MOSCOW, March 20, 2005 – The winter that won’t leave!
We’re three days away from real spring, and it’s still about 10 degrees F with an icy wind and several feet of snow on the ground. Russians are grumbling, and several of my students are missing classes because of colds or flu.
Lena, Sasha’s former colleague, couldn’t make her lesson on Friday because of low blood pressure she insisted was caused by the unseasonable and changeable weather!
It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of. I don’t know how many Russians have told me that abrupt changes in weather cause their blood pressure to go up and down and inflict on them headaches, malaise, and general illness.
Never in all my 65 years in America did I ever hear of anybody not being able to work because a change in the weather had brought them to the sick bed. I’m convinced it’s superstition, but some very responsible and intelligent people report it. Headache is the most usual symptom, but there are often others. My ex-cook Tanya was one of the worst. I’m certain she used it simply as an excuse not to come to work.
But I’m equally sure that many others are really ill, though I suspect they’ve psyched themelves into it.
The lovely relationship between me and Denis continues. Sergei laughingly calls him “Denis the Penis,” an apt nickname, though I don’t think Sergei has ever seen him with a hard on. (Come to think about it, Sergei told me once that he fucked Denis in the ass one time ‘cause Denis was curious. But he decided it wasn’t his cup of tea – so I guess Sergei has seen him with a hard on.) Anyway, when I came home yesterday afternoon, Sergei met me at the door. “I’m angry with you,” he declared, through half a smile.
“Again?” I asked. “What for?”
I woke up in the night and you had your arms around Denis. You never sleep with your arms around me.” He balled his fist in – I hope – feigned anger.
“Honey,” I demurred, “I’ve tried a lot of times to sleep with my arms around you, but you always push me away: ‘You’re too close, you’re pushing me out of the bed.’ I’ll be glad to sleep with my arms around you if you’ll let me.”
And we went on to something else. Still, I thought it was amusing that he is jealous over Denis. Denis’s and my relationship is super, but it’s not in the class with Sergei’s and mine, and I’ve assured Sergei of that.
Anyway, when Sergei and I went to bed last night, Denis was still in the bathroom. “Honey, do you mind if Denis and I have sex?”
He thought a moment. “If you do, I don’t want to see or hear it.”
“Okay.”
A minute later, Denis crawled into bed.
“I’m going to take a bath,” Sergei announced, and left us to do what we desperately wanted to. It followed the developing pattern: I start caressing him, his dick gets stiff, we pull off his shorts, I start sucking, my dick gets stiff, I take off my shorts and T-shirt, we French kiss, hug, caress, suck, and jerk until we both come.
And then comes the sweetest part: We hold and caress and kiss each other for many minutes. Then he turns over, I put my arms around him, and we go to sleep.
When Sergei finally returned from the bathtub about 6 a.m., I put my arms around him, and Denis rolled over and put his arms around me. It was a lovely scene, but just then the doorbell rudely interrupted my tranquility:
Zhorik, at last, arriving from St. Pete. We hugged and kissed, and he handed me a gift: a set of souvenir St. Pete shot glasses and an adorable “Dedushke” -- “To Grandfather” -- card, which translated goes something like this:
A kind heart, an affectionate expression,
Hands of gold – he doesn’t need to speak
“Papa” in spades, my grandfather
With my grandfather, whether in reconnoitering or in a fight
Reconnoitering? Fight? Well, the first three lines were precious. And it’s the thought that counts.
Last Saturday, one of my Institute of Diplomacy students in our “news” portion of the class announced that chess champion Garry Kasparov had played his last game -- a bit of a shock, to say the least.
“Why?” I asked in astonishment.
It seems he will refocus his enviable mastery of strategy to the political arena with the specific intent of masterminding the defeat of Putin or his hand-picked heir in 2008.
“I have done everything that I can in chess,” Kasparov told the press conference called to announce his decision. “Now I intend to use my intellect and strategic thinking in Russian politics.”
The 41-year-old chess genius is already the chairman of an anti-Putin liberal political group called “Committee 2008 Free Choice,” formed after Putin’s landslide 2004 election.
