MOSCOW, October 30, 2005 -- I won’t be going to Thailand for New Year’s! Hong Kong Harry is going to be attending some sort of educational conference in Philly to try to line up his next job after retirement from his HK professorship next year.
The good news is maybe I will go during next March’s school term holiday.
Harry’s five-day visit, which ended yesterday, did bring an unexpected bonus, however: I met his Alyosha replacement, Alex, who is rather cute and seemed quite receptive to the idea of a relationship with me.
The last thing he said when we parted at TGI Friday’s Friday night was, “I’ll be waiting for your call.”
Alex is so blond he’s almost albino, and Harry’s one complaint about him – that he is “too skinny” – almost tripped my peter meter even before I ever saw him. Nothing is sexier than a long stiff uncut cock projecting from a lithe, smooth body that is scarcely bigger around than the cock itself.
I can only fantasize about his skinny hairless body and his pretty little blond-haired piska waving at me from the sheets.
One big problem at the moment: When and where?
Things with Andrei had gotten just about as bad as they could get. When I woke up at 3:30 yesterday morning, he was on the computer – silent except for the inevitable whirr, but still a presence. I couldn’t get back to sleep. My Saturday teaching schedule would start at 9:30 and would continue without a break till 5:30 yesterday afternoon. I had to get some sleep.
Aha! Since I couldn’t sleep, I could at least use that time to finish editing the first two articles for the next issue of Golf! Yeah, I could if Andrei weren’t sitting on the keyboard. No, I won’t rag him. I’m always ragging: Can you turn that music down, can you turn off the TV, can you turn off the sound on the computer….
Yes, I have a perfect right to, but remember! I’m empathetic. How must he feel when everything he does annoys me. He can’t do anything without my bitching at him.
Why doesn’t he go back to Stavropol if life with me is so miserable? Several times I have tried to talk to him: What kind of a relationship do we have? We don’t have sex; we barely speak to each other; when he does talk, it’s loaded with sarcasm; this is a dead end.
But how can skinny blond Alex and I have a relationship in this zoo? Anton and Igor in the other room; Andrei, Zhorik, and I in this one; how can I ever get a chance to see if his cock is as beautiful as I think it is?
“Andrei,” I said between tossing and turning on the bed.
“Da,” he replied, not looking up from his computer game.
“I’m going to start looking for a new boyfriend, and if I bring someone home, I want to have sex with him in this room, just the two of us alone.”
“Where will I sleep?”
“You’ve been sleeping in the kitchen, you can sleep there; or if Igor isn’t here, you can sleep in his bed, or put a mattress down in their bedroom.”
He didn’t reply.
A few minutes later, about 5:30, he turned off the computer and went to the kitchen – to sleep?
So I hopped on the keyboard and finished my editing in half an hour or so. 6:00. I could still sleep for 3 hours before I had to get up for my first class. Yes, I could if it weren’t for the raspy, harsh, obnoxious voice of the “chanson” singer coming from the tape player in the kitchen.
“Chanson,” the lilting, lovely French appellation for “song,” means something quite different in Russia. Here, it’s the name attached to the genre called prison songs – the sad, bitter chronicles of life in an unspeakable Soviet prison or the cruel battlefield of war. It’s Russian reality and it’s not pretty – especially if you’re desperately trying to grab a couple hours’ sleep.
In resignation, I got up and went to the kitchen to fix my oatmeal. Andrei and I barely spoke. He quickly resumed his seat at the computer and I finished my breakfast.
I could still catch some Z’s. That is, if Andrei hadn’t turned on the sound of his war game.
“Andrei, I’ve been awake since 3:30. I have a full day today. I’ve got to get some sleep. Would you turn the sound off?”
He obliged without replying, and Morpheus was kind at last. I woke up at 9:00 – just in time to get ready for 18-year-old Zhenya at 9:30.
My fantasy Peter (Peter fantasy?) was the first one there for yesterday’s 2:30 lesson at the Institute of Diplomacy. I was trying to figure out an excuse to spend some time with him after the lesson when my mobile phone rang: Andrei.
“Dane, what time are you coming home?”
