31-XII-1980.
The usual doček at Mire and Baja's place on ruža (I think it was there, cause where else would we go with Loba and Magi coming to us first - they both lived far across town). This being a masked ball, we met at our place first and arranged ourselves.
The promise was to get masked before leaving home, and then to collect the impressions on passersby along the way - of course, going on foot. I remember I carried my reel-to-reel DDR tape recorder (or was it polish and I only smuggled the stereo microphones of DDR make), as it had enough music and sound power on it (probably something like 2x10W). Or perhaps I took the recorder a day in advance, by car, and this time carried a 5l canister, as for oil, because I decided to mask myself as a šeik (sheik aka sheikh but definitely not sheihh, the latter being something in the muslim hierarchy), so I used Go's calico diaper and tied it up with a thin bandanna to resemble a gulabija. The canister contained rasol (the water from sour cabbage), because that's the best known cure for hangover. It's just salt water but with all the good juices from cabbage fermentation, and it does help.
My mom fitted Loba with a real turban, made of three meters of some baby pink silky cloth, which she sewn in a couple of places so it wouldn't unravel. On Magi we played mostly with makeup, drawing little stars and whatnot on her face.
Of other people I don't quite remember who was there but, of course, their wives (Zorica and the other one), Deks and Lena, and the parents later in the night, when they returned from their doček (probably in police HQ - he was a retired udbaš and she still worked something administrative there). We decided we don't have to force ourselves to dance drink and be merry, but rather let the music on, sat on the floor, sipped our drinks and kept conversation going on.
That's probably the time when Baja came up with his theory of bean jar. Goes like this: start with an empty jar. Every time you two fuck before marriage, drop a bean in the jar. Once you marry, every time you two fuck you take out a bean from the jar. By the time you get too old to rock'n'roll, you'll still have beans in the jar.
Over the following decades, I remembered the story several times (and again now as I write it down), but I never bothered to find him to call him up on the theory. We're seriously short on beans.
Mentions: doček, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jablan Škanata (Baja), Jene Čokai (Deks), Lena Čontić, Margita Gunaroši (Magi), Milorad Škanata (Mire), ruža, Slobodan Šumić (Loba), udbaš, Zorica Škanata, in serbian
1-III-2020 - 24-XII-2024