Simple Truths of Life

Chapter 3. Free Fall

My first serious wrong choice was made when I was thirteen years old. If before I used to have sexual fantasies about my female friends at bedtime – a trace of my childhood sexual experience – then at the beginning of the eighth grade I started having a real sex drive. And if before my fantasies did not interfere with my life in any way, now I just could not help but think about sex and girls. The obvious solution would be to look for a girl, but then another thought appeared in my head – the thought that because of my stumbles in my speech, no girl would want to get involved with me. Perhaps the reason for this conclusion was the memory of how in the village at the bus stop my friend C sang a song that was clearly aimed at making fun of me, and our female friend, whom I sort of liked, had a characteristic expression on her face, saying what she was thinking about me at that moment.

And then I remembered about the existence of masturbation…

This was the first time that I first began to touch myself for sexual pleasure. I enjoyed doing this with myself.

I think it was about that time when many people, including relatives, friends and even guys, had been telling me that I was a handsome boy. At one time, my mother tried to cheer me up about my speech problems, saying that the girls would want to get to know me themselves since I was beautiful. Then at school one of the senior students came up to me to ask if I had an older brother. At another time, my aunt Zina asked where I got my handsome look from; then in the kitchen of the Big House sat my father who was already almost completely bald and full-bodied, and I felt somewhat uncomfortable in front of him. My female cousin noted my beauty a couple of times. Then one of my village female friends said that I was a very handsome boy. I remembered those words, and I too began to think of myself as of a handsome guy. Of course, I liked being beautiful, and I liked that fact that girls were glancing at me.

Meanwhile, it was time for ninth grade. Everything was the old way for me – stutters and self-doubt continued to cloud my life. By then I already began to be afraid of phone calls, fearing that my classmates were calling me, and I would again have to struggle to pronounce the words. Plus, I was always shy to talk on the phone about my personal life in front of my mother who was always nearby in our one-room apartment – this could not but affect the fact that I almost did not learn to talk with people and did not acquire a good understanding about what to say, and how to say it.

In general, I was a very shy child in my childhood, which made the whole situation much more difficult.

So, I remember one summer evening in the village, when we were burning a fire by the spring, and some friends were playing spin-the-bottle. One of my female friends clearly, at least it seemed to me so then, wanted to teach me how to kiss – she was saying that otherwise I would have a girlfriend one day, but I will not know what to do. She insisted for a while. To some extent, I had certain feelings towards that friend, and I think I would have agreed to become her apprentice, so to speak, if it were not for the presence of my male friend who was two years older than me, and who refused to play spin-the-bottle. At that time, he was a decent and the right guy, and the thought of what he would think of me played an important role in my refusal to play the game.

There was a continuation of that story. Once that same friend called me in Moscow and invited me to her birthday. Again, part of me wanted to see her, but the thought that I might need to talk to strangers in the form of her relatives and Moscow friends, and I would start to stutter, outweighed. Even after many minutes of persuasion, my friend did not manage to invite me to her birthday. Of course, at that time she did not know the true reasons for my refusal to come to her… Later, in the village, she jokingly recalled this moment to me. And I felt a little sad at heart…

I was often very worried when I was walking to school, because I was scared by the thought that I might get asked in class, and I often wanted to just be left alone to find peace. Because of this, the days of tests were one of my favorites, since I could be more or less calm that I would not have to speak that day. Then I again began to worry about what people think of me, because a few months earlier one of my village friends finally told me why they gave me the nickname that they had been calling me for many years – it was associated with stuttering. This was the next moment when I again lost confidence in myself and in my speech, after I acquired it with great difficulty.

The speech situation also did not improve after the new teacher asked me to answer in biology class. After my answer, one of my classmates named Olga spoke to the teacher about stuttering and how to fix it. I well remember the teacher's phrase that “nerve cells do not regenerate”. It did not sound very inspiring for me…

I continued to masturbate and soon began to look forward to the time when I would be home alone. Alas, when the spring holidays came, the time when we always went to the village, I decided to stay at home. In the ninth grade, my mother often began to visit her sister for a couple of days and leave me alone so that I could study more calmly in our one-bedroom apartment. But, alas, I also used this time to watch erotic films on one of the television channels at midnight of another Friday. Naturally, I did not just watch them. I masturbated then every day and sometimes several times a day. Of course, then I did not want people to find out about what I was doing with myself – this would have been a disaster for me. After some time, a rather interesting and funny moment happened at the school, when one of my classmates jokingly said that “Zhenya does not smoke, does not drink, only masturbates.” And I had a question in my head – how does he know? I do not think he actually knew, but nevertheless, that simple joke was destined to become something more in the following years…

It is worth noting that I often looked at the icons of saints behind the glass on the shelf, and the thought sometimes visited my head – what if there really is something more to this life, and all the secrets will sooner or later actually become apparent? I was not very comfortable then at the thought, but my favorite habit was overpowering me every time.

Because of wild speech stammering, when, for example, I could not say anything, holding out my tongue, which seemed to not listen to me while jerking in convulsions, I began to think about death, because I perfectly understood that such me would not have a life – at least not the life that I wanted, where I would be the same as everyone else – neither more nor less.

