{"id":701,"date":"2012-04-09T13:33:04","date_gmt":"2012-04-09T11:33:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=701"},"modified":"2015-04-03T01:17:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T23:17:00","slug":"pomlazka-or-happy-easter-bend-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Happy Easter, Bend Over"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Justice<\/a>If you have lived in the Czech Republic or are Czech, the word poml\u00e1zka either makes you giggle, roll your eyes or, if you are a woman, run for the hills. If you have never lived here, then you don’t care.<\/p>\n

In my first Easter in the Czech Republic my student David invited me to \u2018the village\u2019 in Moravia with his family. I appreciated the offer but had that same wary feeling I get whenever my boss calls me into her office to talk about my attitude.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s Easter,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be alone on Easter.\u201d<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have the heart to tell him exactly just how much I was looking forward to alone. I love alone. Alone means not grading your language and lounging in underpants. It means a solitary protest against one of man\u2019s greatest enemies: pants. It means eating and scratching and crying at sad parts in books. Alone is glorious.<\/p>\n

\u201cSounds great,\u201d I said. I am spineless.<\/p>\n

David and his family had driven to the village on Friday and I hopped the train on Saturday. We spent the afternoon and evening testing out the virility of the vineyard and I forgot my middle name and lost one of my shoes.<\/p>\n

Monday morning David led me down the steps and his family \u2013 two little girls, 10 and 13, and his wife, Tereza, were waiting in the kitchen, laughing at me. David said, \u201cWe did not tell you about one Easter custom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instantly suspicious, I imagined myself bound and fitted into a large wicker gentleman. \u201cOh yeah, what\u2019s that?\u201d I desired coffee like snakes desire arms.<\/p>\n

David produced a poml\u00e1zka, a 3 foot long switch made of twisted branches and decorated with ribbons. I felt minor relief when he handed it to me, though I didn\u2019t have the slightest idea what to do with it.<\/p>\n

He pointed to his daughters who then bent at the waist to reveal their bottoms to me. David smiled with glee and said, \u201cSpank them.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this moment, I was overcome by two fantasies. The first was me retelling this story in front of a Czech judge, using the two words of Czech I had in my mastery at the time (‘ahoj’ and ‘zaplat\u00edm’ \u2013 ‘hello’ and ‘I will pay’). The second fantasy was of the 67,348,392 American teen boys who were unknowingly and urgently cursing my luck.<\/p>\n

I went with hesitant taps until they shifted their butts, urging me on. I snapped my wrist forward a few times, reddening their back cheeks, and the whole family exploded into laughter and patted me on the back.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt promotes fertility,\u201d Tereza said.<\/p>\n

Then, as if out of some abnormally perfect dream, the girls opened a bottle of hru\u0161kovice (pear brandy) and poured me a shot.<\/p>\n

Coming from a land of political correctness so stringent that a married couple has to sign contracts before dirty talk, this was monumental.<\/p>\n

I did my shot of hru\u0161kovice and the girls took me by the hand and led me out the door. They knocked on the first door and a similar scenario occurred. The girls in this house were older and so I felt (mildly) less perverted as I promoted their fertility. My primal instinct warmed like bananas in a glove box.<\/p>\n

These girls too gave me a shot. Slivovice \u2013 plum brandy.<\/p>\n

There were about 30 houses in the village and, rumor has it, I whipped most of their pre-pubescent female inhabitants. I have no recollection of the last few houses; though I recollect that the village folk called me Vlad for the remainder of the afternoon, so it couldn\u2019t have gone well. The girls dumped me into bed at 11:30 a.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cDamiana, what do you do in the United States on Easter?\u201d the 13-year-old asked.<\/p>\n

As I slipped into a dreamy sleep, I answered \u201cWe eat ham and hide eggs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCzech is better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes.\u201d<\/p>\n

I found my shoe under a tree and went back to Prague that night on the train.<\/p>\n

Yes, it was better than hunting eggs.<\/p>\n

Happy Easter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you have lived in the Czech Republic or are Czech, the word poml\u00e1zka either makes you giggle, roll your eyes or, if you are a woman, run for the hills. If you have never lived here, then you don’t care. In my first Easter in the Czech Republic my student David invited me to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-bj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2539,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions\/2539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}