January - June 2001

February 8, 2001

I went to pick up my 'wages' for editing the first issue of Independent Uzbekistan, more turgid propaganda - 10,000 sums ($12), and proceeded on to the BCs (British Council and Blue Cupolas). No action. Actually, no real desire. Public sex certainly gives an adrenaline rush, but after my brushes with the law, it really is beyond the pale.
Loaded with old British newspapers, I wandered to the tram terminal, and who should I bump into but grizzled, old Alisher, son of a Communist-era poet. He was overjoyed to see me. "Simon, where have you been? Why don't you call? You look so young and fresh. We must play some tennis." The same old Alisher, now sporting a wispy salt and pepper beard (mostly salt), untrimmed, making him slightly less hoboish than with his usual 3-day growth. His face a strange purple, nose with prominent veins, eyes a bit mad, thin as a rake. Not a sight for sore eyes.
"I've meant to call… Yes, do let's play some tennis. I'll phone." I extricated myself, not relishing being the object of his adulation.
Returning home on the jam-packed tram, the parallel between A and me suddenly made me smile with recognition: I am to A as Yura is to me, and I most likely trigger the same responses in Y as A does in me.
Yura is a heart-throb, a late-20s handsome designer that I've known for years but never managed to get close to until recently. His father was an army officer, and he has that sexy, macho armyness to him, tempered by an innate sensitivity that compelled him to pursue first drawing and then computer design. He grew up near Baikonur in the steppes of Kazakhstan. He has a Siberian ruggedness in his face - small, close eyes in a well-proportioned face, thin but lithe, with a fine figure, as I found out in our drunken, late-night sauna in the mountains 2 weekends ago, rubbing his back with snow in between shots of vodka. His New Years greeting was a pleasant surprise though I was already sound asleep. That and my desire to x-country ski encouraged me to push him to come to the mountains. We drank 2 bottles of vodka and 3 bottles of gin and tonic in 2 days with no hangover, surely a record for me, and a sure sign that I was smitten. Even one hit with an Alisher gives me a headache.
We talked and laughed our heads off - we seemed to be soulmates. I made secret plans to help him pay off his younger brother: "I am your older brother," I would insist. I introduced him to Grisha at Bildersai, the para-glider and we watched G's promo films made in the early 90s when French adventurers came to explore the hidden treasures of a cracking SU. No real sexual longing, just being in his presence and feasting in his beauty and casual str8 airs, feeling him respond at least acceptingly to my growing love… Wow! Too good to be true.
My x-country skiing was a bit of a disaster - the skis were so old, they had no edges, which made even the slightest slope treacherous. I was no doubt the laughing stock of the slopes, but I managed to get down once in a record 2 hours, and spent the rest of the time skiing along the road. It was a magical sight on top - mist shrouded the valley with Gazalkent and Tashkent, and the sun lit the mountain peaks in a heavenly panorama. My heart soared.
We made plans on the way back to come again next weekend and to work out together at a sports club near my house. I realized how I have always yearned for a PB in my life - a sensitive str8 who sensed in me his repressed gay shadow and in whom I could feel a connection with the nasty str8 world. But a phone call canceled our proposed meeting. Y fell sick and then I fell sick - we overdid it, physically, if not emotionally. Then silence. Finally a call last Saturday and Y promised to come over that evening. No show. Then his phone didn't work. 'You heart-breaker! Never trust a str8,' I kept thinking. What a drag, unrequited love.
With Y in the back of my mind continually, I have slogged along since, feeling like a washout. And M went to the banya last Saturday with O and was picked up by Serge, the Frenchman who has been the talk of the town the last year. Whether or not they did anything, I'd rather not know, remembering Tolik. We hardly ever have sex now. M and now unemployed brother are draining my pocket with apt repairs.
Yesterday I went for sour milk and liver to the market down near the metro, and who should I meet, but a sheepish, though unapologetic, Y. My heart skipped, no doubt like Alisher's with me a few hours later at today's tram stop. "Yuri! Where have you been? Etc." Again I suggested a rendezvous, this time at his office and he agreed, though without much conviction, saying coolly he would phone that evening. He didn't. Is he as inured as I to being the 'object of my affection' for an older gay (closet or otherwise)? Time will tell. In the meantime, life goes on (or slips by).
Now that M is so busy, I've been able to invite Daniar over for some hot sex, though it palls rather quickly. He insisted on coming a second time and it was a bit like rape. Ugh. Though I'll no doubt invite him over again. He is happy to have a gay shadow once in a blue moon, but my conversation meter tells me that such relations are more symbolic than real. The less said, the less subtlety, the shorter the tryst, the better.