“About 7:00.”
“Would you bring a bottle of red wine, and I’ll fix chicken and we’ll have a nice supper and talk.”
O-o-o-o-kay! He voice sounded chipper and upbeat like the old Andrei.
After class I had to return the tape player to the administrative office and turn in my hours for October so I will get paid. As I left the building, I searched for Peter, hoping he had found an excuse to hang around and wait for me.
No Peter!
I was disappointed, but realized it was my fault because I hadn’t given any hint that I wanted him to stick around.
When I got home, the fried chicken and mashed potatoes were ready. Andrei opened the wine and I fetched the wine glasses.
“I’m in a much better mood,” Andrei bubbled.
“Why?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just am.”
Just as we were sitting down for our “supper and talk,” Yegor showed up in the kitchen. And stayed. And stayed.
I could see Andrei’s good mood darkening. As he left the kitchen, I took his hand. He shook it loose and left.
So much for my fantasy that maybe things were changing!
I decided to call Alex, my Hong Kong Harry second-hand PNB (potential new boyfriend). Some Russian babushka answered. “You have the wrong number.”
Fortunately, I still had the Moscow Times on which he had written his number. Whoops! I had misread a “3” for a “5.” I called again. No answer.
Okay, I’ll call Peter to apologize for not rendezvousing with him this afternoon. “I was planning to walk with you to Oktyabrskaya Metro Station, but I missed you,” I explained when he answered his mobile.
“I waited for you at the entrance for about 10 minutes,” he replied. He had waited for me. We had somehow missed each other.
“Are you at home now?” I asked.
“No, I’m with friends at the Albion English pub at the Manezh near Red Square. Where are you?”
“I’m at home now.”
“Well, that’s not far away. If you can, why don’t you come join us. If you get here and can’t find the place, call me and I’ll meet you.”
He clearly was as eager as I to spend time together!
I went into the bedroom where Andrei was glumly watching TV. “I’m going to meet a student. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
I found the pub with no problem, and Peter met me at the door. He had been watching for me! He was with his friends Yegor and Yegor’s girlfriend Sveta, and Igor, his best buddy since age five.
Neither of the guys was very cute. We got around to ages. I had assumed that Peter was 23 or 24. “How old are you?” I finally asked.
“Eighteen.”
Eighteen! Holy hemorrhoids! He’s still a child! The same age as Zhorik!
“I’m sorry my girlfriend, Sasha, couldn’t come.” Girlfriend? I’ll scratch her eyes out! “She’s visiting with her brother.”
He and Sasha had been school friends when suddenly at high school graduation a year and a half ago they decided they should become boy/girl friends and fall in love.
Uh-huh. I thought of my own h.s. graduation. “Now that I’m not a kid anymore, I must find a girlfriend.” And I did, and played smacky mouth and buried her Buick bumpers in my chest till my balls ached. But that didn’t keep me from being queer.
Peter told them about our class. We chatted and they asked me lots of questions in Russian, which Peter translated: “How did you become such good friends?” asked Igor.
“I don’t really know. Chemistry, I guess,” I smiled. He translated.
“That happens sometimes in Russia,” they replied.
Peter and I were sitting side-by-side on a tattered old naugahyde-covered couch, our legs pushed as close against each other as they could get. I bought beers for Peter and Igor, the only ones drinking.
“I was very sorry when I missed you this afternoon,” I said.
“I too,” he answered. “Incidentally, I noticed on the Internet that you like classical music,” he continued. The Internet! That means he went to the trouble of finding my profile on the Institute of Diplomacy web site to find out more about me! This is no casual happenstance!
When we were ready to leave, Peter announced he would accompany me to Belarusskaya Station! Yegor and Sveta would go on to Vodnoi Stadion several stations north to do what boys and girls do on cold October nights in Russia. Yegor would go home.
As Peter and I left the metro car at Belarusskaya, I spotted an obviously gay prostitute. He also spotted us, touched Peter on the sleeve as he passed, and gave him a knowing smile and little wave.
Peter’s face reddened. “I thought maybe it was somebody I knew. But I don’t know him. Maybe it’s somebody I went to school with a long time ago.”
