It's Me, Eddie

Chris

As I say, I grasped at everything in my search for salvation. I even resumed my journalistic career, or rather, I tried to resurrect it.

My closest friend, Alexander – prostrated, like me, by his wife's betrayal and his own absolute nothingness' in this world – was living in a studio apartment on Forty-fifth Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues, in a fine building located in a neighborhood of whorehouses and vice dens. He was a trifle afraid of his neighborhood at first, being a bespectacled intellectual, a cautious Jewish youth, but later grew used to it and began to feel at home.

We often got together at his place, trying to find ways to publish our articles in America. They ran counter to the politics of America's ruling circles, and we did not know which papers to try. The New York Times had refused to notice us. We had gone there in the fall, when I was a proofreader at Russkoe Delo, as was Alexander – we had sat across from each other there and quickly found much in common. We went to the Times with our "Open Letter to Academician Sakharov," and the Times cut us dead, they didn't even deign to answer us. Actually, it was a far from stupid letter and the first sober Russian voice in the West. An interview with us and an account of the letter did get printed, not in America, but in England, in the Times of London. The letter was about the idealization of the Western world by Russian intellectuals. In reality, we wrote, the West had plenty of problems and contradictions, no less acute than those of the USSR. In short, the letter was a call to cease destroying the Soviet intelligentsia – who don't know a fucking thing about this world – by inciting them to emigrate. That was why the New York Times didn't print it. Or maybe they considered us incompetent, or didn't react to the unfamiliar names.

The fact remains that in America, just as in Russia, we were unable to publish our articles, that is, to express our views. Here we were forbidden another thing: to write critically about the Western world.

So Alexander and I got together at 330 West Forty-fifth Street and tried to decide what to do. Man is weak; the effort was often accompanied by beer and vodka. But, although a stuffed-shirt statesman may be afraid to admit he has formulated one or another state decision in the interval between two glasses of vodka or whiskey or while sitting on the toilet, I have always been delighted by the apparent incongruity, the inopportuneness, of manifestations of human talent and genius. And I do not intend to hide it. To hide it would be to distort, or facilitate the distortion of, human nature.

In short, Alexander and I drank and worked and discussed. We drank vodka, and along with the vodka we drank ale – for some reason I had taken a liking to it – and everything else we could get our hands on. Then we would set out to cruise the streets. As we walked to Eighth Avenue the girls said hello to us, and not merely in the line of duty – we were a familiar sight, they knew us. The two men in glasses were also known to the people who handed out flyers advertising the bordello, and to the kinky-haired man who issued them their flyers and paid them their money. After passing number 300, where the steep lighted staircase led to the cheapest bordello in New York, one of the cheapest, at least, we turned on Eighth Avenue, down or up, according to our own whim. The cruise began…

Everything had been as usual that April day. Attacks of anguish were coming over me several times a week then, or perhaps even oftener. I don't remember how the day began – no, wait, I wrote the scene where Elena is executed in "The New York Radio Broadcast," and was very weary from always returning to the same painful theme, Elena's betrayal of me. There were swarms of people in the corridor outside my door. They were filming Marat Bagrov in his room, filming him on assignment for Israeli propaganda: Look how hard life is for those who leave Israel. Actually, at least three countries have an interest in our emigre souls – they harass us constantly, swear by us, use us, all three of them. So at that moment Marat Bagrov, former Moscow TV journalist, was being exploited by a man from Israel – former Soviet writer Ephraim Vesyoly – and his American friends. Cables, accessories, lenses, and cameras crowded my door. I went out into New York, wandered, as if aimlessly, to Lexington Avenue, and twice found myself at her place, that is, the Zoli agency, where Elena was living then. I felt sad and disgusted. Suddenly I caught myself on the point of passing out. I had to save myself. I went back to the hotel.

The fucking exploitation scene was still going on. The Moscow TV figure, long unaccustomed to attention, was carried away with the sound of his own voice. The villain Vesyoly was serene. I knocked at Edik Brutt's door and asked for a $5 loan. Edik, kind soul, even consented to go and get the wine with me because I was afraid of passing out from anguish.

