MOSCOW, May 8, 2007 -- As Victory Day on Wednesday approaches, all of Russia is enraged over the decision by the city of Talinn, Estonia, to move a monument installed by the Soviets in the center of the capital to commemorate their “liberation” of Estonia.
They have moved it to a new spot in a military cemetery in the outskirts of the city.
That’s a decision any municipal government has a right to make, right? Especially if the Soviets weren’t liberators, but invaders and occupiers who were only booted out when their rotten government collapsed?
Wrong, if you’re a Russian patriot who considers anything to do with “their” victory in “the Great Patriotic War” a matter too sacred to be questioned.
It’s a slap in the face. No, it’s worse. It’s a sacrilege! It’s blasphemy! It’s an anti-Russian provocation.
And so all of Russia is almost literally up in arms: The audacity of those ungrateful Estonians moving a bronze memorial to the brave Russian soldiers who liberated them from the oppressive Nazis without first getting Russia’s approval.
Interestingly enough, the Baltic states are probably the only place where the Nazi occupiers were more welcome than their Soviet “liberators.” In fact, former Estonian Prime Minister Mart Laar points out, the Estonians had already liberated themselves from the Nazis when Soviet soldiers invaded their capital city on Sept. 22, 1944. An Estonian government was in place and Estonian soldiers had already replaced the swastika on government buildings with the Estonian flag.
It was the Estonian flag which the Soviet thugs tore down and replaced with the hammer and sickle. “The Soviets arrested the Estonian government, shot some of its members, and sent others to the gulag,” Laar wrote in a Moscow Times op-ed piece.
It is the remains of these invading and occupying vandals that the Talinn government decided to transfer – with full military honors -- to a new location in a military cemetery 3 km away.
The hysterical, bullying reaction of the Russian population – whipped up by Kremlin-sanctioined tirades and diatribes on state-owned television --can be explained by a couple of factors. Their victory against Hitler in World War II is the only moment of glory they can claim in the entire 20th century, and it is conveniently pulled out of the hat every May 9 to rekindle the flames of patriotism and pride in Russians who have nothing else to boast about.
To take anything away from this moment of glory is to besmirch the sacred memory of the tens of millions of Russians who died in the slaughter. Thus for Estonia to sully their memory by moving the memorial just before victory day is a slap in the face of the pride-poor Russian population.
On my first visit to Russia in 1993, our group of gay tourists also visited Riga, Latvia. We happened to be there on August 23, the anniversary of that infamous day when Stalin and Hitler agreed to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact dividing the states of Europe between them. The Soviet Union was to get the Baltic States, Finland, and half of Poland. And on Sept. 22, 1944, they simply came to claim their prize.
The mood in Riga that day was somber. There was a national ceremony. Sadness and bitterness reigned. How the Latvians hated, loathed, despised, the Russians. The hatred is no less bitter in Estonia.
Secondly, we are seeing the arrogance of a re-emerging Imperial Russia, newly invigorated by its commanding control of oil and gas supplies crucial to the rest of the world -- which still considers its former satellite slave states as rightfully theirs, much as the U.S.A. demands that Central America and Canada toe the U.S. line on crucial issues.
Russia is looking for every way possible to reassert its domination – actual or psychological -- over its former communist satellites.
For small, insignificant Estonia to spit in the face of its former master and say fuck your invading and occupying soldiers – and they didn’t really even say that; that’s the Russian interpretation – is almost a declaration of war against the mighty power that was and wants so desperately to be again.
Nobody I’ve talked to thinks that real war will be the outcome; but then again, who knows? Added to Chekhia’s and Poland’s agreement to host parts of the U.S. missile defense system, Russia may figure she has to draw the line somewhere to once again remind everybody who’s boss.
Let’s hope this isn’t the place.
In any case, Estonia is equally determined to show that Russia is not the boss. And now it has the European Union behind it.
My student Alexei thinks the Russians will figure out a political solution – more involvement in government on the part of the one-fourth of the Estonian population who are ethnic Russians, for instance.
Zhorik has written me a love poem! -- the first love poem I can remember receiving in my entire 73 years!
