Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 171 - 2692 words
Columns :: My steel resolve crumbles; mercy clobbers justice

MOSCOW, October 23, 2005 -- Comments:   Ratings:
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I promise to bail Zhorik out of the Army
But change my mind.
Twice.
Peter fantasy continues in Andy Warhol setting
Russia facing another meltdown?
It’s still an undeveloped country
I won’t become Vlad’s American uncle



MOSCOW, October 23, 2005 -- I stood strong, resolute, unyielding this week – for several seconds!

In our bench session Monday night, I asked Zhorik how much he would need when he went back home to be inducted, after again reminding him that I had nowhere near the $ 3,000 he would need to bribe the head of the Army induction office (I discovered that Andrei’s bribe five years ago was only $ 700 – inflation and greed have taken their toll!).

“How much do you have?” he countered.

The question caught me off guard.

“A thousand, maybe $ 1500.”

“Anya (his sister, whose husband Dima, I found out, stole Sergei ’s slots casino biz) might be able to give me the other $ 1500.”

“That would be appropriate,” I said, “since Dima stole it from Sergei. Call her; if she agrees to give you $ 1500, I will give you the other half.”

“Then I can bribe my way out of the Army, come back and get a job and go to school, and we can live together.”

“What will be our relationship?” I asked.

“Like a grandfather,” he replied. “I can’t love you any other way.”

Fuck! Strike that! Even worse -- no fuck!

I said nothing as we walked back toward the house, beginning to shiver from the autumn temperature that was descending in inverse proportion to my stress level.


That night and the next day I was preoccupied and angry about what a patsy I was being.

In my one-on-one with Roman at McK. that morning, we had talked about romantic relationships. Roman is a brilliant, good-looking – but not sexy – upper-20s guy with some physical problems that he has managed to overcome. First of all, he’s very small – probably no more than 5 ft. tall (meaning, based on my experience with the twins, that he probably has a big dick). He had to buy his new winter jacket in a children’s store.

He also was born with profound hearing loss that he’s overcome with lip-reading and a $ 2,000 hearing aid. He’s now made his way into the middle class – a car, a good income, nice apartment, and is spending $ 15,000 on his wedding in December.

Our lesson featured one of Oscar Wilde’s glib bon mots:

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, that is his.

“What do you think he meant by that?” I asked. Roman fumbled around, but came up with something inconsequential about careers that made no sense to me.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think it means that women get into a role of trying to be exactly like their mothers – too much like their mothers; but men are cast in a role of having to be tough, macho, the warrior, unemotional, hard – but should be more like their mothers – softer, kinder, more gentle.”

As we were getting on the elevator after the class, Roman looked at me: “I think you are you are very empathetic.”

I was taken aback! He just said my favorite word!

“Yes,” I sputtered. “I probably got it from my mother -- remember Oscar Wilde! My mother was very empathetic.” I paused. “You must be a very sensitive person to notice it.”

“My fiancee’s a psychologist, and I’ve started analyzing people that I meet.”

So I’m empathetic. I still couldn’t get my mind off the unfairness of what Zhorik was asking me to do, and empathy was not coming easy.

Yes, I had $ 1500, but nothing more – not even for groceries, much less any emergency that might arise – like having to buy a new ink cartridge today for my photocopier!

And what about buying my ticket to Bangkok; and what about my early-November mini-vacation of debauchery with my Nizhny Novgorod joy boys?


Besides, the advice from my Red Queen family kept ringing in my ears: “Maybe Zhorik would benefit from the army,” reader Jeremy had written. “He needs to learn about the value of true friendship.”

And “Zhorik should go in the Army,” Dan Schramm had bluntly advised. “The Russian army will teach him what a real pussy he is…. If he had any guts or any honor he wouldn’t ask you to buy him out of it. That boy should be sucking your cock.”

And for what would I be sacrificing? So that I could grandfatherly pat him on the head, in the meantime forking out bucksi for clothes, booze, phone cards, travel, and whatever, locked away from him by his newly-fitted chastity belt – removed only when he wants to fuck the floozy across the hall.

So when my last student left at 9:45 that night, I asked Zhorik if he wanted to take a walk.

When we were finally settled, I dumped it on him: “Honey, I can’t give you $ 1500.”

He looked up, troubled and upset.

“I have $ 1500,” I continued, “but barely $ 1500. If I give it to you, I have nothing left – not even for groceries; not even to give you for traveling money; not even to give you for your bus fare back!”

