Lubov, zachem ti muchayesh menya? Words from a famous Russian movie.. means something like Oh love, why are you torturing me so?

One of the biggest obsessions of my life was married. I never viewed that fact as a serious issue. Before you judge me here, let me attempt to explain. He was an English guy, and he married a whore. And when I say a whore, I mean not those typical amateur whores as I classify a large number of local girls back home, hunting for foreign husbands. She was actually a proper professional, working for a set fee, a well known whore in town. I suppose, he wanted to rescue her or something like that. Or she was just very good in bed. But it is quite ironic, isn’t it? Normally, men marry good girls and then cheat on them with bad girls. In my case, it was the other way around. He married a whore and was cheating on her with a good girl.

I was working with him and I fell for him. It is a long story how, because it was not that simple. However, when I first allowed myself to go out with him, his wife was actually no longer on the scene. They had a huge fight, and when I say fight, I mean a physical fight, with knives and scars. A Russian whore style, you know. And that meant, he said, unbuttoning his shirt to demonstrate an impressive scar across the chest, they truly and finally are over.

I was liberated by my experience with… let’s call him C. He was my first ever foreign man, and I had not had that many men before him anyhow. The whole thing was quite exciting. I was curious about having relationship with someone so different. Everything he did or said was alien to me then. He was wild and crazy, which I later on realized, was supported by endless alcohol intake (that he could easily afford being an expat in Baku)

I did not even notice falling in love with him. I remember discussing my affair with a male friend, who said he was impressed by how cool I was.

I asked:

-Cool? In what way exactly?

- Well - he said- you know he is married! and you don’t even care. You are just happy having a fling with no commitments!

That was so far from reality it made me laugh. But I did not try to explain how pathetic I actually felt deep inside. In fact, I was so obsessed and desperate that when he went back to the wife, (which they always do) I thought I was going to do absolutely anything to get him back.

Back home, girls still believe in magic. Perhaps, not just back home, eh? But anyway. There are those always weird and spooky-looking ladies who would charge you a small amount of money and make you do stupid things. You know. Like steal some hair from the man of your desire and burn it. A bit like voodoo I guess. So…yep this is how sad I got. I went to one of those women. I can not believe I ever did that. But hey, as I said…I was sad and desperate.

I had a nice (and single!) American colleague chasing me then. He asked if I needed a lift home from work and I told him I had to stop somewhere for a minute. He was happy to wait outside, if I then had a drink with him in a local bar. I was of course, too embarrassed to tell him what I was going to do. But it was a dodgy neighbourhood so I wanted some escort.

We drove for almost 30 minutes, which for a size of a town Baku is was quite a distance. This woman lived in a shack on the outskirts of town. I went in, with my escort patiently wafting outside. The woman was unwashed and her nails painted red. She definitely looked the part. Explained to me that my man was bewitched by his ex, and that I had to do a number of bizarre things in order to remove the spell and get him back.

Of course, I knew. I am not really that mad or stupid, honest. But whatever happens to your brain when you are truly and utterly obsessed with a man you can’t have- is a mystery.

So I stole some of his hair next time I saw him (I continued to see him despite everything!) and mixed it with mine…and burned it secretly and then…this was the hardest part. I had to take it to a place where he was due to cross the threshold, preferably before his wife, and that was it. The job was done.

I was terrified to be caught doing something like that. There was no way I could do something like that at his rented flat: what if the scary knife-throwing bitch comes out right at me when I bend down at her door?

But I knew where he worked… So office it was. I left the house at around 6am, well before he or his alcoholic whore wife ever woke up…and sneaked to his one-story building office. There I was, in the summer heat, sweating like a pig in a worry of being caught, I took out the ashes of our hair from a little plastic bag, and quickly spread it across the doorway. I was then free to run and wait for the miracle, which of course!!! I knew was not going to happen.

And guess what. Nothing happened. He stayed with his whore wife. I heard whores often turn into quite decent wives, by the way. In fact, as I often told him, it was not her who was the whore in his marriage. No wonder she had to use a knife. And when the knives did not work, she moved on to another well-known weapon and had a baby. The baby thing worked on me though, and I finally gave up on my dream of destroying the rest of my life with a slightly freaky alcoholic English electrician.

My American admirer later confessed that he was terrified I made him wait outside whilst shopping for drugs. I was surprised he thought that is what I was doing. But I guess, he could never in his wildest dreams imagine what I really was up to. I could not tell him how much of a freak I really was. So I simply looked him straight in the eye and said that I would never!!! do anything like that to him. He was very happy with that statement.

So happy in fact, that he asked me to date him, which of course I was not ready for. In hindsight, was a stupid thing to do as he was loaded and a fab cook.