MOSCOW, Oct. 1, 2003 -- Something’s got to be done about the Misha problem.
In its euphoric bliss, our two-room apartment is virtually the Family von Trapp revisited. If it weren’t for the non-stop Madonna and Mariah Carey, you could probably pick up “a doe’s a deer, a female deer…” being yodeled in the background.
Except for Misha.
It’s understandable, of course.
As I’ve mentioned, Misha and I have been living and loving – or at least making love -- together for four years. When I first met him he was a 21-year-old homeless, life-battered orphan and I was a lonely, gray-haired, balding American more than three times his age.
I have paid the bills; he has been the tsarina, decreeing the rules and looking after the apartment and me. At age 21, he was unskilled, unschooled, unequipped, and was going to some sort of remedial high school. At age 26, he’s still unskilled, unschooled, unequipped, and he’s still going to the same remedial high school that he should have completed three years ago.
He has made no progress in being able to survive on his own. If I went back to the States or kicked the bucket tomorrow, he’s still qualified for nothing – except maybe prostitution.
A month after we moved in together, Misha fell madly in love with Valera, a fellow orphan at his remedial school. That was easy to understand. Valera was enchantingly handsome, sweet, kind, and wise beyond his 17 years.
I was at first angry and jealous, but Misha insisted that “We should be able to have other lovers…as long as it doesn’t interfere with our relationship.
“I love Valera, but I love you too in a different way. I don’t want to lose either of you, and my relationship with him doesn’t affect my relationship with you.”
Seemed reasonable. I reluctantly agreed. However, over the months and years, his sage logic has redounded to his own disadvantage and to my considerable benefit. A few months later, his intense jealousy over Valera pushed Valera away, so for a long time Misha had no other boyfriend. In fact, he had few of what he could even call friends.
In the meantime, our agreement gave me license to continue my relationship with Vanya, by then a 19 yr. old university student from Nizhny Novgorod; and occasionally still with 18-year-old ex-boyfriend Max. Over time I added Sasha to the repertoire; then Slava; then Anton; and much more recently, Yegor and Shurik.
I love Misha dearly. He’s like a member of my real family to me. I worry about him, buy him clothes, buy his books, lavish affection on him and give him probably too much spending money which goes for vodka and cognac in gay bars and clubs. I’ve heard that he sometimes goes home with guys who buy him cognac. Still I love him, and until recently, had relatively frequent sex with him. (His matchless piska should be “erected” as a Russian national monument.)
The first major change in our lives took place a year ago when Anton moved in and Misha and I had the tiff and he went off to Kiev. By the time he came back Anton and I had commandeered the bedroom for ourselves. Misha opted to sleep in the living room, but we still often slept together and continued having sex.
After my relationship with Anton deteriorated, I asked Anton to move out by July 1. He said he would, providing he had the money. He didn’t have the money, and asked if he could stay till August 1.
I had told Misha that Anton would soon leave and he and I would resume our former modus vivendi – perhaps with the addition of Sasha, who had expressed an interest in joining “Dane’s dormitory” for his last year as a grad chem student. That would have been a comfortable situation for us all: Misha and Sasha get along really well, and I could continue loving and having sex with them both of them.
But fate was to deal Misha an unkind blow.
On an evening in early August, Misha’s other boyfriend-of-the-moment, Dima, came to the apartment trailing Yegor, the tall, bronzed, 21-year-old Tajik I’ve already described.
After our first meeting that afternoon in the park I began to feel that I had found the soul-mate for whom I had been searching for 70 years. My “empathizer” was working again. With each passing day I find more corroboration of my initial judgment: a kind, empathetic person I want to live with forever. He is as ecstatic as I am and says he sometimes thinks the life which has suddenly enveloped him is a miracle.
Sounds hokey. But hey, I believe in miracles, and like Yegor, am an incorrigible Pollyanna.
