Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 234 – 2554 words
Columns :: Luzhkov again vows to ban “satanic” gay parades

MOSCOW, February 5, 2007 -- Comments:   Ratings:
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“Whenever you want” seems to be working
Luzhkov: “Gay parades satanic”
No unauthorized typing in Soviet Union
15-yr.-old fathers “not uncommon” in Russia
Rewriting my memoirs – with Basil’s help
Russian railroads will relieve Sheremetevo transport
Paranoid Bureaucrats further complicate foreigner’s lives
“Monstrous” Russian human rights violations persist in Chechnya



MOSCOW, February 5, 2007 -- Igor’s “whenever you want” policy has only been partially tested, because often when he comes to bed it’s very late, and he is – or pretends to be – very tired. A couple of times I’ve asked, “do you want to play,” and he’s rolled over on his stomach without responding.

But hey, maybe he jerked off in the bathtub; maybe he fucked a bimbo and can’t – or doesn’t want to – come again. Maybe he’s just too tired.

I’ve always given him the benefit of the doubt, and haven’t wanted to press myself on him. He’s promised that I can have him, and I haven’t doubted it.

Sunday night, I went to bed about midnight. He said he was going to take a bath and would come to bed soon. He woke me up about 3 when he turned on the light and unplugged the radio to take it to the bathroom. I couldn’t go back to sleep, and when I went to take a pee I stepped into the hallway into a puddle of puppy piss!

This did not improve my mood.

I went on to the bathroom to take a piss and wash the pee off the bottom of my foot, but Igor was in the bathtub. “I thought you were coming to bed two hours ago.”

“I’ve been tattooing myself,” and showed me his left upper arm.

Actually, he’s a mechanical and electrical wizard. He has rigged up his own tattooing instrument with a little of this and a little of that. I don’t like tattoos, but they’re very “in” among the Moscow working class – even those who aren’t working. Anyway, it’s an ingenious device, its tiny needle jabbing hundreds of times per minute to enable the ink to permeate the skin.

I took a pee, and by the time I’d mopped up the puddles, Igor was out of the tub. I washed my foot and headed back to bed, still pissed because he’d woken me up. He had already hit the sack when I crawled into bed.

He was on his side, facing away from me. “You woke me up and I can’t go back to sleep,” I grumbled. “I want to play with your cock.”

Without a word, he rolled onto his back and I started fondling his dick. He quickly got hard and when I started pulling off his shorts, he lifted his ass off the bed to make it easier – a first.

The pre-cum started early, and it took about half an hour to finish the job. His only signal was a slight stiffening of his body, at which I buried his dick deep in my throat and felt the gism spurt through the delivery tube on the underside of his dick. It was sweet and gratifying.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked.

“Umm-hmm,” he said softly.

I think we’re making progress.

We had had a little vodka party before we went to bed, a tardy celebration of Groundhog’s Day, and I again couldn’t come. So the next morning I played with his stiff dick again and prevented another case of prostate cancer – the second time during the week that I had gismed into my shorts while playing with his unconscious but stiff cock.

He’s been loving and affectionate since. If he’s around when I come home from a lesson, he kneels down in front of me and helps me take off my shoes and put on my slippers. (Don’t forget: In Russia wearing shoes in the apartment is an unforgivable faux pas.)

No one has ever done that before, and at my age, which is after all, four times his, I really appreciate not having to bend over and wrestle with my shoes and slippers.

I don’t know how he views our relationship. He seems quite content with it. I in turn could hardly ask for a more fulfilling one. We sleep in the spoons position with my arm clutching his torso. He has no hesitation about kissing me in the mouth in front of anybody who happens to be here. And perhaps because of his inspiration, his cute little 17-year-old Moldovan friend Seryozh has also started kissing me in the mouth.

Hey, I like it! I Don’t have any reason to think Seryozh and I will get it on sexually, and I’m not really trying. But if it’s offered on a silver tray, I won’t turn it down. Seryozh spends a lot of time here, and I think he likes and respects both Igor and me very much.


With a home-made electric tattoo needle, Igor puts the finishing touches on his latest body graffiti. He's growing increasingly affectionate and attentive, and his "whenever you want" policy seems to be working -- within limits. He made me promise that if he goes to Moldava I will go and visit him.