It swept me off my feet – not just because everybody likes to hear “I love you” in whatever guise it appears, but also because it was so totally unexpected. It’s particularly remarkable because Zhorik has trouble even saying the word “love.” He was able to spell out “I – love – you” in sign language while he was here three weeks ago (Chapt. 245) only because he was drunk.
It’s about as improbable as Maurice, the title character of Somerset Maugham’s early 20th century gay love story, suddenly getting a love poem from his illiterate gamekeeper Scudder.
I know Zhorik didn’t copy it from someplace, because the atrocious spelling is uniquely his.
“Dane, here’s a poem for you,” he unceremoniously SMS’d Wednesday night. He was pulling round-the-clock guard duty in his caserne and we were corresponding both for the pleasure of it and to keep him from falling asleep.
Here is my rough translation of what he sent next:
“Love the person your heart holds,
The one who always occupies your thoughts,
The one whom your eyes search for everywhere,
and whom it is impossible to forget.
But did I translate it correctly? Did it really say that? And is it an admission of love to me that he is expressing?
Just to be sure, I sent it to “little sister” Vanya in Spain, who is native Russian, gay, and multilingual with a literary bent.
“…it's really beautiful and heartfelt,” he wrote back. “….It frankly touched me….The poem seems to have come from the bottom of Zhorik's heart.”
And my translation, he reassured me, was accurate. “I couldn't render it better.”
When Zhorik SMS’d, “Well, what do you think of the poem?” I replied: “It is very, very beautiful. I love it. Thank you very, very much.”
“Dane, I’m very glad you liked my poem,” he responded simply. And he again asked me to come to him as soon as possible – maybe in August or September.
We have continued to stay in close contact, and on Friday night, when he was again on 24-hour duty, he wrote:
“Do you know what I want?”
“No, honey, what?”
“I want to fall asleep and wake up at home and forget the army as a bad dream.”
“This will happen in 13 months,” I assured him.
“I know. I can’t wait.”
I’m awed and humbled by these four lines. Besides his aversion to the "L" word, he’s never been one for expressing himself with the pen. So putting these words together in poetry form – and even making them rhyme (they do in Russian, you know) had to be a real challenge for him.
It erases the lingering doubts I’ve had about the sincerity of his love and commitment and about the certainty of our future life together.
Soon after I first met Zhorik nearly two years ago, my thoughts began turning wistfully to Christopher Isherwood, that marvelous, talented gay author of the ’30s and ’40s who wrote I am a Camera, on which the Lisa Minelli musical “Cabaret” was based. His lover, Don Bachardy, was only 18 when Isherwood met him, and they lived together for the rest of their lives – at least of Isherwood’s (Chapt. 174).
So why, I kept asking – aside from the fact that Isherwood was only 48 when they met, and Bachardy was as gay as he was – couldn’t me and my 18-year-old experience the same miracle?
And now it looks like maybe there is some foundation for my fantasy!
My relationship with Igor has in the meantime been something of a roller coaster this week. On Tuesday I was still in my blue funk (Chapt. 246), and decided to go somewhere – anywhere – to get out of my den of computer gamers and TV gawkers.
When I went into the room to change my clothes, Igor was lying on the bed watching TV.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“I Don’t know; someplace besides here.”
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s boring here.”
“Lie down,” he said, patting the bed beside him, “and we’ll go for a bike ride later, okay?”
We rode our bikes to the small park near Novoslobodskaya Station, bought a couple of cocktails, and chatted.
“My dream,” he said, “is to finish school here and go to correspondence cooking school in Moldova. I would study three months here, then go to Moldova for two weeks for practical experience, then back here for three months here, Moldova for two weeks, etc. for a year. Then I could get a good job as a chef in a restaurant here in Moscow.”
He only finished sixth grade. He’s found an adult education school here where he can go from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. for a couple of years and get his high school diploma.
That’s his dream, “but I was afraid to tell you earlier,” he said.
“Why were you afraid to tell me?” I asked, a little dumbfounded.
“I don’t know. I didn’t think you’d approve.”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
We again agreed we will tell each other everything. He also asked if he was doing anything that upset me. “Well, sometimes when I ask you to do something, you say ‘soon,’ but two or three hours later it still isn’t done. That upsets me.”
He apologized and said he would do what I asked when I ask it.
We were feeling fuzzy warm toward each other. “Tonight will be the night,” I told myself confidently.
