MOSCOW, April 14, 2005 – Got an unnerving little bombshell tossed into my bunker on Monday.
The landlady, Natasha, called to warn that my next-door neighbor had told the police that I was running a bordello. Andrei talked to Natasha, and as best I could understand, told her that they he and Sergei were my grandsons, that their brother was visiting from St. Peterburg, and everything was alright.
Then Sergei told me that the cops had visited today and he had told them the same thing, and then they had made the comment, “Your American will be out of here tomorrow.”
So it would be imprudent in the extreme to give Andrei all my money if I’m going to be needing some for a new apartment, moving, lawyer, and god knows what. What I’m afraid of is that it will go down as a mark somewhere in the police labyrinthe and show up on my next application for a visa, and that will be the end of my Russian saga.
It’s something over which I have zero control, so can’t really let it worry me, though it sure as hell does.
In any case, it’s prompted the re-clamor to move to a new apartment, so I think we’ll start looking for one tomorrow.
Zhorik left tonight to return to St. Pete. His shooting gism all over me and his shirt Sunday morning doesn’t seem to have dimished his affection for me. In fact, he went out by himself and “walked” and got drunk Sunday night. When I got up to take a pee in the middle of the night, he was sitting in the kitchen. I reached over to kiss him and he left his lips planted on mine for an exhilaratingly long time.
We seem to be closer than ever, although he reminded me again Sunday night while we were playing pool that “I’m mainly interested in girls.”
He said Sunday that when he was talking to his girlfriend in Svetlograd, they had broken up. He’s firmly planning to stay here this summer and to go to school here next fall.
It would be a shame – as much for him as for me, sadly enough --if apartment indiscretions should fuck that up.
Andrei told me that he and Sergei told Zhorik about us, so now he officially knows. We don’t have to continue our pretense. When I close my eyes, I still fantasize about his equisite little piska popping up out of his unzipped pants like a jack-in-the-box before spurting off into the ether. God, please give me a chance to watch that happen again!
In the meantime, Igor called with his gentle reminder: His university needs ,000 the 15th of May. First Bruce, 00; then Zhorik, 0; then Andrei, ,000; and now Igor! If I hadn’t given it all away, I’d have met my ,000 savings target by June – assuming I’m actually able to pull ,000 together for Yegor. It’s going to be nip and tuck.
Actually, I managed to leave 0 in the bank; my 0 pension got deposited on Wednesday, 0 of which is for rent; but at least that’s 650 left for seed; Kreutz owes me about 0; I’ll get another 200+ from Andrei and his mother, plus another 0 from Data & Vortex and another 100 on Sunday; so by the end of the week, I’ll have about 00 – almost half of the 3000 Yegor needs, with still another month to amass the rest.
In the meantime, Sergei said I misunderstood about the cops. They didn’t threaten me; in fact they said they weren’t interested in me. It’s the twins they were warning.
So things were just about to settle back down to as normal as they ever get: Andrei and I were again discussing the money, and he was assuring me that timing was crucial and everything was going to be all right when Sergei stumbled out of the bathroom clutching a clear plastic bag of glue.
I went ballistic. Andrei affirmed that it was glue and threw it out the kitchen window. All Sergei could think of was going out to retrieve it. I hid the keys and then informed Sergei that he was out of here the next day. He had promised me the last time, faithfully and penitently, that he would never touch the shit again.
I think he had been sincere at the time. It seemed obvious to Andrei and me that the devious little bitch, Nasty Nastya, was the courier, the snake in the tree of knowledge. I tried to look regretful when I informed Denis that she was never to come to the apartment again.
Once again, Sergei was a zombie, wandering around asking “what happened?”
It was a troubled sleep we all eventually fell into, but first Sergei bedded down for a nap in the bathtub. When he finally returned in the middle of the night, Denis maneuvered him onto the outside, and Denis and I made sweet, gentle, affectionate, passionate love.
The next morning, Tuesday, was a sunny, beautiful spring day.
A couple of bonuses of Sergei’s leave of absence: I don’t lose Anton and Yegor, and Denis and I will get to know a lot more about each other.
Sergei was his exuberant, childish self by afternoon of the following day. “Can I take the roller skates?” he asked eagerly. I’ve told him and Andrei that if Sergei behaves himself, he can return after two, three, four months. Andrei has promised to teach him to work and be responsible. Um-humm.
I’m all a-tingle! Zhorik called after the twins left and said he’d come to visit me on May 8, and we’d celebrate Day of Victory together.
I told him the twins had already left. He asked where Denis was.
“In the kitchen,” I told him.
“I have some gossip for you,” he replied.
“Now or when you come?”
“When I come.”
God, I’m giddily in love with that little tyke! Andrei asked me if I was sorry he wasn’t queer. “Well,” I replied, “I would be very happy if he were. But anyway, I love him very much, and I think he loves me very much.”
“He does.”
Again, Andrei expressed concern about Denis remaining here. “I’m afraid that when we come back, you’ll have replaced us with him like you did Yegor with us.”
I laughed. “Don’t worry, honey. We have sex and that’s all.” It’s true – so far. We don’t even talk when we have sex, but the affection that flows between us is touching and humbling. I don’t know what I will say to Denis if he ever brings the subject of commitment up.
With the business community joining youth in opposition to Putin, he could be facing some real difficulties. The Moscow Times describes it as a “growing backlash” from leading businessmen “over what they see as increasing state interference in the economy, a rising tide of state corruption, paralysis in policy making, and mounting jitters over whether political stability can be maintained.”
Businessmen themselves say Putin’s half-hearted attempts a couple of weeks ago to reassure them that all the problems are in the past, that there will be no more Yukoses, and that tax laws and police are being called to heel didn’t convince them.
“The state is not being managed; no decisions are being made. There is no team managing the economy,” one “leading businessman” told the Moscow Times on conditions of anonymity. “Business is not happy. There are not equal conditions for all….Business is tired of promises not being kept.”
The anonymous businessman added ominously: “The state is like a big corporation, and the management of it has just gotten worse. When management gets worse, normally the shareholders try to change the leadership.”
In the meantime, the youth are keeping the griddle warm. An estimated 4,000 of them gathered in front of the White House a couple of days ago to protest shameful nominal government stipends to students (about a month), salaries for professors (beginning university professors get a month), and plans to abandon the soviet educational system, one of the few successes of the Soviet era.
Among the signs carried by the shouting, angry students was one warning that “a hungry student is a force to be reckoned with.”
Despite – or perhaps because of -- the swelling ranks of opposition, Putin has coyly suggested that he might run again in 2012 while still promising not to run for a third term in 2008. Speculation is that he will anoint a stooge to keep everything in place while perhaps taking the post of prime minister to enable him to keep full control of the government in the meantime.
At the same time, op-ed journalist Yulia Latynina notes that the ranks of the liberal opposition are closing around a coalition led by real opposition leaders -- former chess champ Gary Gasparov and liberal Duma member Vladimir Ryzhkov -- instead of the suspiciously cozy energy oligarch Anatoly Chubais and former liberal party chairman Grigory Yavlinsky.
Things could get warm in the next three years.
Wed., April 21, 2005 -- My evening just waxed deliriously brighter: Zhorik called to say that he is coming this weekend – day after tomorrow!
He seems as eager to spend that time with me as I am to spend it with him – he sounded overjoyed! I think it’s safe to say he wants me to feel my way, so to speak, into Chapter 2 of Mutual Heaven. Do you think my fantasy is overreaching reason?
This day years ago:
2004-4-14: Chapt. #53 - Mafia hit man dis-armed in bombing
