MOSCOW, August 30, 2005 -- Russians’ biggest worry is money, according to a poll released last week. In the survey, in which respondents could choose more than one problem, 51% said their biggest concern was inflation; 44% said poverty and low wages; 34% said unemployment.
Further down the list were crime, drugs, weak government, corruption, pollution, and housing problems. Terrorism was a low 7th. Energy – which would have ranked high in the West -- wasn’t even one of the questions.
So what’s the big deal? Whose biggest worry isn’t money?
But for most Russians, it’s more than just a worry. It’s survival: The average monthly wage here is $ 300. One-fourth of the population lives below the poverty line. And everyone suffers the effects of the double-digit inflation that has prevailed since the fall of the communist regime.
As a stupid example, three or four years ago I used to buy a large Snicker’s bar for 14 rubles – less than 50 cents. Now they’re 20 rubles, about 70 cents. Prices went up by 11.7 percent last year, and the current rate of inflation is estimated at 11 percent or more.
Even in Moscow, pensioners, school teachers, medical workers, and university professors – once considered solidly in the middle class – still earn only about $ 100 a month in a city where middle class is now defined by a monthly income of $ 2,000 or so! Adding to their poverty is the relentless reality of inflation gnawing into what little they have.
It takes food out of their mouths, feeds their dissatisfaction, and stokes Tsar Putin’s fears that if the people were permitted to make a real choice in the next presidential election, it wouldn’t be him.
My hands-off policy toward Zhorik lasted two days at least. But Saturday night – actually Sunday morning when he came to bed after being on the computer all night – I couldn’t resist copping a feel. One thing led to another and before you could say Jack Robinson I had prevented some more prostate cancer – my first orgasm in a couple of weeks. He slept through it.
Yesterday morning in a repeat performance I actually got his rock-hard dick out of his shorts and into my mouth. My hand was just filling with gism when he awoke to find his unadorned boner winking at him.
He snorted and rolled over on his stomach.
Ugh-oh!
I guess my secret’s out: I’m not to be trusted around a stiff cock.
I didn’t know what to expect when I came back from my afternoon lesson at British Forum. Cold shoulder? Hostile glares? Snippish replies?
None of the above. He couldn’t have been sweeter. After my student Masha left at 8:30 and I had some rubles in my pocket, I suggested that we stroll to the Perekrestok super market about three blocks away and pick up a few things.
That’s become sort of a nightly routine for us. As usual, we picked up a beer and a cocktail on the way back for an intimate “bench” session in the courtyard.
As we chatted, I could detect nothing negative in his behavior or his attitude toward me. Most of his conversation was about his frustration and disappointment that – because Sergei took my $ 1200 to pay for his phony documents -- we have no money for Zhorik to go to Peter for a booze reunion with his last year’s classmates.
I went to bed about midnight, and woke up about 1 a.m. as he was coming to bed. I asked him if he’d like a massage. Uh-huh. So I gave him the usual, and in a few minutes I was astounded when he rolled toward me and put his arm around me and began massaging my back. So there we lay with our arms around each other gently massaging each other.
This was not the picture of angry recrimination!
My other hand was resting on his ass. When I’ve patted his ass before, he has turned huffy and asked me not to do that. This time he made no objection. He turned on his back and I began massaging his stomach, with my other hand resting on his inner thigh while Sergei sat at the computer with his back to us.
Zhorik was so warm and accepting – and awake! I decided to give it a try. I moved my massaging hand to his dick. He didn’t pull away. I began massaging. He giggled. I continued, and soon he had a raging hard on and was erecting. I made a move toward slipping my hand under his shorts, but he removed my hand and I went back to manipulating his dick through his shorts.
“This is fun,” I said.
“Yes, it’s fun,” he agreed, smiling.
I continued, not daring to believe what I was experiencing. Through his shorts I put my hand fully around his dick in the jerking position.
Do you want to come?” I asked.
“Huh-uh,” he said, adding something in Russian that I wasn’t sure I understood. “I’m going to have a smoke.”
After giving my own boner a chance to reluctantly subside, I followed him into the kitchen with the English-Russian dictionary. “I’m not sure what you said,” and tried to repeat it. He corrected me.
I found it: “I’m not aroused; I’m not turned on.”
That’s funny. When I have a hard on and am repeatedly erecting in response to somebody’s hand, I’m usually turned on.
Maybe he meant that he wasn’t at the point of orgasm. Maybe he needed some straight porn as a booster.
“That was a one-time event,” he said, interrupting my fantasy.
“Why, didn’t you think it was fun?”