Igor has also finished his tattoo job (see photo). It says, “edem na said,” which Sergei told him is German for “to each his own.” But I think it’s meaningless gibberish, and I’m certain it’s not German. But if he likes it, what the hell? He would be very hurt if he knew how much I dislike his body graffiti.


Gay parades are satanic, proclaimed Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov this week, and he will never allow such evil to stalk the streets of the capital of Russia and largest city in Europe.

He told a Russian Orthodox Church conference at the Kremlin that the city would reject any application for a gay parade and would take appropriate measures against anyone who violated the ban.

Referring to last year’s aborted effort (Chapt. 202), Luzhkov pontificated: “We did not allow the parade to take place then, and we will not allow it in the future.”

Whew! Luzhkov has singlehandedly delivered Moscow from the scourge of evil incarnate.

Nikolai Alexeyev, controversial organizer of last year’s event, called it a “personal insult,” and said he would file a libel suit against Luzhkov in the near future.

He also said that he and other organizers of last year’s effort had filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg seeking $ 26,000 in damages for violation of their human rights in the arrest of nearly 100 marchers and organizers of the parade.

He also insisted that gay activists will march again this year notwithstanding Luzhkov’s diatribe.

However, Ed Mishin, director of the gay rights organization “Together” and generally acknowledged unofficial spokesman for the Moscow gay community, dismissed the brou-ha-ha as a personal conflict between Alexeyev and Luzhkov.

“This is not a conflict between city authorities and the gay community at large.”

Mishin and others opposed last year’s gay parade as not representing the best interests of the Moscow gay community. "’We think there are other ways to fight homophobia in this society.”

And much more recently (Chapt. 229), he again urged a non-confrontational approach as “the best way to find acceptance in post-Soviet Russia.”


You couldn’t teach yourself to type in the Soviet Union, I discovered this week. In fact, you couldn’t even own a typewriter.

My student Alexei and I were discussing things that were and weren’t taught in Russian schools when he was going to school in the 1970s and ’80s. We came to typing.

He laughed derisively.

I was a little puzzled. Why was that so extraordinary? “I taught myself to type when I was 12,” I said; “and then I took two years of typing in high school.”

He laughed again.

“First of all,” he said, “nobody had a typewriter at home. You couldn’t even buy a typewriter. They weren’t sold in stores. And girls were taught to type only if they were going to do it as a career. No one ever typed anything for himself.

“When I was in the Ministry of State Supply in 1987-88,” he continued, “if I had a report or something to type, I would write it out in longhand and give it to the director of the typing department, and one of the girls in the typing pool would type it for me. I never typed anything myself. Neither did any other professional.”

“What if you were a writer?”

“If you were a writer, you were a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, and you were automatically provided with a typist and a maid. You didn’t type anything yourself. In fact, you weren’t supposed to.”

“But if you were a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, it meant that your writing was controlled – or at least approved – by the Soviet authorities. What if you weren’t a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, but were just a poet or a novelist?”

“If you weren’t a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, then by definition you weren’t a writer, and you had no business with a typewriter.”

So writers like Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, whose unknowing boost from the CIA is now dominating world literary news, had to write their entire manuscripts by hand. And copies were in turn made by hand and distributed covertly among the surviving Russian intelligentsia and from there disseminated to the wider Russian audience.

In the years of Glasnost, controls were eased somewhat, and there were a few people who managed to get hold of a typewriter. But even if you had a typewriter, it was impossible, absolutely impossible, he said, to have access to a photocopier without the knowledge and permission of the authorities.

Even then, they were still deathly afraid of non-approved writers “samizhdating,” or self-publishing, their dissident works.

Now, of course, with the almost universal use of the computer, it’s a moot point. Everybody now “types” routinely – if for nothing more than to write messages on date message boards.

And the written word no longer strikes fear and terror in the hearts of the ruling Russian elite. Now that there is no censorship, nobody reads anything.


The “modal verbs of probability” were the focus of another lesson, when Lena and I were discussing the use of modal verbs like “must,” “can’t,” “might,” etc., to indicate level of probability. For instance, “the neighbors have bought two Bentleys and a swimming pool. They must have won the lottery.”

That is, you conclude that because of their ostentatious display of wealth, there’s a high probability they have won the lottery. “might” or “may” indicates you think there is a much lower probability.