When Yegor met Anton after our first night together, Yegor was enchanted with him – not sexually, but as a best buddy, two peas in a pod in background, tastes, views. Yegor expressed real sadness when I mentioned that I had asked Anton to leave. So we talked it over; I relented and said Anton could stay – for Yegor’s sake.
Well, that may have been true happiness for me, for Yegor, and for Anton; but where did that leave Misha?
Pissed. Really pissed.
“I’ve been waiting patiently for a year for you to get rid of Anton,” he fumed. “You said he was leaving, and not only is he not leaving, but now Yegor is living here too.” He began throwing temper tantrums – demanding even more money and going out every night and often not coming back till the next day.
After stalking off in a huff on a Wednesday night in mid-September, Misha returned drunk and happy with a very good-looking 19-year-old. “This is Shurik.” Misha could hardly contain himself. “Life is wonderful; forgive me for being such a bitch; thank you for everything….”
He and Shurik went quickly to bed in the living room. Anton had gone to rendezvous with his boyfriend Denis, and Yegor had gone to his aunt’s near Tver, so Sasha – who had come for a mid-week session of cribbage, beer, and sex -- and I settled down in my bed.
“Your boyfriend’s a cute boy,” I told Misha the next day. “Did you have sex?” “No, we just slept together.” “Why not?” “He didn’t want to.”
But Shurik came back and spent the next night with Misha also – sans sex.
In the meantime, the more I observed Shurik, the more I liked him. He seemed kind, sweet, good natured, and very real. After his second night with Misha, he went the next day to meet with some friends. When he came back that evening, I met him at the door and he and I spontaneously threw our arms around each other and kissed, first on the cheek, then on the mouth.
During the course of the evening, one by one everyone drifted off and we found ourselves alone. We talked and hugged and kissed and talked some more like a couple of teenagers – as one of us in fact was.
In the bedroom we deep-throated and were soon prone. He fairly threw off his clothes and my fingers found themselves caressing the most beautiful, hairless, baby-bottom-smooth torso they have ever laid themselves on. He came eagerly. We had barely finished when the doorbell rang: Sasha to spend the night again.
The next day Misha discovered that Shurik was again returning to the apartment that night – to sleep with me! And he went on the 12-hour rampage from which he has not yet recovered – and may never.
So while -- with Yegor and Shurik -- life for me has taken on a beautiful new cast that has created the supreme happiness of my lifelong existence, it has become for Misha a pall.
He has stormily announced that I have betrayed him; that he will not return to the apartment unless he can’t find anyplace else to sleep; that he will try to emigrate.
Unfortunately, he speaks no English, and my Russian isn’t adequate to convey to him what I would like to, and he would never sit still long enough for Yegor to translate it. So he is sitting aboil in the stew which he declares I have made for him, but which he in fact has concocted for himself.
If I could, I would explain to him that I love him no less than I have ever loved him. I would remind him that he has acknowledged that – despite the sex -- he has never loved me romantically, and that in Yegor I have discovered what I think is the love of my life; that Shurik and I also are deeply fond of each other; that Anton, Yegor, Shurik, and I have created a storybook existence as our own unconventional but very tight-knit family; and that I would like for him to join us and be a part of that family.
I would remind him that my overriding motivation at this stage of my life is my own conflict-free existence and happiness; that I am now ecstatically happy, and by declining to take part in my happiness he is taking away from my happiness; and that if he cannot contribute to my happiness, that I at least don’t want him detracting from it.
I would explain to him that unless he creates real obstacles to my happiness by creating conflict, I will never throw him out and I will see that he always has a place to live and enough to eat. I am in no way abandoning him.
I would explain that what has really happened is just that he has suddenly been demoted from tsarina to just one of the ladies of the court.
I would explain that that’s his only real problem.
And that nobody but him can solve it.
This day years ago:
2003-10-1: Chapt. #6 - Desperately Seeking Blond Boys
2003-10-1: Chapt. #7 - Solving Problems in the Russian Embassy