He said nothing.

Seeing his despair, I began to relent: Maybe I could buy my Thai ticket in November. “Do you think Anya could come up with another $ 500 – so I’d at least have something left?”

“No, I don’t think so. Maybe Andrei has a friend he could borrow $ 500 from,” he added.

I remembered Tolya and his aborted promise to lend Andrei $ 5,000 back in July (Chapt. 143). “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Actually, it would be better if he could borrow the full $ 1500 and I could pay him back next month.”

But when we broached the subject with Andrei upon our return, he said Sergei had beaten us to Tolya, and had already borrowed $ 400. No go.

Andrei was angry. “Actually, Zhorik wants to go to the Army,” he said sarcastically. “And maybe I’ll go with him and join, too; and maybe we can find Sergei and we can all three join the same unit. That would be lots of fun.”

I went to bed, more annoyed than ever. When I woke up sometime in the middle of the night, Andrei was watching TV; Zhorik was on the bed beside me, fully clothed; and Igor was pecking on my computer. I asked Andrei to turn the TV down. He did, but not enough. I still couldn’t sleep.

“What are you doing?” I asked Yegor.

“Anton’s using his computer, and I’m on the Internet. Is it bothering you?”

“No, that’s bothering me,” I said, pointing to the TV; and before I could add, “maybe if you’d get off the computer, Andrei would play games on it and turn off the TV,” Andrei leapt from his chair, pounded the TV with his fists, then stormed out of the room, and I could hear him banging and storming in the kitchen.

Oh, Christ, is this a replay of the Sergei scene two weeks ago? I followed Andrei into the kitchen.

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

“I’ve got a terrible headache.”

“Well, I’m sure pounding on the TV and the table really helps a lot.”

I went back to bed and a couple of minutes later the light came on again. I took my arms from around Zhorik and looked to see what Andrei was doing.

“Don’t worry,” he huffed. I’m not taking anything of yours.” He held up his passport and some other documents.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, puzzled.

“See? It’s my passport.”

“What are you talking about?” I repeated.

He stalked out of the room.

Zhorik got up and joined him in the kitchen.

When I got up for my 8:00 class, Andrei was asleep in the bathtub and Zhorik was in the kitchen with his head on the table. I touched him on the shoulder. He stumbled back into the bed I had just left, obviously sad and depressed.


For the next hour and a half, I wrestled with reality: Yes, Zhorik is taking advantage of me. But he really does love me very much – even if only like a grandfather. He’s gentle and kind. Russia is waging a vicious and cruel war in Chechnya. Russian soldiers are being killed there every day, though the attacks and ambushes are hushed by the Kremlin-controlled press.

Every day legless veterans cruise the metro cars on their wheeled platforms, begging for a few rubles. Could I live with myself if he came back with an arm or two, or a leg or two – or maybe all four – missing? Or didn’t come back at all? Could I ever sleep again knowing that $ 1500 which I had but wouldn’t give him could have prevented the unspeakable?

No, I couldn’t.

Justice and mercy had just waged a fierce battle, and mercy had won out by a nose!

When I got back at 9:30 I woke Zhorik. “Listen, honey, I can give you the $ 1500. It will leave me with nothing, but maybe I can borrow some money from Yegor if I need it. Do you want to buy your ticket now?”

The adrenalin quickly dispelled his grogginess, and he was wide awake and happy. He kissed me on the lips.

We chatted and walked together to the supermarket to get the first $ 500 out of the ATM machine. We would get the rest tomorrow.

I saw him to the cross-country Stavropol bus late Thursday afternoon. Andrei called him last night in Svetlograd. He was in the middle of a going-to-the-army party thrown by four of his classmates who are leaving next week. He would have been the fifth.

He will go to the “war office” on Monday and will find out Tuesday if the bribe worked. If so, he plans to come back on Nov. 1.

In the meantime, he got some good news: The same day I told him I could give him the 1500 bucksi, he got a call from a local judge’s office asking him to show up for a job interview for “secretary to the judge” on Nov. 1.

So if everything works out, maybe I won’t be forking out bucksi all winter after all. The chastity belt, we’ll work on.


My Peter fantasy creeps apace, but at least it still creeps. I was a few minutes late for the Institute of Diplomcacy class Wednesday evening, giving Peter an excuse to call me. He seemed very glad to see me when I showed up three minutes later.

After the class, he again dawdled until everyone else had left, and he and I strolled together to the Kropotkinskaya Metro Station, often letting our hands touch.