We went. Edik, mustachioed and somnolent, and I. I bought a gallon of California red for $3.49 and we started back. We encountered a strange man with a Russian face, who glanced at me, then grinned and said suddenly, "Faggot," and turned on Park Avenue. "An odd encounter," I said to Edik. "I don't think he's staying at our hotel."

We returned to the hotel, and the sacrament was still going on. Another denizen of our dormitory, Mr. Levin, was now angrily gritting out something about the Soviet regime and anti-Semitism in Russia. We shut ourselves in my room, and I prevailed on Edik to have a symbolic drink with me, at least one. And I set myself to soaking up my gallon…

Gradually I recovered and brightened up. Somebody summoned Edik, perhaps His Majesty the Interviewer, I don't remember who, but somebody. Then they summoned me, I went – they gave me a table. I took it, and a bookshelf as well. Marat Bagrov had timed the interview for the day he was to move out of the hotel. An ex-furrier named Borya, one of the most worthwhile people in the hotel, helped me move the table into my room. I treated him to a glass. I drank two or three myself. Marat Bagrov was invited too. Ephraim Vesyoly and the crew would have been invited, but they had decamped with their fiendish gear.

When Marat Bagrov and I had knocked back our glasses, the telephone rang. "What are you doing?" asked Alexander's animated voice.

"Drinking a gallon of wine. I've hardly drunk a third of it," I said, "but I want to drink it all." A gallon of California burgundy usually calms me right down.

"Listen, come on over," Alexander said. "Come and bring the jug with you. We'll both drink; I have ale and vodka too. I feel like getting drunk," he added. With that, he probably straightened his glasses. He's a very quiet fellow, but capable of recklessness.

"Okay," I said, "I'll stick the jug in a bag and be right over."

I was wearing a nice tight denim jacket, and jeans tucked in – no, rolled way high, to reveal my very beautiful high-heeled boots of tricolor leather. For my own pleasure I thrust an excellent German knife from Solingen into my boot, then put the jug in a bag and went out.

Downstairs, from the pickup truck containing the migrant Bagrov's things, I was hailed by Bagrov himself, Edik Brutt, and some other extra. "Where are you going?" they said. "To Forty-fifth Street," I said, "between Eighth and Ninth avenues." "Get in," Bagrov said, "that's practically on the way, I'm moving to Fiftieth and Tenth Avenue."

I got in, we started off. Past columns of pedestrians, past gilded Broadway reeking of urine, past a solid wall of strolling people. My glance lovingly picked out of the crowd the long-limbed figures of whimsically dressed young black men and women. I have a weakness for eccentric circus clothes. Although I cannot afford much of anything because of my extreme poverty, still, all my shirts are lace, one of my blazers is lilac velvet, and the white suit is a beauty, my pride and joy. My shoes always have very high heels, I even own some pink ones, and I buy them where all the blacks buy theirs, in the two best stores on Broadway, at the corner of Forty-fifth and the corner of Forty-sixth, lovely little far-out shops where it's all high heels and all provocative and preposterous to squares. I want even my shoes to be a festival. Why not?

The truck moved west along Forty-fifth, past theaters and mounted policemen. In front of one building we had the honor of beholding with our own eyes our Lilliputian mayor. All the emigres recognized him joyfully. He got out of a car with some other puffy-faced characters, and several reporters took pictures of the mayor with professional adeptness but no special enthusiasm. There was no great security force in evidence. Everyone in the truck went on and on about how there was no point shooting at the mayor in such a crush, and we had trouble making progress, moving barely a meter or two at each change of the light. The driver, Bagrov, and I applied ourselves to my gallon jug a few times. I got out my knife and started toying with it.

The love of weapons is in my blood. As far back as I can remember, when I was a little boy, I used to swoon at the mere sight of my father's pistol. I saw something holy in the dark metal. Even now I consider a weapon a holy and mysterious symbol: an object used to take a man's life cannot but be holy and mysterious. The very profile of a revolver, of all its parts, holds a Wagnerian horror. Cold steel, with its different profiles, is no exception. My knife looked somnolent and lazy. Plainly, it knew that nothing of interest awaited it, there was no good job coming up in the near future, so it was bored and indifferent.

