January - June 1999

January 5, 1999

Approaching the 2 year mark in subdued domesticity: a quiet New Years at home with M and Yaha, and the flu. No sex as M is just recovering from herpes. I came fantasizing fucking or being fucked by Lyonia one night to fall asleep. In a dream, I explained why people are gay. I was thinking of Harold's brother, Cecile, who after a rather mediocre life returned to live with his mother, an eternal student with little direction other than reviewing his engineering notes and presumably trying to eke out or repress some kind of sexual life, dying (probably of boredom) at 60. Reading into it from my own life: Repressive Irish mother killing off her son's sexuality, preventing him from asserting himself with joy as a man with a woman. Maybe with a man because that avenue was not foreseen or the boy found it through seduction by his peers.

Rudik Adamian, a heavy-set dark Armenian, a born organizer with his niche as coordinator of the UN-sponsored Central Asian gay anti-AIDS groups, was in town. I agreed to help organize a meeting of local gays at the anonymous AIDs clinic. The egg shells that have to be walked on! Msm (men having sex with men - the new catch-phrase) is still illegal though less so than a few years back (whatever that means); the Interior Ministry and Health Ministry both would prefer (or so they say) if it were legal, but say that society is just not ready for that (probably true). The strategy is to form a group the Ministry of Justice could sanction with UN sponsorship called 'Youth against AIDS' which could be the nucleus for a real gay group and which could be evidence of non-threatening 'nice' gays for the public at large. My dream is for Marlen to be an organizer and actually earn some money and get some skills and contacts and eventually a life other than 'kept man'.

January 19, 1999

Epiphany or last straw? My bus experiements are bearing some strange fruit. I clambered aboard last Friday, disappointed that an albeit cute cop positioned himself in the best spot. Almost as if on a dare, I nonchalantly placed my left hand in the appropriate vicinity. It works best with shorter men, as the hand hits the spot, so to speak, and I suspect psychologically, shorter guys go for asserting their manhood with taller guys. So my swarthy, crisply dressed cop continues to stand at right angles to me, though there was room for either of us to back off, though not too much room, if you know what I mean. As the bus chugged its weary way to suburbia, full of bored, grey faces, 'it' unmistakeablely was blossoming. 'Could this be a provocation?' I thought worriedly. 'But then I've got my relatively secure alibi - crowded bus, etc. And an erection pressing up against me does not suggest a trap. In fact, he's probably just as scared as I am.' How these guys can perform so well when they're scared, I'll never know. I could even hear some heavy breathing. Imagine a cop with a cum stain on his uniform. Whew! Of course, when we both exited, we went our separate ways, other cops passing between us. A fitting reminder of what separates us. Maybe some day all this schizophrenia will dissolve, though I'm not holding my breath.

Our founding meeting of the g-group was a bit rocky - mostly no shows. One Fakhri got cold feet a minute before we were to start and took off. A Sergei whom I hadn't invited proved to be the only real person, excluding M, Yaha and I, and the doctors and bureaucrats who desperately need this group to show they're doing something. The latter insisted that testing would be strictly confidential from now on and that NGOs were getting registered much more easily now, that we had the full support of the Minsitry of Health and the UN, that money was waiting to be spent... They fell all over me and readily agreed to my proposal that M work with the retired doctor Nazia and the UN to prepare articles for a group for the next meeting in a month's time.

I returned to find Vasia, an attractive bi I scored the previous weekend at Pakhtakor, waiting for me at the bus stop, and we spent a wild afternoon immersed in drink, porn and cock, followed by a g party at Baurjon's in the evening. I felt like the lowest of the low the next day after a sleepless night - too much excitement. V and my return engagement Monday with more of the same left me cold. These bi's - afraid of intimacy, schizo about one-way orgasm - sexual relations are by definition empty except when drunk. He's fatherless, like Lyonia, and insecure: "How does my cock compare considering my height?" and increasingly "I hope you're not tired of me." As a matter of fact, after nervously ushering him out, tottering with drink, the last time, and letting him empty my wallet with his last minute requests to finance an evening with his girl, I must answer "Yes", though we have agreed to go to the mountains skiing next weekend. I truly would like to help him - he's sweet and desperately needs a good influence, some good clean fun, and some carefully meted out dough, all of which I can provide. But he's not worth harming my relationship with M, despite what I see increasingly as our sexual incompatibility.