Just before the lesson, he had been to a near-by exhibition of post-revolutionary photographs. “I’d like very much to see it,” I said.

“Would you like to see the Andy Warhol exhibition?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“So would I.”

“What are you doing Sunday?” I asked.

“Well, actually, it isn’t far from our Saturday class. Maybe we could go after the lesson?”

“Great! Let’s do it.”


So after yesterday’s lesson at Park Kultury, we walked across the Moscow River Bridge to the House of Artists, where the Andy Warhol and Russian pop-art exhibitions were being housed.

His father is a Russian Customs agent working in Minsk, Belarus, who tries to come home every weekend. Peter is an only child who seems very devoted to his father – and mother. We couldn’t have dinner after the exhibition because he wanted to spend the evening with his father, since he’s home only two nights a week.

Peter is artistic and sensitive, and dresses very stylishly, though “I don’t follow fashion. I buy what I like.”

In the gallery, we walked very close, frequently touching. Our hands often brushed together. He showed no reaction when, in the Russian pop exhibition, we came across a woman with white stuff spattering her lips and a long reddish rod hovering above her lips.

“Is that what I think it is?” I asked. He didn’t reply. “It looks like she’s having oral sex.”

“Yes,” he replied without a noticeable reaction.

He also showed no reaction when, in the Warhol exhibition, we came across a picture of a naked black dude embracing a naked white guy from behind.

It was obvious that we both enjoyed it immensely – though whether it was each other or the exhibition that we enjoyed the most wasn’t entirely clear. For me – and I hope for him – it was the former.

As we left, he mentioned how much he had enjoyed it. “I really enjoy things like this, too,” I replied; “but I never have anybody to go with.”

“Maybe on a Sunday we could meet and just have some beer and maybe something to eat,” he suggested.

“I’d like that very much,” I quickly assured him.

Clearly a relationship has been launched. Where it will lead, I can only fantasize; but I think it opens a joyful new chapter in my life


Cute little Andrei, one of Peter’s classmates, told the class that a friend of his father’s owns a couple of small banks in Moscow, and that two of the bank’s economists – one a Russian and one a German – had concluded on the basis of their research that within five years Russia will undergo another economic crisis even more devastating than the crisis of ’98.

So maybe Putin and the Bushmaster can nudge their once-mighty steeds over the cliff to economic oblivion together. What could be more fitting than an internationally enacted morality play dramatically portraying the inescapable wages of evil?

But that would be too easy.


Transparency International, the non-profit international organization with which another of my Inst. of Diplomacy students, Stass, is associated, came out last week with a new report showing that in the two years since Pres. Putin announced an onslaught against corruption, corruption has actually significantly increased.

Russia is now 126th down the list – on about the same level of corruption as Niger and Sierra Leone. While corruption in Russia and Belarus -- the former Russian state led by dictator Lushenko – has persistenty increased, corruption has dropped precipitously in other former Russian states – particularly in Ukraine and Estonia – which are making substantial strides toward a democratic government.


Russia continues to be a developing nation, declares the UN in a newly released report on Russia’s standing on the Human Development Index (HDI). Only two Russian regions – Moscow and the oil-rich Siberian state of Tyumen – qualify as “developed.”

Russia and sub-Saharan Africa are the only two regions in the world where life expectancy is declining, the UN’s Human Development Report notes, and Russian men seem hell-bent on killing themselves by suicide, alcohol, and cigarettes (Chapt. 162). 50,000 Russian men die yearly from alcoholic poisoning alone.

The gender gap continues undiminished. Although women are better educated than men, they are kept at lower professional levels and paid one-third less than men for equal work. Women account for less than 10% of the Russian duma – the same level as Cambodia!

But far and away the biggest problem, Transparency International warned, is the distrust between government and business and government and citizens. It bears an “extremely destructive character,” notes the report.

Sadly enough, there are no visible signs that Putin’s government is taking serious steps to mitigate any of these problems. No Russian that I’ve talked to expresses even a ray of hope that things might change for the better during their lifetime.

Russia remains a bleak prospect.


Vlad has found an alternative for learning Chinese. He doesn’t have to become my nephew after all. He’s hired as a private teacher a Chinese student who also speaks Russian and English.

He was dismayed to learn about Sergei’s betrayal and to find that I haven’t had sex with Andrei for nearly a month. And of course none with Zhorik.

“The twins have been an expensive toy,” he observed somberly.

Is Confucian wisdom setting in already?