"Put your knife away," Bagrov said. "Here we are." I climbed out, said good-bye, and charged into the entrance with my gallon jug, but the knife took its place in my boot, went off to bed.

Alexander has a habit – you ring him from downstairs, he presses the buzzer to open the door. But when you go up, he never opens his door ahead of time, never meets you on the threshold, you have to ring again at the door, and he still doesn't open it promptly even if he's expecting you. I keep waiting for him to deviate from his habit. No, today everything was the same as ever, with the obligatory pauses.

We have a division of labor when we're drinking: I cook, he washes the dishes. I boiled up some sort of pasta, then stuck a package of sausages into it, and we went to work in earnest on the gallon jug. The meal was at a table that stood arbitrarily in the corner of the room, we sat under a table lamp. We always talk about news and events, Alexander brings Russian emigre gossip from the newspaper. Often there aren't any events, so much the worse. Once in a great while I get off on the subject of my wife. But only once in a while, and if I do say anything about her, I immediately catch myself and change the subject.

"You were a fool not to kill her," Alexander told me once with the artlessness and clarity of King Solomon or a secret police tribunal. "You strangled her, you should've finished her off. I at least have a baby, or I'd kill my own wife. It wouldn't be good for the baby, she'd be left alone, but you should've killed Elena."

By May, as you will see, he and I would revive, write several articles that no one would publish, hold our May 27 demonstration against the New York Times, and get another interview printed in the Times of London. In May we would try various other gambits as well, dig up all kinds of possibilities in life, but back then, in April, we often just ruminated and got drunk. Besides, he had a weakness for sleeping with his own wife. Either his phone would be out of order and I couldn't get through to him, or he'd disappear over Saturday and Sunday.

That evening was probably as usual. Alexander undoubtedly told me that the paper had received a letter from some dissident, maybe from Krasnov-Levitin, or maybe the wily Maksimov had sent his routine appeal, directed less to the Soviet regime than to the Western left-wing intelligentsia, "deadened with surfeit and idleness," or the bearded Solzhenitsyn had amazed the world with his next deep thought on the world order, or some person had proposed detaching something else from the USSR, some other territory. The names of these "national heroes" of ours were always on our lips.

In our desire to kill the hateful gallon we were already behaving like athletes straining toward victory. I was also in the bad habit of mixing drinks. To revive myself, as I drank, I had a couple of cans of ale and several shots of vodka in the intervals between red burgundy. No wonder, then, that time became a dark sack, and the next illumination, opening of the eyes, call it what you will, found Alexander and me in some sort of temple. A service was going on. One thing I could not understand – whether it was a synagogue or some other kind of temple. I was more inclined to think it was a synagogue. We were sitting on a bench, and for some reason Alexander kept smiling all the time, his face was very joyful. Maybe he had just been given a gift. Money, maybe.

For that reason I turned to myself. Let's go on with our games. I pulled my beloved knife from my boot and stuck it into the floor, or rather, into some boards that constituted a footrest. Next to me a whole family of believers exchanged wild glances. I'm not planning to kill anyone, Messrs. Jews or Catholics or Protestants, I'm just madly in love with weapons, and I have no temple of my own where I can pray to the Great Knife or the Great Revolver. No, so that's why I pray to Him here, I thought. Then I went into a sort of delirium, several times tore the knife from the board and kissed it, stuck it back into the footrest. Once I dropped His Majesty the Knife, and his thunder reverberated throughout the temple because my German friend from Solingen had a heavy metal handle. The service ended with the priest's offering his hand to everyone, even to the foolishly smiling Alexander, but not to me. I was on the point of taking offense but then forgot about it, rightly deciding that I should not take offense at a priest of an unknown religion.

