Life After MN and D, but with GP and L

Time to pause. Almost a year since D left. The Global Forum, Sri Lanka, my young Russians, Greenpeace, subtitles, MN. Depression, but meditation and asserting my sexuality however haltingly keeps me going.

November 14, 1990

Another fit of depression. My week off and I feel useless, nothing. Dorothy has gone and the mass mailing is on hold. She is as lost as I am, and though frustrating, is some comfort.

I can't fit into the 'tribal myth', accepting the expected adult role within society, i.e., marry and settle into a job, not questioning the meaninglessness of a life centered on consumerism. The precapitalist economy enforced a structured intimacy by means of a traditional spirituality. The market economy replaced this spirituality with materialism and the pursuit of 'goods'. The Soviet experiment tried to make the society a domestic economy - one big happy family - to achieve a social intimacy transcending market relations, but that has clearly failed. My attraction to the SU was at least partly this fuzzy attempt to transcend the market. My despair now is realizing I'm being left behind as the whole thing collapses.

K's obsession with leaving makes a kind of sad sense: he's trying to shed this stuffy domestic economy, looking for intimacy through goods. Even as the place collapses, the personal contacts keep things going. This I find attractive, if a bit desperate, though for an impatient teen like K or D, these contacts are not enough. I'm important here as an individual, albeit one with special advantages, but at least not as a cog in a commodity machine. As long as I value myself as a person, I'll find that value reflected in at least some personal contacts.

November 17, 1990

Spent a crazy frustrating few days in Vilnius mooning over Valera. It's as close to making love without admitting that's what we're doing as possible. Who knows where it'll end up. He seems to accept sleeping with me as part of our relationship. I had to go to Donskaya Banya on my way home to get my rocks off. Ended up getting fucked by a stocky but attractive construction worker. The occasional orgy scene at the banya does not attract. I still like my sex one-on-one, fantasizing and personalizing it as 'love'.

November 22, 1990

What keeps me here is the fact that as a foreigner, there is a certain cast or role in which I'm automatically slotted - privileged but not particularly elite, living like a Soviet. It is a source of hate and envy, but also of admiration and respect. It's something I don't have to fight for, as I would in the West. I guess I'm chronically suffering from a castration complex. I'm not at all ambitious; I just want to love and be loved. How difficult, how fleeting love seems to be. D seems like a phantom. Misha has disappeared since I last refused him. He was too intense, and getting fucked got boring. I went to the theatre with him once, to some trashy musical, and partook in the 'gay scene', which struck me as pathetic, as I find it at home.

Admit it: for me, being gay is suffering from arrested sexual development. I've finally figured out what I like sexually: to fuck actively with young guys - just masturbating or frottage, maybe more - and sucking a phantom father/ mother figure. Occasionally being fucked by the same, though with more anxiety attached. A kind of primal 'giving birth' and being born. Is this being childish, or is it, when it comes down to it, what sex is all about? What the fuck. It's sex and it's exciting. It's fleeting, but after all so is life.

Each orgasm is a little death, as I told Valera from Vilnius, the thought of orgasm as close as we seem to be able to get to actually fucking. He excites me - he likes our intimacy, holding, kissing, snuggling, sleeping, but it clearly scares him, and any move to go farther is carefully resisted. Am I fooling myself with this chimera? Love between men has to be a bit dangerous, angry, a discovery, an adventure. [He still excites me 6 years later as I edit this.]

I have my mirror image at MN, Bob Meyerson, a classic study of castration (puer aeternus), though he's far too uptight to even consider if he might be gay. A born-again Christian Jewish recluse, from Philadelphia. His passion is running a Toastmaster's Club at MGU, teaching future Moscow yuppies to be superficial and clever. He too was sent by the Soviet Friendship Society to study at the Pushkin Language Institute in the early 1980s, but he chose to stay on. His mother's letters have the same wilted saintly handwriting as my mother's. The longer I stay here, the more I think I'm becoming like him - withdrawn, dull, vegetarian, religious, impotent, and unemployable.

Still, I've got castrating Dorothy rooting for me to work for castrating GP. And castrating, castrated Tofik, my film director friend, for whose documentaries on Stalin's bodyguard and on prostitution I did the subtitles.

Maybe I'll survive till D comes back and we'll go to Canada and live happily ever after. Maybe I'll fall asleep and never wake up.

November 25, 1990

As a foreigner, you don't have to earn your place from a common Soviet's point of view. You have it by grace, that is, by fate or your willingness to be. It accounts for the 'stupid foreigner' syndrome - the starry-eyed misguided Sov symp of the past, the naive citizen diplomat of the 1980s, not to mention the fat-cat businessman and snotty diplomat.

My stocky construction worker Volodya came over, but it was a bit of a drag. As Marx so telling commented: 'History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.' He told me how he came to be gay: he was buying a winter hat from a speculator on the street who proceded to pick him up, taking him home and blowing him in his sleep.

