years old.
I was sitting next to Nina and observed the action taking place on the stage. Someone was declaring his homebred short little rhymes:
Calm down, time heals,
Just wait and I’ll homosexualize you!
The sun appeared behind the clouds,
I am having fucking bouts.
A guy came up to us, as it turned out later, his name was Lesha, and took Nina somewhere. A few minutes later Lesha appeared on the stage, almost completely naked. His genitals were covered with a shiny toy carrot made of cardboard. He was holding a whip in his hands, and a naked woman in a mask was standing next to him, with an appendicitis scar on her belly. Looking closely at the woman, I realized that it was my new friend Nina.
Looking at the naked Nina, I was thinking if I could have sex with her, and was inclined to answer positively. I was impressed by her sexually provocative behavior. I had no chance with her fifteen-year-old daughter anyway, as there was essentially nothing behind the sexual collar on her neck, and I had the intelligence to understand this moment. I went to look for Volodia. He was sitting with a pleasantly plump girl, who introduced herself as Tonia. After talking with Tonia for some time, Volodia began to lose interest in her, since he realized that he wouldn’t get sex that same evening. I, driven by sexual hunger, on the contrary, began to give more and more attention to Tonia.
Having returned from the scene, Nina disappeared from my radar. Tonia was flattered by the attention that I and Volodia were giving her, especially considering the fact that Volodia “the carrot”, who was performing on stage, also seemed to have plans for her. Tonia invited us next time to the Institute of Soil Science to attend a lecture on tantric sex. After accompanying Tonia to the metro station, the three of us digested for some time the cultural component of this pleasant evening.
The Institute of Soil Science was located in the area adjacent to Tretiakovka. A lecture was read by a certain Lapin. His admirers were crammed into a small room – about two hundred people were packed in a sixty square meters space. It was becoming very stuffy and uncomfortable, the brain was refusing to work, but it is possible that this was a tricky technique to suppress any doubts and sensible questions. Lapin was a muscular man of small stature, constantly engaged in narcissism, which was no big deal considering the fan packed environment. Lapin’s lecture was some kind of imitation of the Indian teacher Osho, but while Osho is certainly a talented and gifted swindler, Lapin was just an unfortunate copy. In his examples he constantly indulged in vulgarity, his mockery of the Christian understanding of the world also looked somewhat out of place. It’s not that I was a good Christian, I just do not understand why mocking what’s essentially just not your thing. In my opinion, one should not destroy other people’s worlds, if it’s possible. On the other hand, all religions try to prove their rightness and the fallacy of other teachings. Each of them tries to promote its own brand in an evil and ruthless way. So, Lapin, too, needed pupils who could bring in some income and also nourish the sense of his own worth.
After the lecture, I, my friends and Tonia are leisurely strolling towards the Red Square. The Moskvoretskii Bridge looks romantic at night, thanks to the mood I’m in. Gradually, I begin to fall in love with this girl, Tonia, but this does not seem like a good idea to me. I’m married, and I have not even got a place to take her.
Soon I have to go on a business trip to Kopeisk. Kopeisk is a suburb of Cheliabinsk. I’ve been there before. Coming there, you seem to travel thirty years in the past. All you get is scuffed, dull houses, poor lighting and no bright colors that please your eye when you are in a large city. It should be added that this trip is not just a trip in the past but a pretty warped past at that. In the Soviet past, people were kind and largely naive, the Soviet authorities tried to remove the negative from the information field, and life was perceived differently. Nowadays it is not so safe to walk past these houses anymore, as they are largely populated by people, who perceive their life, as a desperate hopelessness, and therefore they do not appreciate either their own or others’ lives.
I miss my Tonechka while I’m here, occasionally sending short messages on the phone. I try to entertain myself with work and going to the bathhouse. Since childhood, my grandfather has taught me to visit a public bath, I love this smell of the steam room and brooms, and most importantly – the feeling of cleanliness after the bath. This purity concerns not only the body but also gives some kind of spiritual joy and tranquility. I worked as an auditor, and the essence of my work was to confirm the financial statements of the client. The client was a miraculously surviving defense plant. There is no other work in the town, except for the plant and the coal mines.
During dinner, my accountant would carefully look after me, often pouring vodka into my glass. And though there were enough hot and cold snacks, I drank a bit too much. Next morning my head was buzzing but I was lucky, as the client arranged a tour of the Cheliabinsk region for me. Crossing the Industrial District, where the legendary Cheliabinsk Tractor Factory is located, which was producing Soviet tanks and where there is still a shortage of oxygen in the air and an abundance of different varieties of smoke, we went to the prosperous and slightly boring Miass. I enjoyed the nature of the Cheliabinsk region, which, in comparison with the Perm region or places near Yekaterinburg, is softer and the land is not covered by taiga. On the border of the Cheliabinsk region, the pines are already making way for sparse steppe.
But what struck me most was the city of Karabash. It hosts the Karabash copper smelting plant; therefore the whole place resembles an apocalyptic landscape. Against the backdrop of black houses, black people walk in the midst of black and red snow. If you think that you know what suffering is, then you do not know a damn thing. For the residents of Karabash, suffering has long turned into an everyday life and does not cause any unnecessary emotions. In the evening, remembering what I saw, I drank two hundred grams of vodka and felt the longing for Tonia, wondering how she was doing in Moscow.
Upon arrival in Moscow, my friends and I met at Mitia’s house. Having drunk a little, we wanted some action. And then, we called Nina, inviting her to a group sex. Nina refused, saying that to participate in the group sex we must provide her with a girlfriend for lesbian games. Damn, if we had such a friend, then we would not have called Nina. Anyway, Nina invited us to join her next weekend during the visiting session of her swing club “3 +2” in the Central House of Artists, and that was it. Mitia told that he was phoned by a drunken Tonia and her girlfriend this week, inviting him to join their girl sex. But Mitia did not go. Wow, that’s amazing, I thought, what else does he need? I mean, any sexually mature man would come running even if he had to do it barefoot in the snow, but no, Mitia just went to bed. However, if you think about it, there’s some reason in his actions, as you have to maintain calmness in any situation. Something broke in me because of this story. Fortunately for myself, I stopped feeling something special towards Tonia. It’s not that I was jealous or the prudish kind. In fact, by that time I had learned to treat treason with calmness and to experiment with sex. It’s just that for a moment I wanted to have something special in life.
Nevertheless, next weekend, I went to a meeting of the swinger club “3 +2” in the CHA. Several ugly aunties came, among whom Nina was winning, hands down, apart from one pretty young girl of about twenty-five. Among men, there was me, a small, bearded dude and a guy in leather jeans. Nina told us about the meetings of the swinger club: men would chip in to rent a sauna, where everyone is engaged in sinful activities, with active lesbian and homosexual games included. My objections and attempts to explain that I was not ready for homosexual experience were met with Nina’s remark about me having to expand my consciousness. However, I was not ready to expand my consciousness with the bearded dude, and, besides, I felt attracted to the youngest female participant. It seemed to me that something could happen between me and such a girl, who was ready to experiment.