February 13, 2001

Again my dreaded 13. We had a nasty shock this past week - Igor (Inessa) died of AIDS. He an his cross-dressing side-kick Slavik (Pieka) both had kept it a secret, though the rumor has it that he caught it in Sochi in 1991. M cried last night and insisted I sleep with him, though he usually prefers to sleep alone. I felt (and feel) like a zombie - how crazily I've pursued phantom assignations. I racked my brain to think of any rendezvous since I was last tested in July that could be the fatal one. My preference for 'loxy' as I see scrawled in graffiti here, even on buses, is literally a God-send, though not 100%. Loxy stands for lover of sucking cock.
The reign of death started with poor kitty last October 13, continued with Shakhlo's murder and O's mother's death in December, and now this. And this is just the tip of the iceberg here. How many others did Igor infect? It was only in the last year that Igor started using condoms regularly. He did encourage M to have an AIDS test. He also did his best to have a 'relationship' in the last year, living with a fellow for about 6 months. He actually looked plump last summer - cheerful and lively right to the end. Slavik phoned out of the blue in early January and joked with me that he was just back from Paris. He phoned again and spoke to M for an hour, without a hint of despair.
My life seems to be one long requiem these days. An editorial in the Trib by an environmentalist said that many people feel this way about Nature - that the environmental crisis is now beyond remedy and that people are all in one of Kubla-Ross's stages of mourning - denial, anger, despair, or resignation. Not a perky article. Top this off with Bush and his Star Wars anti-abortion crusades and… Ugh. Enough.
I read several book reviews that were rather provocative:

1. On the Crucible of War by Fred Anderson - a history of the American rev. he argues that the rev was really about imperialism and had very little to do with 'freedom and liberty' etal. It was the limitation on westward expansion beyond the Allegheny Mountains imposed on the colonies by the British that lay at the core of the opposition by the settlers and land speculators. This policy resulted from the treaty ending the 7 Years' war in 1763 which obliged the British to afford protection to all their subjects in North American, including the natives, who George III believed should be able to live at peace in their own lands. Hmm… Shall we tear up the Declaration of Independence and smoke it??
2. And another of a diary by John Mortimer (English playwright and novelist) - The Summer of a Dormouse. On my list for my next trip. He recalls a prep-school headmaster who dismisses his boys' complaints about a homosexual history teacher with: "Most of the masters in this place are homosexual. Why else would they take on the job? The pay's not much, and you boys can be extremely irritating."
3. A recent bio of Judy Garland (Get Happy by Gerald Clarke) reveals that Judy's father, (Gerald), husband (Vincente Minelli) and son-in-law (Peter Allen) were/are gay, that Vincente and Peter even had a fling. Is there something unconscious here or what. Judy the ultimate fag hag: was it because (a) she wanted to be loved by men who could not 'really' love her, or (b) she was afraid of men who could 'really' love her? Funny how Hollywood sex symbols end up with gays either as husbands or as worshippers (Monroe and Harlow come to mind).

The development of consciousness, or the soul, creates physical changes in the body, and not the other way around, as the theory of evolution suggests. We create the reality we perceive but it has no independent existence apart from that. (Jane Roberts Seth Speaks)
Heavy stuff! Nature imitates art, as OW said. As c(onsciousness) develops, evolution goes into high gear and rapidly develops 'man'? A subjective world results as we morph (and we make the world over) to meet the needs of c. This world is meaningless apart from 'man' (i.e., all the computers and toasters would be meaningless if we all croaked tomorrow). But then there are very real objective results of 'man' - all the ecological disasters. Surely there's a subjective-objective dialectic at work.