December 3, 1990

Poor Steve. An hour late for work. "A bad start. I'm wondering what I'm doing here," he said morosely on his first arrival. I could tell him - to escape an oppressive mother and a large family full of older sisters. HE comes from a French Cdn family of nine. Whew! He's also here presumably to try to develop some kind of love life before it's too late (he's just 30). Look at Suzanna, Joanne, Bob, Patricia, not to mention me. Also perhaps there's a bit of Anglo-Saxon (or Catholic?) masochism there. He needs that little extra boost to a deflated ego that being a foreigner here provides.

I've developed this allergic rash on my hands and feet again. When I first moved to Stroitelei, I thought it was bedbugs and threw out what were no doubt perfectly good mattresses and had the apartment fumigated. Then it resurfaced when I got all excited over Daniel. True, it's not easy to keep a good diet, and the air on the street is enough to make you pass out, so it's probably a question of the critical mass of all factors combined.

An infatuation with a 'simple Soviet' Sasha Molchanov, a friend of K's, just out of the army. Half Jewish, with a great twinkle in his eye and an ironic smile. Everything is "mafia". I took him to a party at the Swedish ambassador's residence for the RATS (Russian-Anglo Theatre Society), for whom I play piano. We found some cards and played Durak at 4:30 am. Another possessive mother, phoning the next afternoon (I didn't plug in the phone till 1:30 pm), demanding his immediate return. He was great. All he said was "Yolki, palki," [What the ...] and hung up. She didn't call back. That's what I call a healthy son-mother relationship. The army here is the rite of passage for guys. You go in as a boy and (supposedly, and if you're lucky) come out as a man. Too bad - he's marrying soon, straight as an arrow. We'll have a few highs yet. It's great just sleeping next to him and jacking off a few times as he lightly snores. Snoring - a turn-on! And when some old fart does it on a night train, I want to kill him. I'm quite ageist, but it's probably terror of growing old myself, and the old self-hatred.

December 12, 1990

A meeting with Yuri Utkin, who runs an English language training program based on intensive overloading of the mind, the idea being to overcome the conscious self-censor and unconscious (intuitive) censor, to release the power of the mind to phenomenal learning potential. It struck me that this attempt to cram the mind full to reach a kind of threshhold is trying to do what Buddhist meditation tries to do, but in precisely the opposite way, by clearing the mind of everything. But Buddhism strives for a higher consciousness, release, whereas this cramming strives to FILL UP an unwilling mind with more things, fundamentally an EMPTY exercise. How Zen!

My coming here - to escape oppressive relations - initially allowed me to clear my mind, making way for D. Since he left I have slowly got back into a circuit of frantic relations - bridge, receptions, work - to fill up the time. Love filled an empty willing vessel and made life meaningful. Now life is 'full' but empty.

December 16, 1990

Today's bloopers included "Truthness is not (just) a word," words of wisdom from Slbodkin, a crypto-fascist RCP RSFSR deputy, who accused the parliament of "fraudliness in its proposed land bill." Then Pat suddenly laughed, having discovered that excessively turgidity of the piece she was struggling with was at least in part due to the fact that the pages had been misnumbered by the Russian translator down the hall. Meanwhile, Ira, a caricature of herself, with her false-toothy smile, bow legs, overpainted lips, constant sexual undertones, was declaiming at length about prices and politics. Not much sublime, but lots of ridiculous.

I'm haltingly discovering different sides to my sexuality - active male vs passive female.

December 21, 1990

I met Alexei Bogunov at the banya this week - an attractive guy with a shock of dark hair, and a hard athletic body. We arranged to have lunch at the US-Canada Institute where he works. I felt like a zombie in a morgue there: we were a group of dry leathery intellectuals . Not a hint of sensuality. So much for my sexual fantasy. Maybe because I wasn't wearing my glasses when we met. Ah, my glasses - the dark polaroid is a good way to hide (or let me forget) the cruel wrinkles that have reached critical mass under my eyes, but they destroy my illusions of others. My obsession with feeling someone's (almost anyone's) orgasm burying me, giving birth to me, piercing me, overwhelming me - somehow loses its magic in the intellectual world. Oh, for worker Leonid's sudden incarnation, orgasm, and quick ascension/ disappearance. Another fallout from meeting Alexei: I envy his stable relation with his lover as he moves on into old age. I'm incapable, unless my love for absent D proves otherwise, of this.

January 8, 1991

Xmas eve with Alexei and his gay activist crowd - a real sexual bore. Misha, a yuppie gay who travels to Argentina (short and with a dapper sculpted beard) tried to get me to go to the Nutcracker on New Year's Eve, but I squirmed out, having agreed to drop acid with straight, 16-year-old Danya, the beautiful dark haired, white-skinned Jewish friend of Shtukun's, who reduces me to a blubbering idiot. It was a gentle and comforting night. We went till 8:00am at which point his obsession with computer tennis and drawing made me irritable. He was focussing his intense sexual energy on them (at my expense so I felt). I finally joined him on the couch when he crashed. He was carefully oblivious to me. His first drawing - an incredible unconscious erect penis/ hand which has caused many an erection for me since.

