MOSCOW, September 18, 2006 – Swapping English lessons for sex, my new hobby, got off to an auspicious beginning on Thursday when 22-year-old Igor and I met in the metro at my usual junction on the platform near the escalator.
He was the stuff of dreams – about 6 ft. tall, blond, crew cut, beautiful blue eyes, handsome, shy, intelligent, and sexy. Vanya was still here when I ushered Igor into the apartment at about 1 p.m., but as soon as Vanya left a few minutes later, I asked: “Shall we go play?”
He nodded and we headed to my bedroom. He immediately started taking off his pants – he, too, doesn’t wear shorts – and I found myself face to face with one of the longest schlongs I have ever seen, with lots and lots of foreskin – my favorite brand.
He was slim and hairless except for a few sparse strays around the base of his cock. I started sucking, and left him room for jerking. It was the perfect match.
Except for the fact that his dick never really got hard. He was kind enough to pretend that it wasn’t because my aging corpus just didn’t turn him on. “I came this morning,” he explained, “and I can’t come twice in the same day. But I love having my dick sucked, and you do it really well.”
So he never came. But I did. And I told him not to jerk off before he comes on Friday for round two of Sex and English,
He’s actually Estonian. He came here with his Russian mother seven years ago and lives alone in his own apartment. He is studying ethnology at Moscow’s most prestigious university. He’s very serious about his English, so many rematches are guaranteed between now and May, when he will have to submit all his documents – including the IELTS test results -- to the university in Reading, England, in hopes of being accepted.
He has a rich Russian boyfriend, so I think we will not become more intimate than Thursday’s introductory session. But we can still become close fuck-and-study buddies.
When he didn’t show Friday, he sent me a message: “hallo, sorry I was so busy today. Kiss you, Igor.”
“I missed you,” I answered. “Thank you for the kiss. I send many to you also. If I find out that I have time tomorrow, I will call you and see if you have time for a lesson and sex.”
“You want to suck me dick two times in week?” he wrote back.
“I would love to suck your dick two times a week -- maybe even more. Maybe Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:00 would be a good time for me…,” I replied.
“Yes it will good -- two times sucking and studying in week.”
If he can just energize that enormous tool and shoot some gism down my throat, I think it will be – so to speak – a very fruitful relationship.
So maybe I should start a new business:
native tongue
instructs and sucks
No waiting
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Call 0/000/000-00-00! - Operator on duty to take your call now
I’ve got another Facelink fantasy working, 19-year-old Aleksei, from Novosibirsk, who described himself as a friendly, sports-loving guy with an 8-inch-plus dick. “I want to come as a guest to Moscow for 2-3 days,” he said, and was looking for a humanitarian to finance it.
I could see some definite advantages working here: To compete with the gorgeous young Moscow studs for the beautiful 18-22-year-olds, you either have to be as beautiful as they are or be able to offer something they want – like English lessons or tickets to Moscow.
[If you want to see what I mean, try visiting http://www.facelink.ru/ and registering (if you can find your way through the Cyrillic barriers) for the site. There are dozens – maybe hundreds (I’ve never made it all the way through the parade) – of delectable Russian boys, a surprising number of them displaying “intimate” pictures of their erect eight-inch-plus credentials. Of course, you probably won’t be able to read them (you won’t need to – pictures are still worth 1000 words), but you can see the ages of the men they’re looking for – usually 18 to 25.
[Occasionally you find one seeking “18 to 80.” They’re the ones who are looking for something besides another eight-incher – “sponsors,” sex for money, etc., -- and the ones I can compete for with free English lessons or trips to Moscow.]
“Where do you live?” I asked Aleksei on the message board.
He lives in Novosibirsk in the Urals, 50 hours by train southeast of Moscow, 4 hours by plane. It would cost about $ 200-$ 250 round trip to fly.
So we bantered back and forth, and I decided, What the hell? Go for it. It’s a win-win: He’ll have a fantastic time being shown the sights of Moscow and getting his 19-year-old cock sucked, and I’ll have a weekend of chewing on eight inches of pure heaven.
Next question: How to buy tickets. The only solution is to send him money.