Am I changing? I need to rest a few days between orgasms now, and what turns me on is being active with a smaller guy, better yet, an innocent guy that craves my arousal. M overwhelms me with his size and I know he craves a big cock to overwhelm him if he is to be passive. This I can never do. But then I read recently that most people are resigned to living with someone that is not really sexually compatible for them. And how could 'they' be if what turns us on changes over time? Making sexual compatibility the prime determinant would mean incessant serial monogamy. So much for building a deep life-long relationship.

January 31, 1999

My sexual philosophy: I guess I'm both monogamous and promiscuous. I see that there are few possibilities of ever finding a relationship like M and I have now, though I'm bound to be sexually restless, anxious to turn young guys on and enjoy their taking pleasure in their masculinity. Is that what ulitmately defines a gay sensibility, enjoying the other guy's pleasure, vs a bi enjoying his own pleasure with whomever? My rationalization is that at 47, with receding hairline and accelerating wrinkles and white hair, my time for turning these young guys on is getting shorter (though you can stay appealing by staying positive and keeping your form). I guess when I was younger, I was ashamed that I was being the 'girl' in such relations, but now I really don't care so much. I have a residual self-respect (maybe not a whole lot, but some) that keeps me going.

My escapades on the buses continue hit and miss. I turned on a bored Uzbek, who let me open his trousers and feel his big stiff member this week. I followed him out at the Yunosobod market stop and hung around enjoying the reverberations of our little orgy. He went to some fellows working on construction and chatted. I turned around to go and saw him motion to me. He invited me over. "Are you German?" "What do you like. Sucking? How about having a party?" We went in the building where two guys were painting walls."These are my friends. Tell the guys what you like." They didn't seem to be threatening. On the contrary good looking and relaxed. Was this a set up? Hardly, though this was definitely unknown territory for me.
"I'm embarrassed."
"Ahh, we're all guys. What's to be embarrassed about?"
"OK, I like to suck."
"How about up the ass?"
"Not without a condom."
Misha suggested I go for some vodka and cigarettes, which I did. When I returned, the atmosphere seemed strained, and what seemed to be their employer, a young, serious fellow appeared from around the corner. I took this as my cue to go, and quickly exited. Misha followed and asked for my telephone number. When he phoned a few days later, M figured out something was up and I had to hang up. Sigh. A great fantasy, but you can't square the circle, as I'm finding out. Besides, a potentially dangerous fantasy.

April 28, 1999

Kitty goes mad with a new toy - a simple string or scrap of cloth, - it doesn't matter so long as it's new. She will hop and jump, run and attack it till she is panting from exhaustion. But after one or two sessions, it has lost her interest, and she comes and appeals innocently for me to create a new toy for her. It struck me that in sexual matters, I'm like Kitty. I need a new 'toy' - Paktakhor, buses, banya, chance acquaintances. After a few times, the illusion that I build around the love object disintegrates, or he disappears, leaving me with a memory of perfection lost. M's respect for me (at least in some respects) confronts my own lack of self-respect and results in a struggle: dismiss his feelings, or re-evaluate my relation to myself.

The life of a cruising (aging) queen definitely sucks. Take yesterday. A trip to the banya (the memory of the Uzbek god still lingering) brought out the worst of the gay world. A tall, thin, hungry-looking, nasty Uzbek decided the f-room and any potential contents were his, and he drove me and others out by demand and/ or the negative tension that surrounded him. I guess his two tricks were oblivious, full enough of themselves to use his willing body. I dropped in on Pakhtakor in what increasingly seems like a vain search for Valera, the fast big and silent one, and was confronted by the pushy drip Sasha? who is now in the habit of extorting as much money as he can from me. He makes my skin crawl, as he did virtually from the start. How I let myself get sucked into his deadbeat existence now seems a mystery. A double whamo of humiliation. Who needs that for a will-o'-the-whisp?

PB's criticism of my intellectualizing and dream analysis hit me. The point of the analysis should be to get in touch with the unconscious (u), the feelings closest to my 'truth'. I must keep this in the forefront. The feelings themselves are not true or false wrt reality, but rather wrt ME. They are my truth and I should respect that and honor those feelings.

