Chapter 4 Pictures

 Damian Adanti didn’t really remember the time he was in DADANTI’s office. He was young, straight after university and for the first six years of his professional life, he changed his job every half a year, unsure what to do with his life and his potential. 

In DADANTI he was a part of a bigger team employed for control and administration of the packaging. Sixty-two people were employed, most of them in Damian’s age, all either without experience or a wish to stay there for longer. Their job was mundane, all day long they were looking at pictures of the products, their packaging, register numbers, descriptions in multiple languages, making sure that these were scrupulously added to the books (looking through countless excel tables), sometimes rechecking and checking again, pinpointing mistakes, receiving complaints. His team, after the first weeks of training, was suddenly dissolved and the duties were redirected to India where this job could be done cheaper and by fewer people. 

Damian Adanti jumped a bit around the food industry, played with his own (failed) restaurant, and finally started working with tires, and, happy with his salary, completely forgot that DADANTI even existed. 

Meanwhile, the company was doing great. In 2008 DADANTI had this ecstatic idea of introducing the UNICORN collection - gadgets for women in sweet pastel colors, girly toys with rainbows and happy horses, butterfly clitoris massagers, sparkling dildo horns, bubble gum lubricants, anal raspberries, and cherry nipple clips. And it sold like hot buns in the coldest of winters. So, to celebrate that, DADANTI had another great idea of embracing womanhood and organized a contest of acceptance: “Lovagina, love your vagina, send us a picture of your vagina, win a two-week stay in a beautiful and luxurious hotel in Bali”. 

Unfortunately, as opposed to the UNICORN collection, it had no interest among DADANTI’s customers. The founder of the idea was demoted and her creativity put to doubt (DADANTI invested a lot in the campaign which was merely a flop) and the subject of Lovagina, vagina love, was forever abandoned and treated as one of the company's many taboos. 

What DADANTI failed to notice was the fact that on their internet website the address to which the pictures of vaginas in their vast range of shapes, sizes, and colors were to be sent, was actually the address not of the headquarters of DADANTI, but the address of a very brief and long-forgotten employee D.Adanti. A mistake was made by the administration (who copied pasted from the wrong set of personal data) who provided data to the IT (who dealt with the website design) and the person who briefly checked the page was new in town, so she didn’t notice the change of address. Kirk and Beata were happy about the webpage’s final result and so was the board. A separate page was devoted to the UNICORN collection with flying cute magical creatures and flowery meadows, which made Beata especially proud. 

So one day, when Damian Adanti (blissfully unaware of the contest) received an envelope and a picture of a hairy and natural woman’s vagina, he was lost for words.

But when during the following weeks, to his house, the postman brought 13657 envelopes, all with pictures of the vagina, and just the sender’s address, nothing else, no info, no letter of explanation, he was startled. He didn’t know if he should respond to those women, send back the pictures, or burn them and treat them as an insult. He was ashamed. He had never in his life seen so many pussies and these weren’t the pussies he had seen in porn films. These were real, full, natural female genital organs. He didn’t feel Lovagina. He felt threatened. 

Having no better idea, he put all these envelopes in the drawers, which were placed in his basement and locked with a key. 

He wasn’t even aware that his connection to DADANTI was the reason for his first marital break-up. Five years later, his then-wife, Sylvia, was looking for a hammer (a trivial reason, she wanted to hang a painting she bought at the flea market) and went to the basement. She was sure that the hammer was kept in one of the chests of drawers placed under the garage walls (as was done in her family home), so she force-opened the drawer and saw hundreds of envelopes with women’s addresses. Inside, there was only a picture. A picture of a vagina. A collection of vaginas. Enormous collection of vaginas. 

‘My God!’, she exclaimed.

Her mother told her about these serial killers, obsessed with female genital parts. She didn’t bother calling the police. She wanted to survive herself. She took the bag with her documents and money, went into the car, and left, abandoning Damian Adanti for good.