February 24, 2001

Robert Oostvogels is here doing a report on prostitutes and AIDS, and regaled us with his stories of his harem of beautiful Turkish boys back in Rotterdam. Good ol' Holland: the most laid-back laws and attitudes, plus a ready supply of young Turks. Sigh. Rob conveniently lives smack in the Turkish ghetto there. "Turkish families are hell for teenage boys. The father is a cold dictator and the son is at his beck and call at all times, not to mention regular beatings and then arranged marriages to daughters of father's friends back in Anatolia. They love coming over to stay with me. They're all straight, but just like lots of sex."
He stayed with us two days, downloading bashful messages from Hakim and others telling him to hurry home. Rob started out with problem kids (whose parents no doubt couldn't care less who they stay with or what they did) and Dutch teens, but decided they were too much - robbing, destroying things, playing hard to get. Now he sticks to Turks: well (if harshly) brought up, and not inhibited.
This may be a bit embroidered for effect. It certainly made me restless and I dropped in on Chorsu Monday for a blow job. And again Wednesday. A nice looking Uzbek stood massaging his cock quite boldly in the main room. I made my interest known and followed him into the sauna. We ended up in the orgy room and he had lots of juice. I brushed off an eager guy and went back to find Muktor sitting idly in the main room. He stood coolly facing me, showing his sexy crotch to good effect, putting one leg on the bench, which was very sexy. I offered him a massage and we went back into the sauna, where he was soon hard and came again. I timed my exit with his and offered my telephone number on the way out. He turned out to be a new Uzbek, with a fancy Nexia (albeit with a broken door handle). We had dinner and clearly were enjoying each other's company. He ended up driving me home and came for the third time, bringing me with him. Fortunately, M phoned to say he would be home soon and our wild few hours ended happily. To be followed by a return visit the next day (coming twice) and yesterday. He just arrived when Daniar phoned and just left as M was arriving and M saw me saying goodbye at his car. A white lie: "I took too much commission from Shukhrat and his assistant came to get the extra back." I feel full of sexy Uzbeks for once. A nice feeling.

April 10, 2001

Bill Marshall's theory that to dream allegories, you must first consider your life journey as an allegory for the search for identity, meaning, and an unfolding of how you relate to others. As Nietzsche says, 'there are no facts'. I would add, there are only relations. My working life is a good case in point: short jobs, avoiding responsibility, translating, freelance journalism, using superficial knowledge of many areas. My promiscuous intellectual life parallels my flirting in banyas, toilets, with Muktor, Daniar and the like - superficial, abstract, unreal personal relations.

Muktor was on my doorstep when I returned from a frustrating day trip to the mountains with Sasha, which included losing a filling to a stringy shashlik and the long tedious hauls to and from the mountains on the busy 2-lane road, with the myriad security checks, complete with alternately disdainful and snarling cops. Of course, it appealed to my vanity to have a young handsome Uzbek gently ambushing me. Good thing M wasn't around. He rekindles that feeling of excitement of being possessed, loved. He chokes on the words "I love you," but nonetheless sputters them out as his excitement increases, but no kisses. The quickie left me restless.

The next day in the Blue Cupola can, I saw the guy in the next cubicle slip next door and leave a few minutes later. As I washed up, I saw his 'victim' - another dark masculine guy, rinsing out his mouth, that tell-tale serious half-snarl on his handsome face. I felt like I'd taken part in the mystery of shared masculine (forbidden) sexual excitement. I was just a bit jealous ('wish it could have been me'), but enjoyed it vicariously. It was a kind of affirmation of my own quest for this fleeting ecstasy - the excitement of witnessing a masculine ('straight') guy surrendering to another's sexual aggression/ gift. The excitement in giving another sexual arousal and being possessed by the Godhead, the other, the unknown, the unnamed!