I told my mother that at school I again had problems with speech. I do not think we went to the doctor that day for the next pills, which in any case did not really help, but my mother then told me to think about what to say at school tomorrow. I took this advice too seriously and began to imagine before falling asleep about what could happen tomorrow at school. This did not help, but rather, on the contrary, made the situation worse.

It is noteworthy that before that wrong advice from my mother, I thought that you just need to learn your lesson and live your life. And when a teacher asks me to answer a question in class, I will remember the necessary information if I have learned and understood the essence of the subject being studied.

There was a time when several classmates and I sat on a bench on the ground floor of our school – in front of the main door, which is facing a long corridor leading to the gym and dining room. I think many Russians will recognize this layout of this standard Soviet school, similar to the letter “H” when viewed from above. It was gym class, which we did not go to, and in the school corridors it was empty and quiet. I was sitting on the edge of the bench, next to the corridor. Suddenly two girls appeared from that corridor, quickly sweeping the floor. My eyes were fixed on a blonde girl dressed in a white shirt, emphasizing her small breasts, and a tight-fitting black skirt, and I remember exactly how in my perception time seemed to slow down – I fell in love with her at first sight.

I constantly thought and dreamed about her. I just could not help but think about her.

When they went to the biology class, I was able to establish from the schedule that she was an eleventh grader. I was thinking of approaching her, but that thought immediately overlapped with another – if I started to stutter, and she laughed – that would be the end of my life for I could hardly bear the pain of my fate. In addition, she always walked with her equally pretty red-haired friend, and this created even more problems for me. Plus, she was older than me, which was not a surprise, as I often fell in love with older girls, and I decided that perhaps I would endure and wait for the time when I would be older and the age differences would not be so obvious.

Sometime later, a group of classmates and I were waiting for the start of a lesson. One of the guys expressed his opinion that in our class all the girls were not beautiful, if one was to convey his words in a mild form. Then they drew attention to other “not beautiful” girls, and another guy said: “To fuck such girls – is to disrespect yourself”. Although everything was fine with my appearance at that time, I still combined this statement with my speech problems, believing that all the girls whom I would try to approached would think the same about me. Then I finally dismissed the idea of approaching the girl with whom I was in love, and then I made another the most serious mistake of my life.

I had moments when I started to fantasize about something or someone, but I essentially did it before bedtime. I can only recall the event at the dentist. In childhood, I could not stand the pain when drilling teeth. Then my mother led me to check my teeth at the dental clinic on Prostornaya Street, and again I had tooth decay. Then I saw a flitting bird on a nearby building, which has now been demolished to build two multi-story residential buildings. While my tooth was being drilled, I decided to try to go into fantasies, imagining a story about that bird – and it really helped me. This was the first time that I was able to calmly endure the pain, as I simply “turned it off” – there was pain, but at the same time I did not feel it, being in my mind somewhere else.

But in the ninth grade, I decided that I would deliberately fantasize about someone in all my free time. Otherwise, I would have just taken my own life, because I could not bear all that load; because of speech problems my life was breaking before it had even begun, and I could not do anything about it. Then I listened to foreign music on musical radio stations every day, and also watched MTV, and I began to fantasize about one of the popular, at that time, singers. Of course, in my fantasies everything happened as I wanted it to – there was no stuttering or stiffness. I often fantasized about the same idea again, because I wanted to “relive” it once more, making, from time to time, certain changes in some details. Alas, I fantasized about the blonde girl, as well as about her friend. Then I fantasized about other girls and celebrities. And once I created in my imagination a girl who settled in a new house in our village, where at that time there was a vacant lot. There is no need to mention that we had sex and everything that I just wanted to imagine. Of course, when we went on summer vacation and drove past that lot, there was no house and, respectively, a girl.

I think that I should mention here that even before I started to actively dream, I thought briefly if people could see that I was dreaming. And I had confirmation of my guesses when in the ninth grade our class teacher mentioned to the whole class that I was smiling at something, and one of the students replied that I was constantly smiling. I do not remember that during that period of my life I paid much attention to the significance of that event.

But soon another case happened when I was sitting with my classmate Vova's on a bench near the locker room. Vova's acquaintances from another class were standing next to us.

It was the first floor of the school, and on the opposite bench, but closer to the aisle to the dining room, the same blonde girl sat down, from whom I could hardly take my eyes away. Her red-haired friend was with her too.

At some point, one of Vova's acquaintances looked at me and with a crooked smile told his friend some unflattering words about me. I immediately realized what the reason was, and I almost as quickly stopped daydreaming. When the other guy looked at me, he said that everything was fine with me.

At that time, I had such a character trait that I could not change myself after the vile statements of someone about me, as this would mean that they, people who contemptuously treated me, were right, and I myself would remember my life’s bad episode with them for the rest of my life – which I did not want at all back then and in every possible way tried to forget everything negative, immersing myself in my inner world.