Am now teaching French at the Anglo-American School. It's a great opportunity to see the ages of man as an accepted outsider. Eight yr olds, 11s, 16s - from child to man. The unselfconscious innocence of the youngest - trusting, joyous, living for the moment, taking joy in bright colours and play. The conflict-ridden but still bursting with life of those hovering on the edge of puberty - Meredith, the squat, fat, ugly brat that the pretty, sweeter girls pick on, the outgoing chivalrous, nonthreatening Eric. The shy, self-conscious 16 yr olds, so hard to reach, already uncomfortable dealing with me as a father figure to obey or disobey, especially as my French is worse than theirs.

Feel the emptiness of having no lover and yet being so close to D, Valera (Vilnius) and Danya. The Donskaya beckons, but I can't overcome the distaste, the humiliation, the seeming pointlessness of being chained to it as my only sure sexual outlet. Will I break out of this, or do my experiences with Misha, Viktor, my construction worker Leonid merely confirm my inability to connect? D is the exception, and he has now been away longer than we fucked together or even knew each other. I still feel I have to keep trying, though my aging body horrifies me, even though I am in great health for my age.

An MN article by Beretsov (1/91) described Soviet society as keeping people in dependent, immature childhood, and democratization as an inevitable growing up. So my attraction is perverse! Attraction to the childlike nature of people here - the ubiquitous, polymorphous perverse sexuality - and the womb-like but boring dependency on state socialism. I'm wrong to make a cult of youth and try to avoid becoming a serious adult. Politics was only interesting in as much as it was anti-social, critical, irresponsible. When it requires growing up (democratization) I lose interest, parallelling my immature sexuality, constantly directing my desire to other bodies, escaping any long term commitment. But time runs out for that eventually.

On the collapsing socialism front, I won a ration card to the Univermag Moskva for tomorrow at 6:00pm. A rep from the housing organization brought a hat to my door at 10:00pm this evening with slips of paper to choose, and I won a chance to buy a silver ring. 'Lucky in cards, loser in love' goes the Russian expression.

January 21, 1991

My clandestine trip to visit D in Kazakhstan is now underway! D's father Sasha bought me a plane ticket to Ufa in someone else's name. Good thing no one checked when we boarded, and we arrived at his friend Haifis's doorstep late that evening. In spite of the tough economic situation, they treated us to dumplings, a fine Georgian wine and vodka. Their parakeet Kesha buzzed from head to head. On a good day it says "Kesha's good" and "Gorbachev", but only chirped and sang for us. They are Tatar, though Russian is their lingua franca. A nephew is a noted jazz bass guitarist and Haffis insisted on presenting me with his album, which turned out to be very good.

We spent a bizarre 3 1/2 hours in the train station awaiting our train (Moscow-Tselinagrad) at 4:30am. A pathetic drunk awoke from his stupor beside us and, seeing the foreign script of my English newspaper, assumed I was Lithuanian. He launched into a passionate but garbled reminiscence of his supposed participation in the defense of Kaliningrad in WWII, presuming that Kaliningrad was part of Lithuania, and that I was an ungrateful Lithuanian nationalist. [Lithuania had been occupied a few days earlier and martial law declared.] He then poured some wine from his ample bag to fellow BIChes (bums or Formerly Intelligent Persons - FIPs), but soon disappeared when a militia came by and cleared the radiators of sleeping tramps, one of whom he grilled with me sitting in between. As I had no right to be taking a train anywhere from Ufa or any right to be in Ufa at all, I discretely moved a few seats over as the young unfortunate fellow explained to the militia his tale of misfortune - the theft of his belongings and passport, his previous life in a hostel in Tashkent. He did not look the part of a tramp; an older, frowsy woman was hovering over him, clearly infatuated. The video-salon was playing 'Girls in Panties', which I passed up. The temperature was not much above 0 degrees in the waiting hall and we were more than grateful when the loudspeaker announced our train. We had a 1st class 'sleeping wagon' 2 person coupe and immediately crashed.

Though I was anxious to see Denis, the day of leisurely dozing, watching the bleak, snowy, gently rolling landscape, reading, and eating - was very pleasant. I read an entire Readers' Digest (they are on sale in kiosks in Moscow), pleasant to the point of numbness.

We dragged ourselves from bed at 5:00am (2:00am Moscow time) to disembark at Esel, a tiny settlement in central Kazakhstan, from which we would take another train deep into the Kazakh steppe. It was bitterly cold - -20 degrees - with a sharp wind and we finally boarded a cold grimy train at 6:30am and dozed, cold and forelorn, on benches till we reached Derzhavinsk, 2 hours later.

Derzhavinsk, a city of 30,000, was founded only in 1955, part of Kazakhstan's Virgin Lands scheme, and named in honour of God knows what revolutionary. It is low rise in the extreme, nondescript - 1/2 Kazakh, 1/2 Russian - with a large 3-storey yellow stucco hotel, the Ishin, where we were reasonably well received, despite my lack of visa. The idea that we might be refused accommodation (was Derzhavinsk 'closed', why had I no visa?) was chilling indeed, but no questions were asked and we settled in to a whitewashed no-frills 6 rbl per person room. The door looked like it had been pushed in more than once. The bedding was very yellow, but, we were assured, clean, though my bed smelled faintly of dirty feet, and Denis's springs were so loose, it made fucking too funny to let me come.