But when were returned to the apartment, I asked him to fix fried potatoes for dinner and we would buy a grilled chicken to eat with then. But he said he had to leave to meet “acquaintances” and would be back in an hour.
While he was gone, I decided it was time to lay down the law again: I told Sergei and Denis they had to find jobs by June 15 or find a new place to live.
It was three hours before Igor returned. And before he had a chance to fix supper, Denis’s schlukha Ksenia called.
It was already 12:30 a.m., but before I knew what was happening Dennis and Igor were both heading out on their bicycles. When I asked what was going on, Igor promised faithfully to be home by 1 a.m. When I awoke at 4 a.m, the bed was empty. Denis had come home and was asleep on the floor of Sergei’s and Tanya’s room.
I was furious.
He finally returned about 7:30.
“I want to have a talk with you,” I said. “Do you remember the last thing you told me before you left last night?”
“What?”
“You said you’d be back by 1:00. Do you know what time it is now?”
“I was trying to make some money.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ksenia and I played the guitar all night at the underpass at Voikovskaya Metro Station.” Teenaged wannabe pop idols often do that and cojole passers-by for money.
“How much did you make?”
“Nothing,” he said sheepishly.
“That’s what I figured. Do you know why I’m so angry? This is the second night in a row that you’ve said you’d be home ‘soon’ and then stayed out all night. I told you to fix supper last night. There was no supper. And the kitchen’s a mess.
“If you don’t get your shit together and start acting responsibly and dependably, you’re going to be looking for another apartment just like Denis and Sergei.”
“I won’t ever do it again,” he promised.
On Wednesday afternoon after he resurrected we went shopping and things warmed up between us. “Our relationship hasn’t been very good the last couple of days,” I said, “and neither has my mood. When our relationship isn’t good, neither is my mood. When our relationship is good, so is my mood.”
He left on his bike about 6 p.m. When I came back from my Institute of Diplomacy class about 10:00, he still hadn’t returned.
“Where’s Igor?” asked Sergei.
“I don’t know. But don’t worry. He’ll be here,” I assured, remembering his promise.
Sure enough, just before midnight, he arrived. I was lying on the bed watching the Mezzo classic music channel. He came in and kissed me.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said. “I was at a birthday party. Are you angry?”
“No, honey. It isn’t late. I’m very glad to see you.”
He went to the kitchen, put some stuff on a plate from leftovers in the refrigerator, came in and lay beside me on the bed, feeding me bits of cucumber, tomato, Polish sausage, and green peas.
When he turned off the lights and came to bed a little later, I began my routine. “Do you want to play?”
“Not tonight.” Maybe because he hadn’t taken a bath.
The next night I repeated my query. “Tomorrow night,” he promised.
When tomorrow night came, he kept his word. We watched a porn movie and he came quicker than he ever had.
Things have been very mellow between us since.
Igor needs to return to Moldova by the 11th of June. That’s when three months will have elapsed since our return from our earlier trip (Chapt. 241). The law is that if you’re a foreigner you don’t need registration if you can produce a plane or train ticket showing you’ve been here less than three months. After that, you’re dog meat for the cops.
So his plan is to go back to Svetliy on the 11th, get his records from his grammar school so he can enroll in the night courses here, and find out the details of the long-distance chef’s school.
“Can you go with me?” he asked hopefully.
“I doubt it, honey. We’ll just have to see.”
If he goes by himself, it should cost a max of $ 250. If I go, we’ll spend at least twice as much, and I’ll need that money to finance my trip to see Zhorik in September – if I’m able to swing it at all.
Igor and I will probably have to forego our jaunt to Pitr for white nights for the same reason.
Monday night our relationship soared into outer space! After I got home from my lesson with Masha, we went to the store in our courtyard to buy some juice to go with the vodka he had bought earlier.
We sat in the courtyard for a few minutes and chatted. He begged me to go with him to Moldava. We would only stay five days. He doesn’t want to go by himself. “It depends on the money and my schedule,” I replied; “but I’ll try to go. I have a lot of expenses this summer.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Zhorik wants me to go visit him again in September.”
“Maybe we could both go to visit him on the train. It would only cost $ 100 for each of us each way. It would be a lot cheaper than flying.”