Also, I could not live in reality back then, since I could not be the person I could be if I did not stutter. And I often began to think about justice in life. How is it that I not only never harmed anyone in my life, moreover, I was a friendly and cheerful person who loved nature and life in general, but in spite of all this I had to suffer so much from the age of five? Why do those people who commit the wildest crimes live happily ever after if they are never caught by the police? Where is justice in this life?

Soon my grandmother died. I was so immersed in myself that I could not feel any emotions. I understood what had happened, but everything was as if in a haze, and as if it did not directly concern me, it was something distant. I wanted to get rid of constant stress – and I managed to do it, but at what cost…

The school year was drawing to a close, and it was time for exams. Without hesitation, I decided to continue to study in school for the tenth and eleventh grade. I had good grades, except for the second quarter where I had two 3s because I first started skipping school, but since studying was not a big problem for me, I was able to catch up with the curriculum and close almost all bad grades I got during that period. There were two strict teachers who decided to put 3s in the annual standings, but this was not a problem, and I was taken to the tenth grade.

Speaking of truancy, my mother and I started quarreling in the ninth grade due to the fact that I started not wanting to go to school, because my life was crumbling, and so studying wasn’t the top priority for me. Once we quarreled so much that at midnight I went to my father's apartment with a full rucksack of textbooks on my back, but at a quarter of the way I realized how far I had to go and decided to return to my mother's apartment. I remember how then the police car made a circle around me at the turn to the Lokomotiv stadium, but then it drove further along the highway, where it was driving originally. Our quarrels began to decline, when after a couple of years we quarreled again, I looked at her and I was amazed to realize that she had clearly aged. She was missing some teeth. I do not know how, but I did not notice this before. Then my eyes began to open up slightly, and I tried to avoid quarrels with my mother so that she would not be nervous.

Alas, from time to time I also tried to get sick so as not to go to school. And sometimes I really managed to do it. So much the fear of speech dulled then my thinking…

Everything was almost the same in the village. Longtime friends created a comfortable zone.

Perhaps it was in that year that I decided to try drinking alcohol. Many of my friends started drinking beer and wine some time ago. I put up a fight for a long time, but in the end I could not resist. I do not remember how exactly this happened, and it does not really matter, the important fact here is that I drank alcohol with the rest, but I never touched vodka. It is worth saying that I never got drunk and knew the limits. Also, I always remembered everything that happened to me during alcoholic intoxication.

Many of us also had motorcycles and motor scooters that replaced quiet and clean bicycles. We often fiddled with our iron horses, repairing them almost every day. I had Voskhod 2M, which was given to me by my first cousin once-removed. I remember that I soiled my clothes with that motorcycle so much that it was no longer washable.

Summer was not without problems. A couple of months ago, when I was still in ninth grade, my nail scissors stopped being serviceable. The two points did not fit snugly against each other and were spread wide in different directions. The obvious decision would be to go and buy new scissors downstairs in the store, but I could not do it because of the fear that I would have to speak with the seller. Because of that I continued to cut my nails with old scissors which led to terrible bleeding sores on my big toes that simply could not heal before the nails grew into them. It all ended up that we had to go to a Moscow hospital where they cut out a third of my toenail. Riding home on the tram, I grabbed the seat handle in front of me – so much it hurt; but apparently I wasn’t hurt enough not to masturbate again when I was already at home…

It is worth noting that it was on that day of the operation that I saw near the hospital my old classmate, with whom we sat at the same desk in the first grade, and with whom we studied until the ninth, when our friendship had cooled down. Perhaps my withdrawal into myself influenced this, as well as the fact that for some reason he hit me in the face during exams – I did not provoke such an act, I just stood at the door and waited for my time to enter the biology class.

My father bought me new normal nail scissors, and I no longer had such problems, although the nail still reminds me of itself, since part of it was not removed properly.

After the second operation on the toe of the other foot, I returned to the village where I soon began to walk normally again.

Eventually, another time had come when my father arrived to the village to take me and my mother back to Moscow for the new school year.

On the first call, a new girl in our class and school caught my eye. She was not the only new person in the class; moreover, most of the people were new, as people from several classes merged into one.

I remember how in the dining room one of the classmates asked her friend to talk to me about sex. There was no conversation, but I took it as another sign that girls like me. But this did not help my fear of speech and terrible insecurity because of the fact that there were new faces everywhere who, so far, did not know that I stuttered.

Mom used to take me to the doctor all those years, but the pills that he prescribed did not help me with the speech. I was even once brought to the “healer” who recited some mantra, conducting almost dances with tambourines. It is funny, but after her session I really started talking completely normally and regained my confidence in myself, the confidence that was destined to leave me again when my mother in the village had a quarrel with her sister, Tatyana. They almost got into a fight, and I began to worry that something irreparable, or maybe fatal, could happen.

Once we were sitting on a bench on the ground floor of the school – not far from the biology class. It was a break, and of the many people passing by, my gaze fell again on the new girl in our class, and her eyes looked at me, while she quickly flew past us with her friend.

Once in the literature class, when the lesson had not yet begun, her friend asked my buddy if he wanted to be her boyfriend. The girl who liked me asked me the same question, and I answered in the affirmative.

