To women who cross borders. To men who

jump. To those who can’t help turning life

into story.

Fling Girl

Three nights later, I was in another man’s bed. Of course, he was also called Simonas.

Born and bred in Lithuania, he said he only knew two others by that name. The universe gifted me four that summer. One of them is a story that I am not ready to tell you. Three remain — the Virgo, the Sphynx, the Gemini. Simonai galore.

“I bled onto the comforter,” I sighed.

“It doesn’t disgust me,” the Gemini grinned back.

He shifted closer, his fingers idly trailing circles on my thigh, as if nothing about this scene was out of the ordinary. The ceiling had a water stain shaped like the Baltics; I stared at it and wondered if Vilnius was the blotch where we lay.

“Will you be doing flings forever?” he asked me earlier that day, when we were running a vibe-check during lunch like dogs sniffing each other in a park.

“I might.”

Not only men get labels in my story.

I am a Fling Girl.

Not always because I want to.

Sometimes the connection feels orchestral — all crescendo — or Parliament and Funkadelic. Then I meet him, and it’s elevator muzak. Sometimes they love the dazzle, lean in close, eyes wide. Then they blink, and it’s like they’ve remembered the exits.

Lighting the match is the easy part. The rest takes work.

I came to Vilnius several days before. My fifth time. I keep orbiting the city for some reason. Maybe it’s the parks. Maybe it’s a curse.

“I’m silly. People fall in love with Rome, Berlin, Madrid.”

“People fall in love with the shape of their expectations, and then call it culture,” replied my ex.

Mine weren’t complicated. A man who’d hold me hard enough to bruise, then laugh about it in a language I couldn’t follow.

I hadn’t always been that cynical. The second Simonas — the Virgo — had told me in June that his heart yearned for me. Yearned. In 2025. I’d believed him. Spent July with fingers between my legs, replaying the shape of his restraint. When I came back, his yearning was still there — but he’d meant it differently.

Vilnius in August smells like linden trees and wet cobblestones. A city built for walking, for overhearing. My kind of hunting ground. I hunt words, glances, moments — anything that feels like the start of trouble.

When I tell people I write, they either panic or preen. Almost always, they ask, “Will I be in it?” Oh, honey — you will. Not the way you think. And not without a cost.

Holy Restraint

I looked good. All in black pinstripes, something between a power suit and pyjamas. The blouse slouched loose, casual but not slutty. White sneakers. My usual lipstick. Perfect fit for a Friday night, open-air cinema date.

It would be our first meeting since June. Back then, we’d spent a day so delightful it felt stolen. We read each other poetry by the river. Waited out a storm inside the hollow of a tree. Ate potato pancakes with greasy fingers. He sang me Lithuanian slow jams in falsetto, pure and unashamed, and never once touched me.

“Something straight out of a rom-com.” As usual, one of my exes decided to narrate my life. This time it was Igor. He followed with a row of barfing emojis. I didn’t tell him I’d be seeing the man again tonight.

I spotted him from my vantage point at the back of Kudirka Square — Simonas the Virgo. These legs could carry me through war, I thought, taking in his cyclist’s calves. Okay, cowgirl. Let’s go.

If I want, I flirt like I’d been dared by the devil and raised by drag queens. But he preferred tact over spectacle, quiet glances over confetti cannons. I still don’t know if I was just trimming my claws or contorting to fit his taste.

Polite conversation. Good to see you. Where’s the place you picked for us? Ah, wonderful. At the cafe, before I’d even warmed my hands on the cup, he asked if I thought I’d ever relocate to Lithuania. It sounded big, weighty — but not the kind of courage I’d been hoping for. I wanted a sign, a reach across the gap. Instead, he kept it safe.

In Bernardine Gardens, we claimed a bench under a thick, green canopy. One beer, he insisted — just one. We traded sips, knees bumping once, twice, each of us pretending not to notice. The breeze carried the faint, clean scent of his hair. I could’ve closed the space. He could’ve, too.

Maybe he believed my marriage was the reason to keep his hands to himself. It wasn’t. It was the reason I wanted to see if he’d dare.