Again there was a dark pit, and the onset of a new illumination, revealing the smiling faces of some priestesses of love, who out of a special susceptibility to us – two stinking drunk, but, I think, very appealing bespectacled characters – had agreed to make love with us for $5. They were very sweet, these girls. Alexander would not have stopped any disagreeable ones, nor would they have stopped him. These were a light chocolate color, there were two of them, they were much more beautiful than proper women. Eighth Avenue has many beautiful and even touching prostitutes, Lexington has many beautiful ones too; when I lived there I exchanged greetings with them every evening.

Murmuring agreeably, the girls put their arms around us and pulled us along with them. They had a trained eye, they knew, exactly and definitely, that we had $5 between us and no more. You can't fool them. Money is their main interest, of course, but they're obviously no strangers to human feeling. They smelled nice, they had provocative long legs; these girls were much better than any ordinary secretary or pimply American coed. I had nothing against them. Why I didn't go with them, but sent Alexander off to enjoy one and promised to wait for him, I do not know. I believe there was some deep-seated force within me that made me think: All women are disagreeable. Prostitutes are much better than all the rest, they have almost no falsehood in them, they're natural women, and if they've undertaken to make love with the two of us for $5 when it's not even raining, not the kind of weather when they don't have clients, then that is obviously their pleasure. But even so, I'm not going with them.

I didn't want to think it through, but I knew that I would not go with them today – some other time. Why not? Was I afraid, perhaps? Not true. They were so sincere and homey, they might have been in my class in grade school. And in that April mood of mine I had essentially lost the instinct for self-preservation; I feared no one and nothing at all in this world because I was prepared to die at any moment. I believe I was seeking death – unconsciously, but I was. Then why would I be afraid of two beautiful minks? Afraid they were decoys? Afraid of pimps? You know I don't give a damn, I don't own a thing. That wasn't it. Women no longer existed for me. I was thoroughly drunk, yet I rejected them, almost involuntarily, which especially means that what happened a little later that night was no accident, my body wanted it.

I left Alexander; he went off with one of the girls to her place to make love, and I went into the gaping dark of the West Side streets, somewhere around Tenth or Eleventh Avenue. I remember myself walking away, as if I had been staring at my own back through the eyes of a bystander.

The light flared next when I entered some sort of walled-in area, apparently a playground for children. Dark corners have always attracted me. I remember even in Moscow I loved to go into boarded-up houses, which everyone feared and where bandits supposedly lived. When I was good and drunk I would remember those houses and set out for one. After climbing in through a broken window or door, stepping over piles of petrified shit and puddles of urine, cursing and singing Russian folksongs, I would discover some poor unfortunates in the house, alcoholics or tramps, with whom, after making their acquaintance, I would have a long and incoherent conversation. In one of those places someone conked me with a bottle and appropriated two rubles. But the habit stayed with me.

So, I entered an area where there were swings and other attractions for children. A light burned in the middle, but all the corners were alluringly dark. I went, of course, to the largest dark spot. Squeezing between some iron girders, on which rested a scaffold of unknown purpose, I let out an oath – my high heels were sinking in sand. To this day I don't know why the sand was there. Was it a sandbox for the children to play in? But then why all these iron girders? Or was it a parking place for cars, and the second tier raised on the scaffold? I don't know. This will forever remain a mystery, for not long ago I tried to find the place, but without success. Maybe they've built something there, which is improbable in such a short time, or more likely I mixed up the streets. I'll go look again sometime, if I find it I'll let you know.

I climbed a short iron ladder to the wooden scaffold, let down my legs, and sat on the very edge of the scaffold dangling my feet. Not a fucking thing to do. Night. I waited for adventure and glanced around. It was quiet, although somewhere far away I heard cries, footsteps – someone was chasing someone – music, the shuffle of feet. I sat and dangled my legs. A free personality in the free world. I could do anything I wanted. Kill somebody, for instance. Everything was available and easy. The alcoholic fog was beginning to clear. The free personality got sick of sitting on the scaffold. It jumped down. I jumped down, into the sand.

And then I saw Chris. That is, of course, it was only later I found out his name was Chris. He sat leaning against the brick wall, a young black man. A wide black hat lay beside him on the sand. Later I had time to examine it; it was decorated with a dark green ribbon embroidered with gold thread. As I later saw, he was dressed all in these three colors – black, dark green, and gold. He had these colors in his vest, his slacks, shoes, and shirt. But when I jumped down and saw him directly in front of me, what I saw was a black man dressed in black, his eyes meeting mine with a cold and mysterious glitter.