I went to the Department Store across the road and then awaited for the return of Sasha and Denis from the barracks. The dept store was deserted, though I saw some very large slippers lying unwanted on a shelf. 'What was wrong with them?' I wondered. They looked fine and large enough, though hard and uncomfortable, so I bought a pair for 5 rbls, as slippers are not to be found in Moscow. Later in the hotel, the floor lady noticed them and explained there had been a shipment the day before and these size 44 were all that were left - Kazakhs are small, and 44 is big, even for Europeans. Sasha checked the store out the next day, and the remaining 3 pairs were already gone.

Sasha and Denis returned within 2 hrs, much to my surprise and Denis was as cheerful and handsome as when I last saw him 9 months earlier.

We unpacked all Denis's goodies and he was soon deep into his Elvis tapes, much to his father's disgust. Sasha and I went out to track down my GP contact from the Breakthrough direct mail - Ravil Nizbaev. We eventually found the address and were almost ravaged by a viscious German Shepherd. I'm sure we were like men in the moon to poor Ravil, a slight high-voiced art student in Arkalyk, 2 hours even further into the steppe, the end of civilization. He is a well-mannered, rather worried and earnest but on the whole, optimistic that the changes set in motion will eventually be for the the better. The family (mother Uzbek, father Tatar) has a large vegetable garden and 20 sheep.

No doubt upper-middle class Kazakh style, but in fact, simple spartan hard living. Ravil said he couldn't afford to marry and have a family and especially now, with the economic crisis.

Sasha and I returned to the Hotel Ishin and Sasha soon left us. Denis and I talked ("Tell me concretely when I can come to Canada forever? How much does a video cost? A car? How much will you earn at GP?") Finally he turned in, very matter-of-fact, clearly intending to sleep alone - leaving me to bemoan my lonesome fate. I finally gathered up the courage to crawl in beside him, but he seemed entirely indifferent, and fearing rejection, I jacked off, stayed a while longer and then returned to my bed, as it was far from comfortable, hovering on the edge of Denis's sinking bed.

I felt terribly sorry for myself - why had Denis written his supposedly rejected sweetheart Annia about his new set up at the Dom Kultyury as disk jockey, suprervising dances, watching videos, having his own room - in short not suffering agorophobia on watches on the steppes, as his family and I thought from his only letter. That was why I dropped everything to come to this God-foresaken outpost (and, of course, to fuck!). My itchy, sprained ankle (yes, this crazy trip with a sprained ankle) and wounded ego kept me awake till a few minutes before Sasha woke us up. I was fuming and stayed in bed while they went to the DK to get clearance for his continued holiday.

I calmed down only after an afternoon in bed with Denis. He laughed teasingly as I humped him. The bouncy squeaky springs kept us laughing and after 2 tries, I gave up and jacked off. The magician gave me enough rope to keep hanging myself. We lay together for another hour of snuggling and dozing till Sasha arrived. Denis laughingly said, "Lusiki was angry this morning but I knew he would be happy this afternoon." The brazen self-confidence of a narcissitic lover, sure of his hold. I don't know what Sasha thinks, but Denis calls the shots with us all. A lazy evening of eating, drinking, reading, writing, all to the accompaniment of the inspired magic of Elvis has left me with a feeling of crazy contentment, a desire to write, to make Denis a star, to bring my treasure to Canada.

Army jokes:
'Can you shit after an atomic war?' 'Yes. If you can find your asshole.'
'Is it better to have a bitch to yourself or a beauty that sleeps around? 'Better to eat cake in a chorus, than a turd alone.'

Our next 3 days developed a natural rhythmn - Denis dragged out of bed by us to report to the barracks (so they knew he hadn't deserted) with his father, while I nursed my head cold and ankle. They returned and several times Ravil showed up and we had lunch, with Denis quickly disposing of the precious sweetened condensed milk, chocolate and other goodies.

I realized it was hard for both Denis and I to rekindle our relationship. I was paralysed with his father around at first and only when Sasha went shopping or left for the evening could I get up the courage to hold Denis. For his part, it took 2 days of playfully recalling our crazy adventures, amid grillings about how we would emigrate and live together, and protestations of faithfulness before he spontaneously would hug or tickle me.

We slept the last 2 nights together, till I came, and I moved over to my own bed, anticipating Sasha' arrival in the morning.

"I must write a book - Lusiki's Adventures in the Land of Miracles." Not about big things, but about little details, like Lusiki feeding the kitty pancakes in the Ufa train station, how it ran away and the drunk started tormenting Lusiki about Kaliningrad. About how Lusiki would wear yellow pants and sandals to work and how I bummed a cigarette from him the first time."