We spoke of our families. Each saga was wacky in its own way. I wondered if mine made me break doors open in search of connection, and his taught him to bolt them from the inside. “Everything, happy and sad, makes you grow. Absolutely everything’s a lesson, and that is that,” said the Virgo.

“Am I a lesson too? What if I was sent to test you?” I tilted my head, holding his gaze a heartbeat past comfortable.

His eyes sparkled.

“You know, I actually thought about that.”

The day before he’d asked me which movie I’d prefer to see — The Big Lebowski or Eyes Wide Shut. I told him to choose whichever would make him blush more. He picked Eyes Wide Shut, knowing we both liked Kubrick. I wondered if he was measuring how much heat I could take before the facade cracked. And how much he could.

It was one of those starry summer nights with a hint of a chill. The couple next to us stole kisses, unbothered. We sat taut side by side, whispering snarky comments to each other — a flimsy disguise for the static in the air. On screen, a wife confessed to hungers she’d barely dared to name, while her husband buried himself in control, resisting every temptation. I wasn’t thinking about his body; I was wondering if he was thinking about mine.

We spilled out into Cathedral Square after midnight, the stones gleaming, pale under the lights. “The movie was great, but I didn’t like how they restored the equilibrium. I know that’s how endings go, but I always hope for a rupture,” I said.

The Virgo shook his head. “But they didn’t emerge unchanged.” “I guess.”

“I love how Tom Cruise never gave in,” he added, eyes lit. “Always saved by the bell, didn’t break.”

He called it resolve; I still heard the echo of that other word — yearn — and clung to it.

The next day we played tourists in the Botanical Gardens. The Virgo always had a thing for nature; he joked about becoming a hermit in the woods and I could see how easily he’d disappear here. In July he’d almost promised me a kiss under a tree. We crossed bridges, lingered on benches, wandered shaded paths. I thought they might coax him closer. He didn’t move. And in that stillness I understood — we were companions now, not would-be lovers. We left the gardens and he showed me his old dorms, tossing off an anecdote about a girl he’d slept with there. At the lake he half-suggested a swim, then talked me into trying an electric scooter while he rode beside me on his bike. I sped ahead, yelling “TAKE THAT, SUCKER,” and for a moment the day was light again. The joy stayed with me, but only for a block or two.

We stopped by my Airbnb. Simonas looked like he’d rather keep moving, lose himself in paths and trees of Vingis Park, but I pulled us inside. I was hoping the air of the place might echo June, when he’d sung to me and everything had seemed possible.

A little over a month earlier we’d sat in these same chairs, the room thick with quiet tension. Now I felt more like his older cousin, politely being shown around the city, the spark

dissolved into courtesy. I really should have dropped it, excused myself with a headache and sent him home, but I’ve always been the one to slice open a silence, to drag the unsaid into daylight. It costs me people. Still, if I must choose between losing them and losing myself, I know which cut I’ll take.

“So… was I too much after all?” It slipped out, small and shaky, before I could stop it. “What are you talking about?” He seemed none the wiser, but his eyes betrayed him.

I spilled. Not my proudest moment, but the Virgo always said he hated ego talk. I let my bruise do the talking. He blinked until the realization set in: I hadn’t come for the parks and galleries.

“Didn’t you imagine how it’d unfold?” I demanded.

“I thought what I could show you. I pictured us in Būsi Trečias, laughing over a pint. But I did not…”

“So why all the talk about feelings?” I pinned him down like a butterfly. The cruelty of it sickened me.

“I meant it. But it’d have to take months. Not now, not like this. Not when you’re married. Not right after divorce.”

“I crossed a fucking border. I showed up. Hoped you’d meet me halfway. How could I not start to wonder if there was something wrong with me?”

“No — don’t say that. You’re a beautiful person,” he rushed to comfort me, his arms clumsy around my shoulders.

“I didn’t want to be a beautiful person. I wanted to be beautiful to you.”

He only looked at me, a faint sigh escaping, and I knew he wouldn’t cross whatever line he’d drawn for himself.

“Do you wanna watch The Office?” he asked.