On that day, when I came home, I finally put a fat cross on myself when I began to masturbate, rejoicing that I have a girlfriend and “will” have sex. Obviously, I had no sex, since I was so afraid of starting to stutter during a conversation that I stopped going to school.

On one rare day, when I did come to school, that girl came up to me and asked if I had not forgotten that I was her boyfriend. We talked a little about our institute plans, and then she slowly walked off.

The next day, in algebra, the teacher heard the conversation of that girl with her female table partner, and for the whole class said that she had become an adult. One of the guys with whom we studied since elementary school proudly shouted “me!” to someone's question regarding who was responsible for taking the girl’s virginity.

Going away into fantasy once again helped me avoid stress and mental suffering when I imagined that that girl was of easy virtue and then consciously made that fantasy into the “truth” in my head. But is it correct to use the word “helped” here? What if I needed that suffering at that time?

Speaking of imagination’s help. I remember exactly the moment that happened in the village when several people from our company drank alcohol and, I think, someone said that they drink to make them feel more fun, to color the gray everyday life. I realized then that I did not need alcohol, since I can make my gray days brighter and amuse myself with my imagination, which, unlike alcohol, is always at hand, so to speak. Here it can also be noted that I have never smoked at all.

Then I had a very strange period of life, when I started to lock myself in the bathroom with the lights off. I took along my boom box with radio and headphones to just listen to music in the dark. Almost nothing distracted me from my imaginary, ideal, and just world – at least just towards me. Sometimes my dreams led me to masturbation in the darkness. This madness continued for some time. Mom could not do anything. I think that both of us no longer had the strength and desire to quarrel. Once she even brought Anton, my best friend at the time, but I did not go out.

Also, computer games helped me get away from reality. In the tenth grade, I often played in WarCraft 3. I did not have internet yet, and I just spent time playing against the computer. When I was skipping school in the ninth grade, I decided that I would just play all my life in video games so that I would not feel pain from the reality that I was in, as I then thought for nothing, because of the injustice of life.

Speaking of injustice, there was one year when I came in the village for the summer holidays. At that time, not all friends and acquaintances came to vacation. I remember how A was bugging a girl who was several years younger than us. I regret to say that I then joined him. She did not have any shortcomings, or illnesses. I think my older friend simply decided that she looked like a character in a well-known literary work, and he began to call her the same name. Fortunately, this “fun” did not last long, and even if it was not something very terribly bad, as that girl was all right, but this moment showed that I myself was not averse to being on the other side of ridicule, which was a mistake.

I can recall another negative incident that occurred in Moscow. Then for some reason I started to twist and roll in the snow a guy who was younger than me. I determine that the reason for this shameful action was that I subconsciously wanted to be on the other side of the “unjust” life again, wanted to throw out all the accumulated resentment onto someone, even if I hardly knew that person. Again, I note that that episode was not too cruel, but it showed once again that although I was usually a kind and cheerful person, I was not a saint.

Summer holidays have come. I think it was the year when the village ceased to be a place of comfort for me, as our company and company from the other end of the village began to spend time together. I again began to be silent constantly, because the thought that I could start talking with stutter and people would start laughing at me, looking at me weirdly, or they would just start thinking something not very good chilled my whole body.

Another nuisance was that some time ago my father sold his mother’s apartment for very cheap, about a quarter of its market value. As I understand it, his acquaintances deceived him when he was drunk. Before selling the apartment, father rented it out, but then there was a small fire in it, and someone talked him into selling a Moscow two-room apartment of 52 square meters for just a million rubles. Simply put, someone had bought their apartment at a huge discount. Father then bought a new car and a TV for the money received. Then he began to drink the rest of the money away.

It so happened that in the summer, my father decided to buy me a motor scooter, since my motorcycle was constantly breaking down, and almost all my friends were riding on these new (for our village) vehicles. He arrived with cash already withdrawn. Having traveled to the nearest cities, we were able to find only one store where only one Chinese scooter was sold. I tried it by having driven it on a local road. Everything seemed quite normal, including the power of a 50-liter moped. I then had a choice: to take that one scooter or risk that my father would drink the already withdrawn money away, which, alas, could happen, given his previous decisions. We bought that scooter. After some time, it became clear that the Chinese scooter had a chain instead of a variator and a drive belt, which is why it tangibly lost in power to its brothers from Japan. This led to the fact that very soon I could not have anyone ride on my scooter except for myself.

Unfortunately, the problems did not end there. It soon became clear that some strangers began to live in father’s apartment. Father himself was almost always drunk. It became clear to my adult relatives that those people wanted to get their hands on my father’s apartment. Then my cousin helped us make the deed of gift for that apartment to me so that my father could not become homeless. A few months later, dad told how those people were shocked to find out that the apartment no longer belonged to him and disappeared very quickly from his life, possibly in search of other people with alcohol addiction… There were also some people who tried to redirect my father to think that his son, that is me, will kick him out from the apartment. Unfortunately, my father actually asked us one day if we wanted to do something like that – certainly not! He then sighed with relief and in fact lived in his apartment until the end of his life, even despite all the difficulties that we had to overcome…

In the village, I fell in love with one girl who was new in our company and was older than me. I then often thought about telling her about my feelings, but each time, when I was outside with her, I could not force myself to do this during our conversations. The fear of speech overpowered every time. It is interesting that I spoke normally when we talked about other topics, but as soon as I thought about telling the truth, I was immediately constrained by my insecurities. Many years of life had taught me that when I start talking in this state of consciousness, speech stutters are guaranteed. And I did not want her to know.