He added: “Those kinds of things happen at Kitai Gorod.” He knows about Kitai Gorod, the most notorious gay cruising spot in Moscow?
As he and I exited the station, I pointed out my building “Do you have time for another beer?”
“I’d like to, but I need to be home by midnight. My parents will worry if I’m not.”
He bought a pack of Kents and headed back toward the metro entrance. Our hands held and squeezed tightly as we said goodby. “Thank you very, very much,” he smiled.
“Thank you!” I replied wistfully. I’ll see you Wednesday night.”
Something out of the ordinary is happening here!
Andrei was asleep when I got home. And I was not far behind. After wine, beer, and a “Street” vodka-filbert cocktail, I slept soundly for a full eight hours! The first good night’s sleep I’ve had in a week.
When I strolled into the kitchen this morning to make a cup of coffee. Andrei was there, beaming.
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“I slept really well,” I replied, “the best I have in a long time.”
“Me too,” he said. “After you left I opened the other bottle of wine and drank it all. I was very, very drunk.”
“Yes, you were asleep when I got home.”
“Dane,” he said. “I was in a really good mood last night. I fixed supper, and you brought the wine, and I wanted to have a nice supper with you and talk, and then Yegor came in. I think he did it on purpose.”
“Honey, I don’t think he did it on purpose. All you’d have had to say was, ‘Yegor, we want to talk alone,’ and he would have left. But anyway, let’s talk now.”
In the vintage exuberant – even excited -- tone of voice which made him so endearing a year and three months ago, he launched into a dialog.
“Dane, when you said you were going to look for a new boyfriend yesterday, it upset me. You know I haven’t been very communicative, but I’ve had a lot of problems.”
“I know you have, but we could still talk.”
“Listen, Dane, you know we haven’t had sex for a long time.”
“Yes.”
“And you think it’s because I don’t love you anymore. But Dane, you’re 72 years old, and I want you to live to be 100.” He whipped out his monster cock and showed me the tiny lesion on the head.
“You remember when Sergei, Zhorik and I ‘went for a walk’?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Sergei and I fucked this girl. I didn’t have a condom. And she had herpes! I didn’t want to give it to you, so I refused to have sex with you.”
“Zhorik didn’t fuck her?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you use a rubber?”
“I didn’t have one. I got a hard on and just wanted to fuck her.”
Ah, the age-old story. Like all the rest of us, led through life by his insatiable cock.
“Well, I appreciate the fact that you didn’t want to infect me, honey; but why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to tell you. I was ashamed. My life is such a mess. I’m sad and angry at Sergei. He stole things from me, too. He stole the money that I needed to be successful in my truck business. I’ve cried about him a lot. But it’s a sickness. He can’t help it. He said it’s better if he and I live apart. Maybe he can get over it if he’s living by himself.
“And then Natasha is pregnant with my baby in Stavropol.
“And now this! I have work waiting for me in Stavropol. But do you know why I can’t go back? Because she would want to have sex, and I can’t have sex with her until this is healed, and I can’t tell her why I can’t have sex. So everything in my life is a disaster right now.”
“Honey,” I said, hugging and kissing him. “I understand that. But why didn’t you just tell me? What I know about, I can understand. It’s when I don’t know about something that problems start.
“You know that the truth is never as terrible as what we imagine when we don’t know it.
“I was sure you didn’t love me and didn’t respect me.”
“I do love you, Dane, very, very much, and I respect you completely,” he replied.
There was a pause: “Are you still going to try to find another boyfriend?”
“Honey, I may try to find someone to have sex with sometimes, but I won’t look for another boyfriend.”
“You know what, Dane? I know that you’re very sad because Zhorik doesn’t want to have sex. But I’ll have a talk with him when he gets back. I’ll explain to him.”
“Honey, I just want to play with his cock. If he doesn’t want me to suck it, I won’t.”
“I’ll talk with him.”
“You know that I love Zhorik very much,” I added.
“Yes, I know. And to tell the truth, sometimes I’m jealous,” he said. “I was jealous of Sergei, and I’m jealous of Zhorik. Do you think I’d be jealous if I didn’t love you?”
