Simple Truths of Life

Chapter 1. The Beginning

I was about five years old when my friend A, his grandmother and I were sitting on a bench in front of the Big House – as we called it in my family – on a clear summer day in the village of Malye Gorki, Vladimir Oblast. The Little House, where my mother and I used to come during the warm months, was later attached to the bigger one.

During our idle pastime I heard how to the left of me a gate leading to the Little House opened. I thought at that moment that my mother was coming out, since no one else could go from our part of the garden plot, as my mother and I were the only one in the Little House that day. My father was in Moscow, and my aunt Liza, or great-aunt Liza, formally speaking, always went outside from the side door of the Big House, located to my right.

When I turned my head towards the creak of the gate, I was surprised to see there a bright yellow outline of a humanoid figure, glowing with other bright shades of yellow and gold. It quickly slipped into the garden and disappeared behind the wall of our Little House. At that moment I heard the plates rattling in the kitchen.

Having run into the kitchen, I saw that my mother was calmly washing the dishes. She saw nothing and nobody.

Upon returning to my friend and his grandmother, I began to actively try to tell them about what I saw a minute ago. This was the first time that I had encountered skepticism in my life. I learned back then that people are not only inclined not to believe in what they have never seen themselves, moreover, they can ridicule those who begin to talk about what is not yet a universally recognized fact.

Interestingly enough, that childhood friend had previously talked about how he saw something like a ghost that jumped over the fence of an abandoned house, standing across from mine. Now, when I am writing this book, I understand that I am myself skeptical of his story. In addition, as you will understand later, fences are not an obstacle to real souls of the dead.

Nevertheless, thanks to that unusual experience with a bright yellow figure, I learned that there is more to this world than is customary to think. I thought for a very long time that it was a ghost. Looking ahead, I will say that later I found out that that figure simply could not have been it. But first things first.

I think it was the same summer when I entered the Little House to see my drunk father beat my mother. Being a five-year-old child, I did not know what to do. I simply could not do anything. My two elderly great-aunts, Liza and Klava, were also not able to help my mother in any way. I was very worried and cried, thinking that I could lose my mom.

I do not remember exactly how much time had passed when I heard my village friends calling for me to go outside. In tears, I quickly jumped out onto the porch to say that I could not go out. I remember very well how one of my friends laughed then at my appearance. I understand that she did not know what was the cause of my tears, but, as you will learn later, even in this situation she made a mistake by allowing herself to laugh at a person in trouble. Nevertheless, this was yet another instance when someone laughed at me.

Fortunately, my father soon stopped beating my mother. She was alive, and we even managed to walk together to Lakibrovo, the neighboring village where my aunt Zina used to live. I called her myself when we were already at the fence of her house.

After some time, we gathered our courage and the three of us went back to Malye Gorki.

Then I only remember how on the outskirts of our village Zina gave me Kinder Surprise before going back to Lakibrovo.

Apart from the memory of the grim incident of that day, everything else seemed exactly the same as it was before…

My mother and I slept that night in the Big House, along with the aunts. When in the morning dad entered the room of the house, he was very surprised to see my mother with a huge bruise under her eye. He did not remember anything regarding the events of the last day and papa was somewhat stunned when he was told everything.

After that day, I promised myself that I would never drink vodka.

I do not remember exactly how much time had passed when I, A, and, if I remember correctly, Denis, were outside near a neighboring house. I could not understand for a long time why A laughed whenever I said something. From my point of view, nothing was happening that could amuse him so much. Then for some reason he began to specifically repeat the syllable of the words that I spoke…

This is how I realized that the incident with my drunken father had an effect on my speech, and I became a stutterer… But I still did not know then the seriousness of the situation, and what it would lead to.

I will say right away that my father was a pretty kind and softhearted person when he was not drunk. Drinking used to have a much worse effect on him than on many other people. From a calm person he turned into a very loud and mobile. Sometimes he did things that he could never have done if he was sober. But, fortunately, he never brawled again like on that fateful day. It also took him a very long time to recover from drinking bouts. I am glad that one day he did not drink on my birthday at my request. Alas, despite my mother’s and mine admonitions against drinking, he still could not overcome this addiction, which eventually brought him to the grave.

The last momentous event of my childhood occurred when I was about six years old. I cannot describe everything in detail, so as not to ruin the life of other people. I can only say that after meeting that guy who was about my age, we often spent time together outside and became friends.

I do not remember exactly how, but it all led to the fact that he taught me to masturbate. It was mutual masturbation, and I do not think that I touched myself back then – only he did. I did not understand then what we were doing and why. I was feeling neither disgusted nor good. It was just a new life experience, about the consequences of which I could not know.

