

Pavel could get up for work about an hour later. It was nice that she always made him a relatively hearty breakfast.

Article

Dana the second

Dana the third