Because of this inability to confess my feelings to a girl, I for the first time seriously thought about suicide. “Seriously” means that I really decided that when I would be in Moscow, I would commit suicide by jumping from a tall building. It was not just a thought or fantasy; it was a firm decision. Something interesting happened after that. A few months ago, I watched a television show about palmistry, and how lines, or dots, crossing the life line, can mean a person’s death. Then in the village, sitting by the window of the Small House, I accidentally noticed that a spot appeared on the life line of my right palm, located not far from half the length of that line. At that moment, I clearly realized that I would really commit suicide and die if I would not change the course of my thoughts. I chose life, and the spot on my life line quickly disappeared.

Then I continued to fantasize very often, too often… If earlier it was a conscious action, a choice that I made during loneliness, then it was happening more and more as if by itself. I constantly dreamed of something, or someone, even while doing some work, for example, while repairing a motorcycle, or when I was repairing the roof of our house and terrace. Fictional stories covered up all the “bad” of my real life so perfectly that I simply could not live without them, because I no longer felt discomfort and fear. Needless to say, I fantasized about the girl I fell in love with and often accompanied those fantasies with masturbation… (I should add a clarification here so that everyone has a clear picture of what I mean when I talk about my negative habit of daydreaming in this particular book. During such fantasies, I began to “voice” the speech of imaginary characters in my head, “hearing” a muffled “voice” that I myself generate in my mind).

Once we had dinner in the kitchen of the Big House. We were eating there because my father had come for a visit. I think he drank alcohol then, and I made a speech about the harm from such alcohol consumption, and that psychology plays an important role in this addiction. It was a very clever speech for a teenager of my age, and my father jokingly mentioned this, noting that I did not take after him. I never studied psychology. I just as if “always”, or from birth, knew that truth, which I then told my father.

This was not the only time I had knowledge of something that I had never read or heard about in my life. Once in Moscow, while still at school, I watched a television program about the secrets of death, and at the end of that program, the announcer said along a black screen, that after death we simply cease to exist. I immediately knew that this simply could not be true. If this were true, then it would mean that we are simple robots, and robots cannot identify themselves – they cannot say “I am” because they really think so, and not because in the past they were programmed by someone to say that. In the following years, when I was dealing with programming, I found even more confirmation of the correctness of that knowledge, but it is still difficult for me to express that truth with words so that everyone understands what I mean. And considering the fact that many modern serious scientists really believe that robots can gain consciousness, means that not all readers will understand me.

There was also a case in the village when I instructed an older friend against drinking with another, more “adult” company, as it was clear that he was going to make a mistake in his desires to be with people of his age at the expense of his health and moral convictions – he had previously made a promise that would never drink. In the end, my fears were confirmed when he often drank and once, one might say, allowed one guy from another company to trample the mint that he planted earlier near his house – then we often went in the woods to transplant trees from there to the lawns in front of our houses – we were interested in it in our childhood.

Returning to the passage of my life on which we stopped, the time had come for the last eleventh grade.

After a couple of months, I, and several of my friends and acquaintances, started to have the Internet access.

One of the first things I started looking up was “how to cure stuttering”. On one of the forums I read the comment of an adult woman who, if my memory serves me, worked as a teacher and continued to stutter. She wrote that the best thing to do in this situation is to simply come to terms with stuttering. I got defensive then about the idea of putting up with stuttering. I could not put up with such a stammering speech, and I clearly remember that I wanted to be either completely normal and healthy, or no one at all. Then I closed the page and did not search for anything more regarding stuttering, thinking that if the best thing people on the Internet could write about stuttering was to put up with it, it meant that I would not find the answer to my question, otherwise all people would already known about the solution to the stuttering problem, right…?

Sometimes I looked at the pages that told about Russian saints who lived in Russia in the old days. I remember that one was a hermit who built his wooden house in the forest. Then I found that idea about hermitism interesting. I also remember the story of a man who resurrected a child that drowned in a well. Some of those websites talked about Auras.

Then I started looking for articles about UFOs and other little-known things. The reason for this was that distant event with the bright entity, which I, then a five-year-old child, saw at our house in the village. I think I, like Fox Mulder, tried to find the answers to my questions – do extraterrestrials exist? By that time, I already knew about the existence of ghosts and the so called “paranormal” things. And since those things really exist, why extraterrestrials cannot exist, whom many people talk to have had a contact with, which is also often met with skepticism, mistrust, and ridicule from society.

I was generally interested in space. I often read about planets and stars. I remember how I was mesmerized by photographs of Europa, the satellite of Jupiter, and other celestial bodies which are part of our solar system.