"Hi!" I said.

"Hi," he replied indifferently.

"My name is Edward," I said, taking a couple of steps toward him.

He let out a meaningless, scornful sound.

"Got anything to drink?" I asked him.

"Fuck off!" he said.

I thought, Wonder why he's sitting here, he's not a drunk or a druggie, doesn't seem out of it; if he meant to sleep here, he doesn't look like a bum. Maybe hiding from the police? I'm not one to betray anybody. I'd even help him hide. Only he looks real mean. I stared at him, then took several steps toward him and squatted beside him. He watched coldly and didn't move. I sat on my heels, peering into his face.

A broad hawklike nose, deeply flaring nostrils, lips unusual for a black – austere, not plump – a strong chest. A big guy: if he stood up he'd probably be a head taller than I. Young, twenty-five or thirty, no more. The wide legs of his black slacks lay on the sand.

"Say, what's your name?" I said.

Then he snapped, he had had it with my staring and questioning. Silently and swiftly he lunged at me. He hurled himself straight from a sitting position and pinned me instantly; a second later I was lying underneath him, and by all indications he meant to choke me to death.

I gave up the struggle at once, I was at too great a disadvantage. All I had time to do when he hurled himself on me was to tuck my right arm down under my right thigh, and simultaneously curl my right leg up under me. This way, when crushed under him I lay on my right side. It was a good strategy because my hidden hand was free to reach into my boot and grab the knife handle. If he intends to strangle me, I'll kill him, I thought coldly. He weighed me down all over, but my right hand could move freely. He had not allowed for that.

I was not terrified. Word of honor, absolutely not. As I say, I had some unconscious instinct at the time, a craving for death. The world had become empty without love. That is merely a pat formula, but behind it lie tears, humiliated ambition, the squalid hotel, lust unsatisfied to the point of giddiness, a grudge against Elena and the whole world (a world that only now, laughing openly and mockingly, had shown me how unneeded I was and always had been), hours not empty but filled with despair and horror, terrible dreams and terrible dawns.

The man was strangling me; this was fair because two months ago I had strangled Elena, nothing should go unpunished. He was strangling me, but I did not hurry with my knife. Maybe I didn't even pull it, or maybe I did, I don't know, but suddenly he relaxed his grip, perhaps his anger had passed. We lay gasping for breath, he was gasping too, from his exertions. It's not easy to strangle someone; I know from experience, it's not so easy as it looks.

There was a smell of damp sand, a shuffle of feet on the other side of the wall, lonely night people were passing by in the street. Suddenly I wrenched my arms free and put them around his back. "I want you," I said to him, "let's make love."

I did not thrust myself on him, it all happened of itself. It wasn't my fault, I got a hard-on from the scuffle and the weight of his body. This was not the dead weight of a Raymond, this man's weight was of a different nature. I did say "Let's make love," but he himself could probably tell that I wanted him – my cock must have poked into his belly, he couldn't help but feel it. He smiled.

"Baby," he said.

"Darling," I said.

I rolled over and sat up. We began to kiss. I think he was about my age or even younger, but the simple fact that he was considerably bigger and more virile somehow determined our roles. His kisses were not the senile slobbering of a Raymond; now I knew the difference. The firm kisses of a strong man, probably a criminal. There was a scar across his upper lip. Cautiously I stroked his scar with my fingers. He caught my hand in his lips and kissed it finger by finger, as I had done with Elena. I unbuttoned his shirt and began kissing his chest, his neck. I especially like to hug as children do, flinging my arms way round the neck, hugging the neck, not the shoulders. I hugged him, he smelled of a strong cologne and some kind of acrid alcohol, or maybe that was the smell of his young body. He was giving me pleasure. After all, I loved the beautiful and the healthy in this world. He was beautiful, tall, strong, and well-built, and a criminal for sure. That added to my enjoyment. Unceasingly kissing his chest, I worked my way down to where the unbuttoned shirt went into his slacks and disappeared under the belt. My lips came up against the buckle. My chin felt his engorged member under the thin fabric of the slacks. I undid his zipper, turned back the edge of his panties, and drew out his member.