Seconds after our awkward good-byes, a notification pinged. Mantas, the horny Klaipėda film guy. We had sexted two or three times, no strings attached. His nude pictures were close to art. He liked my directness.

“How’s the night”

“The guy already left. Couldn’t keep up with my pacing. Guess we shouldn’t waste each other’s time,” I compressed the whirlwind of emotions in a sentence.

“Sometimes it’s for the better” “Yeah, but it still stings a little”

“It always stings,” he replied. “What are you wearing right now?”

I howled. The universe was absolutely toying with me, sending this horndog at the very moment.

“ARE YOU FOR REAL???? I wish I could say a penguin onesie, to throw you off” “You ain’t throwing me off 😀 I would smash you right now”

After tiptoeing around the Virgo’s feelings all day, his bluntness felt like home. It wasn’t exactly my dialect, but I got that a lot and knew how to play along.

I did not, this time. Logging out, I remembered how he did the same thing one day after I’d told him my mom had cancer. Thank God for chaotic, shallow, horny men, I smiled through tears.

Two days later, in a text, the Virgo told me he hated who he became when desire took over. Not face to face — as if even the words might pull him across the line. If I go in, I go in all the way. Work, friends, other people. It all blurs, he wrote.

I stared at the message as the kettle boiled. Outside, someone’s dog barked like it was being exorcised.

The Council stirred. Yvie the drag queen, my patron saint of all things quirky and unapologetic, sat cross-legged on the floor, picking glitter from her teeth.

“He’s just saying that to soften the landing, hun. Go out dancing tonight and find someone to love.”

But Zana, my Balkan ancestress, whose tender strength could outlast a siege, shook her head. “Some men build walls to keep the storm in, not you out.”

The words hung there. Soft, but immovable. “What do I do?” I asked.

Zuzanna Ginczanka, my writing spirit who lived as if every line were her last, didn’t bother with comfort — she tapped her pen against the table, impatient for me to turn this into a sentence worth keeping.

Maria, the urban siren, let her nail trace a slow circle on the rim of her glass. She was smiling like she knew a dozen ways out of this mood, all of them involving lipstick and an exit.

Mažoji sesė Lilka opened her mouth to say something reckless, but her older sister Zofia’s tired hand on her shoulder kept it in.

“Whatever you decide, remember that Vilnius is still yours,” said Zofia. I didn’t reply. I felt the compass steady, no longer spinning. Towards the tower, maybe. Towards myself.

The Tower and the Sphynx

I climbed the Vilnius TV Tower because what else was I supposed to do after the Virgo — buy perfume? get bangs? No. I wanted altitude. I wanted concrete and Soviet steel, something so blunt it made my feelings look small.

From above, Vilnius was all shades of gray, the river curling like a sly ribbon, Vingis Park spreading beneath my feet, swallowing whole districts. He’d once promised to take me there

— the Virgo, with his solemn face and his maybe-one-day tone. Instead, I was left with an aerial view and a choice.

At the top of the tower, the pictures of those who died in 1991 stared back. Not props, not footnotes, but proof that this city carried weight far beyond my petty heartbreak. Lithuania wasn’t just a backdrop for my doomed little romance. Its wounds were real. Mine were just recent.

It wasn’t only the men. I was drawn to the country itself, though early attempts to admit that online had been treated like espionage. As if I were about to steal state secrets or mock someone’s grandmother’s funeral rites. Ah, a crazy Lenkė fetishizing us again. Many brushed it off: You probably know more than I do, haha.

The men were my Trojan horse into a country that deserved more. Fine. Enough. I’d claim Vingis Park on my own — and after that, let Simonas the Sphynx test me however he pleased.

He was the very first guy on my Lithuanian roll call, and I believed I’d made elementary mistakes. I gave him full me in technicolor the moment I sensed his sharp mind. You see, it didn’t take much to wow me a few Simonai ago.

He always spoke in riddles, like he was weighing my answers in a test I didn’t realize I was taking. I knew all the neat facts about him, but the moment the conversation turned even slightly personal, he’d sidestep and retreat, leaving me hungry to try again. Unconventionally handsome, witty, avoidant — exactly my catnip.

