Author: Dane Lowell
Submitted by: redadmin

Chapt. 270 – 3,956 words
Columns :: Kremlin clans battle over rights to smuggle, launder bucksi

MOSCOW, November 6, 2007 -- Comments:   Ratings:
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Igor returns
…and brings back joy
He gets registered,
… professes undying love,
…and holds my dick while I pee!
His epilepsy returns
And he heads to St Pete
Until I can get rid of the twins
Zhorik weighs in with a reminder
Andrei averts arm amputation
I’ll remain here barring disaster
…which might be war with Iran
Bizarre secret services shoot-out
…bares the gangland rule of Russia



MOSCOW, November 6, 2007 -- A year almost to the day after I first laid eyes – and hands – on Igor (Chapt. 222, Shtokman, Sakhalin, just part of Putin’s defense), we reaffirmed his “whenever you want” doctrine the night after he returned.

He arrived on Thursday (Oct. 18) -- a day later than he had promised and six weeks after he had left to treat his head wound -- while I was giving my American student a Russian lesson at Shukinskaya Metro Station.

He looked healthy, if a little thin. He has spent his time “convalescing” from his “class 2 epilepsy,” which in Moldova would entitle him to a monthly pension of about $ 20 – allegedly so he could live without having to work. But $ 20 wouldn’t keep him in cigarettes.

He said he felt fine and was fully able to work.

He also said Denis was in the hospital with tuberculosis and possibly AIDS. He has broken his mother’s heart, and precipitated a return of her epilepsy. Igor is very worried about her, and I’m disgusted and furious with Denis.


Igor returned joy to my life a few days later, on Monday night (Oct. 22) when he suggested we buy some vodka and “bukhat” – get drunk – to celebrate his homecoming and his Sept. 2 birthday which he had spent in a hospital in Moldova.

The more he drank the more profuse and astonishing the professions of love that tumbled –admittedly, a bit slurred – from his lips. He said he wanted to be my boyfriend, that he had wanted to ask me when Artur was here, but he thought I was in love with Artur. He said he wants to stay in Moscow and work so he can live with me. He again promised he would be my “devoted follower” or “man Friday.”

When we finally got to bed two bottles of vodka later, we were too drunk to have sex, but we entwined passionately and French-kissed for the very first time.

“You have to promise not to tell anybody about us,” he begged.

“Can I tell Zhorik?”

“No, don’t tell anybody.”

So I’m not telling a soul but you!

He also told me about an episode he remembers when he was about five or six. His mother was hanging clothes to dry in the sunshine on the flat roof of their nine-story building. Their drunken father had just left them. She had no food in the apartment and the equivalent of a few kopeks between her and starvation for the three of them. She had tried to get an orphanage to take the two boys so they would at least survive, but the orphanage had refused to accept them because she was still alive.

So she decided to solve that problem: She would commit suicide by jumping off the roof. She was about to leap when Igor suddenly ran out onto the roof, and she realized that she couldn’t do it. Nobody knows about that moment but her, Igor, and Denis.

“Can I still have girlfriends?” he asked.

“Yes, of course, honey, you can have girlfriends as long as you come back to me.”

“I will always come back to you.”

We hugged and kissed some more and held each other tightly.

When I woke up at about 6:00 the next morning, he was lying on his back, and his big dick was lying invitingly just one thin layer of shorts away. I put my hand on it and felt my own dick growing. I reached underneath his shorts and brought the full sturdy length out into the open. It was erecting in my hand. I very quickly shot my second wad since his return, then went back to sleep and didn’t wake up again until my 8 a.m. students Dima and Sasha arrived.

Whoops!

That afternoon we sent his mother $ 100.

But for the next few days, the messages were mixed, and I didn’t feel he was returning my affection. He was coming to bed at 3 and 4 in the morning and pulling away when I tried to hug him passionately.

The exchanges between him and the twins were testy, which may have been one of the problems. They’re clearly jealous of him, and both have offered me their bodies and their dicks and have been very short-tempered with him.


Igor is now legally registered. I paid the extra $ 300 and Dima, the landlady’s son, came and got him registered on Monday (Oct. 22). But landlady Natasha also muttered something about the Russian custom for renters to repair the apartment every three years, noting that I have now been here for seven. She suggested new wallpaper and a superficial facelifting.

I talked to student Masha, a lawyer, about it. “That’s not the Russian custom at all,” she said. “The standard practice is for the landlord to repair the apartment after you move out.”

So I realized she is trying to gouge me, so I decided to start seriously looking for a new apartment soon. One of my new students has offered to help me find one. I could rent a renovated two-bedroom apartment in the inner city, she said, for 30,000 rubles (1,200 Bushified dollars), the same amount I’m now paying for this unrestored war zone.