Read Gay Sunshine Interviews volume 2. Gay writer Edouard Roditi argues that homosexuality increases with the level of social anxiety and crowding, something he experimented with in rats and extrapolates to the increasing prominence of the issue from WWI on. He (and I) explain it as a search for mutual male support/ confirmation. A way of soothing the anxiety of being alone. Also a uniting with 'the other', i.e., another male like yourself.

I relistened to Hopcke's tape on dreams. A dream tells you about your emotional life: the you in the dream is the emotional you. If you're in the back of the house, your emotional you is repressed. Primitive animals represent undeveloped feelings. Amplification is recognizing the archetypical symbolism of a dream image. For example, ants are a symbol of earthiness, humility of the feminine.
With patriarchy, we find an alienation of the m from feelings (passion). For a gay man, this means an inability to sustain feeling in a love relationship, a preference for anonymous sex/ passion. Straight men channel their male passion into collective sports, and their sexual energy to women. For gays in patriarchy, this translates into channeling male passion into culture and problematic relations with men (either anonymous or a parody of straight relationships).
The repression of the emotional side in men translates intergenerationally into the (emotional or actual) absence of the father, and the concomitant difficulty in accepting male intimacy. For a gay this is especially problematic, because the only intimate (sexual) relations he can have are with men. He searches for the lost/ absent father-son intimacy through sexual relations with other men (vs str8 men through collective sports). This is a search for both personal and transpersonal sources of masculine being (requiring both psychological and spiritual development).
Without internalizing authority, a man is left with the masculinity of teenage rebellion (dependent, immature), not the masculinity of adult productivity. This inner authority is based on the principle of generativity, increase and power, and is self-centered in the positive sense. The totality of the masculine is puer and senex (Hillman).
In patriarchy, the feminine is denied (Uranos -> Chronos -> Zeus), and there is a masculine imbalance, where puer (intimacy, feeling, relation) is denied. We must recognize the healing nature of relationship (the soul/ anima), which entails responsibility, vulnerability, interdependence, feeling, love, creativity, work, acceptance of imperfection, abiding care and nuturing…
The Greek myths are inspired by (are an allegory for) the shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. Persephone, abducted by Hades, ate a pomegranate seed in the underworld. The male now possesses the birth process, creation. Eros (son of Aphrodite, who in turn was born of Chronos's discarded genitals) is now the female principle within man, controlled by man. Thus abduction/ rape becomes another allegory: the painful struggle to possess the female principle. For Jung, the anima is the feminine in men, but this is his conceptualization arising from his ingrained patriarchy. Hades abducts P to the underworld (the u), but P should elevate H to c. This is not in the myth - it's too late, patriarchy has triumphed. Demeter represents the winter desolation resulting from the m/f split. She tries to save P but can't. "The goddess can't save the masculine from itself in patriarchy." D tries to give immortality to Demophelon but fails. Humans can't be purified. We must relieve women of the burden of carrying male creativity. We must recognize the autonomy of the female principle in ourselves.
Hopcke argues that the anima is the figure for the soul, not just the feminine, and animus (the masculine) is really the spirit. In late Jung, he differentiates Archetype from its symbolic culture-specific embodiment. The anima, Persephone, is both Goddess of death (dark) and daughter of the harvest (light). She represents the cycle of life: renewal -> death -> renewal. She is the intermediary between c and u, not just the female principle. [This reminds me of the so-called male mother archetype idea.]
He goes on to argue the old adage that you must learn to love yourself in order to learn to love another man (or woman). To love another, a man must feel comfortable with other men emotionally if not physically; learn to love both the male and female in himself.