What is it about Denis that obsesses me? His smile, like David Harbord's, so clean and fresh, so shy and yet so warm. Or his silky, musical voice, as he tells some outrageously filthy rhyme or joke: "Not a word about cunt," says Ryzhevsky when Natasha asks where to put the 16th candle. Or about various story-book animals meeting to have a shitting contest, and fucking each other.

D: "Just 9 more months. I imagine how I come back to Moscow without Lusiki knowing, and come right over to surprise him." Denis almost always addresses me in the 3rd person and I like it for some reason. Is it because it allows me some distance from myself? Lets me love Denis loving a crazy Canadian, rather than myself?

Sasha made an unexpected return to our room the 4th night when we were already thrashing around in bed. Denis said later his long underwear was already wet, and I had to disentangle myself, put on my glasses, etc. and try to look cool as I opened the door. "My roomate just arrived and I'd like to make him some tea," said kind-hearted Sasha. What was he thinking? I felt like a dirty lech, with sweet angelic Denis lying on his stomach so innocently. But when Sasha left, Denis let me continue. It turned out I didn't lock the door after Sasha left. There we were fucking and someone could have opened the door unexpectedly, or it could simply have opened itself, it was in such bad shape, to allow curious passerbys a cosmic shock. In fact it did open on its own but no one was around, we were doing nothing, and I noticed it in time. Whew!

The 3rd night after a bit of real intimacy, I dreamt of mother, seeing her as old, with lipstick on her teeth, but harmless and slightly pathetic. One of my brothers brought my deceased father's last letter. I wanted to smoke and read it. Denis urged me to make peace with Betty Adams as he calls her, and was pleased at the idea of meeting.

It seems that I'm slowly killing the dragon, although I'm still holding on to my fantasy about father. Maybe the letter represents my coming out (i.e., in reverse, he should be getting a letter from me). So I'm still not completely liberated from my hetero shell, clinging to the macho traditions, concealing my feminine nature.

Many times, Denis told me how other soldiers and women there accuse him of being goluboi (gay), which clearly bothers him (and me still, after all these years). I told him "You're simply a person. That's the only label you need." In fact, he's really still a child in many ways. He jokes freely about masturbating in front of his father. As for his girl Annia "I sometimes want to jack off on her picture and flush it down the toilet."

He complained that I seldom wrote, and only about my activities, never about my feelings for him. He loves it when I call him "my GP", when I answer jokingly to his questions, "I want to live on the 2nd storey of your cock, there's lots of room there."

We laughed constantly, even at how the bed laughed at us. We parted happy, though the trip back was sad. Reality knocks.

February 3, 1991

I am on electronic mail now. What a culture shock to send a letter via San Fransisco to Holland/ Toronto in a few seconds.

A totally unexpected call from a Volodya - a Donskaya lay from 8 months ago. A fresh unspoiled worker. "Hello Eric, it's V. Remember me?" When it finally clicked, I tried not to lose this nibble, but complicated arrangements and another call and invitation to go to a village outside Moscow and promises to phone amounted to nothing.

The tantalizing thrill of an unexpected adventure with a simple worker left me totally preoccupied all weekend, awaiting the call I knew wouldn't come. In restless despair, I went to Donskaya. No luck. Again the next day, where I met yet another Volodya, a vet who was keen to fuck, but just not masculine enough for me. All I seem to want these days is to give a blow job. My stall was next to a frightening looking muscular man, shaved bald, whom this Volodya figured was an excon. He did not give me any strong signals, but I finally mustered the courage to look in when he entered his stall and didn't shut the door behind him. I fantasized being robbed or raped as I sucked him off. I turned out he is an optometrist, planning to intern with Fedorov, and studying voice at the Conservatory (so he said). I invited him back and he fucked me and we listened to Brahms, but I already didn't want to have sex with him again. A strange ugly cock - a huge head with an opening like lips. The only arousal after the inital fantasy at the Donskaya, was fantasizing being fucked by a convict, or being robbed in a park. Why this need to be abused or to feel anger and aggression (albeit intensified and focused and made tender by passion)? There is something exquisite and ecstatic about rough brute strength channelled into fucking, ending in defeat/ release/ death/ peace.

Like almost everyone, he wants to emigrate. He mentioned South Africa as the only hope. "I'm fed up with poverty. I make 150 roubles a month. It's a joke. The old woman doctor at the polyclinic - her hands shake - she can't even give an injection. She earns 2 times that and hardly lifts a finger... And why is our opera so bad when we have the best voices? It's who you sleep with, who your relatives are."

February 26, 1991

I spent a week at a ski resort - Dombai - in the Caucusus with an MGU student, Andrei, who made the vacation for me by having to share my single bed. 100% straight, he mistook my excessive indulgence as selfless friendship. GP, MN, my sexual frustrations - are all whirling around. Who knows what the outcome will be? I should be taking control of my fate, but all I want to do is fuck. Not just to come, but to feel intimacy. It's not a death wish so much as a life wish. Why can't I find someone to love and fuck with at the same time?