But I could rent a one-bedroom for at least $ 200 or $ 300 less. I had already decided to go this route and to tell Sergei and Andrei I wanted to live alone, that they were a luxury I couldn’t afford, when my intention was inadvertently reinforced Saturday night (Nov. 3) in a mindboggling evening with Igor.


It all started early Saturday afternoon. The night before, Igor had asked me if I would like to have some herring, which the Russians fix by cutting it into chunks and adding onions and oil and serving with boiled potatoes – a really tasty peasant concoction.

Yes, I had readily agreed. I had nothing less than a 1,000-ruble note, which I gave him before I left for my 3:30 class at the Inst. of Diplomacy, and told him to use it to buy the herring and whatever else we needed and to bring me back the change. When I realized he was heading out with Sergei to the clothing market at Vodniy Stadium metro station to exchange the hooded sweater we had bought for Sergei for his birthday two days before, the 1st of November, my warning lights flashed and I knew instinctively that something was about to go awry. Igor is unable not to spend money if he has it in his pocket – or Igor has it in his.

When I returned from my classes, neither of them was here. I had a 7:30 class with a student who had switched from 10 a.m. because of a seminar which he had had to attend that day. They returned during my lesson, so I didn’t have time to quiz them on what had happened, only time to ask, “Did you go shopping?”

Igor shook his head.

“Do you have the money?”

He nodded.

They were drunk. They had begun with the half liter bottle of vodka we had bought, but hadn’t drunk, for the twins’ birthday celebration.

Igor lay down on our bed. I heard Sergei go in and talk to him and a few minutes later they were heading out on the bicycles. “We’re going for a ride,” Igor said. “Is it okay?”

“No, it’s not okay. You’re both drunk. This is irresponsible!”

They ignored me.

After my student left, I was tired, hungry, and pissed. I called Igor several times asking him to come home. He told me he loved me and asked me not to be angry with him, but he didn’t come home.

I went to a cheap restaurant around the corner and had fish with cauliflower and a couple of beers. When I returned about 11 p.m. they still hadn’t returned.

I had bought a vodka-laced bottle of “Baltika 9” beer and was drinking it and watching TV when they arrived. Igor headed straight toward me and hugged and kissed me. “Are you upset?”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t be upset,” he said, pulling me into the kitchen. “Let’s go out and talk.”

I thought he meant to sit in the stairwell. I had only slippers on my feet and no coat.

But he wanted a “bench session,” in the style of Zhorik and other Russians who have no privacy in their small apartments, we retired with our beer to a bench in the courtyard.

Igor said that by the time they had arrived at the Vodniy Stadion market, Sergei had discovered that Igor had the 1,000 rubles I had given him for groceries and decided to buy an 850-ruble jacket to replace the 350-ruble sweater I had given him. Igor said he had strongly resisted, but Sergei had insisted he would merely “borrow” the money from me. Another reason he let Sergei spend the money, he said, was because he is physically afraid of both Sergei and Andrei. I can understand it. They can be brutal. Igor begged me not to tell Sergei that he had told me about the jacket, because he said Sergei would beat him.

It was dark in our courtyard, but there were at least a few people scattered around drinking in the cold. Despite this, Igor was effuse in his kissing and embracing. He reiterated that he loved me very much and wanted to live with me. In the meantime, he was going to St. Peterburg to stay with “Finish” for awhile and maybe work there.

I told him about my plans to get a one-room apartment and to kick Sergei and Andrei out. “Can you come back and live with me without Sergei and Andrei after I get the new apartment?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s my dream to live alone with you.”

“Mine too.”

We hugged and kissed some more.

“I think we should go in,” I said; “I’ve got to pee really bad.”

“No, we don’t need to. I’ll help you,” he said. He took me by the hand and led me to an obscure corner of the courtyard. He reached under my jacket and unzipped my pants, pulled out my dick, peeled back the foreskin, and held it in his hands while I peed.

“This is a first” was all I could muster in my astonishment.

“It may be the first, but it won’t be the last,” he promised.

Holy hemorrhoids, Batman!


He zipped me up, we hugged and kissed each other, and headed for the little basement convenience store in our courtyard to buy some more beer. As we re-emerged at the top of the steps, he decided to return to put some more money on my mobile phone on the phone service machine in the store so he could call his mother. As he reached the bottom of the steps, I heard the sound of his body falling. I put the two beers on the steps and went down to see what had happened. He was having an epileptic seizure, the fourth of the evening, I found out later. I put my gloved finger into his mouth to keep him from biting his tongue. In three or four minutes it was all over. I helped him to his feet, put the money on my mobile phone, and we resumed our spots on the bench.