“How do I know that if I send you the money, you will actually come here and won’t spend it for something else?” I asked.
“I’d be crazy to do that. I very much want to go to Moscow. I was there once before with my parents about four years ago. I really want to go to Moscow to see the Kremlin and the sights again. Why would I do that?”
“There are a lot of con-men in Russia,” I replied. By now, after all, I’m an expert.
It was either the post office or Western Union. We opted for Western Union. I would send him about $ 135 for a one-way ticket. If I could get the money there Friday, he could be in Moscow for the weekend. But because of lesson conflicts, it was 4:30 Friday before I could get to Alfa Bank, which hosts Western Union here.
He sent me a message that it was too late for him to get the money Friday, but first thing Saturday he’d get it, buy a ticket, and come to Moscow.
He had said on his site that he’s a “night owl,” and it was noon Saturday before I heard from him, and 3:00 before he got the money.
Immediately afterwards I got the message, “I’m bummed out.”
“What happened?”
“My money’s been stolen. Somebody stole my wallet.”
Oh, come on. Your dream is to get to Moscow and 15 minutes after you get the money from the bank somebody just happens to steal it from you before you can even get to the ticket office?
“Mmm-hmm,” I wrote.
“I’m always so careful, and now this. I must look to you like a complete nincompoop.”
Well, yes.
And then began a series of “what shall I do, what can I do” messages. “I so want to go to Moscow.”
“What are your options?” I wrote. “Sorry, but it was stupid to ‘lose’ 5,000 rubles. I’m not a rich man. I can’t give you any more.”
“I understand. But they stole it from me. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“In Russia, you should always expect it.”
“I guess you’re right. But what can we do? I really want to go to Moscow.”
“It would be very nice if you were here,” I answered, “but the reality is you’re not here, and it seems, unfortunately, that you won’t be here.”
“I very much want to be, believe me.”
“Me too. It’s too bad they stole your money.”
“Please give me another chance.”
I was beginning to weaken. I’m always a sucker for “please.”
“I couldn’t send you the money till Monday,” I wrote, “and the weekend will already be past. I will have to work. When would we have time to spend together?”
“I don’t know, but you could send the money and I will buy the ticket for the days that will be convenient for you.”
“I will think about it. The only possibility would be next weekend. But for that I wouldn’t have to send the money now, right? Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday. I am not saying I will do it, only that I will think about it.”
“Okay, better Wednesday.”
I still wasn’t satisfied. “How can I know whether somebody really stole your wallet, or if you just told me they did so you could get more money out of me?” I wrote. “Do you understand?”
“Damn,” he replied. “I understand.”
There was a pause. “But I want very badly to go to Moscow. For that reason, I wouldn’t cheat you….Further than that, I don’t know what more I can say.”
Okay, I was definitely caving in.
“Okay, honey,” I wrote. “I want to believe you. Let’s think about some of the things you want to do in Moscow if you come.”
“I want to see Red Square.”
“Okay, we can do that. What else?”
“I don’t know. Some other tourist sights, maybe.”
“I have a guidebook. We can look at that when you get here and decide what’s interesting.”
“Okay, that’s a good plan. Let’s do that.” It will also give me a good excuse to do the kind of picture tour I’ve done of St. Peterburg but haven’t yet done of Moscow – the cobbler’s shoes, and all that.
So if he comes, which is by now pretty much a foregone conclusion – I think I’ve completely caved -- he will arrive Friday evening about 9:20 at Domodedovo, the same airport from which I flew to Montenegro. I will meet him there and we will catch the express train back and begin our fantasy weekend – his fantasy of Moscow, and mine of him.
Sunday night I got another message from Alexei: “I want to come to you.”
“I also very much want you to come,” I replied. We will have a very good time. By the way, my favorite thing to do is suck cock. Is that okay with you?”
“SUPER”! I like it very much.”
“Great. I also want to sleep with you and to hold you all night long. Can I?”
“Of course you can.”
So that’s all out of the way. Shouldn’t be any surprises. So you’ll find out next week whether I’m a self-serving humanitarian or the biggest chump in Russia. The answer is in Alexei’s hands.
