MOSCOW, March 4, 2008 -- As if I didn’t have enough reasons already, beautiful Volodya (see photo) gave me another reason not to cave in to the Sochi Cassandra’s dire prediction that my life is nearing its end (Chapt. 16, Black Sea Cassandra Adds to Trinity, 275, Spain offers new future – if I have one). He’s going to let me suck his cock.
On my 80th birthday!
He promised!
Stroking my epiglottis with his beautiful (I’m sure) schlong has been a not very well hidden fantasy ever since I first saw him as a 15-year-old on a bus with his parents and little sister on a tour to Turkey with ex-boyfriend Max in 1999. And since he became a private student five years ago (Chapt. 2, A “Guess-What” Gift from Turkey, ff), he’s kept the fantasy alive by periodically teasing me with promises.
He dropped by last week to chat and to bring me up to date on his life: He’s going to get married in June and a business partner stole $ 65,000 from him which he is having to repay the bank.
Aside from those two catastrophes, his life is going well.
Beautiful Volodya
He and Sergei exchanged “privets” –Russian for “howdies” – and then he caught sight of little Sasha (see photo, Chapt. 277, Remodels: The apartment and Sasha).
“Who’s he?” he grinned accusingly.
“That’s my new fantasy.”
“Have you sucked his dick?”
I smiled.
“Do you still suck Sergei’s dick?”
“Sometimes….By the way,” I added, “when am I going to get to suck yours?”
“On your 80th birthday.”
He’s made these kinds of promises before, but has always backed out at the last minute. The last time was when he had promised it as a prize for winning a cribbage game with him, but when showdown time came, he begged off again, insisting that “I can’t get it up for another guy (Chapt. 72).”
But now that he’s admitted to a couple of homosexual experiences and is making wedding plans, he is apparently a bit more adventuresome.
I’m sure it will happen this time!
Only five years and five months to go.
And speaking of end of life, Sergei has been struck by the realization that I’m not going to be around forever. I had to give him and Igor a little lecture after they disturbed my sleep three nights in a row.
I shoved my schedule in front of them: “I can’t sleep three or four hours and then work a 15-hour day,” I snapped. “I’m 75, and I’ve already had one minor stroke. The next one could kill me or crippled me. If I’m dead or crippled, I can’t work; if I can’t work, I can’t pay the rent; if I can’t pay the rent, I’ll have to leave you and go back to America, and where will this leave you?
“It’s high blood pressure and stress that cause strokes, and not getting enough sleep is causing me stress.”
They promised to be in bed by midnight and turn off all the noise-makers – the computer, DVD players, television. That night Igor even let me suck his dick, which incidentally gets more responsive each time. I think he’s beginning to enjoy it!
When I came home from student Masha’s class on Friday evening, Sergei was sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of vodka.
“Dane, I’d like to be alone for a little while.”
I shrugged and went to mine and Igor’s room, where Igor, Sasha, Denis (he turned up a couple of weeks ago, much to my dismay), and Julia, Sergei’s new strumpet, were watching a DVD movie on the computer.
A few minutes later I returned to the kitchen to refill my vodka and peach juice cocktail.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Sergei.
“Nothing. I’m just thinking about life and my future, and your future.” And then he grew very serious.
“Dane, you’re 75 and I’m 25. You’re only going to be here another 10 or 20 years. You don’t get enough sleep. You work every day. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I love you.” Tears were rolling down his cheek. “I don’t want you to ever leave me. I want to live with you always.”
By this time I was crying too. I’ve become very dependent on Sergei, emotionally and physically. He’s taken complete charge of the remodel. In our household routine, he plays the mama – or is it the papa? – for me. I ask Igor to go shopping. “Soon,” he says. But when Sergei tells him to go shopping and fix supper, he reaches for his coat. I tell him to turn off the computer and come to bed. “Soon,” he says. But when Sergei tells him to turn off the computer and go to bed in five minutes, five minutes later he is on the bed beside me.
From the beginning I’ve felt Sergei was the more compassionate and emotional of the twins. And now that we’ve eliminated Andrei from the equation, the change in his attitude, in his sense of responsibility, in his devotion to me, in his joy, is remarkable.
Our love is abiding and very deep. He protects me and watches after me.
“I’m very lucky,” I told him, “to have somebody love me as you do.”
“Everybody loves you,” he said through his tears.
We hugged and kissed many times.
“I don’t ever want you to leave me.”
“Honey,” I said, “I’ll always be with you. When I become a ghost, I’ll come back and haunt you.”
Igor also loves me very much, and Sasha keeps my fantasies fed with the dream of the next time I will hold him, kiss him passionately, and suck his lovely little cock. We kiss each other often and sometimes squeeze each other’s hand secretly. The time will come.
But nothing’s perfect. When Sergei, Igor, and Sasha went to celebrate Sasha’s 19th birthday last Sunday, they came back but my new camera didn’t. I’m afraid they got drunk and left it somewhere, but both Igor and Sasha insist they will find it. They haven’t yet.
And they’re using my mobile phone as if it were theirs. Often in the mornings when I try to send am SMS or make a phone call, I discover they’re used up all my money.