In Russia people had often talked about the sexual advantages blacks had over whites. Legend told of the size of their member. And here before me was this legendary tool. Despite my very sincere desire for love with him, curiosity too sprang from somewhere within me and gawked. "Look at that, black all over, or with a tinge of…" But it was rather hard to see, even though my eyes were used to the dark. His member was big. But hardly bigger than mine. Thicker, maybe. Hard to tell, though. Curiosity hid within me. Desire emerged.

Psychologically I was very pleased by what was happening to me. For the first time in several months I was in a situation that I liked, utterly and completely. I wanted his cock in my mouth. I sensed that this would give me enjoyment, I was drawn to take his cock in my mouth, and most of all I wanted to taste his semen, to see him twitch, to feel this as I embraced his body. And I took his cock and for the first time ran my tongue around its engorged head. Chris shuddered.

This is something I do well, I think, very well, because by nature I am a subtle person and not lazy, and moreover I am not a hedonist, that is, I'm not someone who seeks enjoyment only for himself, seeks to come no matter what, achieve his own orgasm and that's all. I am a good partner – I derive enjoyment from the moans, cries, and pleasure of the other man or woman. That is why I devoted myself to his member without a second thought, completely giving myself over to sensation and obeying desire. With my left hand, gathering them from below, I fondled his balls. He kept moaning, he leaned back on his hands and moaned softly, with a sob. He may have said, "Oh, my God!"

Gradually he began rocking hard and playing up to me with his hips, sending his cock deeper into my throat. He lay slightly sideways in the sand, on his right elbow, with his left hand just barely stroking my neck and hair. I slid my tongue and lips over his member, deftly tracing out intricate designs, alternating between touching his member lightly and swallowing it deep. Once I almost gagged. But I was even glad of that.

What was happening to my member? I was lying with my belly and my member in the sand, and at every move I rubbed it against the sand through my thin jeans. My cock responded to what was happening with a delightful itching, I scarcely wanted anything more at that moment. I was utterly happy. I had a relationship. Another man had condescended to me, and I had a relationship. How humiliated and unhappy I had been for two whole months. At last. I was terribly grateful to him, I wanted it to be very good for him, and I think it was. I did not merely accommodate his strong thick cock in my mouth, no, this love we were engaged in, these actions, symbolized much more – to me they symbolized life, the triumph of life, a return to life. I was receiving communion from his cock, the strong cock of a lad from Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street, doubtless a criminal. To me it was life's tool, life itself. And when I brought off his orgasm, when that fountain hurtled into me, into my mouth, I was utterly happy. Do you know the taste of semen? It is the taste of the alive. I know nothing more alive to the taste than semen.

In ecstasy I licked all the semen off his cock and balls, I gathered up what had spilled, licked it up and swallowed it. I found the droplets of semen among his hairs, tracked down the last little drops.

Chris was astounded, I think. He hardly understood, of course he did not, could not, understand what he meant to me, and he was astounded by the enthusiasm with which I did all this. He was grateful to me, stroked my neck and hair with all the tenderness he was capable of, I buried my face in his groin and lay without moving, and he stroked me with his hands and murmured, "My baby, my baby!"

Listen here, there are morals, there are decent people in the world, there are offices and banks, there are beds; sleeping in them are men and women, also very decent. It was all happening at once, and still is. And there were Chris and I, who had accidentally met there in the dirty sand, in a vacant lot in the vast Great City, a Babylon, God help me, a Babylon. There we lay, and he stroked my hair. Homeless children of the world.

No one needed me, no one had even touched a hand to me in over two months, and there he was, stroking me and saying, "My baby, my baby!" I nearly cried. Despite my everlasting honor and ironic mockery I was a hunted creature, cornered and exhausted, and this was precisely what I needed – another man's hand stroking my head, caressing me. The tears welled up in me, welled up and started to flow. His groin gave off a characteristic musky smell; I cried, my face burrowing deeper into the warm jumble of his balls, hair, and prick. I don't think he was a sentimental creature, but he felt that I was crying and asked me why, forcibly lifted my face and began to wipe it with his hands. Chris had big strong hands.

