Moscow, November 28, 2005 -- Why don’t they celebrate Thanksgiving Day in Russia? Sam Love has the answer: “I guess they don’t have guilt about displacing Indians.”
But they’ve got plenty of other ethnic crimes to feel guilty about – the Chechens, for instance. Or for that matter, Stalin’s starvation of tens of millions of their own and the Ukrainian people in 1932-33, a black day in Soviet history which the Ukrainians observed last week.
Anyway, I quietly celebrated not being in America with Zhorik and Sergei over filet of sole, spinach, cottage cheese, and a bottle of cheap Moldavian merlot.
Maybe more important than just another turkey day in America is that this is the day some have predicted will prove to be the moment oil peaked in the world – the day from which henceforward there will never be as much oil again as there is right now.
Prices will never be as low again.
And standards of living will never be as high.
So I hope you gave thanks for what you’ve enjoyed up to now.
Of course, whether the pundits were right or not can’t be verified for months – maybe years.
Anyway, it will be soon, and by the time it’s finally proved, we’ll be hurtin’ scooters.
The signs are rampant: Gasoline has gone through the roof; GM is flirting with bankruptcy, partially because people can no longer afford to drive their outdated gas hogs. A lot of Americans are expected to have to choose between food and heat over the next several months; and in Britain, where meteorologists say there’s a one-in-three chance that the winter will be a frigid ice box that occurs only once very 50 years, politicians worry that tens of thousands could freeze to death because there simply won’t be enough NG to keep their bodies at survival temp.
Running out of oil won’t be a sudden falling off the cliff. The racheting down will come slowly as prices steadily rise, people lose jobs and houses, and living standards steadily drop.
Americans will soon have to make choices they haven’t had to make since the depression: Do we go to the movies, get a new CD, buy a new pair of high heels, or eat?
This may prove to have been one of the last Thanksgivings that you’ll be able to afford tomatoes from Mexico, Brussels sprouts from Chile, and chestnuts from god knows where. The price of diesel and jet fuel may soon soar too high to continue sating your epicurean taste buds with imports from around the globe.
Today we may well have entered a new era. Remember it well so you can tell your grand-nephews and nieces how things used to be.
The day before Thanksgiving Zhorik and I bought our airplane tickets to Stavropol -- one hour to buy two tickets! But Zhorik was ecstatic: His first airplane ride. He insisted on taking charge of his ticket immediately. “I’ll keep it forever,” he said. “I will kill anybody who tries to take it,” he had joked.
I had also given him 4,000 rubles – about $ 135 – for a gold neckace, the third one I’ve bought for him. His father adopted the first -- my graduation present (Chapt. 135) -- proudly telling everyone that “Zhorik gave it to me.” Sergei “borrowed” and pawned the second.
But instead of a necklace, he’s bought a gold bracelet and a ring. He still has $ 50 left from what I gave him. “When I get paid, I’ll add some of my money and buy the necklace.”
He wants me to buy a matching ring, bracelet, and necklace for myself.
“Do you like them?” he asked, holding out his hand and wrist.
“They’re very beautiful,” I said. I took his ring off, kissed his finger and the ring, then placed it back on the finger I had just kissed, hoping the symbolism wouldn’t escape him.
By this time, it was 1:30 a.m., way past my bedtime.
“I’ve got to go to bed,” honey.
“Sit here in the kitchen a while longer, he insisted.”
We talked a little more. “I’m really tired, too,” he said, adding “I hope you’ll let me sleep tonight”
“I hope so.”
“What do you mean you hope so?”
I realized what he was getting at: He was saying my playing with his cock the night before had kept him awake. He had been sleeping spraddle-legged, and I had eased my fingers under his shorts. His dick had been very hard, and had erected several times in my trembling fingers. When I tried to pull it out of his shorts to get in a better stroking position, he had muttered something and turned on his stomach.
“What you did this morning really hurt.”
“You mean when I was playing with your cock?”
“Yes. It really hurt. That’s the only reason I wanted you to quit.”
“Honey, you went right back to sleep. You didn’t move for the next three hours, you were sleeping so soundly.”
But I was suddenly ecstatic: He had just told me that he knew I had been playing with his dick and that it was okay. The only reason he had objected until I accidentally hurt him.
Big step forward!
“I’m very, very sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to hurt your cock.”
“It’s okay.”
“Please forgive me.”
“It’s no big deal.”
We sat, holding hands. I kissed him on the cheek, on the neck, on the hands.
“When we’re in Svetlograd….” And he made a distancing sign to indicate that we couldn’t do this when we’re on his home grounds. “Of course not, honey. Absolutely not.’
Our relationship has worked its way to a new and higher level. The closeness, the secret intimacy, between us is awesome.
He seems to have accepted our tacit agreement. He lets me do what I want with his body, and I buy him what he wants and needs – jewelry, clothes, bribes out of the army, airplane flights to Stavropol. In a sense, I am his and he is mine.