When I discovered he might be holding grudges against women and that he listened to Czech fecal goregrind on the regular, my interest dimmed — but not enough to resist when he asked

me out for a drink. He’d called me a habitual line-stepper and an attention seeker and I was seriously intrigued if he would say it to my face.

Tall, well-built, with a slightly duck-footed gait. An impeccable shirt — not too formal, yet effortlessly elegant. A chiseled jaw, the most beautiful crooked nose, glacier-like eyes so pale they seemed almost white. Brown curls. And the surprisingly flamboyant beauty mark near the corner of his mouth, as if nature had played a prank on this Samogitian demigod.

He was beaming. “Little lady!”

A brief hug. A flurry of chatter.

I remembered an old message. I’d once called him hot and he’d replied, “It’s brave to say that about someone you haven’t met in real life.” I’d thought it a polite deflection of my flirtatiousness — but now I got it. All of it. The high-pitched voice, the thick accent, the nervous giggle that sealed every sentence. I felt the lace of my matching lingerie against my skin and nearly burst into maniacal laughter.

We had margaritas in a rooftop bar. I was taking in the panorama of the city and juggling the conversation. We weren’t simply reminiscing about the pandemic; I was weaving a story like I always did and the Sphynx was drafting a diagnosis of every power structure that had ever failed him — governments, corporations, institutions, all filed neatly under “suspect.” I opened my eyes wide and gasped, “For real?” every now and then for his pleasure. This was a guy for whom Orwell wasn’t a high-school memory — but a prophecy.

Strolling along Vilnelė, he told me about the father of Fluxus.

“You know, George Maciunas — Lithuanian-born, of course — started it all. Wanted to break down the barriers between art and life. Thought galleries were mausoleums for rich people.” “It’s really cool that you know of Fluxus,” I said.

He scoffed.

“Lady, PLEASE.”

Such a show-off, I thought. He laid out names, dates, and theories like a street vendor with too much stock, each one capped with that horrendous giggle. He didn’t ask me much. He kept looping back to his own brilliance, and seemed rattled that I wasn’t dancing for it this time.

“Have you heard of Labubu dolls? They are actually based on a Mesopotamian demon, Pazuzu.”

I didn’t even blink. Just thought: How is this my life?

“Really? Are you sure about that?”

“Why would I lie? What would I gain from it? Do you often lie to people?” he said, suddenly alarmed.

We passed a couple of ToiTois. Simonas gestured towards the portable washbasins.

“Would you know how to use them? Because one day I saw a guy — completely at a loss, no idea about the pedals.”

“Uhm… I would never use a ToiToi. If the situation were dire, I’d pop into a coffee shop, get a cappuccino, and use the bathroom there.”

“Of course! I can imagine that for women… the logistics… are a bit more complicated.” The giggle.

Somewhere between Fluxus and the story of Killdozer — the man who armored a bulldozer and went on a one-man demolition spree — he told me that he’d started biweekly psychoanalysis after his mother died. He’d been the one to decide when to take her off life support. The sentence hung there, bare and heavy.

I thought of the contrast — how easily I hand over my traumas, ready for someone else to read aloud. I wear them on my sleeve, offering people a scene before they even ask. He let his

slip by accident, as if grief were a crack in the mask he couldn’t patch in time. I didn’t prod. I didn’t soothe. I simply witnessed the silence between us, and for once I wasn’t the one supplying a script.

We were winding down the walk when the music from a passing car leaked out — bass heavy, familiar.

“I’m too old to listen to certain kinds of rap,” I said. “When you’re a thirty-year-old woman, you can’t listen to ‘bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks’ with a straight face.”

“But that’s true…” he said, perfectly calm, side-eying me.

I went home thinking about Pazuzu, Killdozer, and that beauty mark — proof that I’ll walk straight into chaos if it promises me a killer line.

Aquemini

“Oxytocin, a neuropeptide released during sustained skin-to-skin contact, modulates stress, fosters trust, and reinforces perceived emotional safety between individuals.”