The Evil Twins seem hell-bent on upending my serene life again. Last Saturday, while I was cleaning the debris from the “ramont” of the bathroom and kitchen, I got several frantic phone calls from Andrei wanting Zhorik’s number.
Figuring he had a scam of some sort working, I sent an SMS to Zhorik: “Don’t let Andrei intimidate you” as the twins have in the past when they had Zhorik borrow money from me to funnel to them. Andrei called later complaining that he hadn’t been able to reach Zhorik on this number.
Tough shit. That’s his number. If you want to complain, don’t complaint to me, complain to the phone company.
On Monday night while I was flirting on the “Facelink” Internet gay bulletin board, I got a call on my mobile phone: Sergei’s voice. “Hello, Dane, how are you?”
“What do you want?”
Then Andrei’s voice: “Hello, Dane, how are you?”
“What do you want?”
“What do you mean, what do I want. I want to see how you are.”
“I’m fine. What do you want?”
“We just want to talk to you a minute. Could you come out on the street?”
“No.”
They called back.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I said, and turned off my cell phone.
Then the entry com-system rang announcing a visitor downstairs wanting to come in.
Sergei: “Could you come down for a minute?”
“No.”
“Please.”
“You stole $ 800 from me. You’re nothing but thieves. I don’t want to talk to you,” and hung up.
A few minutes later I heard a knock on the door.
I turned off the light and double locked the door.
Still later the house phone rang.
I took it off the hook.
Again, knocks at the door.
I continued to ignore all of them. A few minutes later I heard an engine start and a car drive away.
But I’m sure it didn’t signal their final exit from my life. They’ll be back to try somehow to con more money out of me. Later in the week they cornered Yuri and beat him because he wouldn’t give them money.
I had just been working on my story, “When Do You Write Finis” about Zhorik’s and my romance within the turmoil of life with the twins; and all their schemes and pleadings that sucked somewhere between $ 20,000 and $ 25,000 out of me were fresh in my mind, so I was in no mood to tolerate any more of their bullshit.
When I went to bed my BP was 150/89 and my pulse was at 67, several beats faster than the usual 58.
I called my American Medical Center physician to tell him that my BP had been creeping up and had hit 150 the night before. He surmised that it was because of stress and advised me to take a natural sedative like valerian.
As for dissolving the carotid occlusion, he said I should take 100-200 mg/day of ascorbic acid – vitamin C.
He just saved me $ 1,000 round trip air fare to LA.
Still haven’t received the letter from Zhorik which he said he sent a week ago. But that could be the fault of the Russian post office. He sent me an SMS this Thursday: “Dane, thank you for everything. I adore and respect you.”
Okay, that makes me feel better. But it was immediately followed by “Put 300 rubles on this (telephone) number. I need to make an urgent phone call.”
I also broke down and sent him a really nice Nokia Model 6820 with all the bells and whistles that I bought used for less than 100 bucksi. I’m still giving him the benefit of the doubt. After all, I do want When do You Write Finis to have a happy ending.
On 9/11 I taught my first American Mass Media class at Potemkin U. I was faced with some delicious fantasies, the most alluring of whom is an 18-year-old named Gavril, Russian for Gabriel, a really sweet, intelligent, adorable, naïve kid, the kind you don’t find on Facelink. He sits smack dab in front of me, so I can conveniently rest my eyes on him without raising eyebrows – mine or others’.
Another was Vladimir, a returning fantasy from my spring Human Resources class. His buddy Sergei, another handsome and bright young buck from my spring class, dropped in “just to say hello.”
I’d like to develop the kind of relationship with Gavril that I have with my Peter fantasy, but unfortunately, I think that’s not in the cards. Time, place, and circumstances are simply too different.
We do chat, though, at every class. And Friday he told me that his mother is an Amway distributor and is at the “Number 15” lever, which gives her a 30% profit on everything she sells. Apparently Amway is doing well in the emerging Russian economy.
Anyway, I think it’s going to be a fun class. There are close to 50 students. Biggest task will be learning their names. We will talk a lot about the how’s and why’s of the rotting American press, which obligingly rolled over quietly for the 9/11 “attack,” whose fifth anniversary we were observing the same day.