Strange, but sometime after, I read a book in which a photo of Moscow, taken from the air, was shown. The camera looked almost exactly down. Then for the first time I felt uneasy. My head seemed to be spinning. Then the same thing happened when I read articles about space, and on the pages photographs of planets, for example Jupiter, were shown. Sometimes I began to panic so much that it would become for me hard to breathe, and I would walk from the computer for a couple of minutes, trying to concentrate on reality, or think about something else. But I love space and the Universe, and therefore I would always come back to read the article, no matter how hard it was for me to do this in the presence of a huge planet on the page. Later I found out that I was not the only one who had “planet phobia”. I also began to be afraid of heights, and this despite the fact that I always liked to look from the window of my grandmother on the seventeenth floor of her house. And when my mother and I visited my aunt Zina, I also looked at the views of Moscow from the thirteenth floor without any problems. It was strange that this phobia came from nowhere and for no apparent reason…

I had developed other fears. For example, at one time I became afraid of the number thirteen. While doing exercises, I sometimes thought what if I had done a certain workout thirteen times? Because of this thought, I began to do that particular exercise again about ten times, so that there was no chance of getting to the number thirteen. I am glad to say that I quickly got rid myself from that ridiculous phobia.

There is one more thing that I went looking for on the Internet – more than candid photos of naked girls and women. I was interested to see what was hidden in the erotic films shown on television. Additionally, I wanted to see how sexual intercourse occurs. At heart I still hoped that I would have a girlfriend, and this knowledge would be useful to me. I think you already understood that I also began to masturbate very often, looking at porn photos.

Separately, it should be noted that there was a time when I questioned whether masturbation was harmful to health. But all that I found on the Internet was the articles of doctors who claimed that masturbation is not only not harmful, but also beneficial. With this information, I continued to lead my usual way of life – in the end, I liked the feelings that I experienced while masturbating, and I liked to look at beautiful female bodies, available “absolutely free” in a couple of mouse clicks.

As for school, I continued to skip it. The problems were not only with school. I stopped going to college for preparatory lectures, because during the first lecture, the teacher asked everyone to read aloud the text in turns, and I had great difficulties with that. The awkward looks and whispers of my young peers also could not in any way help me not stammer. In the eleventh grade my speech hesitations reached climax – I began to repeat one syllable and could not utter a single word, which once amused so much the girl who asked me to become her boyfriend a year ago. I do not know if she was ashamed for once wishing to be my girlfriend, or she was just the only one from the whole class who found it funny to hear my speech cramps and the twitching of my speech apparatus. What I can say is that for the first time I had to write the answer on a piece of paper in a room adjacent to the biology class. And it was the eleventh grade – the time when all other people actively fell in love and had fun spending their days with friends and loved ones with whom they calmly talked on various topics. As you probably know from what I wrote earlier, deep down I also wanted to experience all these joys of life.

I was not at all happy with who I was in my life. There was a moment in the ninth grade when, while walking with three classmates down the street after school, the new strong guy in our class started jokingly twisting my hand, as he usually did with all students, showing off his strength. My long-time classmate immediately exclaimed that the guy should stop doing this, as I stuttered. At that moment, I felt that I did not want people to think so of me as of a disabled person to whom they make concessions. My friend wanted to do what’s best, since he did not see what was happening in my inner world, but in fact my self-esteem and confidence shook once again at that hour.

Another similar incident also happened in the ninth grade. Then I had fun and laughed with other classmates in anticipation of the next lesson. Apparently, our teacher did not like our laughter, and of all the people she made a remark to me, saying that I too became noisy, like the others. The fact is that I would not mind being like others, and at times I considered myself the same as others. But, nevertheless, the fun came to an end… for a while.

Returning to the eleventh grade, perhaps this was the time when I overcame my fears and, using ICQ, managed to tell the village friend I was in love with about my feelings for her. To which she replied that she was very pleased, but she already had a boyfriend. He was my old friend from the village. If only I could have told her what I wanted, a couple of months ago, when she was still without a boyfriend…

I was disappointed. I also felt terrible because my fantasies about her were broken. This moment, along with several others, made me again start inventing fictional girls in my fantasies, so that I would not feel again the terrible pain in the depths of my soul that I felt when it turned out that the real girl I liked and was dreaming of had a boyfriend.

It was time for the last school exams. Despite the fact that I almost did not attend classes in the eleventh grade, I still managed not to be expelled. As I said, studying was not a big problem for me, and I was able to finish school, albeit with a bunch of 3s.

Speaking of 3s – there was a moment when after school I came to take a test in physics which I had never written at all since I was not at school. With me were those who wrote it, but got 2s. Of all my answers only one was incorrect, and the physics teacher, whom I consider one of the best teachers, gave me 3 even though I wrote that test for the first time. Yes, I skipped classes, but grades should measure knowledge, not attendance.

It is worth noting that my “ex-girlfriend” invited me to go for festivities with others, but I refused. At that time, I wanted almost nothing in my life.

So, the school period, which was often like a nightmare for me for nine years (I skipped fourth grade, and in the first grade everything was almost excellent from my point of view), was over.