It is hard to speak of the Gemini. He had no persona, no schtick I could name right away. Perhaps that’s why I felt less angular in his company — as if some of my own edges had quietly curved into arcs. The stakes were low; it was my last day in Vilnius.

We’d been texting for a while, vaguely planning an outing. He met my wit on the fly; had his own stockpile ready. We bantered, two people long past their first rodeo. I filled him in on my hilarious Sphynx ride.

“You know, the weirdest part is that he was kinda hot despite the cryptid energy.”

“He’s not hot-hot. He’s ‘you’re in another country and your judgement is compromised’ hot,” replied the Gemini. “So no moves? How thirsty are you actually?”

“Oh, I am very thirsty. It’s been a dry spell of years. But I don’t want anything. I want it to count.”

“You’ve been here a week — you could’ve said so. I don’t mind sleeping with someone I like. I just don’t do one-night stands. What I want is simple — I wanna cuddle and stay the night.” Okay, he was game, though it felt more like a trade than I expected. A tiny sting to my pride, the kind that makes you sit up straighter without meaning to.

He’d said, like a warning, that if anything ever happened between us, it wouldn’t be from a porn flick. I laughed, not because it was funny, but because this honesty was almost radical. Somewhere in the back of my mind, another voice echoed — not his, but one I hadn’t quite shaken:

“Alright, frame me as an incel or a douche, or whatever you choose to make yourself feel better. But deep down you know that I’m smarter and I’d be the best dick you’d have had.”

I turned the words over in my head later, lying in the dark. They didn’t have teeth anymore; the obscenity didn’t move me. What lingered was smaller, sadder — the wish that men who carried depth were better than this.

Morning light slanted low through my Airbnb curtains, Vilnius already humming under the heat. I was halfway into the lazy last-day fantasy — slow coffee, a market stroll — when the Gemini texted: “Lunch? Before the afternoon gets away from us.” It wasn’t a flirt. It was a fact, like he wanted to see me in daylight first. I liked that.

Over lunch he asked if he was what I’d expected. I told him yes, and it looked like he ticked a box off a mental list. He said he was glad — “It’s like I’m talking to a real, fleshed-out

person, not a type.” It wasn’t flattery — more like relief that we’d both walked out of the abstract and into something solid.

When we met up again that afternoon, the rhythm was easy, like we’d skipped a few steps most people circle around for days. It wasn’t intensity, exactly. More a sense that neither of us minded showing the cracks. I threw at him the bits that usually made men flinch — the divorce, the parade of exes, the years I thought I’d lost — and he caught them without fuss. Once, someone told me I make people confront themselves, but I knew I never spared myself, either.

He answered in kind, not to balance the scales but because that was his rhythm too. A trail of girlfriends who walked away with better lives than when they found him.

“It’s like every one of them levels up — new job, new glow, new self — and then they leave.” I breathed, felt my own truth pushing to the surface.

“I’m almost a divorcee. I’m a lot. I know what I bring to the table but I also know what I expect. I’m afraid of not being chosen at all.”

We snorted. Our trademark levity.

“To stepping stones and damaged goods,” I said, raising my glass. “Five stars on TripAdvisor, but nobody books twice.”

It was good to laugh at it. “Okay, enough of the two lost souls swimmin’ in a fishbowl routine

— let’s find another place.”

Vilniaus gatvė, trashy bar, sticky floor — could’ve been my favorite college haunt.

I slipped away to the bathroom. Checked my socials. A message from the Virgo — his usual move: send a song to speak for him, so he could backpedal later if confronted.

Ronan Keating. “Life Is a Rollercoaster.”

I knew he hadn’t handpicked it for me — it was from one of his carefully curated playlists he’d shown me when we first met. A cycling song, I imagined, the kind he’d play while picturing himself with a girlfriend. Not necessarily me. Just a girlfriend. And still, I heard what he wanted me to hear: I have feelings. The kind that look for a home but never knock.

My council didn’t even bother to rise — “A breadcrumb,” they said. “You’ve starved on worse.”

I got back to the Gemini. He held my hands.

“I like you. It’s been a really good evening.” I knew what was coming. “Do you want to spend more time together?”