Some provocative ideas from my reading
(John H Burns, Momma):
-When you achieve something at last (i.e., my relationship with M), you think it's the end, the ultimate. But in reality it is the beginning of existing on a new level. If you don't grow into this new level, it becomes stale and you fall back into depression - this time not from attaining what you want, but from finding it empty.
-Even when you don't get any satisfaction, you go back to you habits like a dog to his vomit... Why kid ourselves and talk of love? Love is a constructive force... We only want to destroy ourselves in others because we hate ourselves...
-We've spent our youth looking for something that doesn't really exist. Therefore none of us is ever at peace with himself. All bitchery adds up to an attempt to get away from yourself by playing a variety of poses, each one more gruesome and leering than the last. ... That's what tantalizes us all. We play with the thing till it makes of us what we swear we'll never become, cold-blooded sex machines, dead to love. There are so many ways of sublimating... But are they truly satisfying either? For some hours I've known, though they'll never come again, I'd cheerfully pass all eternity in hell... God lets us have those moments the way you'd give poisoned candy to a child. And we look back on those wonderful nights with far fiercer resentment than an old lady counting the medals of her dead son...
-Look at the essence of our sorrow... What we seek and can never have... And each side hates the other. The twain never meet except in case of necessity. And they part with tension on both sides.
-What an odd force to unite so many varied personalities. Something they all want... and when they've had it, their reactions will be different. Some will feel themselves defiled. Others will want another try at it. Others will feel that they haven't found what they were looking for and will be back here tomorrow night... They're all looking for perfection... and perfection is a love of death... That's the reason why these people live so hysterically. Since the desire to live, in its truest sense of reproducing, isn't in them, they live for the moment more passionately than most. That makes them brazen and shortsighted... In this life, when you find perfection, you either die on the spot in orgasm, or else you don't know what to do with it... These people are the embodiment of the tragic principle of life. They contain tragedy as surely as a taut string contains a musical note. They're the race's own question mark on its value to survive... Some hold back in the minds and distrust what they're doing. In them are the seeds of schizophrenia and destruction. Others give themselves wholly up to their impulses with a dizziness and a comic sense that are revolting to the more serious ones... Lastly there's a group which sees that they can profit by everything in this world. These are the sane. The Orientals are wiser in these matters than we or Queen Victoria. No phase of human life is evil in iteslf, provided the whole doesn't grow static or subservient to the part... A new morality may come into existence in our time. That's one of the few facts that thrills me. Some distinction may be made between public and private sins, between economic and ethical issues... How can we speak of sin when thousands are cremated in German furnaces, when it isn't wrong to make a million pounds, but a crime to steal a loaf of bread?

(Christopher Isherwood, Letters and Life):
-What I mean by camp is something much more fundamental. You can call the other Low Camp; then what I'm talking about is High Camp. HC is the whole emotional basis of the ballet, for example, and of course of baroque art. It has an underlying seriousness. You can't camp about something you don't take seriously. You're not making fun of it; you're making fun out of it. You're expressing what's basically serious to you in terms of fun and artifice and elegance. Baroque art is largely camp about religion. The ballet is camp about love... Dostoevsky is the founder of the whole school of modern Psycho-Camp which was later developed by Freud.

June 3, 1999

A month in our treehouse. Climbing up to the 5th floor and looking out at the tree tops, with no one above, and the huge vines covering the south wall and meandering into our balcony is a nice change from the gloomy apartment on F St. with the nosey landlady.
My only thoughts of note: Quick anonymous sex is like trying to live out Dorian Gray's eternal youth. Always 'the first time'.
A relationship allows aging. There are no perfect relationships. With M is not bad. We have at least some things in common, some mutual respect. O's racy stories about the handsome cop that he seduced, etc. sound exciting ("A dream come true!" he gushed), but then he says he lost interest right away since there was nothing mutual and claims to envy M and my domestic 'bliss'. How green the other side's grass.
Reading Stephen Fry's The Liar, I think how bland my sex life has been, how complexed I am and unable to seduce the objects of my admiration, left and right, as his hero Adrian does. But Fry's plot, making his hero effete and somehow loved by the straighter love objects who play passive in wild sexual escapades, and the rampant gay sex which supposedly goes on in Cambridge - these are fantasies of Fry, and rather shallow ones.

