Sára Gáspár: Hot Girl Walk [Panodyssey]

Második alkalommal rendezték meg idén a Panodyssey és a Könyves Magazin közös írói pályázatát, amelyre 166 pályamunka érkezett. A második helyezett Gáspár Sára lett Hot Girl Walk című írásával, amelyet most angol fordításban is elolvashattok!

A Panodyssey és a Könyves Magazin második írói pályázatán második helyezett lett Gáspár Sára a Hot Girl Walk című írásával, amely Borda Réka laudációja szerint "egy húszas éveiben járó nő fizikai és mentális utazását mutatja be a nagyvárosban, és olyan mai kihívásokat vázol fel, mint a social media okozta testképzavar vagy a catcalling". A másik zsűritag, Kiss Tibor Noé pedig ezt emelte ki: "Gáspár Sára Hot Girl Walkja tele van eredeti képekkel, jó mondatokkal, magabiztosan, manírok nélkül építi bele a szövegbe a Tindert, a proseccót és Britney Spears-től a Work Bitch című számot". Olvassátok el a második helyezett pályaművét angolul!

Sára Gáspár: Hot Girl Walk

Translator: Austin Wagner

This is the first day of the rest of your life. This is the sentence that pops up on my phone when the alarm goes off at five o’clock, this is the first thing I read. Maybe it will make it easier to work out with nausea on an empty stomach and then swallow down my leafy greens smoothie. I remember picking the spinach from my eggs in the cafeteria years ago, what would the inner child say to that, the one I supposedly owe this life I’m now living to, and who, according to the description of the one hundred and fifty dollar ‘5 to 9 before your 9 to 5’ program I bought, would be proud of me for taking care of her. If I don’t hit snooze three times I might still be able to squeeze in a quick hot girl walk. I think about the headline I would write if I were selling it. Sexier With Every Step, or Walk to Make Them Run After You, the first one’s better, it doesn’t mean anything, but might just fit within the Google Ads headline character limit, I count it out again, 22 characters, target market is Budapest, women from 18 to 30, etcetera. In the end I don’t have the motivation to get up, I buy a doughnut at the Princess bakery, eat it on the metro steps, buy another one at another Princess on my way out, I’m hungry. When I get to the office, I think about how tomorrow will finally be the first day of the rest of my life. No need to rush, I still have a few years before thirty.

In the evening I make up for the hot girl walk, fresh air, positive thoughts, independence and all that. I made a note from the video for myself not to forget that I’m only allowed to think about three things on the walk: things for which I am grateful, my goals, and how hot I look. Of course I don’t really look that hot, I’m wearing running clothes, an ancient tactic: this way I don’t stand out if I start running from someone. I’ll take the number nine bus and start my walk from the Margaret Bridge – Buda Side stop, you can’t just hit that stride anywhere in the city, but that’s okay, at least this way I can let myself cry on the bus over a work email that ended with three dots.

I have enough experience to know where you can and can’t hot-girl it up – I can’t forgive the city for leaving me just one sentence from my first breakup: “What are you crying for, didn’t get enough dick?” That’s what the workers called out after me as I headed down to the square. Well, if they take another dig tonight, on the way to Rózsadomb they’ll get a different reaction, not interested, bye, just off to my villa for some prosecco. To my imaginary boyfriend, though I don’t think the program would be too happy with men being in my thoughts in any capacity, and I probably shouldn’t be putting my desire to avoid going into the office on Monday into the goals category, and I probably shouldn’t be thinking about checking Tinder when I reach the swanky neighborhoods to see who’s within one kilometer and between the age of 35 and 40.

I know what you think of me, dear woman I want to become, but understand, trying to drum up my self-confidence at eight o’clock on a Friday night is tiring in and of itself, somebody really should be funding all of this. I don’t want kids, but if the house is big enough, then cleaning alone would take plenty of time. Plus, my hardworking stud’s suit pants won’t iron themselves, I wouldn’t waste his time like that for all the world, he needs it to make all that money. I step off the bus, from now on I’m a hot girl, I queue up Britney without delay, You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work, bitch, I quickly convince myself that I don’t need a man, it’s worth crying behind a turned-off camera and patiently waiting for my face to someday stop looking so girlish and for the day to come when people stop thinking I go to work every day because I need money for music festivals. 

Obviously I didn’t spend half an hour on the bus to get here and stand in front of the Bem movie theater and search the crowd of people drinking beer and nodding thoughtfully for the man who says I never would have left him if he were an engineer pulling in eight hundred thousand forints per month, but all the same, I’m disappointed he’s not here. It occurs to me that I haven’t yet looked back on the messages we exchanged exactly one year ago today. Like it’s an Advent calendar, I open one door every day if the child living inside me doesn’t scarf the whole thing down first. I drift to the edge of the sidewalk to read, muting Doja Cat and Boss Bitch, this isn’t a scene where I’m the main character. I’m going out for beers with the guys, you say. Have fun, I say, and in the next scene, undocumented in writing, I’m already screaming in the shower because I think your own friends will give you the truth. That they’ll say yeah, we saw this coming from the beginning, that K. will probably be congratulating him, it’s not like anyone’s organizing a party, and there won’t be any cake with sparklers and ‘congratulations on breaking up with that bitch’ written in icing. Enough of this, I don’t know which of the three categories these thoughts fit into. What am I doing here, a year of mediation, daily fifty-minute podcast, vitamin D and matcha tea, and all for nothing, I’m still exactly where I left off.

I reach the hill, if I haven’t run into you yet and I’m not opening Tinder and wasting my mobile data, I hope the walk up the hill will at least make my butt look better. I sit on a step in Peter Mansfield Park, suddenly I feel as if I’m at home here, but I can’t let myself be deceived: everything seems more significant from up high. Maneater starts up in my ear, and hey, I do look pretty hot.