He accepts, even welcomes, my kissing, my hugging, my snuggling with him in bed, our pillow talk. It’s as near to marriage as I can imagine. I wonder if he’s thought of that. I doubt it, though I think he senses the specialness of the emotions between us.
Last night after he came to bed rather drunk and rather late, he fell deeply asleep. When I woke up later, his legs were again spraddled, leaving his crotch completely open. Again I stroked the inside of his thigh down to the junction of his body and his leg. I stroked the long silky pubic hairs and fondled his ass. I reached under his shorts and took his dick completely in my hand, then added his balls, then stroked his thigh some more, and very quickly came. Then I too passed out until I heard the house phone ring at 9:13.
Oh my god, my student Gerd! My alarm hadn’t gone off.
Gerd, a university student, is physically one of the most perfectly formed masterpieces the Slavic genes have ever collaborated on. Very blond – even his eyelashes and eyebrows are nearly white – movie star handsome, very cultured, extremely intelligent, very polite, very sensitive, a little shy, and completely at ease with me. I’m in rapture just sitting and looking at his perfection, occasionally touching his arm or hand. I close my eyes and see his exquisitely shaped Michelangelo cock limp in his crotch, rather modest, delicate, the protecting skin coming to a rosebud peak at the tip, and unfortunately completely unresponsive to my gentle stroking.
Then back to reality: Helping him translate and understand the recorded BBC news from last night.—more car bombs in Baghdad; cloning scandal in South Korea; making hit records from dead rappers, all the while mesmerized by the unassuming fragility of the breath-catching beauty just inches away.
Ahhh, Russia, how do I love thee – let me count the ways: Zhorik, Peter, Gerd, Alexei, Vlad, Dima…...
It’s certain that I will remember this day on which I had so much for which to be thankful -- though not to describe to my grand-nephews!
The nails in the coffin of a free Russian civil society were hammered in by the rubber-stamp duma earlier this week when they passed the draconian bill bringing all civic associations (non-government organizations – NGOs) under strict Kremlin control (Chapt. 174) and prohibiting foreign contributions to such organizations.
NGOs are the citizen-created organizations and societies that act as public watch dogs, like the human rights organization “Memorial” and “Soldiers Mothers.” They provide non-governmental help for education, culture, environment, homeless children, etc.
It will slam the door on organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
“This bill is aimed at shutting down organizations that don’t share the government’s or Vladimir Putin’s ideas,” accurately complained a communist member of the duma.
The stooge who introduced the bill and pushed it through the first reading in the lower house of parliament, Andrei Makarov, contended such a bill is absolutely necessary to fight extremism and money laundering, asserting that “Many criminal organizations disguise themselves as NGOs or use the status of an NGO to launder dirty money.”
However, “pressed several times by reporters to offer an example of how criminals use NGOs as a cover, Makarov was unable to provide any examples,” the Moscow Times reported.
If passed as now drafted, all 450,000 NGOs in Russia will have to be re-registered by the Justice Dept., at which time those the Kremlin finds undesirable will simply not be approved. They will no longer be permitted to operate. It can be assumed that that will include any who oppose Kremlin policies. Russia’s already weak opposition will find itself comatose -- precisely Putin’s goal.
Putin and other Kremlin forces don’t try to hide the fact that they are acting out of fear. They admit they are trying to nip any more “soft” revolutions in the bud. They are convinced that Ukraine’s and Georgia’s revolutions were bankrolled by foreign money channeled through NGOs, and they are not going to let it happen here.
By rendering illegal any NGO funded by a convicted felon, the bill will also cleverly outlaw “Open Russia,” the organization founded by Michail Khodokovsky to encourage the development of opposition parties.
The growing paranoia is further underscored by the simultaneously warning by the head of the FSB, nee KGB, that espionage is increasing against Russia and that with new overthrown governments in Georgia and the Ukraine joining NATO member nations, Russia is being encircled by hostile powers.
Fortunately, this dangerous trend will be curbed by the new law halting foreign funding for NGOs.
I was awakened at 3 a.m. Saturday morning by Kreutz, Sergei, and Zhorik invading my bed.
Kreutz had just come from Chance gay club. “I’ve got problems, Dane,” he confided as he lay down beside me after Zhorik and Sergei had gone to the kitchen. “You have to help me with my problems.”
“What problems, honey?”
“I’m in love with Zhorik!”
Holy hemorrhoids, Batman! If I hadn’t already been lying down, I might have fainted from the shock.
“Honey, I’m madly in love with him too. But he’s not gay!”
“Not even a little bit?”
I told him about my agreement with Zhorik. “He likes girls.”
“What shall I do? Should I tell him?”
Kreutz is Zhorik’s boss as well as my best friend. Is he also to be my rival over Zhorik? Kreutz is also mature and responsible. He wouldn’t use his leverage over Zhorik to force sexual favors.