“It’s possible. We’ll have to wait and see.”
I didn’t want to tell him that the reason I’m going to visit Zhorik is so that we can spend more time along together and practice our sex. But when I SMS’d Zhorik that Igor wanted to come with me, but that I wanted to spend that time alone with Zhorik, he replied that “I want to see all of you. I would like for all of you to come.”
And this was just after he had asked me to forgive him for spending so little time together when he was here.
Tilt!
On Sunday night Igor and I had talked about doing exercises. I said I really needed to do them, but it was very difficult for me to do alone, and I don’t have the time or the money to join a gym. He offered to hold my legs while I did sit-ups -- the first I’ve done since I can remember. They were torture – but good for me.
He dropped to the floor and did 20 push-ups. “Even when I was in the army, I couldn’t do 20 push-ups,” I said.
“I can’t go into the army,” he said.
“You mean the Russian or the Moldovan?”
“The Moldovan.”
“Why, because of your epilepsy?”
“No. I’m forbidden by the court.”
“Why?”
“I did something very bad when I was young, and almost went to prison for 15 years.”
“How did you escape it?”
He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “We bribed someone. So I didn’t go to prison, but I can’t serve in the army.”
“What did you do?”
“I’ll tell you another time.”
He said when he was very young, his mother was having severe epileptic fits and had to go to the hospital in Chisinau for a year. The authorities didn’t know what to do with Igor and Denis, so they put them in a boarding school for the retarded.
Denis ran away within two weeks. Igor stuck it out for six months, then ran away too, all the way to Camrat on foot, 35 km away, where he lived with a man and his family. The man was rather wealthy and took very good care of him, but he was a binge drinker and in one of his binges he fell and hit his head, killing him instantly. Igor continued to remain with the family.
But he never went back to school.
“I want to get my high school diploma and go to chef’s school and learn English and be as smart as you,” he said.
“I think that’s a wonderful idea. That’s what we’ll do,” I promised.
His back was covered with dirt from lying on the floor. I brushed it off. “Is my back that dirty too?”
“Yes.”
He brushed it off and I could feel the gritty sand from the rug.
“You should take a bath,” he said.
A little later when I went to the kitchen, I heard water running and the tub was full.
“Is this bath water for you?” I asked.
“No, it’s for you.”
I sprawled in the warm tub for the first time in months.
As I was luxuriating in the relaxing hot water that came up to my neck, I heard someone in the kitchen.
“Igor, is that you?”
“Yes.” He came in and sat on the toilet beside the tub and started chatting. He was wearing only his shorts.
I stuck my right foot out toward him and pointed toward the pumice stone. “Honey, do you think you could scape the calluses off my foot?” I asked.
Without a word he put my foot on his lap and started rubbing the sole of my foot with the pumice stone.
I was lying spraddled on my back with my dick in the air. He motioned for me to give him my left foot.
And then he proceeded to trim my toenails for me – a difficult task, in case you’ve never been a septuagenarian with onychomycosis and twisted yellow/green toenails that won’t even fit into toenail clippers. I was incredibly grateful.
He seemed very gentle and loving.
“We need to do this every night,” he said. “Soon you’ll have nice toenails like mine. He thrust his bare foot onto the edge of the tub. I kissed it.
“If you have anything that’s bothering you, you can tell me about it; and if I have anything that’s bothering me, I’ll tell you about it, okay?” he said.
“And I will help you with your exercises every night. Next we’ll do six sit-ups and three push-ups, and then seven, etc.
“Thank you, honey.”
“No, thank you for all you’ve done for me.”
“You’ll be my personal trainer,” I laughed.
“No, I’ll be your ukhazhor,” which in some dictionaries is translated “admirer” and in others, “john,” “beau” or “boyfriend.”
What am I to make of this?
When he was finished with my feet, he began to soap my body, starting at the chest and working his way down. “Soap my dick, too,” I said, raising my body from the water. It was such a nice feeling and the first time since Little Seryozh (Chapt. 41) that anybody has gently lathered my dick. I started getting a pleasant tingle.
Then he washed my hair and back and rinsed and dried me off. By this time I had a real hard on.
Then it was his turn in the tub.
I went into the kitchen to take my after-dinner blood pressure pills, which I’d forgotten to take.