I had a small epiphany a while back after smoking a joint, leaning out the window, looking at the shadow of a tree. It first looked like a cat jumping, then a penis, a fish… The dope made me sensitive to my emotional response to each image. The cat prompted love and anxiety, the penis - sex, the fish - religious calm. This was my grasping of the idea in "The Soul and the Nature of its Perception" in Seth Speaks (subtitle: The Eternal Validity of the Soul), where he says: "The physical senses can actually be said to create the physical world, in that they force you to perceive an available field of energy in physical terms, and impose a highly specialized pattern upon this field of reality... There are no real divisions between the perceiver and the thing seemingly perceived. In many ways the thing perceived is an extension of the perceiver. This may seem strange, but all acts are mental, or if you prefer, psychic acts." The world is in and is realized through our perception. It can be beautiful or frightening, depending on your state of mind.

May 27, 2001

More thoughts on m/f: women are more home-making. The f principle suggests guys should be more domestic for balance. However, mixed with the male principle, the result is a guy that wants a home (mate) but, unlike a woman, pursues promiscuity on the side. Women in a straight marriage on the other hand, are supposed/ more likely to practice 'abstinence'.

I can see a pattern to my 'relationships' now, after Denis, Lyonia, Ruzibai, M, Daniar, Ayub, and now Muktor and Bakhriddin. I need the strong silent male, initially enjoy oral sex, with the fantasy of penetration in reserve. When I start anal sex, the novelty soon wears off and sex becomes almost repulsive. Lyonia and Daniar are my success stories in that they are muzhiks and yet we kept the anal sex at bay and see each other rarely enough to keep the oral sex interesting. Denis and Ruzibai just didn't have enough of the male. Ayub was a masochistic relation, definitely dead after his blatent robbing. As with Bakhriddin (see below). As for Muktor, we've managed to maintain the interest even with anal sex, but it's limited and our weeks apart are necessary healing.

Bakhriddin - an anecdote. A swarthy Tajik sitting on a bench in BC, legs apart, clutching at his cock, teeth shining white, a large square head. Not bad, though a little too eager. I stopped, returned for a light. His lighter barely worked: "I just bought it. Chinese, I guess." I thought I'd have to break the code and pull out my own lighter, but finally he managed, taking a cigarette. I invited him for some (awful, flat) 'champagne' and then we shuffled to the metro and my place, his newly baouth (Chinese) sandals already falling apart. Skinny as a rake, his cock difficult to keep hard, though with nice legs. Rather blah sex, with the bitter aftertaste of the alcohol in his cum. He came over again on Saturday, more nondescript sex, though tasteless this time. No magic, a bit dumb and embarrassed. I thought maybe that would be the end, but he phoned Sunday: "Eric, my uncle died. Can you help me, I'm at the station and must raise enough to get to Fergana right away." I volunteered 2500 sums, knowing I'd never see it again and he rushed over. I liked the way he slunk gracefully down the steps as he left, and thought maybe he would be a nice diversion - my 'student'. The next day, I went to BC on my way to the British Council and decided to pass the spot where I met him to try to feel something. A guy was sitting there with a short, chubby, balding middle-aged man. Guess who? He studiously avoided looking at me, but his pick-up ingenuously ask me the time, and B was caught out. He followed me and I could see the gears grinding inside as he tried to think up something plausible. "I decided to fly there. Otherwise I couldn't have made it." Sure, sure. I was taken in, but was not too surprised. I was surprised that a Tajik would so lightly use the death of a family member as a pretext to cadge a few sums. The initial bitter cum is still in my mouth. B is someone I'm not eager to see again.

I found CDROMs of Keith Jarrett's collected works and just listened to Facing You (1971) which I fell in love with back at Peter Martins's as a grad student. After 25 years, I listen more analytically, trying to follow J's creative train of thought, the conversation of different voices. It makes me realize how time is slipping away, and that this album is a piece of J frozen in time. But he is alive and changing, having just returned to playing after several years with cfs. And me? Am I frozen in time with my youthful hopes and dreams. I have little to show for my stay here on earth, but then I have left less bad in my wake at least in terms of destroying nature. I'm trying to live the 'praxis' - theory-practice, balancing real and fantasy/art, social/political and personal, urban and natural.