I think a year has passed when my friend wanted to try oral sex with me. I did not like this idea at all, and I constantly refused his requests. He said that he and his other friend, whom I never knew personally, did this and there is nothing wrong with that. But I continued to feel deep inside of me that this was not something that I would like to do.

It took some time, a year or two, before I finally agreed to have oral sex, which we performed on one another. Fortunately, we did not try any other sexual penetrations.

This went on for several years. There was a time when our friend caught us. She immediately turned around and left. Once she used her knowledge so that we would stop pestering her – otherwise everyone would have known. I think that if other friends had found out, it would have been a disaster for me at that time, but now many years later I can almost calmly write about my experience in this book, which many people of different worldviews and cultures may read.

One day our friends called us to travel around the neighboring areas. I loved to travel in nature and wanted to go with them. But did not do it. While friends left, we went to our favorite place where no one could see us. This was the beginning of the school holidays, and for many months we had not seen each other. He began to touch me in the southern latitudes, and if before I was excited in a second, at that moment I could not get an erection. It was an unspoken sign that my homosexual experience had come to an end.

My friend and I never talked about what we did in our childhood.

This experience had consequences in my life. I remember how another friend from Moscow and I were playing at his house when we were about ten years old – give or take. I remember exactly that while he was playing with a plastic Godzilla toy, there were thoughts in my head that I was not very interested, and I was more interested in girls and in sex with them, and not in toys. I myself had toys in my childhood, but I did not often play with them.

In my preschool years, I did not go to kindergarten and often spent time in the village with friends. I really enjoyed being there. Clean air, greenery, nature – everything gave me joy in my carefree childhood. For a long time, I was the youngest in our company. While my friends one by one started going to school, I continued to stay in the village with my mother for the warm autumn months, so that later my father would take us to Moscow for the winter.

In Moscow, I lived with my mother in a small one-room apartment. Although there was a time when we lived with my father in his two-room apartment. But then Mom found photographs in his closet where my father was with another woman. Her hair was dyed red and, as we learned later, her name was Marina…

My parents had a big argument, and my mother and I never visited my father for a long stay at his place again.

At the age of seven, I went to study at school No. 376, which is located next to my house on Khalturinskaya Street. I sat at the first desk in front of a young beautiful teacher who once suddenly told me to go down from the clouds, and then: “Wake up and sing!” – Did I dream in class that day? My desk mate was B.

In the first grade, everything was fine – or I thought so. The only thing I remember is how every time I cheerfully answered at the blackboard in front of the whole class, one guy sitting at his desk in the back rows always clearly stuck his head out to look at me. And I thought – why?

On the summer holidays of that year, I got my answer. About when I was six years old, my parents brought me to a doctor who studied and treated stuttering. I was prescribed some medications that I had to drink with water in slow sips. In my eyes at that time, it all did not seem negative. Visiting a doctor, taking medications – it was just another new experience in my childhood life. And in those summer holidays, I finally understood what stuttering had in store for me.

A and C were constantly teasing me because of my speech. They gave me a nickname, and for a long time I could not understand its connection with me. Did I look unusual? It did not seem to be so – many people called me beautiful in my childhood and youth. They did not answer my question – “What’s that got to do with me?”, and I received the answer only many years after…

Around the same early years of my life, I sometimes began to fantasize before going to bed. I clearly remember how I once fantasized about death. The fantasy took place in the village, and, I think, that fantasy arose because I subconsciously understood that my life was starting to go not the same way I would like it to go. Of course, I, like many others, did not want to be the object of ridicule, even though only a few people projected this negativity on me.

Meanwhile, the time has come for a second grade. Our class teacher had changed. The young woman left, and now we had a rather strict woman, who was much older.

If in the first grade I actively and vigorously spoke in class, in the second one I already completely understood that I am different from all the other people because of my stumbling speech. I was uncomfortable. If I were asked to draw the time spent before the second grade, then I would use bright light colors, for example yellow, but the second grade is the first year when these colors turned into gray faded shades. The desk at which I was sitting changed too. The bright place at the window was replaced by a more darker one behind the second desk near the wall.

I remember clearly the moment when our teacher asked me to read aloud the text in the book. I was already fully aware that I was reading with constant speech stutters. My tongue refused to obey me, and I could not do anything about it – no matter how hard I tried. All the time that I was reading, I held the sheet of the book with my finger so that it would not close, and when my torment came to an end, I removed my finger from the page to find in its place a pronounced wet spot from sweat.