I got quiet. It wasn’t coyness; it was reflection — the Virgo’s song still humming at the edge of my mind, my council watching from their seats. “He’s not the feast, but at least a meal. You won’t go home hungry.”

“Sure. Let’s do it.”

“Is there anything that’d be off-limits for you?” The Gemini tipped the ash of his hard-earned cigarette — we’d chased half the city to find it at that hour.

“Yeah. Sofa kisses.” “Sorry?”

“Sofa kisses. I hate the inching. You know, when they sit beside you and can’t decide if they should lunge. Puppy eyes, and my blood drains. If someone wants me, they gotta jump.”

He nodded — eyes steady, tucking the answer away. I knew he wasn’t a jumper, but hoped he might prove me wrong, break his own pattern. It was ridiculous, that flash of faith — like

betting on a cat to bark — but in the streetlamp glow, with smoke curling between us, the thought seemed absurdly reasonable.

Back in my twenties, flings had unwritten rules — you made it cinematic, like you wanted to etch yourself in their memory. Smooth legs, artful gasps, the slow, deliberate drop of a dress to the floor. But he wasn’t in for cinematic. The warmth, the skin-on-skin closeness, that was his thing. I let the edges ease, hiding my slight surprise. We were playful, unhurried, joyful — like kids skipping school with a whole day ahead. He looked into my eyes more than at my body, as if checking I was still in on the same joke.

It wasn’t just touch — it never was, for me. I could be lit on nothing but the right words, pitched in the right voice, at the right time.

So I demanded, half-laughing, “What are you doing?”

“Making love to you,” he teased. “Those aren’t the words you were hoping for, right?” “Yeah.”

He looked smug.

“Then say it,” I told him. “Fucking you.”

I wasn’t humiliating him, I was giving him a script, a chance to step into my narrative. And he did. That was the gift: his compliance, my authorship. Tender. Defiant. Both.

Then his mouth was on my neck, the words dissolving into motion — nothing to prove, nothing to perform, only the act and the air we were in.

He’d warned me about being a cuddler, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that the closeness wasn’t entirely about me, but about patching some hollow the woman before had left behind. Still, I’d never fallen asleep so fused to another body. And an hour before the alarm, we both

woke — talking, kissing, as if trying to steal back time from the morning. We traded scraps of our lives — the cat curled on his sofa, the friend who always picked up, the playlists we swore by. It was nothing and everything, the kind of details you usually earn slowly. A travel-sized girlfriend experience, I thought.

He lit my cigarette in the morning drizzle, the flare licked uncertain, then took hold. He smirked.

“Do you know what it means when someone does that?” “In Poland we say it makes you their bitch,” I quipped. He laughed, awkward. “It means you owe them a night.”

I exhaled, slow, staring at the dreary courtyard. “Haven’t I already returned that favor?”

We hugged, longer than casual, shorter than cinematic. My eyes prickled — traitors. I hid it with the cigarette, the last ember between us.

If you came here looking for a triumphant ending, turn back now. This isn’t that kind of story. By the time I was curled in my plane seat, chin resting on my knees, that ember had already turned to draft. The flight was short, so I didn’t bother opening a book. Instead, I caught myself replaying the night with the Gemini: a shared laugh, being wrapped in the comforter like a family treasure in a move, the way he said, “This was different. A good different,” when we lay there, my cheek pressed against his chest. This wasn’t how you were supposed to treat a stranger for a night, and that’s why it lingered.

Halfway through the flight, I realized I wasn’t remembering him at all — not his face, not his voice. Just the words. I’d already started polishing them, like lines I could mark in a book. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Words last longer than men. I suppose that’s why I turn them into sentences worth keeping.

A few months later I asked Mantas the Klaipėda film guy if I could use him in my piece. “Only if you call me NORFA XXL,” he replied, chaos incarnate.

I closed the chat and stared at the scratches in the bar table, initials carved by people who’d come here with their own storms. Vilnius didn’t care. It kept buzzing.

Maybe yearning doesn’t move anyone closer. Maybe chemistry, tenderness and good stories don’t save you. But they’re mine. I’ll keep them.

Tender, defiant — always.