So the sentence was, “He has children in college, so he __________ be at least 40.”

Lena inserted a low-medium probability “might.”

“Do you think it’s only ‘might’?” I asked. If he has children in the university and he’s not at least 40, how old do you think might be?”

“Maybe 35.”

“How old are students in the university?”

“Maybe 20.”

“Okay, if he’s 35, and his oldest child is 20, how old was he when the child was born?”

“Fifteen.”

“So you think he ‘might’ be at least 40 and not ‘must’ be at least 40?”

“It’s not unusual in Russia.”

Okay, you win! He might be at least 40.


Much of my current “spare time” is now going to editing and rewriting my memoirs. Why? Because they’re there.

Actually, it’s been five years since I finished them, and now when I dig them out and start reading, I go to sleep, leading me to think maybe something’s wrong.

A big share of the blame or credit for my decision to rewrite goes to Red Queen administrator Basil, who is himself a rather good writer, but hasn’t been inspired for the last two-three years, and therefore, fortunately for me, has begun devoting his literary talents to li’l ol’ moi.

I consider him an extraordinarily good editor of written English, even though he’s Russian. I keep telling him the story of Maxwell Perkins, the book editor at Scribner who discovered F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and others. Without Perkins, they’d probably now be lying in unmarked graves.

I don’t fancy myself as any of the above, but I long ago realized that Basil has the critical eye of an editor and the uncanny ability to spot what’s wrong and to tell you what would make it right.

In any case, don’t look for this magnum opus (I’m thinking about calling it Sucker for Life) in your bookstore any time soon. There are far too many chapters and far too many pages. Even Maxwell Perkins might not be able to salvage this one!

But god bless him for trying.


While the confusing, difficult, and expensive commute from Moscow to Sheremetovo Airport will never be resolved by Luzhkov and his minions (Chapt. 231), the Russian Railway Ministry has announced that it is going to spend $ 75 million building a branch rail line from Moscow to Sheremetevo which will begin operation next year.

The current all-but-impossible transportation problem to the airport is at least part of the reason why up-to-date and efficient Domodedova has overtaken Sheremetevo as Russia’s Number One airport. There is a rail line directly from Moscow to Domodedova that takes about an hour. When I took it on my trip to Dubrovnik last August (Chapt. 214), it was cheap, fast, and uncomplicated.

Maybe next time my jaunt to Sheremetyevo – if I’m unlucky enough to have to make one – won’t take two hours.


The bureaucrats have figured out a way to make life a little more complicated for foreigners. Rod from English Exchange, which is still sponsoring my Russian visa, called and asked me to come in and discuss the changes.

It seems that if I plan to leave Moscow “for any reason for any period greater than three working days” I must inform English Exchange at least 10 days before my expected departure.

Then when I arrive at my destination, “the inviting party” – individual, hotel, etc. – must within three days of my arrival submit information about my whereabouts to the local immigration office.

Then when I return to Moscow, I must hand in my passport, visa, and immigration card to English Exchange before 11 a.m. of the first following business day.

If I screw up and omit any of these steps, it could cost my “employer” – English Exchange – up to $ 30,000 in fines. I, of course, would have to reimburse EE.

It looks like a way of tracking in detail the movements of all foreigners within the Sov – er, rather, within Russia. As we get closer to the 2008 election, the Putin Kremlin is increasingly paranoid about foreigners who might be attempting to influence election developments.


“Monstrous” human rights violations in Chechnya by its Russian occupiers continue, despite Putin’s insistence that the situation there has “normalized,” says a report by the Moscow “think tank” Demos.

Kidnapping, torture, murder, and other violent crimes are rife. Between 3,000 and 5,000 people have been abducted, mostly by Russian federal forces or their local minions, since the current war began in 1999, the report maintains.

The Kremlin representative to the Southern Federal District, which includes Chechnya, acknowledged that problems remain, but blamed them on corruption of local officials.

So the Russian Army is still mired in Chechnya, and the fatalities grow daily. If it weren’t for those damned Chechnyans, the Russian invaders could go home.

And the Bushwhacker’s war? If it weren’t for those damned Iraqis, we’d have won by now! The oil would be ours.

That’s okay! We’ll get it in the next one in Iran.

Remember when we used to have a Congress?