Fucking life, it makes us into beasts. We had come together here in the dirt, and there was nothing for us to share. He hugged me and began to soothe me. He did it all the way I wanted, I had not expected that. When I'm excited, all the hairs on my body lift, as if tiny jabs, hundreds and thousands of very tiny jabs, were lifting my hairs; I get cold, and I shiver. It was the first time in a long time that I had not viewed myself with pity. I put my arms around his neck, he put his around me, and I said to him, "I… am… Eddie. I have no one. You will love me? Yes? And we always will be together? Yes?"

He said, "Yes, baby, yes… take it easy."

Then I broke away from him, my right hand dove into my boot and pulled out my knife. "If you betray me," I told him, the tears in my eyes not yet dry, "I will kill you!" My English being very poor, this all sounded like gibberish, but he understood. He said he would not betray me.

I said to him, "Darling!"

He said, "My baby!"

"You and I always will go together and never part, yes?" I said.

"Yes, baby, always together," he said seriously.

I don't think he was lying. He had things to do, but I was so fucking crazy with loneliness, I suited him. This did not mean our relationship was forever. It was simply that he needed me just now, I could meet with him, he would wait for me in bars or simply on the street; I could, and surely would, have some part in the things he did, possibly criminal things. I didn't care what he did, this was what I wanted – it was life, life needed me, that kind of life or any kind at all, but I was needed. He accepted me, I was utterly happy, he accepted me. We talked. It was then I learned his name was Chris. He said that in the morning we would go home to where he lived, but we had to sit here for the night. I didn't ask why; to me it was enough that he had invited me to live with him. I was like a dog that had found its master again; I would have bitten the throat of a policeman or anyone else for him.

We were conversing under our breath, in that same pidgin English. Sometimes I forgot and began speaking Russian. He laughed softly, and then and there I taught him a few words of Russian. They were not nice words from the standpoint of a respectable person, no, they were bad words – prick, love, and others in the same spirit.

In the middle of this conversation I wanted him. I completely let go, God only knows what I did. I pulled off my jeans, I wanted him to fuck me, I pulled off my jeans, pulled off my boots. I ordered him to tear my underpants off me, I wanted him to tear them up, and he obediently tore my red panties off me. I hurled them far away.

At that moment I was really a woman, capricious, demanding, and probably seductive, because I remember myself playfully wiggling my poopka as I leaned on my hands in the sand. My neat round poopka, whose neatness even Elena had envied – it did something unbeknownst to me, it arched sweetly, and I remember that its nakedness, whiteness, and defenselessness gave me the greatest of pleasure. These were purely feminine feelings, I think. I whispered to him, "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"

Chris was breathing heavily. I think I had aroused him in the extreme. I don't know what he did, maybe he wetted his cock with his own spit, but gradually it entered me, his cock did. I shall never forget that feeling of fullness. Pain? Since childhood I had been a lover of every possible savage sensation. Even before women, as a masturbating teenager, a pale onanist, I had invented a certain homemade method: I had put all kinds of objects into my anal orifice, from a pencil to a candle, sometimes rather thick objects. This double onanism – of the cock and through the anal orifice – was very bestial, I remember, very strong and deep. So his cock in my poopka did not frighten me, and it didn't hurt much, even in the first moment; I had obviously stretched my little hole long ago. But the ravishing feeling of fullness – that was new.

He fucked me, and I began to moan. He fucked me, and with one hand caressed my member, I whimpered, moaned, arched, and moaned louder and sweeter. Finally he said to me, "Take it easy, baby, somebody will hear!" I replied that I was not afraid of anything, but nevertheless, out of consideration for him, I made my moans and cries softer.