Danya/ Daniel is here now with a girl friend. These straights hanging around bug me, though I crave their companionship. I want my cake and eat it. I want to feel free of sexual innuendo, and yet I want sex. Danya also brought some soldiers along with some dope. I'm a sucker for soldiers. The male society, the lack of all the soft pleasures, the simple life of a penniless, horny, young male.

March 10, 1991

More straights, in particular Andrei, using me and my computer. All these young fellows are using me for their own ends, though being full of life, they cheer me up. Even poor Volodya Shtukun, just returned from 5 months at a labour camp - he's always eating and drinking here, trying to sell me Soviet kitsch and other odds and ends for some ready cash, but there's a warmth there. Denis is a conundrum in comparison - talking clothes and cars, but still finding real joy in our crazy relationship.

I'm angry and feel sorry for myself because I haven't fucked in a long time. Good thing I went to Kazakhstan! At Donskaya yesterday, I almost got it off with Yura, a Ukrainian student at a construction insititute, but he had his eye on a cute young feminine guy. When the lights went out in the sauna, I saw he had moved over to his choice and when the door opened, he was standing over him getting a blow job. It was exciting and beautiful. Too bad I missed out. No one else was interesting. I gave him my number before leaving.

The GP work depresses me. Without a sex life, I have no inspiration to work.

March 12, 1991

Why do I like soldiers? The barracks life, like a big family, no privacy, the jungle of emotions, trust only with a special friend. The only thing they have is their thing. Everything is illegal except the inhuman regime (which I fear is why I 'like' the Soviet Union, as it forces people to look to each other for relief).

My Kazakh soldier friend, Marat, from Chimkent, didn't manage to sneak away from his 'stroibat' construction work (the worst army assignment), and my university 'friends' haven't bothered to show up to do some volunteer work for GP, so I'm finally reading some psychoanalysis.

Happiness is getting along with your daimon (natural living force (sex, eros, anger, power)) according to Rollo May. It's struggle according to the Tao. It's enjoying the plateaux, according to Zen new-ager George Leonard. Either way, you need mindfulness, to be conscious of your unconscious.

Freedom is having the will to do what is necessary, and doing it. It is the ability to shape reality in accordance with its potentialities, its truth. It implies responsibility to do this. If you're stuck on the level of protest, you're not free. You're dependent on the object of your protest, i.e., you give up your will to your enemy.

March 17, 1991

Andrei latched on to me immediately in the sauna - his arm positioned to touch me 30 seconds after sitting down. I followed him out to his room, where he sat, covered with a towel, his legs spread apart. Long curly hair, broad thick stocky body, young open face. Short ugly bent cock, which I sucked with decreasing pleasure. Then I was hounded by a scrawny bearded youthful redhead. "Andrei is a common friend," he leered at me. I demured, but then for some reason followed him to his stall, and realized then how exciting his thin but glowing body was. He came in a minute and I managed to swallow only the beginning of his bittersweet ejaculation. He withdrew and came, spurting a beautiful white arc to the side. That broke the spell, and I coudn't come, though he stood naked and let me watch him. We talked. He's religious - an Old Believer - and he invited me to a church at Serebrannyi Bor. German. We agreed for him to visit me next Friday. This feels good. Orgasm must be a holy feeling for him. To come against his smooth white body and feel a pure ecstasy. Wow!

March 21, 1991

What is it about Readers' Digest that is at the same time comforting and ... disgusting? It's saturated in a repressed asexual family incestuous love: a daughter talking about her mother's death, a defense of a father kissing his son. Everyone is (or will be) happily married with kids. Everyone works. Your stress can be calmed so you can take responsibility for your life and return to the 'hussle and bussle'. It's a watered-down religion for the busy middle class. Its glimmers of truth are padded with narrowmindedness.

After my crazy Friday, an equally strange Saturday. Yura of last week's Donskaya fantasy phoned just after I had jacked off. I was sitting at the computer and wasn't overwhelmed, but agreed to meet him. We barely recognised each other at the metro - he looked dull and plain with his toque pulled over his thick black hair, his face gaunt, his gold teeth now incongruous, and a nervous flick of his hand to emphasize his points. He was cool and aloof, complaining he had come down with the flu.

We had a glass of wine, as he flipped through glossy magazines, disappointed I had no porn. As the wine took effect, we sat a bit closer and when he half lay down, I eventually joined him and gave him a blow job. He came relatively effortlessly, but I got no joy as his cum filled my mouth. The sickly sweet taste was slightly nauseating and I was repulsed by the feel of the skin at the end of his cock. I couldn't come, then the phone rang, and he soon excused himself.

I ate without any relish and then Andrei Serikov, my str8 student 'friend', arrived with some Russian computer software.

The dopey feeling of coming down with the flu was pleasant that evening, but became excrucitingly painful by Sunday. This was a nasty dose. I was convinced that all my promiscuity had destroyed my immune system, and my feelings about sex were remorse and shame. Only a glimmer of excitement over my German Old Believer remains. I'm ambivalent about him, but I can feel the blood flowing again.

