MOSCOW, March 23, 2004 – Well, now it’s officially spring – not just in Russia. And we’re feeling and enjoying it. The sidewalks are mostly dry. There’s no snow and very little ice left. Leaves are sprouting, pigeons are cooing, people are smiling.
Hong Kong Harry left Moscow a week ago after nagging me the entire time he was here about losing weight and getting a physical – particularly to check my heart.
Now nearly 60, he’s obsessed with health, because it was on a routine heart checkup that he discovered that he had an aneurism of the aorta that was about to burst. He was literally on the threshold of the final exit when they found and replaced his tissue-thin artery.
So now he’s a heart missionary. When he meets somebody, it goes something like this: Hi, I’m Harry. Have you had an EKG lately?
Well, not quite, but the last three times he’s been here, he’s incessantly bugged me to get my heart checked. “You really should, especially at your age. You know if I hadn’t had my heart checked when I did, I’d be dead by now. You really should make an appointment to get your heart checked. And you’re too heavy. You’d feel a lot better and look a lot better if you’d lose some weight. You’re heavier than you were the last time I saw you. That extra weight is very bad for your heart. You really should go on a diet.”
Aaaah, stop it!
Besides, I’m not fatter than I was a year ago. In fact, at 93 kg, I’m a couple less than the 95 I weighed the last time he saw me.
Anyway, it works. It was after his visit last year that I went on a diet and lost nearly 20 lb – for a while.
And last Friday, two days after he left, I went for a check-up. Quite a contrast to the American scene: First of all, the surprisingly well equipped clinic is practically impossible to find, hidden away as it is in an obscure alley near Lubyanka Metro Station.
Secondly, the doctors are all women. I didn’t see a single young Dr. Kildare, which would have made my pilgrimage much easier to bear. Secondly, there’s no formal order for seeing the doctor. When you walk into the waiting room, you simply ask, “who’s the last in line,” and after that person sees the doc, you know you’re next.
Sometimes it’s not so clear, and then there’s a big argument, and everybody weighs in with their opinion. This is a technique they learned during the Soviet years when it was the loudest, most persistent voice that would win the argument in the housing coop over who got the biggest apartment. But the debate is always reasoned, and people here don’t lose their tempers and shoot each other like they do in America.
My “therapist,” which is the Russian equivalent of “GP,” was -- like all the others -- a woman. I told her I wanted to get my heart checked. She explained that my English Exchange insurance didn’t pay for preventive visits. “So I have to have a stroke first, and then they’ll pay for the treatment?” She nodded.
“But,” she added, “we’ll try to find some symptoms that prompted your visit. Have you had any chest pains,” she began. By the time she finished, I had had enough alarming episodes to warrant any insurance company’s reimbursement.
Then she sent me to visit the urologist – Nadezhda Gavrilovna Alexeeva -- a tough old bird as old as I am, but she melted when she discovered I was from America. “Oh,” she nearly swooned, “your medicine there! You have such wonderful medicine!” She asked me if I came to find a Russian woman, and we were practically engaged by the time I left. She told me to bring a bottle of pee the next day to the laboratory, where I would also get my blood drawn. Both of them would get analyzed, and I would come back to see her next week for the results.
Also waiting to see her was a sexy little boy – he must have been at least 15 – about 5 ft. 9 with dark hair and eyes and the look that you often see in gay clubs here. We recognized immediately what the other was looking for: I was looking for a sexy young boy and he was looking for a rich old man. Little did he know that I wasn’t rich. On the other hand, little do I know what he was doing in the urologist’s office.
The new culture and press minister after the post-election government shakeup, Alexander Sokolov, has assured reporters he will not censor the press – the print press, that is. But he dodged questions about whether the Kremlin would re-privatize the television channels they have commandeered over the past four years.
Why, after all, should they? It was as a result of their blatant manipulation that Putin got 70% of the vote instead of the mere 50 he might have received without it. So nobody expects Putin to give up his control of television.
This, of course, is one of the laments of the Russia observers – including me – who are disillusioned that the “democratic” embryo of 10 years has been almost completely aborted. With Putin controlling not only the Kremlin, but the courts, the congress, and the press as well, where is the democracy, we cry.
On the other hand, a democracy does not assure a just, fair, and responsible government. Look at America!