But next it was time for the University. I passed the exams, enrolling in a paid faculty of mathematics at MGUPI. Do not ask why. I can only say that if at school instead of German, which I studied due to the fact that my mother did not enroll me in the English class when there was a chance to do this, I was studying English, as I wanted from early childhood, when my mother and I began to learn simple English words, and if my life had turned out differently in terms of speech, then perhaps I would have gone to college to study foreign languages. That would make more sense to me, given my vast interests in many areas of life and nature. Due to different interests, I never knew what I wanted more and could not choose a profession.

The exams ended at the end of July, and I went for a month to the village.

Of the significant events, I can only recall that, contrary to my promises, I first drank vodka mixed with orange juice. A friend mixed two drinks in a huge beer glass, and I completely drank the mixture, as part of me wanted to get drunk. I remember someone saying that I was so drunk then because of a girl – who knows, maybe this was not that far from the truth. Then we went to the fire after drinking in the “domushka” – as we called a friend’s little summer house in his backyard, where we often spent time watching movies and playing games on his laptop.

I was not feeling well. For the first time I vomited because of alcohol. I lay on the ground under a tree, some distance from the bonfire, and I threw up. Then I choked and began to suffocate. I was so drunk that I could neither get up nor give a sign to my friends. I just lay breathless on the ground, and everything was getting dim before me. I realized at that moment that I was going to die. I do not know how, from my point of view there simply wasn’t any reason for this, but Dmitry, our recent friend from the other end of the village, at that very moment asked someone if I was alright… They managed to knock me on the back to free my airways. I owe him that I am writing these lines now…

After that I was sick for a couple of days and this became one of my worst poisonings. I remembered that moment forever and decided that on this note my brief affair with alcohol would be over. And so it was.

Also that summer, I became distant with the friend who was with a girl with whom I once loved. Naturally, he was not to blame for anything, but given that at that moment my life had almost reached the bottom, and I had no idea how to fix this, I was then not up to the logic and simplicity of life… which was an error, as we will learn later.

I also got distant with my old friends because of the growing difference in interests. So, in the village I did not want to spend time repairing old motorbikes all day long, and in Moscow my friends were fond of rap music. I like some foreign rappers, but by and large I was not very interested, and I was a bit bored with my friends.

I started to sleep badly and would often go home early, when everyone else stayed up until dawn. I think that fantasizing and masturbation were slowly taking over my health. But I did not see it yet back then.

Everything that has a beginning has an end, and that summer was no exception.

I did not stay at the University for long, because the old problems and fears returned, even though I did not need to talk to anyone there.

One of the key points was that one of the beautiful girls of our faculty, whom I liked, began to have sex with another guy. I do not think that they were going out for a long time and actually got to know each other – at that time it was already considered old-fashioned in certain circles.

Another point was that we needed to go to a museum, and when I arrived by metro to the right place, I realized that I did not know where to go. To ask complete strangers on the street how to get to the museum was not an option at that time because of my fear of speaking. I rode back home.

Soon they expelled me for not attending the University, and the money that my father could collect for my “studies” was not returned, although the girl in charge wanted to help with this.

Having no more visible purpose in my life, I was completely absorbed in my fantasies. The themes of my fantasies could be related to friends, the video games I played, and just different things that I read about on the Internet.

Regarding the video games, I always preferred to play games with a good, in my opinion, story, or just with a very good gameplay. One of such games was Half-Life. Recently, Half – Life: Episode 1 was released and, having downloaded that episode from the Internet, I started playing it. The only negative thing that happened while playing it was that at the level where you need to wait for the elevator, fighting off crowds of zombies, I began to be very tense. I had already developed a bad habit of biting my lips. We also had old wooden windows, from which cold air was seeping through in cold seasons, and because of this, my lips were chapped. While playing in that game level, I bit my upper lip too hard on the right side. I got blood flowing. I washed my lip and put a cotton swab on the wound. The blood stopped, and I went to go about my business. The consequences of that incident remind me of the event every time I look in the mirror – the bite has cured so that I have a somewhat noticeable lip asymmetry.

There was a time when I had the following dream. I was on a tram which was riding from a stop next to my former school. In the car in the solitary seat sat the same girl who asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend in the tenth grade. I thought to approach her, but suddenly the guy, who deprived her of virginity in reality, came up to her. Suddenly, I no longer had any desire to talk with her, I gave up and allowed that guy to talk to her while I stood silently on the sidelines. And then, as if from nowhere, my village friend with black hair, Olga, sitting on the other seat, said to me: “Zhenya, you were going down for your whole life. Isn’t it time to go up?” – I immediately woke up. My mind was absolutely pure at that moment. I realized then that I no longer had friends in the real world, I saw the real price of that distant decision to start actively fantasizing, which I made in the ninth grade. It lasted a second, maybe two. Then I clearly remember how the haze, which has become such an everyday thing for me in the three years that I constantly dreamed about something, began very quickly covering my mind, until I was again completely immersed in myself, in my inner world.