“Well, maybe.”
At that, I kissed him goodnight and went back to bed.
This is real progress! From “don’t touch me,” to “this is fun,” even if he does think it was a one-act play. I think when Sergei leaves, I’ll somehow make it appropriate to turn on some straight porn and re-enact the scene.
A couple of nights ago, he said, “I want to write a book.”
“Really? What about?”
“About living with gays. It’s not what I thought.”
“Have you changed your mind about gays?”
“Yes.”
“So you feel differently than you did a year ago.”
“Yes.”
He’ll never be gay, but with continued coaxing, I think he’ll make it to the “bi-“ column.
So I have a new mission in life. But is that really new? Naah, it’s just fueled with more optimism.
The average life span of the Russian male has dropped again – to 58.8 years, the lowest in Europe and 5 years less than when the Soviet Union collapsed. So if I were Russian, I’d be dead now.
What’s been killing Russians since the USSR collapsed is one of the great medical mysteries of recent times. Various teams of demographers and researchers have long been attempting to find the answer.
They’ve explored several candidates: One, of course, is smoking. 60 percent of Russian men smoke like chimneys, and there are no legal limits to tar or nicotine. My natve vow when I first came here, to have a non-smoking apartment didn’t last long.
Smoking is their god-given imperative, and is as accepted and expected as it was in America in the ‘40s, when actor Ronald Reagan used to advertise Chesterfield cigarettes and “more doctors were recommending Camels than any other cigarette.”
Even so, the rate of lung cancer here is only slightly higher than in America, where only 25% of American men smoke. Of course, smoking also affects the heart, vascular system, and other organs. But the fall of communism didn’t presage any change in smoking patterns, so smoking – despite its deleterious health effects – couldn’t account for the sudden spike in Russian death rates – especially for males in their 40s and 50s.
Higher pollution, while an obvious health hazard, was also ruled out as a cause for the increase in deaths, as was quality of health care, which --while abysmal – still couldn’t account for the sudden increase in morbidity.
Ubiquitous vodka, though unquestionably a killer, also couldn’t explain the sudden increase in middle-age deaths. Russians consume 60% more alcohol than their European counterparts and drink destructively – binge drinking, straight vodka a bottle at a time. Still, no significant change in drinking patterns accompanied the fall of the USSR.
So what’s left?
The shock of losing everything, including the status associated with their job, has emerged as the most likely culprit.
Suddenly millions of middle-aged, “middle-class” men found themselves virtually starving, their jobs gone and their pensions devoured by inflation. They had to face the shame of ravaging through trash and garbage in search of beer bottles they could sell for a ruble apiece to try to stay alive.
Poverty, unemployment, and homelessness had been non-existent in the Soviet Union, and the combined shock of the political and economic upending of their world and the abject and ignominious poverty into which they were suddenly thrust was more than they could cope with.
For many, the stress was simply unbearable. And men in their 40s and 50s began dying in unprecedented numbers for no apparent health reason.
Researchers have concluded that virtually an entire Russian generation is dying of hopelessness and despair – much like what happens to many elderly who decide life simply isn’t worth living any more.
This legacy continues; for millions nothing remains but despair. They have lost everything – jobs, homes, money, pride, self-respect – and hope. The government ignores them and their plight.
A lesson for America? Will this pattern of inexplicable mortality replicate itself in the shock, despair, and hopelessness that will overwhelm America when millions have lost their jobs to the energy crisis; their mortaged homes to the housing bubble; and their investments and pensions to the financial and economic crash that seems inevitable?
There’s one big difference: The Russian society wasn’t saturated with guns. Frustrated Russian fathers and breadwinners couldn’t take out their frustration and anger and despair on anybody but themselves.
One contributor to the EnergyResource web site had this comment recently:
An American contributor replied:
If that’s the answer, I’m a lucky SOB. I’ve got a big head start.
The icon of Saint George, patron saint of Moscow and England, drew thousands of true believers a couple of week ago who stood for up to five hours in the hot August sun at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior at Kropotkinskaya Metro Station for a chance to touch or kiss it.
Why? I asked cute little Kostya at Masha’s law firm this afternoon.
He explained to me that these holy icons, these little pieces of gold-decorated painted wood, are actually saintly transubstantiations. So when you kiss the icon, you’re really playing smacky mouth with the saint himself.
“But why would they want to do that?”
He grew very serious: “Sometimes they heal people or help them in other ways. These icons are really the saints. Sometimes they cry real tears.”
Ugh-oh. I hadn’t realized Kostya was a true believer.
There goes that fantasy.