Putin was sounding more like a statesman than a politician, observed newspapers reporting on his annual tete-a-tete with a group of world journalists last weekend, during the course of which he reiterated that it is Russia’s security which will determine Russia’s energy policy, not Europe’s – and certainly not America’s.
Furthermore, by 2020, 30% of Russia’s oil exports will be going to Asia.
But in his energy pronouncements, he soft pedaled Russia’s dominant role, according to the Moscow Times. When a Georgetown Univ. professor asked about Russia’s status as an energy superpower, he said he “would like to depart from the terminology of the past.”
“Superpower,” he said, is a cold war term that is “deliberately fed to the media in order to bring about an association with the dreadful Soviet Union.”
While he acknowledged that “we have more (energy) resources than most countries…I have never said that Russia is some sort of energy superpower.”
He again hit glancing blows at the hypocrisy of the U.S., saying that Russia had attempted to hire a U.S. lobbyist, but those who were approached declined, saying that the State Department had nixed it. The State Department in turn denied it.
“At least one of them was lying to us.”
While this is a “small detail,” he said, it points up the fact that “There is this presumption of guilt in regard to the Soviet Union that has been automatically extended to Russia.”
He insisted again that he will not change the constitution so that he can run again in 2008, despite the fact that probably the majority of Russians want him to.
Despite the public image he presented to the world press of just your good average, humble Ivan doing the best he can to regain the world respect, you just can’t close your eyes to the relentlessly creeping Kremlin control over all aspects of life here.
On the same day the Moscow Times reported his firmness and fairness on the world stage, it also reported that the Cabinet has approved an innocuous sounding change in the Law on Science to give the president veto power over the scientist chosen to head the Russian Academy of Sciences.
It seems clearly just another step in the relentless drive to maintain control over information – all information – in Russia.
“The academy will no longer be able to make decisions that upset the authorities while expressing the consciousness of the county’s academic elite,” one anonymous scholar complained to the MT.
It was the same Russian Academy of Sciences which defied the Kremlin and kept Andrei Sakharov, the dissident physicist and human rights activist, in its ranks even after the Soviet Kremlin exiled him to the city of Gorky. Putin is seeing to it that that such an affront to Russian authority won’t occur again.
The Russian electric power conglomerate, UES, has announced it will restrict power in 16 Russian regions this winter to try to prevent shortages (Chapt. 216) that might endanger human life.
What Russia is facing now is going to be replicated everywhere – including and perhaps especially the United States – as the world comes up against the realities of decreasing hydrocarbon fuels in the face of increasing demand, to create the most awesome crisis civilization has ever faced.
What will it really be like? We hear words like die-off, collapse, anarchy, chaos, wars – all of which are probably accurate to some degree. This is not going to happen overnight, though it will happen.
We hear pooh-poohers, including self-serving Exxon Mobil and Saudi oil officials insisting that we still have plenty of oil left. True. We do. But what we have to remember, as a co-author and I stressed in a 1974 book published by Doubleday Anchor on the coming energy crisis (which could be foreseen even back then), is that it is not simply the availability of energy which has made possible and sustains the astounding progress and population growth of the last century and a half, but the availability of cheap, abundant energy.
The oil that is left will not be abundant and certainly not cheap, as the tripling of prices in the last two years has made abundantly clear.
So what can we expect in the coming years and decades when energy is no longer cheap and readily available? Declining standards of living, pandemic loss of jobs, loss of homes, scarcity of food and water, certainly, and who knows what else?
In The Archdruid Report earlier this month, a guy named John Michael Greer published an article called “Briefing for the Descent,” which is the most sober, rational, non-hysterical and realistic assessment of our future that I have seen.
And since I am, at the bottom of my bleeding heart, a do-gooder, I feel compelled to let you in on this preview of our – your and my – future. I owe it, after all, to civilization – certainly to the civilization of the Court of the Red Queen.
First of all, advises Greer, forget about grabbing your M-16 and a case of beans and heading for a cabin in the woods to stick it out as a survivalist.
Civilization is not going to collapse all at once.