It was a scary period of my life. I understood what the constant use of my imagination had led me to, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not do anything about it – the habit was very strong and refused to leave. And in cases when I was able to momentarily remove the imagination from everyday life, I immediately remembered stuttering and my lip, began to worry and think about it, and then thoughts again smoothly merged into the imagination. I could not leave from withing myself…

Since I did not study, I went to the village early. I think that I was helping my mother with the housework and almost did not go anywhere outside.

That summer, my aunt Liza died in the village. All my life that I knew her, she was very kind and responsive. She had never been rude to anyone and seemed to have had no negative thoughts.

Unfortunately, my father then got very drunk with my two uncles, and they could not attend the funeral.

Having problems with imagination, I understood that Liza was no longer alive, but I could not feel any feelings about this, everything that was happening was in a “haze” and seemed to be far away. I understood that such a state of consciousness is not normal, remembering very well my dream, and the full focus and pure clarity of consciousness after it. But I could not free myself from these shackles – with the exception of one moment when I was able to concentrate on reality for a sufficiently long time. Then it was evening, and I went for a walk. My friend Natasha asked me why I was so sad? I did not know what to answer – and then I still could not tell the whole truth. I did not want to be sad and live in boredom, and the imagination again consumed me.

One day our company was drinking. As far as I remember, I did not touch any alcohol then. At that time, many guys were crowding around one of my old female friends. They were hugging with her and so on. I do not remember if I was a bit drunk after all, or I just wanted to get a little closer to her, but to my flirtations she told me the following: “Listen, you moron, stop touching me!” It hurt me, and for a long time I remembered that incident, wondering why she said it to me and in such a harsh form? After all, I did not want to do anything bad to her and I was her old friend. She did not treat new strangers like that. Moreover, it was she who had previously told me that I was a “very handsome boy”. So what had changed since then?

There were other cases when some long-time friends said something negative about me to others and looked somewhat weirdly in my direction. I could only guess about the reasons for their actions, since none of my old friends told me anything at all. In addition, I did not ask them for an answer.

In the fall, when I returned to Moscow, I received call-up papers to the recruitment office. While I was driving there, I saw a very pretty girl in the tram. She was different from other people in that she cheerfully looked at the sunny street from the window of the tram. She got out of the car, and for a while I was following her with my gaze. I recalled her from time to time. In the process of writing this book, I understand that perhaps her cheerfulness was the reason for my craving for her. We already had something in common.

At the military registration and enlistment office, one of the doctors asked me questions about my health and whether I had any complaints. I answered him, to which he unexpectedly told me to behave with dignity. I did not understand what caused his statement, since from my point of view I behaved just like that, despite the nervousness from being in the military enlistment office.

I really had health complaints then. Even though I had the Internet, I continued to watch erotic films on TV when I was alone at home. I often began to stretch the act of masturbation, in anticipation of seeing the actress I liked in action. And so, when on one such night I brought myself to orgasm, my heart started to pound for the first time. This was not normal, and I was uncomfortable. Then I continued to masturbate every day, because I could not get rid of this bad habit, having a very strong sex drive every day. Every time after an orgasm, I was not feeling well. I began to feel my heart and no longer felt light and calm in my chest. But these alarming symptoms time after time disappeared in the morning, and I felt good.

I talked about my heart complaints to another doctor as well when I took the treadmill test. I do not think she was listening to me, since I was not sent anywhere else regarding that.

Then they sent me to the doctor who spoke to me about my stuttering. She sent me for an examination to another medical center, but I remember the following bit. When she went out to speak with her colleague in the corridor, I remember exactly how that man, at the mention of me, spoke of me as of a “little boy”. He said this in the tone that they say about effeminate or gay men. I know for sure that it was about me, because then he looked at me and said something of an apology about the fact that it is clear that it is hard to live like this for the whole life. It really hurt me a lot, and I could not understand where such an attitude towards me comes from…

It was a cloudy rainy day when I was going for a medical examination of my speech. I think that I was then relaxed, because I decided that in any case I would not go to the army. I have always treasured freedom…

Having arrived to the building, I went into the doctor’s office and something terrible happened. I just could no stutter!

After finishing my “examination”, the woman gave me a closed envelope which had to be handed over to the doctors at the military registration and enlistment office. Then I went out of her office into the corridor to my mother and father with tears in my eyes.

The so-called “stuttering” ruined my whole life. I had neither love, nor friends, and at one time I could not even utter a single word, and now, when such an important moment came up in my life, I could speak almost better than any anchor on television…

When the envelope was opened at the military registration and enlistment office, it became clear that my pathetic attempts to show the woman on medical examination that I had really stuttered were unsuccessful. Fortunately for me, a woman in the military enlistment office could still use her brains, although she did not very flatteringly introduce me to her colleague the other day. The additional checks she sent me to give me a military ID and relieved me of my military duty due to stuttering. I was told that in three years they could invite me for new speech checks.

Despite the fact that I did not need to join the army, the moment with the inability to stammer in the speech influenced me very much. I could no longer live with such mockery in this life. I simply no longer had anything that I could live for, and that night I firmly decided that that day would be the last for me. This was the second time that I really wanted to commit suicide, but for some reason I did not go to the ninth floor of my house right away… instead, I decided to sleep and say goodbye to everything the next morning…