June 6, 1999

I have decided to go with as much of the Ivanov fasting as is comfortable. There's something about shutting down the digestive system once a week that a dry fast attempts to simulate that appeals. The trick is to fill up your day without exposing yourself to temptation. Yesterday being Saturday, with an English lesson planned in the morning and a Conservatory concert late afternoon, I set off in the morning in my swim trunks, taught my lesson, and went for an icy dip in the Anhor canal. It was a bit overcast, but hot, so when two Uzbek teens did the same and other Uzbek guys were relaxing around, I decided to hang out.
Lying down on my Times in the pleasant afterglow of my second dip, I dozed off and was roused by a friendly Tadjik asking how the water was. His dark square face broke into the characteristic Tadjik dazzling smile, set off by several gold-colored caps when I introduced myself in halting Uzbek, and Hairulla's compact body opened like a spring flower as he carefully undressed. Mmmm... what if... I thought. When I dressed with the intent of going home before the concert, he protested mildly: "It's Saturday, what's the rush? I told my younger brother I was going to take a walk (the wonderful Russian 'guliat' meaning just about anything). Let's go to the video in the square later."
Not one to refuse a handsome worker, I waited for him to dress and we walked across the baking Independence Square, past the globe statue showing Uzbekistan at the center of the world (the world's largest Lenin used to grace the massive plinth, making the globe rather pathetic). "What is the film?" I asked innocently. "Oh, I don't know," Hairulla mumbled. As the lights dimmed I whispered, "Maybe something erotic?" to which he nodded, encouraged. As the seductress began to disrobe, I took courage and leaned close to his ear: "You could almost jack off here." Things started to fall into place.
Not immediately. The wholly young male crowd was typically well-behaved and constant new recruits meant that this was not an option. After the film, I casually suggested we have a beer. "No money," H said without much conviction. "Don't worry. My treat," as I steered us to the canteen near Pakhtakor where Volodya, Vasya and I had relaxed after some action in the past. H was of course married, with two daughters, living in the tram drivers' dorm. Suitably surprised that I wasn't married. "How can you live without a woman?" "You can have fun without a woman," I prevaricated. "Yes, it's lonely at times; I wouldn't mind having a woman now with you... You're Tadjik - of course, Tadjiks are the best-looking people in Central Asia; do you work out - you've got a great body; etc."
Finally, after two of Uzbekistan's best beers each and somsas (so much for my fast), and H's explanation that he was already 10 days without his wife and "Wouldn't it be great to have a woman now?" I took the plunge: "Would you like to go to the banya nearby. I'd like to relax some more with you (again that fine Russian word 'otdokhnut')?" H paused for a split second, and taking a last swig of his beer said in a quiet, serious voice: "Yes, I wouldn't mind." On the way, he grabbed his cock and said: "That film really got me hot. I could use a woman now." "I'll try to satisfy you," I replied excitedly.
Our room with a shower was pretty grotty, but I was relaxed. He was hot and not threatening. The usual questions:
"Have you ever fucked a woman? When did you start 'this'?"
My halting explanations: "Yes, in university (a white lie) but I decided I like this better. I started at summer camp."
Not a big cock, but who cares? He was beautiful - hot and manly, and after some anal sex ("I'll cum faster") which made me think he probably did this a lot with sheep when he was a teenager, he withdrew and came in my mouth. Except for a bitter residue of anal mucus, his cum was sweet and smooth, and watching him shower down with his cock still bobbing, erect, was better than any visit to an art museum.
He asked: "You need this to get an erection and cum, like women get aroused?" innocently, without contempt. A nice way to put it. He asked for my number. "We could meet again. Maybe I'll find you some boys," he said casually. I gladly gave him 400 sums - he had spent his last on our somsas. Heaven.
So much for trying to kick the cruising habit. This was not demeaning like the toilet with the Sasha-creep and the terror. It's such a high to give a bit of cash to a poor, handsome Tadjik, to make him feel like a king, without any commercial bullshit other than a few sums. Something that guys have experienced instinctively for millennia, Jung's racial memory, collective unconscious...
I don't cum so much these days. Last night, basking in the afterglow of H, I would have been happy to have sex with M, but he didn't come in and I felt shy about asking, so I worshipped H alone. Once or twice a week, I have great erections and jack off imagining being active, initiating a young guy into sex. Ah, the Greeks had a great thing going.