“Is that you, Dane?” Igor asked.
“Yes,” I answered. He unlocked the door and it was my turn to sit on the tub and chat and stroke his chest and belly, then his pubic hair. When I moved to his inner thighs, balls and dick, he looked uncomfortable.
“Not now,” he said.
But after a few more minutes of stroking his chest and stomach, he didn’t object when I again moved to his dick. He didn’t get a full hard on, but was felt very pleasant between my fingers.
Then when we finally got in bed, I asked him if I could play.
“Yes.” It took him an hour to come, even watching the wretched porn movie. His dick was stiff the entire time. Thinking maybe he was tired of this game, I asked him, “do you think you can come?”
”Yes,” he said without hesitation. When he did finally come, it filled my throat and my soul.
Holy shit! What has happened?
I’ll go with him to buy a new wheel for his bike today and tomorrow we’ll ride our bicycles together to a park and talk more about his past and our future.
So on Victory Day, I will be celebrating a victory of my own, of sorts.
After three weeks, fantasy Peter and I finally managed to get together yesterday. He suggested we take a trip to Novodevichye monastery, which was built in the 15th century and whose famous cemetery now boasts the newly-dug graves of Boris Yeltsin and Mstislav Rostropovich.
It was really a lovely monastery. Unfortunately, I didn’t take my camera. But besides the majesty of the old fortress walls and towers, its cemetery houses many famous and infamous Soviet and Russian politicians, artists, scientists, and space pioneers.
I didn’t know that Rostropovich had died until I opened the Moscow Times last Wednesday after four days without a newspaper because of the May 1 holiday. The old Soviet labor day is still celebrated, and since the 1st fell on a Tuesday, the Russians were granted an extra Monday holiday to go with it.
I remember the first time I heard Rostropovich in a Kennedy Center concert in the early ’70s. I had just hired a new reporter named Tom S., who turned out to be the grandson of a wealthy Virginia lawyer and Southern Railroad shareholder. Consequently, Tom also had big bucksi.
He and his wife invited me and my ex-lover to dinner one night, for which he served a bottle of ’54 Lafitte Rothschild burgundy. “Now I know what real wine is supposed to taste like,” I told my host.
I felt the same sense of awe and appreciation after hearing Rostropovich. Now I knew what a cello is supposed to sound like.
I also attended several National Symphony Orchestra concerts while he was its conductor. Probably because of the way he was treated by his Soviet zoo-masters, I’ve always felt a real warmth toward the man. His death leaves a little vacuum down there someplace.
His and Yeltsin's flower-bedecked graves lie just yards apart near the entrance to the cemetery.
Anyway, Peter and I discussed our travel plans to Europe. I cushioned the potential blow by saying, “it depends on the money situation. I’ve had to spend $ 1500 I hadn’t planned to spend – that is, the money to Zhorik’s father to bail him out of the bank loan he made for Andrei (Chapt. 246).
Peter started asking personal questions about my life and background, apologizing for “intruding” into my life as he did so.
“Honey (I’ve started calling him that occasionally – Chapt. 233), you can ask me anything you like. I can’t imagine a question you might ask me that I wouldn’t gladly answer.
He asked about my family. I told him I was married for five years, but didn’t have any children, and that I have five living brothers and sisters in America, but we’re not very close. Then I told him I had written my memoirs.
“Could I read them?” he asked.
“Well, I’m re-writing and editing them right now. I would love for you to read them, but not quite yet. Maybe after our trip together, and I’ve had a chance to put my moves on you” – well, I didn’t say that, but that’s what I was thinking.
“Let me know when you think I’m ready,” he smiled.
Three people have expressed this kind of interest in my memoirs – Vanya, who is gay; Sasha, who became a sex partner; and Basil, who is probably the best straight friend I have in Russia. So I think there’s some kind of special relationship in the offing. Time will tell what that might be.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #41 - A replacement for Zhenya
Chapt. #246 - Yeltsin dies; unfortunately, his legacy doesn’t
Chapt. #245 - Zhorik exits; and so do human rights
Chapt. #241 - Fade out Moldova, fade in sex
Chapt. #174 - Sergei’s return doesn’t change Zhorik scenario
Chapt. #233 - Mogadan prison may shed light on mystery killers
