Sometimes, when you lie tired but unable to fall asleep, the shrieking sound of brakes of the buses roaring past the nearby intersection reminds you of seagulls. The same longing calls that invite everywhere and nowhere. Very soon afterwards you are overcome by dreams.

Addendum I (November 19, 1988)

At the time I lived in a small room in the attic of an apartment building in Ljubljana designed and built for the higher officials in the Yugoslav counterpart of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs. There were several such rooms in the attic. They shared a narrow entrance hall, a shower, and a toilet. These rooms were originally intended for the maids, but were all empty at the time. Having a maid had become a luxury even for the higher officials. In fact, I rented the room from the daughter of the then ambassador of Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union, and the now President of Slovenia, because she and her husband not only could not afford a maid, but needed some extra cash to make ends meet while her parents were away on duty.

My room was as wide as my small bed was long. The room was not very long, either. It was crowded with furniture, which had to be arranged carefully to accommodate the door that swung deep into the room. There was a huge wardrobe with creaky doors; a small table with red formica top; and a rather rickety chair upholstered with green plastic. Finally, there was a small, curtainless window. It was set so high that one could normally see only the sky and the tips of the television antennae on top of a neighboring apartment building. But it was my room, my Pascalian universe.

My wife and my three-year-old son lived in Ljubljana, too. I left them sometime in 1977, lived alone for a year or so, and joined them again later in 1978. Soon afterwards we were fused together again by a joint project of major proportions: the return to the United States. Of course, in my case that translated into the dream of teaching at MIT, where I had spent three good years as a student.

Returning to my small room, one of the three such small rooms I inhabited while I lived alone, I do not hesitate to say that I remember it fondly. Its images help me sink into the past. To start with, the memories of women who came to visit me there are still fresh in my mind. It is so exciting to recollect all the sounds of their arrival: the sound of the elevator door one floor below, the sound of their heals on the concrete stairs, their quiet knocks at the main door, the muffled rustle of their garments… More important, the memory of waiting for them, and especially one of them, is still painfully and yet blessedly alive. I must add that I am surprised at the intensity with which the bittersweet memory surfaces even today. For my favorite came once, while I waited always, every waking hour. Indeed, that infatuation knew no bounds. And I can still hear the longing calls of sea gulls from the nearby intersection as though this entire decade has passed in vain.

Addendum II (March 18, 1994)

Elise, my first wife, visited me once, as well. Perhaps she came to tease me, knowing full well how fascinated I was by her treachery, by her sexual exploits with several of my friends and acquaintances, and by her lack of interest in me, her lawfully-wedded husband. Perhaps she also came to gauge the possibility of reunion. At the time, she was still with the man because of whom I had left our home, but she let me undress her. She let my fingers explore her oversized labia. She let me suck the nipples of her tiny tits. But, explaining coyly that she was getting what she needed from her man, as well as that she would not cheat him with another, she did not let me enter her vagina; instead, she offered me her tail. She lay on her back—her legs spread wide, her inhospitable cunt glistening under my nose in all its glory—and I pulled her up on my knees and sunk my prick into her asshole. Overexcited, I came a few precious minutes later, and my chaste wife was free to return to her lover. Elise was a born lawyer!