It happened Friday night with dire consequences. I had put 100 rubles – about $ 12 – on my phone the night before. As Masha and I were beginning our lesson about 7 p.m., I got an SMS from Zhorik. “Dane, are you busy?”
“I’m in a lesson now. I’ll write you in an hour.”
But when I tried to send it, the stop sign appeared on my screen. Ugh-oh.
Nothing to do but wait. Adjacent to the Frunzunskaya Metro is a Evroset shop, where at 8:15 I put 50 rubles on the phone. But when I tried to send Zhorik a message explaining what had happened, I got the stop sign again. What the hell is going on?
It was not till I had boarded the subway that I realized I had put 50 rubles on Zhorik’s number, not on mine. I couldn’t do anything for another half hour.
As I was nearing the top of the escalator at Belarusskaya, my pbone rang. “Zhorik,” I said, and explained what had happened. “In five minutes I’ll SMS you.” He hung up without a word.
By the time I finally put some money on my phone, I had received more messages from Zhorik. He was furious. “if you don’t want to communicate, just say so. I don’t want to communicate with you now, I’m not in the mood.”
“Don’t be angry with me,” I wrote back. “It’s not my fault. Sergei and Igor used all my money and I didn’t know it. I wanted very much to contact you, but I couldn’t.”
“I don’t want to communicate now.”
“Zhorik,” I replied, exasperation creeping onto my screen. “I know you’re alone and lonely, but don’t be angry with me. I love you and only you. I wanted very much to communicate with you. It’s not my fault.”
“I’m going to bed now,” he SMS’d. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Good night.”
“Good night, honey. I love you.”
But he wasn’t too pissed to ask me two days later for 1000 rubles – a little over $ 40 – to pay back a loan he had made a month ago.
He clearly has images of me running around with a lot of little boys while he’s freezing in the Siberian ice box. But there aren’t a lot of little boys – only Igor and Sasha.
But one day soon, I’m going to have to deal with reality. I’ve promised him we would live alone. But I can’t kick Sergei out. I can’t kick Igor out. I don’t want to kick Sasha out.
Who wrote this script anyway?
Get me re-write!
Russia’s ho-hum election charade that formally installed Putin’s anointed heir, Dmitriy Medvedev, came off according to script last Sunday, with Medvedev officially getting 68.5% of the total vote cast.
Of course reports of ballot stuffing and other forms of election rigging were rampant, and unfair pre-election TV exposure – four times as much for Medvedev as for all four of his “competitors” combined – is well documented; but of course all the complaints were dismissed as groundless and the election was pronounced “fair and democratic” by the Central Election Commission, the official ballot box stuffers.
The high election turnout – allegedly 64.2 % of total voters – is by some as-yet-unexplained law of physics, proof positive that “the election was not decided in advance,” contended head Kremlin spin doctor Sergei Sobyanin with a straight face on Sunday night.
Vladimir Ryzhkov, a rare Kremlin critic and – until he was gerrymandered out of office by Putin’s fix-it squad – former duma deputy, dismissed the election as merely the “burdensome but unavoidable chore” of all dictatorships, for which elections are “boring, embarrassing, unpleasant, and pointless affairs…staged from time to time to provide an outward appearance of legitimacy – even if it is clear to everyone that they are, in reality, a complete sham.”
But underneath the widespread vote rigging, the skepticism, and the justified criticism lies the hard core reality: Medvedev did win by a landslide, and most Russians are quite satisfied with the outcome.
And there may even be some pleasant surprises in a Medvedev presidency, surmises my student Alexey, whose recent new job as chief counsel and top executive of a large publishing empire has plugged him more deeply into the cross currents of the ruling elite.
Alexey thinks, for instance, that Medvedev will really rule and not merely act as Putin’s puppet. For the prime minister to give orders instead of carrying them out would be too great a deviation from Russian tradition, he contends. I personally disagree with his reasoning – there’s nothing to keep ruler from up-ending tradition.
But the deeper factor seems to be the fact that there are in fact several ruling elites – super rich and super powerful clans -- who must give their nod to any proposed major change. Putin governs with the consent of these murky but very real forces. Despite some earlier observations of political pundits (Chapt. 276, Putin succession battle brings uncertainty to Russia too , for instance), the decision to tap Medvedev came only after these clans and invididuals concurred with the choice.
He also doesn’t think Putin will return to the presidency, either in the short term or at the end of Medvedev’s stint in 2012. Russia’s infrastructure is crumbling, and it’s the PM’s job to fix it. And the fact that he almost certainly won’t have been able to do that four years from now may make Putin a far less charismatic and sought-after figure in 2012 than he is now.
Alexey also thinks that under Medvedev Russia will actually become more democratic. His public utterances so far have been decidedly more liberal than Putin’s or other mainstreamers, and since Alexey thinks Medvedev will be his own man, he sees more liberal domestic and foreign policy.
As usual, we can only wait and see.
See also related pages:
Chapt. #277 - Remodels: The apartment and Sasha
Chapt. #276 - Putin succession battle brings uncertainty to Russia too
Chapt. #275 - Spain offers new future – if I have one
Chapt. #2 - A “Guess-What” Gift from Turkey