Yegor is working part-time a courier [Kreutz]. Misha met Kreutz in the gay baths one night and brought him home. They had sex a few times, and then they quit having sex, but still slept together, and then they quit sleeping together, but Kreutz continued to come visit, and then Misha announced that if Kreutz came to visit, he would leave. Misha was gone even more than usual.
I have never found out what transpired between Misha and Kreutz to render Kreutz such a pariah, but my love for Kreutz has remained constant. And when Hong Kong Harry met him with me at the Starlite Diner last year, his observation was that, “My god, you can tell by the way he looks at you that he really loves you.” The fact that he does is very pleasing – even if it doesn’t mean sex.
First of all, he’s handsome, lively, energetic, intelligent, sociable, loving, and entertaining. He has the sense of humor and the timing of a natural comedian, and he always has an eager audience when he comes to visit.
But when I really fell in love with him was one Saturday night when we all got drunk and Kreutz wound up doing a strip tease on the kitchen cabinet. Misha had confided that he was well endowed, but when he finally stripped off his shorts, I practically went into heat.
In the meantime, he had sex with Anton once and he and Sasha had a brief fling, in the process of which I actually felt his turgid dick a couple of times. But he informed me that while he loved me, he didn’t want to have sex with me. So I bowed to the inevitable and we became – alas – just friends.
But we have remained sturdily that. I’ve loaned him money a couple of times – which he’s repaid – and he has continued to occasionally drop by. In the meantime, he met a new boyfriend, another Sergei, and they’ve started a courier and translation business together. So he’s hired Yegor as a courier, and I’m editing for him the English translation of Russian articles for Golf Style magazine, a slick, up-scale monthly whose mission is to serve as an expensive advertising medium for rich new Russians and ex-pats. It doesn’t pay a lot but I enjoy it, and it enables me to keep my hand in the journalism biz and earn an extra 200 or 300 bucksi a month.
Anyway, Yegor came home from his courier job last Friday and returned a call from his Aunt Olga in Sandova, where he has his official Russian registration. His alcoholic uncle had borrowed a neighbor’s Volga automobile and had an accident. His aunt asked Yegor if he could buy a new fender in Moscow, bring it to Sandova, and pay somebody to attach the fender to the car.
Otherwise, the car’s owner said he will come and take all Aunt Olga’s pigs and cows.
And Uncle Vanya, the poor dear, is so upset by it all that he’s taken to bed and may have to go back into the hospital, so he can’t possibly come to Moscow to get the replacement fender.
So it’s the classic story of the alcoholic who maneuvers everybody else into taking care of him, and Yegor is furious. But how can he refuse? So of course he will do it. Everyone is just waiting for Uncle Vanya to finish drinking himself to death, which shouldn’t be long because he’s already in his 50s and the male Russian life span is about 56, and less than that for the vodkaholic. In the meantime, Yegor, like everybody else in his life, has to jump through Uncle Vanya’s hoops.
While we rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic, I daily monitor the latest input on the EnergyResource group site. Today the debate was over who will be hit the hardest when the curtain falls on our present petroleum age in the next 10 to 50 years – the rich, whose connection with the life-sustaining land has long been severed, or the poor farmer of undeveloped nations who is accustomed to grubbing for survival.
A Michael D. conjectured that the most devastating impact would be on the dirt farmers of the third world.
“What is coming will be far worse for those who live in countries that are 'unstable', or will be,” he insisted. “America…will stay reasonably 'stable.’ Sure, there will be rioting, but nothing beyond that.”
To which, “Bob H.” replied:
”I fear you are wrong, Michael. The impact from the fall will likely be hardest on those who fall the furthest. We in the US are deeply dependent on other people’s resources, energy and labor. We are also deeply in debt, both internal and external.
“Those who live the closest to the land like the Indians of the Amazon will likely have the least impact from the decline in fossil fuels. We on the other hand are the polar opposite from such people. Rioting will be among the least of our problems.
”What is coming will be far worse for America than almost anywhere I can think of. We have the most energy wasteful infrastructure in the world. And we are hopelessly spoiled, lazy, obese, ignorant, and rampantly consumed with ‘consumption’.”
So the millions of Russian peasants will hardly know it.
But then another article in today’s Moscow Times brings me back to reality: The Al-Qaida terrorists say they now have briefcase nuclear bombs.
So who’s going to be around to watch the Titanic sink?
See also related pages:
Chapt. #50 - People living with stones shouldn’t break glasses
Chapt. #48 - Tsar Putin 2nd best liar in contest with Bush