He is one of the handful of prominent Russians daring to articulate the emperor’s lack of clothing. On his website, Kasparov.ru, he declared last week that Russia is “moving in the wrong direction,” and that he would do “everything possible to fight Putin’s dictatorship.”
According to the Moscow Times, Kasparov has accused Putin of rolling back democracy, and in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece last month likened Putin’s nomination of his St. Pete crony, Gazprom exec Anton Ivanov, as the new chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, to “Caligula’s naming of a horse to the Senate.”
While Kasparov’s star status promises to be a powerful vehicle in the attempt to topple the Putin government, some critics are pointing to his past forays into politics and predicting that he will soon lose interest and find a new toy.
Supporters say that the resignation as world king of the chess board is itself evidence enough that he is committed to this new course.
I feel a tenuous link to Kasparov. English Exchange assigned me to “teach” at the Kasparov Chess Club several years ago. Unfortunately, I never met Kasparov. In fact, the most significant person I met there was Ivan, whom I would twice a week help edit the English translations of Internet chess comment and reportage. We became close friends, and he has remained devoted and helpful. Through him I met Slava and became acquainted with my wistful but impossible fantasy, beautiful Valodya.
Another head-shaking episode occurred last Thursday. My student Anton, who lives some 20 miles outside Moscow, called me about 11 a.m. and said that, although he had already been on the road for two hours, he didn’t think he would be able to make our 4 p.m. class because traffic was dead still.
“I heard that there was a murder attempt on Anatoly Chubais, and I think it’s connected to that,” Anton said. “The police have the road completely blocked.”
So we agreed that he should go back home and that we would meet at our next scheduled lesson on Monday, tomorrow.
According to news broadcasts, the investigation into the “assassination attempt” has taken some very strange turns.
Chubais, as the architect of the diastrous privatization fiasco of the ’90s, is one of the most hated men in Russia. Still, as head of the Russian electric system, he manages to keep his power base as well as his independence of Putin. So there are all kinds of reasons for many vested interests to “off” the red-headed renegade.
But the “attempt” on his life was so clumsy that it has spawned speculation that he arranged it himself in order to bring him back into the spotlight as another possible contender against Putin in the 2008 election!
A car belonging to the wife of one of Russia’s most sophisticated explosives experts was spotted as the get-away car for two of the perpetrators. But the explosive device, ineptly and amateurishly put together, blew off in the wrong direction. When it was obvious the “attempt” had failed, the gunmen who emerged from the nearby woods spraying the area with Kalishnikov automatic weapons didn’t hit so much as a bodyguard or a stray cat, much less Chubais himself.
Nobody was injured!
This by one of Russia’s most skilled explosives experts?
As usual with these high-profile episodes, nobody except the insiders knows what really happened and probably never will, although Chubais has pronounced the investigation so far as “professional” and “impressive,” which means it’s going the way he wants it to.
There is a humorous addendum to the story: It seems that on the day of the “attempt,” the International Olympics Committee was winding up its investigation of Moscow as a contender for the Olympic Games in 2012, a plum which Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is desperate to pluck.
One of my students, Masha, happened to be watching the televised press conference in which Commission Chairwoman Nawal El Moutawakel praised Moscow for its well-suited sports infrastructure, transportation facilities and plans to transport athletes and spectators via boats on the Moscow River, the widespread public support, and general suitableness for the event.
Moscow’s chances were “very good,” she said, as Luzhkov and others beamed.
But in the questioning that followed, one of the journalists asked her what effect, if any, the attempted assassination of Chubais would have on the committee’s decision.
According to Masha, the woman’s expression changed immediately. “What attempted assassination? They didn’t tell me anything about it!” At which point the unctious Luzhkov leapt to the microphone to insist that “It wasn’t in Moscow; it was outside of Moscow, and nobody was hurt.”
But the chairwoman was clearly miffed that her Moscow handlers had kept such a significant development from the committee here to determine – among other things – the city’s ability to provide adequate safety for athletes and visitors.
I think if Moscow was a serious contender, it is no longer.
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