Kreutz announced that he has bought a room within sight of his office for $ 50,000, and the relationship between him and Sergei, his lover who also bankrolled his business, is unraveling.
He’s looking for a new lover.
“What should I do?”
“Jesus, honey, I don’t know.”
He, Zhorik, and I moved to the kitchen for beer and a Street before I left them together and returned for some desperately needed sleep.
When I woke about 8 a.m. and got up to take a pee, Zhorik was in the bath. I knocked and called him.
He stood up and unlocked the door and sat back down in the bathtub. I sat on the toilet and we chatted for several minutes. I massaged his chest. The shower curtain was still blocking the view of his dick.
“What did you and Kreutz talk about?” he asked.
“His new apartment.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“He said he likes you very much.”
“What else?”
“He asked if you were gay.”
“What did you tell him?”
“No, but I think he’d like to have a relationship with you.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him I wasn’t ready.”
I got up to leave.
“Don’t go. Sit down and talk some more.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“You know the thing I like most about gays?”
“No, what?”
“They’re very sociable. They like to socialize.”
“A year ago, did you ever think you’d have such a close relationship with two gays?”
“No,” he smiled.
I told him about my fantasy over Peter, my student at the Institute of Diplomacy.
“I don’t think you should have a relationship with him,” he said.
Why?
“You might get fired.” But something in his voice told me there was something more.
“Honey, if I had a sexual relationship with someone else, would you be jealous?”
“Yes,” he said without hestitation!!!
My Zhorik fantasy jealous over me! Holy shit!
I pulled the shower curtain back: “I’d like to just look at your body.”
“Okay, he smiled.”
I resumed stroking his chest and let my hand roam down to his pubes. As I had assumed, a bushy growth to about an inch above his dick, then nearly hairless except the slim dark pencil line up to his navel.
I felt his dick. No reaction.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Sometimes, when you’re sleeping, I do this,” and put my fingers around his dick, “and sometimes I do this,” lifting his balls with my hand.
“I know. Why do you like dicks so much?” he asked.
“I don’t know, honey, I just do.” Pushing my finger into his scrotum, I added. “It’s probably the same way you feel when you touch a vagina.”
I stroked his butt hair as I had done the night before. “You have a lot of hair.”
Yes.
I Played with his dick some more, watching it spring back up as I depressed it in the water. It got a little harder, but still not stiff.
“I like our relationship very much. Do you?”
Rather surprisingly, he responded: “It would be better if it weren’t for Sergei.”
Jesus! As intimiate as we’ve become what more would he do if Sergei weren’t here? It set me to thinking: Maybe it’s time to do something about Alan. Maybe it’s time I kicked him out and Zhorik and I took over the room for ourselves.
He stood up. I helped him dry off, and then we returned to bed.
I put both arms around him, pulled him to me, hugged him tightly and kissed him.
“I think we have a commitment to each other, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t have sex with anybody else except Sergei. Would you like that?
“Yes.”
After my 9 a.m. Saturday student Valera left, I rejoined his sleeping body in bed and played with his dick, which got very hard and erected a lot in my hand. When I reached into his shorts and pulled it out, it continued hard and erecting. I moved my mouth down and let it cover the head and moved it slowly back and forth several times. It got very stiff and burgeoning red. He raised his knees and began to withdraw.
If Sergei weren’t here I think he’d have let me suck him off. Is this what he means by “our relationship would be better if Sergei weren’t here?”
Our relationship is already almost as close as I could wish for in my wildest dreams. Dare I hope that it could get closer?
My Peter fantasy, Zhorik’s potential rival, seemed as usual very glad to see me Saturday afternoon. I had sent him an e-mail explaining that again I couldn’t meet with him after class, but maybe Sunday.
“Did you get my e-mail?”
“No,” he said. “I’m having trouble with my computer.”
I explained to him that I couldn’t meet, but perhaps tomorrow….
“Do you offer private lessons?” Peter asked, bungling his words as if this is a phrase he has practiced and was afraid of screwing up.
“Yes, I give lots of private lessons,” I replied.
“Do you think you could give me private lessons?”
Don’t throw me in the briar patch!
“I think it would be fantastic to give you private lessons.”
“I think it would be fantastic to take private lessons from you,” he countered.
“The problem is time,” I explained. I promised to send him a copy of my schedule, which I did, and explained that if our schedules don’t coincide, maybe I can shift someone else, and offering to give him lessons for $ 10 and hour, one-third to one-half less than I charge ordinary students.
But he’s not ordinary.
I’ll keep my commitment to Zhorik. I won’t try to develop a sexual relationship with him. But we will certainly explore our feelings for each other.
In the meantime, Zhorik and I have become committed partners. I had sex with Sergei last night and jerked off to Zhorik twice within an hour this morning. I think I will remember this Thanksgiving week for a very long time.
It was the week that was.
Chapt. 176 - 2936 words
Columns :: The week that was: Zhorik and I are partners!
Moscow, November 28, 2005 -- Comments: Ratings: 
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