My First Man: Sentimental Vomit
I have never written or reminisced about it
as if this part of my memory got blocked: the recollections are vague and dim
as if it had happened in my infancy long before I became who I became — DEPRAVED UNBRIDLED MONSTER
I think I know what happened: I made myself forget about it
my first experience with another man
that guy whose place I crashed at in Leningrad
I don't remember clearly neither his face nor his cock — just a blurry eroded image
I was 17 he was near 40
Things did not get to fucking
everything was quite innocent: I was lying like a log giving him complete freedom of action but he was delicate and courteous perhaps too much so
He touched me all over and gave me a great blow job — my first blow job ever!
He came twice but I was too nervous and stiff so I couldn’t come no matter how hard he and I tried
He liked my body even my skinny legs he called “sexy”
It must have been from him i first learned that i was attractive and this knowledge turned my world upside down
In order to impress my teenage imagination he took me to a Beriozka hard currency store where we solemnly acquired a bottle of some imported vodka
My imagination was indeed impressed
It was bitterly cold we were dying to get warm so we split the bottle between the two of us
That night I didn’t eat anything except some solyanka that was a bit off
I got sick and puked all over him his bed and his bedroom
I made a mess
I vaguely remember how he started undressing me and when I was already naked he tried to take off the golden cross I was wearing (I got baptized shortly before that and was very religious at the time)
I got ravenously angry called him a faggot a pervert and proudly fell asleep in my own puke while he offended went to sleep on the sofa
A couple of months later I was arrested by the militia for a drunken row in the moscow subway the cops in the sobering station having beaten me up and stripped me naked emptied my pockets and expropriated my golden cross and my watch then threw me onto the concrete floor to “relax” under an icy cold shower where I realized that god had turned away from me and that my religion was not even worth my vomit
Upon my return to Moscow I sent him some of my poems full of adolescent fears depression and vague forebodings of a future knockout life
He wrote me mad love letters to my old address — letters which I read only after his death when he either slipped or jumped off a balcony
one of them stated that he “cannot live without me”
these words meant absolutely nothing to me
later on things happened this way more than once
The only thing that I do remember clearly and forever is the scent of his cologne Drakkar — the scent that I can unmistakably distinguish from any others even though I myself never use perfume
Now it seems to me he was even good-looking
Back then anyone could have taken his place
I was waiting to be seduced and used the first one who came in handy (even though he was sure it was him who used me—so young and innocent!)
He was only part of the faceless crowd of extras—one of those who later in my life were countless
MY FIRST MAN
THE FIRST OF THOUSANDS
a semi-poet/semi-journalist/semi-playboy who didn’t leave behind anything except a slim book of poems and some rapidly aging boys who to this day preserve memories of his embraces
I entered his life and unceremoniously appropriated it
I adopted his identity and extended it to the point where he no longer existed
My adolescent depression grew into something greater than a simple yearning for a good life and someone's strong arms
Even now I am writing not so much about him but about the vomit with which essentially the whole thing had begun
Since then whenever I see vomit I get sentimental
November 11th 1998, New York - London
Translated from the Russian by Vitaly Chernetsky