We finished laying our plans. After I’m moved he will come back to live with me and get a job. We will go to visit Zhorik in Novosibirsk for New Year’s.


I accompanied Igor to the train station Monday morning. Not long after he left, I had two SMS text messages from him; the first:

Dane, I have been sleeping. I really miss you, I don't know how I'm going to exist there without you. Take photos and send me. I really miss you, Your Igor.

And the second:

Dane, I don't want to go away from you. I miss you. Igor.

And that night he called me from Finish’s apartment in St. Peterburg to reaffirm that he doesn’t know how he’s going to live without me and for me to hurry and get a new apartment for us.


Zhorik SMS’d me today to ask me to put some money on his mobile phone. “How’s your mood?” he asked.

“Fine,” I answered, “but I miss Igor.”

“And me?” he immediately wrote back.

“Of course, honey. I miss you every minute.”

“Who do you miss most, me or Igor,” he asked.

“You, of course, honey,” I replied, “but without either of you, it’s even worse.”

“I understand.”

“I’m glad you asked who I missed the most,” I added. “It means you miss me too.”

“Yes, very very much,” he replied.

So I think I have two young bucks professing their undying love for me and wanting to spend the rest of my life with me. I didn’t intend – or even think – that the romance with Igor would become so intense. I thought he was too straight to want to continue a long-term relationship, but it looks like I was wrong.

Igor and I have a very rewarding relationship, but I promised Zhorik before he left that I would be here for him when he gets out of the army. How am I going to sort this out before he comes back in June?

I can only hope once again that I don’t fall victim to the old Russian adage: “When you chase two rabbits, you don’t catch either.”

Maybe I’ll get some clues when the three of us spend our New Year’s together in Novosibirsk.


Andrei came within a day of having to have his arm amputated, according to doctors at the nearby hospital. A needle that somehow got lost out of our sewing box found itself in his arm while he was sleeping on the mattress on the floor. It was a rather deep puncture and by Tuesday, when he showed me his arm, it was swollen and painful and the telltale red streaks of blood poisoning were starting to radiate up his arm.

“You must, absolutely must, get to the hospital today,” I told him. “That’s very, very serious. You could die from that.”

His inclination was to ignore it and wait for it to get better, but between the pain and my advice, he went to the clinic. They told him if he’d waited another day or two, they would at least have had to amputate his arm.


Monday, Nov. 5, was a holiday, the Day of Reconciliation, which replaced the old Day of Revolution commemorating the Bolshevik take-over of the Kirinsky government and the beginning of 70 years of Communist rule.

It was also quite cold and windy – below zero with a peppering of snowflakes. Winter is upon us.

I was feeling an inexplicable sadness and sense of foreboding as Igor boarded the train for Pitr at 10:30 Monday morning – ostensibly to work with “Finish” there, but also to bide time until I can rent a one-bedroom apartment and get the twins out of my life so Igor and I can live together.

I’m plagued by the fear that our plans will somehow be scuttled, that they Sergei and Andrei will erect some impossible obstacle, that Igor’s epilepsy will worsen to the point where he has to return to Moldova, that I won’t be able to find an apartment, that some barrier will come between me and the happiness with Igor that seems within reach.

I had only one class on Monday. The rest of the day was spent trying to catch up on my sleep and on my blog -- writing this column and trying to get the Red Queen back on track.

Administrator Basil and I got together Friday for a talk about our plans for the future. I was feeling a sense of despair in my inability to meet the blog’s weekly deadlines – partly because of my busy schedule, but also partly because Sergei’s obsession with computer games monopolizes the keyboard, making it impossible for me to sit down and write for half an hour when some free time presents itself.

It’s one of the reasons I have to get rid of him.

“Maybe I’ll just quit writing it,” I told Basil with a resigned sigh.

“No, you can’t quit,” he protested.

Yes, he’s right. I can’t quit. So I will try to rejuvenate in a one-bedroom apartment without Sergei and Andrei.

In the meantime, my friend Sam Love last week sent me his newest short story – a hilarious account of his ongoing battle with the Internet spam monitor over his name, which also seems to be the appellation given to a life-size fuck-doll, the mention of which is considered pornographic.

“I think you should package the blogs and send it to some agents who market gay lit,” he urged as an afterthought.

So Basil and I also discussed the possibility of putting the Red Queen on ice for a few weeks while I explore marketing possibilities for the blog and for my memoirs, which are in the final stages of revision.

There are times when I think it’s time to hang it up and move on. But to what? I don’t want to go back to America. Spain perhaps? And then I think of how much Igor and Zhorik love me and of our plans for the future and I realize that – barring a disaster -- I’ll just keep on keepin’ on.