Nothing to read but these f***ing Readers' Digests that for some strange reason are swamping the kiosks. I can't really get inside the RD 'feel-good-about-yourself' pop psychology. That's not my upbringing, and my self-abasement in sexual relations continues. Maybe though, my desire to be active with my Old Believer and Denis (as well as to suck) is a sign of an unconscious 'feel-good-about-myself' race memory not totally destroyed by my upbringing. If I can help that feeling or instinct triumph, I can heal the scars of childhood. I'll still need love, but not so desperately. Is this pop Eric/Jung?

Whether that can lead to a reconciliation with mother - not as mother/son, but as individuals - brother/sister as Sheldon Kopp suggests we all are (or as sister/sister as Bob's fortune teller in Seattle suggested for mother and me), only time can tell. Certainly I took refuge in Denis's crazy love. Has his passion lasted? How to 'win the peace'?

March 30, 1991

Valera from Vilnius came with a friend Rima. What torture. Without my sexual fantasy, all I see is a stupid, smelly guy with no sense of humour. Poor fellow. He's sensitive - nice - and I treat him like shit. Of course I'm jealous, but really we are from 2 different planets. Sometimes I feel I should be a hermit so as not to inflict my untrue interactions with reality onto unsuspecting victims.

My last episode with Yura left a bad taste in my mouth. Sex - my brief encounters - is all maya, illusion. So many infatuations - Andrei, Valera (Vilnius), Valera (Kamchatka), Danya, various soldiers, bath encounters, Viktor (MN)... Escaped Kostya is still there and Denis is planted firmly in my mind.

April 1991

My GP junket to Ireland!

It was strange to see my peers, fellow fundraisers, from mostly Europe and the States, upwardly mobilizing and mostly sexually frustrated, trying to feel part of bourgeois society without being party to the guilt. But just as every fucking car driver today is part of the crime (a la Soviet people under Stalin), so are they. I don't like them (except Finnish Harry, the quasi-Slav), though I respect Bob Penner, an old acquaintance from 80s peacenik demos in Toronto, now a rising GP official.

After the conference, I stayed a week to cycle and holiday. After 3 days of cycling (Cork-Kinsale-Cape Clear-Cork) I remember why I hate cars and dogs so much. They actually resemble each other, chasing and sniffing each other's asses, flaunting their shit, tormenting pedestrians and cyclists, howling and growling. Cars and dogs incessantly barked and nipped at my heels, and exhaust filled my lungs as I puffed along what should have been quaint rural lanes.

I also remember why I began to hate life in the West so - the superficial politeness, the punctiliousness (ie, tightassedness), the excessive luxury of hotels, with their sterility and coldness, their irritating formality and bureaucracy for meals and room rituals. The rampant petit bourgeois mentality - small shops, overpackaging, high prices. Then there's the travelling youth hostel clones - mostly German and Australian, visiting castles and writing trite diaries (careful), the girls maybe getting laid by youth hostel workers if they're lucky.

I'm not sure why I'm doing this trip. The biking was a masochistic re-enactment of my past canoeing adventures, partly to test myself, partly to get into shape and clean my lungs, partly to soak in some repressed associations (landscape). I'm still not relaxed; instead, I'm irritable and nervous, but the atmosphere of otherworldliness on Cape Clear was soothing, and I sense that hitching to Galway and trekking there could be exhilarating. It's important not to expect anything, to enjoy calmly and disinterestedly, so as not to be disappointed.

Killary Harbour. My cock is numb and ass blistered. 62 miles today from the bleak ghostly island off Skibereen up endless hlls into a stiff breeze, the sun baking my face and hands to a crisp. I was so exhausted I fell asleep twice during 2 of my frequent rest stops. After 3 days of cycling (with associated sore ass, numb cock, blistered feet and sore knees), I have decided if I couldn't beat the hated dogs and cars, I would join them, even embrace them. Or they me, as it turned out - warm, hospitable rides and overly friendly dogs sticking noses everywhere, one even embracing me and licking my ear.

Cork. Ennis is an electronics small businessman who taught me Canis a ta tu (How are you) and Slon che (Good luck), and insisted the IRA were a legitimate response to the Ulster Defense League attacks on the peaceful protests of the early 70s.

Castlebar. Yet another Ennis is a driver for a compost firm who REALLY seemed to like me. Quite, shy, single, 30s, still living at home... We had lunch and then I treated him to a pint. He invited me to come home with him, but I demured. A simple honest worker, but a perfect example of why the oil economy is so distorted - literally driving shit all over the country (and terrorizing cyclists in the process).

Castelbar-Westport-Newport. An eccentric English woman well into her 40s in a rattle-trap jeep with a droopy slavering hound. She invited me home for coffee and to meet my hosts-to-be at the youth hostel - a drunken Georgian (American, that is) Jim and Irish wife Elma, who just happened to be there (Westport IS small). They drove me through a lunar landscape to a beautiful ex-hunting lodge and I spent the afternoon climbing till my knees said stop. Sheep fences, gorse and peat bog. Got slightly drunk on whiskey with Jim and felt like I'm sure mother feels about drunks - uptight and disgusted. Too friendly, too sensitive, self-abasing, loud, forcing a false intimacy - like my flame from Pushkin Institute days in 79, Vitalik. Dreamed of Denis seducing me in public at a conference on an elevator.