“We’re facing decline, not apocalypse,” though “four horsemen still define the most likely scenario”:
The second horseman, hard on the hooves of the first, is economic contraction. As petroleum production begins to decline, energy prices skyrocket as nations, regions and individuals engage in bidding wars driven to extremes by rampant speculation. The global economy, which made economic sense only in the context of the artificially low oil prices of the 1990s, comes apart at the seams, driving many import- and export-based industries onto the ropes, setting off a wave of bankruptcies and business failures, and causing shortages of many consumer products, all the way down to such essentials as food and clothing. Soaring energy prices have the same effect more directly in many areas of the domestic economy. Unemployment climbs to Great Depression levels and poverty becomes widespread.
The third horseman, following the second by a length or two, is collapsing public health. As poverty rates spiral upwards, shortages and energy costs impact the food supply chain, energy intensive health care becomes
unaffordable for all but the obscenely rich, and global warming and ecosystem disruption drive the spread of tropical and emerging diseases, malnutrition and disease become major burdens. People begin to die of what were once minor, treatable conditions, and chronic illnesses such as diabetes become death sentences as medicines price themselves out of reach. Death rates soar as rates of live birth slump, launching the first wave of population contraction.
The fourth horseman, galloping along in the wake of the first three, is political turmoil. What political scientists call “liberal democracy” is a system in which competing elite groups buy the loyalty of sectors of the electorate by handing out economic largesse. That system depends on abundant fossil fuels and the industrial economy they make possible. Many of today’s political institutions will not survive the end of cheap energy, and the changeover to new political arrangements will likely involve violence. International affairs face similar realignments as nations whose power and influence depend on access to abundant, cheap energy fall from their present positions of strength, while “backward” nations find their less energy-dependent economies becoming a source of strength rather than weakness in world affairs. If history is any guide, these power shifts will work themselves out on the battlefield.
Okay, so you, your kids (or nephews and nieces) and grandchildren have got a problem over the next century or so. But there is a silver – well, at least pewter -- lining in all this:
As public health fails, populations decline, taking pressure off all other sectors of the economy. As existing political arrangements collapse, finally, new regimes take their place, and like all new regimes these can be counted on to put stability at the top of their agendas. Thus we’re facing a period of crisis perhaps a quarter century long, followed by a period of renewed stability, with another round of crises waiting in the wings.
Historically speaking, this is how civilizations fall, in a stair-step process alternating periods of crisis with breathing spaces at progressively lower levels of economic and political integration.
This is the predicament we face.
So what do we do with this broad outline of our society and our world in the not-distant future? Greer has some very sane and useful suggestions and advice, which I will not take Red Queen space to replicate, but if you’re interested, you can find at (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/).
Okay, enough do-gooding for today! On to the bad news:
Traffic accidents kill 30,000 to 35,000 people a year in Russia, despite repeated cries of dismay from the Kremlin and stern edicts to do something about it. And it’s easy to see why: Even after nearly nine years here, I’m still aghast at the reckless speed with which fleets of cars race for the checkered flag on Tverskaya Boulevard, Moscow’s main drag.
Last Sunday alone, 766 traffic accidents killed 121 people in the country in one day, including a 62-car pile-up near the southern city of Krasnodar!
Putin reminded Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev that he had been ordered to cut traffic accidents six months ago. “Present a finalized solution to the raft of problems by the end of this week,” Putin deadlined in televised remarks that seemed uniquely tailored for next year’s elections.
Especially when he singled out the universally detested cars with flashing blue lights and sirens that give them the right to drive as fast as they want without interference from the traffic cops. They’re supposed to be issued only to high government officials, which is repulsive enough; but in practice, scores, if not hundreds of Moscow hot dogs install them just for the hell of it and terrorize everybody in their path.
There have been 215 accidents in the past six months alone involving these blue light bandits, according to Nurgaliyev.
As Luc Beaudoin, a gay Associate Professor of Russian at the University of Denver who was here researching gay male self-perception in Russia, observed over lunch last week, Putin’s solution seems so Russian:
“There’s a problem? Pass a law, issue a regulation, fire somebody.” It placates ruffled sensibilities for a while, but in the end nothing changes.
See also related pages:
This day years ago:
2005-9-18: Chapt. #165 - Hurricane Sergei; Andrei dismisses marriage rumors