There has been a sharp, shooting pain in my right lower arm for 3 months now, despite several bouts with physiotherapy, bandaging and rubbing iboprofen into it. I finally spent a day searching the Internet and reading my findings. I traced it to my piano technique: pounding, with fingers curled. The reason curled fingers are dangerous is that the two end joints of the fingers are moved by the flexor muscles on the lower side of the forearm. Holding the fingers curled requires maintaining the contraction of the flexor muscles. Lifting of the fingers, on the other 'hand', is accomplished by contracting the extensor muscles on the top of the forearm. Therefore, if I lift my fingers while maintaining the "curl" of the two end joints, I am using flexor muscles and extensor muscles simultaneously; in other words, I am co-contracting. I'm sure my earlier finger pain was caused by this and playing tensely and too loud, and in fact was a warning, which I didn't heed.

I'll have to relearn my technique, doing warm-up stretches, massage, relaxing, and taking more breaks. The warm-up is intended to get the tendons running smoothly and the muscles warm. It is not designed to build strength, so simple, non-stressful movements such as flexing the wrist, arm, and fingers are all that is needed. Lightly squeezing a ball also works well as a part of the routine. Grab a condensed soup can with your fingers, with the back of your hand up, and raise and lower it about 20 times a day using only your wrist. Do arm strengthening weight lifting with fairly light weights (4 pounds) on a regular basis each day. Also no leaning on wrists at the computer, which I am sure is also a cause.

There is the Alexander Technique as well, which recognizes the importance of the neck, and aims at freeing it. This is done by moving the head slightly forwards and upwards; in this way the shortening of the neck is avoided. The back must be straight and, when bending it, the movement must come from the hip joints without curving the spine. There is an exercise performed in a standing position in the following manner: First the musician is asked to "allow the spine to lengthen". In other words, the back is gently straightened without any effort. This automatically seems to liberate tensions at the back of the neck and be conducive to a balanced head position. After this has been achieved, the musician exhales loudly and slowly by uttering the syllable "Ha". This relaxes the diaphragm area and there are certain physical changes which become apparent. The shoulders, for instance, relax and the musician generally feels very comfortable. After this complete exhalation, the body also inhales differently. The inhalation is complete and full, and this is very necessary when dealing with tension. The breathing must become regular and deep, because in all states of stress it is shallow and irregular. The relaxation is made complete by the third step which is "liberating the whole body through the loosening of the ankles". One simply orders the ankles to become very supple and flexible, and this final gesture releases all the remaining tensions in the body. It becomes light and there is an exhilarating sensation of floating. There is also the Feldenkrais Method where the arms are raised and lowered by the combined action of the pelvis, trunk, and head, producing the easiest, least effortful movement of the arms.

When playing, one should sit on the front half of the chair or stool in order to be able to utilize the force of gravity. The gravity should be pulling the front half of the body; in that way one is able to let the weight of it create those effortless Rubinsteinian fortissimos. One of the fundamental issues in piano playing is how one uses the arm weight. The arm is very important in tone production and in the creation of great sonorities and fortissimos. When the shoulders are relaxed, there is automatically more arm weight resting on the hands and fingers. And when the arms are relaxed, there is a wonderful sensation of having no arms at all! At that moment, the arms are in a state of balance and this is a prerequisite for a healthy technique. "Breathe" with the wrists. By this I mean the constant up and down movement which effectively prevents tension.

Playing the piano is for pianists "a physical as much as a psychological need, since they feel unwell and uncomfortable if they cannot play. In Freudian terms it is the id, the creative instinctual child who needs to play, which is the most powerful part of their psyche. The toy with which the child is entirely absorbed and obsessed is the musical instrument and the sounds that come out of it. Musicians identify their particular instrument as part of the self. After all, though an instrument is only a tool, it symbolises so much more. After an injury one has to re-train the body, then forget it if the Spirit is to enter again. Or as Alfred Cortot would have it, the way is "from the knowledge of the physical to the perception of the metaphysical." In other words, the "new" body is no longer the object of attention. Instead the mind soars to the heavenly realms of music, and the physical hands, fingers and wrist become a vehicle for the voice of God.