Newport-Westport. A ride with a loud priest ("Is that a bomb you have?" "How's the church in Canada?"

Westport-Leenane-Killary Harbour. James, who manages the Salmon factory nearby, gave me a ride. My suspicions about the ecological problems involved in sedentary fish farming confirmed. The beautiful fiord is growing all sorts of organic matter, which eats up the oxygen and spoils the water for other wildlife. As almost everywhere here, the moonscape is brush and peat - hardly a tree to be seen except on pine plantations. Ireland's sad, an ecological disaster from Imperial days, not pretty! God, I miss Denis!

The romantic description in the youth hostel guide conjured up a bucolic, 18th c cottage surrounded by a picturesque orchard. The reality: the old cottage had collapsed and the cherry and apple trees were cut down. The hostel is cold and sterile, with its quota of Australian and German Tourists (and a lone Canadian), and a Scottish landlady in a one-woman fight against local sloth (the neighbours dump garbage in the fiord, and it conveniently washes up on the hostel's beach).

The barren lunarscape depresses me. Not even a private spot to jack off. The plastic Australians drove me to Galway, emphasizing for me the silliness of sightseeing with dual purpose picture-taking cum pit-stops. Rather than staying with them and continue on THEIR way, I hastily decided to keep on truckin', and eventually got a ride all the way back to Dublin with an audiocassette producer (former cyclist) who played various self-produced tapes of Irish music, traditional and rock. I landed at Isaac's, a friendly hippish hostel, where I befriended an East German and was pestered by an insuffereable greying New Zealander. He irritated me because of our similarity: we're both aimless, lonely wanderers.

The beautiful bodies in the bunks around me were a pleasant sight the next morning. Much better than waking up alone. I took a train south to Bray and inadvertently hitched eventually, with the help of a car-full of silly Australians, to Glendaloch, a magical ruins of a 7th c monastic city on 2 small lakes surrounded by mountains. Unfortunately I missed the hermit's cave because I accepted Irish directions at face-value (the map is dead wrong), but felt the spirit there despite. After a rewarding day browsing through book and health food stores, I went to the airport. Even the Irish airport security are friendly, directing me to a quiet corner to sleep. I'm spending the night waiting for AerLinga's early morning flight to Heathrow, looking forward to Moscow with longing and anxiety (my itchy scalp has returned!).

I see where my freckles and big ears come from, and gentle character. I don't understand why the north doesn't want to be part of the republic. It's poorer but has a charm which England lacks, with all its pretensions. Perhaps it's too polite, too repressed, too sad underneath, but there's an underlying strength and beauty in the people. The lovely green eyes of the clerk in the 2nd hand book store, the giggly excitement of GPers Mark and Lucy ("Brilliant!"), the hearty glasses of creamy Guiness...

May 2, 1991 Suffering through the revolutionary holidays. They seem so unnatural, without any joy, especially now. I long for the personal intimacy of being with Denis. My own loss of political inspiration has left an emotional void (or rather opened a spiritual dimension of emptiness) which I need D to fill. My freedom from attachment (other than D) - can this lead to total emptiness? It feels like it would lead to me losing my mind. What if, God forbid, D were to die? How could I survive? Only with total emptiness. Better to embrace this than to shrink from it.

My old flame Misha, the commercial artist friend of Volodya the vet, invited himself over. His drawn out fucking irritated me in more ways than one, and I made him stop. "I thought you were enjoying it." I couldn't explain to him that it was humiliating, being the woman to him. In sex, it's the personal intensity I crave. The anonymous pumping leaves me cold. It's the feeling of intense oneness, the precious anti-social nature of two guys dissolving into one in ecstasy that fills me with energy. Jacking off with Denis, with each coming as he wants, initiating his own orgasm without pressure on the other, was great. Is it that D is not smothering? The only time he was physically possessive was when we went to filmmaker Tofik's to watch movies and he grabbed my hand as we sat together. Whereas Misha is clingy, embraces me with a whimpish fauning touch that is almost repulsive. We don't laugh either. He doesn't have a sharp sense of humour. D's and my attraction is expressed in the peels of laughter, the playful hunting (OK, me pursuing and seducing him) ritual, his self-confessed helplessness, yielding to me for phyusical sustenance, and yet his youthful stubborn egoism: the passion that burns in him at the moment motivates our creative activities be they musical, artisitic, sexual, culinary. I must muster my experience and wealth to realize them. He accepts my caresses as proof of my devotion, but he enjoys them. His earlier fooling around with neighbour Volodya Zubkov was fresh enough and my fumbling seduction ingenuous enough to pull off the transition to narcissistic quasi-gay quasi-virginity.

All this heated searching has not lowered my fever. It's 1 1/2 years since he left, with my crazy fleeting visits as my only way of assuring myself it's not all a dream. The longing is as intense as ever.