So, like the ending of a bad novel, everything is suddenly clear.
We’ve hugged and kissed a lot this morning.
A few days ago, Yegor gave me another lecture about Andrei’s shabby treatment of me. “You should get rid of him. He doesn’t love you.”
“You shouldn’t be so judgmental,” I replied. “He has lots of problems,” even before I knew about this latest one.
“Everybody has problems. His can’t be worse than anybody else’s.”
“How do you know that? You don’t even know what they are!”
“I see how he treats you. He doesn’t love you, and he doesn’t respect you. You deserve better than him.”
“Judge not,” I replied, pulling out my secret weapon – Bible verses for this ex-Christian ex-lover – “for with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.”
He shook his head: “I am seriously amazed at your patience.”
This happy ending is precisely why I try – too often unsuccessfully -- to preserve it. And I feel completely vindicated. Andrei is as sweet, as loving, as devoted as I was convinced he was a year ago.
“The only mistake I ever made was the time I thought I did.”
We’re having the first kiss of winter here – 12 degree (F) temperatures and a couple of inches of snow that got rained away before the mercury dropped again and froze everything.
Puts one in mind of Christmas. In fact, had an e-mail from Damion Hankejh a couple of nights ago bearing a profile of Bush’s Chief of Staff Karl Rove wishing everyone “Treason’s Greetings.”
So the prospect of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald bringing indictments against Rove and Veep Cheney’s Chief of Staff I-for-Irving Lewis Libby Jr. brings a spirit of Christmas I haven’t felt for a long time.
And yesterday morning, from Jack and Jackie Harvey came another satiric Xmas jingle reminiscent of some I used to write 20 years ago. So Jack and Jackie are still among the living, and political Christmas spoofery is still alive and well:
THE NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS
Twas the night before Fitzmas, and in the White House
Every one was scared shitless, and Bush was quite soused
The indictments were hanging like Damoceles' sword
As verminous oxen prepared to be gored
The perps were all sleepless, curled fetal in bed
While visions of prison cells loomed in each head
And Dick in his jammies, and George in his lap
Were sweating and swearing and looking like crap
When out on the web there arose such a clatter
The blogs and the forums were buzzing with chatter
Away to the PC Rove ran like a flash
He booted his browser and cleared out his cache
The rumors that flew through the cold autumn air
Made Dubya shiver with angry despair
When what to his horror-filled eyes did he spy?
A bespectacled man with a brown suit and tie!
With an impartial manner that gave Bush the shits
He knew in a moment it must be St. Fitz!
With unwavering voice, his indictments they came
He cleared out his throat and he called them by name:
Now Scooter, Now Libby,
Now Blossoming Turd,
Now Cheney, dear Cheney,
Yes, you are the third
To the bench of the court
Up the steps, down the hall
Now come along, come along,
Come along, all!
He then became silent, and went right to work
He filed the indictments and turned with a jerk
And pointing his finger at justice's scale
Said, "The people be served, and let fairness prevail."
He then left the room, to his team gave a nod
And the sound could be heard of a crumbling facade
And we all did exclaim, as he faded from sight
"Merry Fitzmas to all, and to all a good night!"
Something else these developments have brought is the realization that in increasingly fascist America even a Bushmaster Administration is still subject to the law.
There still remain depths to which we haven’t yet fallen. Still something worth salvaging!
This couldn’t happen in Putin’s Russia. Nobody upper echelon honcho gets charged with a crime without his specific nod. And Bush’s fury must be doubly anguished now because his ship is sinking before he got to bring it into the port of absolute dictatorship alongside that of soul-mate Putin.
Or am I speaking too soon?
After all, it ain’t over till it’s over. He still has 39 weeks to try to bring your future into my present.
But there is next year’s mid-term election and the tantalizing hope of a Democratically controlled House or Senate – or both – with impeachment proceeding against the Bushwhacker for the lies and treason he has wrought against my country.
This day years ago:
2003-10-30: Chapt. #20 - Volodya, Yegor, and Khodorkovsky