But my nephew Dennis raised the spectre of the disaster that might take me out of Russia.

“I'm a little nervous for you,” he wrote last week, “with the drum beats of war with Iran increasing here. We are hearing almost the same line of rhetoric from the Bush administration that we heard immediately preceding the Iraq invasion and, of course, Putin has responded that an attack on Iran is an attack on Russia.

“If the Russians are as xenophobic in the time of hostilities as the US, I fear for both your liberty and safety. Maybe Russia is more accepting than the U.S. but I suspect not. Maybe we'll get lucky and nothing will come of all this. But I have my doubts.”

Similar concerns were expressed by one of my students in the Inst. of Diplomacy when he announced in a class last week that “Bush is about to start World War III” by invading Iran.

But I don’t recall that Putin said that an attack on Iran is an attack on Russia. He did say in February that in the event of an attack against Iran, he would send Russian special forces to protect “vital” Russian interests “against any and all hostile forces.”

Furthermore, I simply can’t believe that, as dumb and single-minded as Bush is on stealing the world’s oil resources for America’s SUVs, that he would ignore the awful consequences he is being warned against on every hand and actually launch an attack against Iran.

In any case, I have encountered absolutely no personal animosity toward me as an American. I hear a lot of complaints about America’s belligerence and imperial muscle-flexing, but no hint of any anger against Americans personally.

So barring this or some other disaster, the Red Queen will keep coming, perhaps -- like me with Igor gone -- a bit more sporadically; but fortunately, still coming nonetheless.


The arrest by FSK>KGB agents a month ago of a top-ranking general in the Federal Drug Control Service has brought to the surface a long-simmering war between Russia’s security agencies and bared some of the bizarre and unbelievable realities of the tawdry issues that propel Russia’s ruling elite.

A Moscow Times investigative report last week called it the first visible evidence of the on-going war between the nation’s top law enforcement authorities over who gets the profits from the rampant smuggling and money-laundering in Russia.

One of the two “clans” is led by Putin’s powerful deputy chief of staff, Sergei Sechin, and includes FSB>KGB chief Nikolai Petrushov, his deputy Alexander Bortnikov, Putin aide Viktor Ivanov, and head of the newly created “Investigative Committee” Alexander Bastrykin.

The opposing “clan” is led by Federal Drug Control Service Chief Viktor Cherkesov and Viktor Zolotov, head of Putin’s personal security service, and includes Solicitor General (analogous to U.S. attorney general) Yuri Charka. It also “enjoys good relations” with leading presidential candidates and First Deputy Prime Ministers Dmitriy Medvedev and Sergei Ivanov.

The soldiers of the two armies have actually already been involved in shoot-outs “after one group nabbed smugglers protected by the other group…” an informed source told the Moscow Times. They somehow avoided killing anybody – perhaps an unintended testimonial to their respective professional competence.

Another inside source also told the Moscow Times that several days before the Drug Control Service general, Alexander Bulbov, was arrested, FSB and Investigative Committee officers tried to search his dacha, “but were held off by Federal Drug Control Service officers. ‘I know that for about five hours they were shooting at each other,’” he told the MT. “’Can you imagine that? Two special services from the same country shooting at each other like criminals!’”

According to the MT, Putin is trying to remain above the fray and to play the role of referee between the two groups, which observers see as a very dangerous game. “If one of them takes over, it would spell the end of Putin’s authority,” one observer predicted.

So when Transparency International and others talk about the endemic corruption in Russia, they are not talking about penny-ante bribes from street cops. They are talking about the millions of dollars that go into the pockets of the ruling elite – even and especially the law enforcement elite – from such sleezy operations as unbridled smuggling and money-laundering.

And Putin himself? While for obvious reasons the Moscow Times article didn’t have the audacity to say so, the way the system works is that the skimming takes place all the way up to and including the top.

According to my business-savvy student Andrey, “the tower” is the code word for Putin, and the most often-asked question among those involved in official corruption is, “how much do we have to give the tower?”

So by now Putin, like Yeltsin before him, has ladled millions – if not billions – of dollars into his Swiss bank accounts off of the rampant cauldrons of corruption that constitute the entire Russian government.

Does the average Russian have any concept of how his rulers run his country? Most likely not. Or perhaps he does, but he’s so inured to it after the years of graft and corruption of the Brezhnev-to-Yeltsin years that he simply accepts it as a normal part of what it means to be a Russian politician.


See also related pages:
Chapt. #271 - Life without Igor restful but empty
Chapt. #269 - Zhorik goes berserk and I pick up the tab
Chapt. #222 - Shtokman, Sakhalin, just part of Putin’s defense


This day years ago:
2003-11-7: Chapt. #23 - Celebrate the Revolution: Take a Stroll