Bosnian Lolita.

(preamble: i ve just re-read this and it may not make any sense to anyone. And only 99.5% of it really happened)

I was a Bosnian Lolita. The girl they met on the cobbles outside Mostar who had slept in a bush afraid of wild dogs the night before. My sleeping bag was tough but hardly tough enough and in the dark their teeth had sounded huge and slanted like the view askew of grotesque mirrors.

One gentleman is wide, brash, confident, offers me a place to stay. The other wild, looks all around me and says my aura is wrong. You have demons inside you. I do not deny nor indeed mention that I have already met the Devil twice by this stage but instead allow my body to be subjected to astral photography, smudging, mantras. I end up topless, being bathed in red wine inside and out as drums are banged and he says he sees steam rising from my corpse. I think I am more than a little bemused and stoned on hashish by this point so just lie back and enjoy the relative safety of someone s almost Tropical backyard. The dogs and the landmines are far away. Where is my bike? This is Mostar and the hills of Sarajevo and Izet s family are so long ago- or at least all of four days.

I meet some of the artists of Mostar, the beautiful bridge reduced to canvas and less, the dust between the cobblestones, the boys smoking spliff on their floors, watching the divers plummet, the mosque, the hostel run by an old man and his son where the keyholes are stuffed with tissue paper and a bottle of brandy is left hanging on my door handle every evening, the unmistakable erections, the chats with me full of male preoccupations and signposts in a certain direction, your lovelife your lovelife well I can appreciate the misnomer.

Here I hang like a wisp, eating my animal biscuits, adrift.

Plans, quick quick, crazy plans, we cant be seen together but we can meet on the coast in Croatia where we will get a boat and explore the islands. The wide man knows a doctor, a rich man there. We will sail the sea and lounge. Nothing sounds dearer.

The Adriatic sea opens up to my eyes like a brilliant blue orchid, flat like a morning glory not a flurry of petals like some silly chrysanthemum. The sun is hot, the traffic heavy. When its too suffocating to ride during the day I nap on beds of pine needles in the shade and let the ants, sticky with pine sap, crawl over me. There are many new freckles on my skin.

Finally, seated on the prow, he rubs salt water and suntan lotion into my small breasts in equal measures. You are pale he says, distracted by the job of captain, full of seaspray and importance. I sing little songs, tumtum some castanets. He doesnt stay for long. I find myself confused by his motives.
Maybe he really is busy..

Where do I escape? How do the police know to be waiting for me? Why do we end up nowhere near the police station but instead naked in the shallows of a rocky beach? Do all police officers act this way? Where are my clothes? Their fingers are inside me, probing my inner depths like experts, potholers. There are people watching I realise. The demons are never that far away.

I become their plaything, a nymph on their shoulders, the officer is married but he wants his wife to meet me – without her knowing what games we have been getting up to of course – so there begins a weird night in a bar where I pose as his friends girlfriend and we enjoy some wine. The next day I leave Dubrovnik and go up Srd moutain with the intention of never coming back down again.