Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 14 - 1553 words
Columns :: G&T Meets Ann Landers, Step One

MOSCOW, Oct 12, 2003 -- Comments:   Ratings:

Pissed at Anton and Yegor
And throw Anton out
Yegor and I make up
I will not let him go



MOSCOW, Oct 14, 2003 -- I put Phase One of my plan into operation this morning.

I told Anton I would like for him to leave by the time Misha returns from his month-long excursion to Prague.

Actually I told him last night in a shouting match after a glass of cheap port and a liter of Greenall’s G&T Russkiy style – out of a can. .15 per half-liter at almost any kiosk.

I was really pissed. For two days Yegor had been moping and sleeping. He’d hardly said a word and barely reacted to anything I said.

Yesterday after students ValeraI and Volodya left, I asked Yegor if he’d go shopping with me. Yes, he mumbled, and we walked to the nearby relatively inexpensive market to buy a few things we needed most. First, of course, was a 2.25-liter bottle of Ochakova beer for 43 rubles – a little less than a buck and a half. We bought milk for about 50 cents a quart; a third of a quart of mayonnaise (67% fat) for 65 cents; onions for about 15 cents a pound; beets for borshcht for about 20 cents a pound; eggs, 60 cents for 10; and apples for about 50 cents a pound.

Yegar was so glum and antagonistic that I told him if he was going to continue to act like that, I wanted him to go on home and I’d finish the shopping by myself.

He didn’t leave me to finish the shopping by myself, but he continued his pouting after we returned home.

If there’s anything guaranteed to push my buttons, it’s glum pouting. If you’ve got a bitch, spill it and let’s talk about it. I’m not a goddamned mind reader, you know!

So he lay in bed and pouted and I sat nearby intermittently playing computer games and writing.

Anton was snoozing on his bed across the room.

The house phone rang. I picked up the phone. Dial tone. It rang again. I looked over at Anton; he seemed to be asleep. I picked it up. Dial tone. Somebody playing games. This is Anton’s brand of practical joke, so I threw the phone at him. He started laughing. The phone rang again. He answered it and pretended to have a conversation. “Yes, he’s here. Here, Dane it’s for you.” I took it. Dial tone. Anton started laughing again.

I said, “very fucking funny, Anton. Very fucking funny!” And starting changing my clothes to go out.

“Where are you going?” they chorused.

“I don’t know.”

“To buy beer?”

Maybe.


I walked out into the drizzly October evening and bought a half-liter can of G&T and walked over to Tversakaya Street and toward Pushkin Square in the center, maybe 20 minutes away. When I got there, I realized I was hungry, so I walked to the “Kroshka Kartoshka” baked potato kiosk and bought one filled with butter, cheese, and mushrooms for about .50 and set my G&T on the stand-up table right behind me while I waited for my potato. When I turned around to put my potato on the table the G&T was gone.

God damn it, is nothing sacred in this city of thieves?

I was so pissed at this that I forgot to pick up my change, so the buxom little lady got a nearly tip. This pissed me off even more.

I walked to a nearby kiosk and bought my second G&T and started toward home. The mobile phone rang. I answered and immediately hung up. It rang again. Anton: Where are you? In the center. Come home. Here’s Yegor. “Dane, come home; we’re waiting for you.”

“Okay.”

I strolled home, still fuming.

When I walked into the room, I don’t remember what set me off, but I exploded. I told Anton he needed to find another place to live. Why doesn’t he go live with his boyfriend Denis?

“He lives with his parents.”


The cheap son of a bitch works for the Central Bank, drives a new Nissan, is always buying new mobile phones and bragging about how much this cost, and how much that cost.

“If he really loved you, he’d rent an apartment and you’d live together!”

Anton stalked out of the room.

I also lit into Yegor for pouting for two days without saying anything and reminding him about how when we first met he had said how he loved to snuggle and now he was refusing to even sleep with me.

I was ready to tell him to move on too.