I was behaving now exactly as my wife had when I fucked her. I caught myself feeling this, and I thought, So this is how she is, this is how they are! Exultation surged through my body. In a last convulsive movement we dug into the sand and I downed my orgasm in the sand, simultaneously feeling inside me a hot burning. He came inside me. We sprawled exhausted in the sand. My cock dug into the sand, the sand grains pricked it pleasantly, it stood up again almost immediately.

Then we got dressed and settled ourselves comfortably to go to sleep. He took his old place by the wall, and I settled myself beside him, with my head on his chest and my arms around his neck – I'm very fond of that position. He hugged me and we fell asleep…

I don't know how long I slept, but I woke up. Maybe an hour had passed, maybe a few minutes. It was as dark as ever. He was asleep, breathing evenly. I woke up and could not get back to sleep. I sniffed him, scrutinized him, and thought.

No doubt about it, I'm incorrigible, I thought. If my first woman was a drunken Yalta prostitute, then my first man, of course, had to be someone I found in a vacant lot. I remember that girl distinctly. She picked me up one summer night at the bus station in Yalta. She liked the pretty kid dozing on the bench with his friend. She walked over, woke me up, and brazenly led me away to a little public garden behind the bus station. There she calmly lay down on a bench, she was completely naked under her dress. I remember the salty taste of her skin, and her still-wet hair – she had just been for a swim in the sea. I remember her very big, mature cunt with its many folds; I was stunned, it was all streaming with mucus, she wanted this kid, she fucked me not for money but out of desire. Southern scents, the rich southern night accompanied my first love. Next morning my friend and I left Yalta.

Fate is mocking me. Now I lie with a man of the streets. The years have made no essential change in me. A bum, nothing but a bum, I thought contentedly, meaning myself. I turned to scrutinize Chris again. He stirred, as if sensing my gaze, but then was still again.

Slanting patches of light from the nearby street lamp penetrated here and there through the crisscrossed iron of the scaffolding. There was a smell of gasoline, I was calm and content. Added to the sense of contentment and calm was the sense of a goal achieved. Well, here I am, a real pederast, I thought with a little giggle. You didn't back off, you outdid yourself, you knew how, good for you, Eddie boy! And although I knew in my heart that I was not entirely free in this life, that I was still a long way from absolute freedom, I had nevertheless taken a step, and a huge one, down that path.

I left him at five-twenty. That was the time on a clock that I saw when I got out to the street. I double-crossed him, left quietly as a thief, slid from his chest without waking him. Why did I do it? I don't know, maybe I feared my future life with him – not the sexual relationship, no, maybe I feared someone else's will, someone else's influence, being subject to him. Maybe. It was an unfathomed but quite powerful feeling that moved me to double-cross him and crawl out of his embrace. Glancing at him over my shoulder, I looked for my metal-rimmed glasses and the key to my hotel room. Once or twice I thought he was watching, but he slept on. Miraculously, I found my glasses in the sand. I was still wearing glasses then, but they didn't spoil my looks much, I looked like a wild man anyway, fucking crazy Eddie. I hunted down my glasses, somehow crawled out to the street, and strode away with a strange satisfaction that I had never before known, abandoning Chris and our future relationship, which might have been one variant of my fate.

I walked along dusting myself off. I had sand in my hair, sand in my ears, sand in my boots, sand everywhere. A whore returning from the night's escapades. I smiled, I wanted to shout to life, "Well, who's next!" I was free. Why I needed my freedom I do not know. I needed Chris much more, but contrary to common sense I left him. When I came out on Broadway I nearly wavered. But only for an instant, and I decisively strode on again toward the East Side.

A couple of weeks later I would be cursing myself for having left him, the loneliness and troubled silence would move in again, Elena's villainous image would again torment me, and by the end of April I would have an attack, a very violent, terrible attack of horror and loneliness. But back then, arriving at the hotel, asking for another key, riding up to my floor, and flinging myself wearily on the bed, I was happy and pleased with myself. I was still happy when I woke up the next morning. I lay there smiling and thought how I must be the only Russian poet who had ever been smart enough to fuck a black man in a New York vacant lot. Lascivious recollections of Chris clasping my poopka and whispering to quiet my moans – "Take it easy, baby, take it easy" – made me roar with joyous laughter.