Fortunately, I didn’t.


What he had been so upset about, Yegor said, was that he had read Vanya’s e-mail – not intentionally, but he sat down at the computer and it was on the screen. Plain view doctrine.

Can’t argue with that.

“Vanya had no right to say you should get rid of me because I’d cause you problems,” Yegor said.

Oops!

No wonder he was pissed, preoccupied, worried, upset. For two days he hadn’t been able to think of anything except that maybe I was going to throw him out. Poor little guy!

Okay, so how come you first told me how much you love to snuggle and now you won’t even sleep with me? He had begun to complain that the single bed we shared was too narrow and uncomfortable. Okay. So I had begun sleeping on Misha’s bed because Misha was always sleeping somewhere else.

When Yegor’s friend Andrei had been here on Thursday night to play on the Internet all night, I had asked Yegor specifically to sleep with me on Misha’s bed in the living room. He had promised he would. He hadn’t. Why?

“I was afraid Misha would come home, and there would be another scene if he found out I’d been sleeping in his bed.”

Okay, that’s reasonable.

My anger with Yegor was fading fast.

We began talking normally, then lovingly.

When it came time to go to sleep, we slept together on Misha’s bed and had exhilarating sex.

Today has been a wonderfully loving day.


I talked to Anton this morning to reiterate that I meant what I said last night: He needs to find another place.

“If I’d have known that, I wouldn’t have bought the computer.”

“It’s paid for, isn’t it?”

“I owe Vikki 0. And how can I afford to rent an apartment?”

“How much will it cost?”

“0-0.”

Maybe I can loan you the money.

“How can I repay it when I’m only making 0 a month?”

“Okay, I’ll give you the 0-0.

“Misha will be gone a month, and I’d like for you to be in your own apartment when he gets back.”

He nodded glumly.

Yegor and I snuggled a long time this afternoon and talked. I reminded him of the poem I wrote right after we had met. I will not let him go, I had declared.

“I love you,” I said. “I will not let you go.”

“I love you, too.” He replied. “And I know one thing. No one has as wonderful a relationship as ours.” He was serious.

But he said he was concerned after yesterday that I would some day in a bad mood throw him out.

I explained why I had been in a bad mood: “I told you when I met you, if you are the person I think you are, we’ll be together forever. When you were pouting and angry for two days I thought I had been mistaken. You were not the person I had thought you were, and the real you was beginning to slip out. I thought I’d made a terrible mistake. But I haven’t made a mistake. You are the person I thought you were. I will never throw you out.

“We’re both very lucky to have found each other.”

He asked for 200 rubles – about – to go to the baths with his friend Andrei.


After they had left, Anton again brought up the events of last night.

“Yegor was angry; you were angry; I wasn’t angry,” he said. “I was in a good mood.” His antics with the phone were his idea of a way to cheer me up. He didn’t know how intensely I hate practical jokes, and I told him that I didn’t know he was trying to cheer me up, I thought he was just trying to laugh at me.

“I was. But I only laugh at people I like. Do you think if I didn’t like you and respect you I would play practical jokes on you?” I felt like the guy in the joke college roommate George Crutchfield used to tell about the man who was tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

“If it weren’t for the honor, I’d just as soon walk.” I thanked Anton for his efforts but reiterated: I really hate practical jokes. He still has to go.


The whirlwind of the last 24 hours has made one thing clear to me: Yegor is the most important person in the world to me. I dearly love Misha – as a family member. But I adore Yegor.

If Misha continues to insist that nobody can live here but us, I’m afraid we’re back to Square One.

Yegor is more important to me than Misha; more important even than Ann Landers.

I will not let him go.

There! I’ve professed my love for him in front of the whole world. I’ve just written “I love you” in mile high letters across the sky.

Dear god, please don’t let the plane crash!


This day years ago:
2003-10-12: Chapt. #12 - “Hi, My name’s Cliff; drop over sometime”