daymokhk (3:22:56 AM): And then there are the people who were raised by wild packs of slash fanfiction.
daymokhk (3:23:08 AM): GOD SO FUCKING INAPPROPRIATE, I AM NOT YOUR FETISH, TEENAGE GIRLS
inthisabyss (3:23:15 AM): EW
daymokhk (3:23:22 AM): They're like
daymokhk (3:23:26 AM): OKAY SO WHICH ONE OF YOU IS THE UKE
daymokhk (3:23:29 AM): And I'm like what the fuck
daymokhk (3:23:38 AM): And one of them is like
daymokhk (3:23:45 AM): HE HAS TO BE BECAUSE THE UKE IS ALWAYS SHORTER
daymokhk (3:23:46 AM): and I'm like
daymokhk (3:23:46 AM): uh
daymokhk (3:24:14 AM): and then they get all
daymokhk (3:24:17 AM): HEE HEE CAN WE WATCH YOU FUCK
daymokhk (3:24:18 AM): and I'm like
daymokhk (3:24:26 AM): sure but only if when I pull out I can come on your tits
daymokhk (3:24:29 AM): That shut the bitch up.

See, this is why I can't have fag hags.

daymokhk (3:30:21 AM): What are you watching?
dressedlikeastar (3:31:14 AM): *crawls into your lap, settling myself there* Labyrinth.
daymokhk (3:31:26 AM): Is that the one with that man who I don't like?
dressedlikeastar (3:31:45 AM): David Bowie!!
daymokhk (3:31:46 AM): But he used to hang out with Iggy Pop? And my friend made me a mix CD of him and I felt inferior because I didn't like any of the songs?
daymokhk (3:32:04 AM): And I'm supposed to make a Livejournal post talking about him except I can't because I'm embarrassed to admit I find him underwhelming?
daymokhk (3:32:16 AM): Also, you think for some reason I wanted to fuck that guy even though he's like fourteen or something?
daymokhk (3:32:29 AM): Man. *goes back to my bottle of vodka*
dressedlikeastar (3:32:48 AM): WHAT GUY?
daymokhk (3:32:57 AM): IT WAS YOUR IDEA I DON'T KNOW
dressedlikeastar (3:33:06 AM): No, really! What the fuck are you talking about!
daymokhk (3:33:24 AM): Okay, remember my friend made me a mix CD like four months ago about David Bowie?
dressedlikeastar (3:33:29 AM): No...
dressedlikeastar (3:33:31 AM): But go on.
daymokhk (3:33:42 AM): And I mentioned to you like, I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS IMMEDIATELY
daymokhk (3:33:50 AM): and you were like, A GUY MADE IT FOR YOU HUH DOES HE WANT TO FUCK YOU
daymokhk (3:33:52 AM): and I'm like, NO
dressedlikeastar (3:33:56 AM): HAHAHAHAHAHHA
dressedlikeastar (3:33:58 AM): YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH
dressedlikeastar (3:34:03 AM): I TOTALLY REMEMBER
dressedlikeastar (3:34:04 AM): HAHAHAHAHAH
dressedlikeastar (3:34:15 AM): That is so funny.
dressedlikeastar (3:34:22 AM): Probably because it's totally something I would do.
daymokhk (3:34:33 AM): NO IT ISN'T I BET IF I TOLD HIM HE WOULD BE PERTURBED
daymokhk (3:34:37 AM): I'M GONNA TELL HIM RIGHT NOW
dressedlikeastar (3:34:41 AM): Here's a David Bowie tape...it really touches me soul....that's why I'm sharing it with you...will you fuck me now?
daymokhk (3:34:46 AM): USING THE INTERNET
daymokhk (3:34:49 AM): *uses the internet*

And this is why I can't have male friends.

Are there any like lesbians in the audience or something, I am so lonely.

Day I was at the library and I picked up an Italian novel called "Blackout" because I thought the cover looked cool.

Look, I'm a shallow, shallow man. You know this. Don't give me that look.

It ended up being one of those foreign thinking man's thriller sort of novels (which I really enjoy - I read this totally weird Bosnian once I should talk about one day) about three people trapped in an elevator.

Naturally, there's some dithering about what, exactly, is causing the blackout, because the author did his research and understands that an automatic alarm should have gone off and that the doors shouldn't be sealed shut. Which I liked mostly because it's given just enough attention that we're curious about it and so that it doesn't seem like a diversion when we get to know what's going on, yet not enough focus that we feel like the eventual explanation is anti-climactic or a cop-out. Like, it's not really important, but it's nice to know. And, thank God, because the characters figure out pretty quickly that they can't monkey up the elevator shaft or anything, which never does anything and is a waste of time in these plots. They just have to sit and wait to be rescued. So - largely, it's character driven.

Tomas is a polite, shy, and good-natured but somewhat autistic teenager who needs to catch a train to Parma so he can run away with his girlfriend, who he met trolling a message board about heavy metal. (It's that kind of modern novel.) Claudia is an attractive 24-year-old butch lesbian who collects Superman comics and works at a trashy bar to pay her tuition. She is also surprisingly well-written. She doesn't like being slobbered over by men and despises her degrading job, but she's not a man-hater or an overwritten tough chick without any vulnerabilities or flaws, and her relationship is written respectfully without a hint of exploitation. Her girlfriend gets an interesting personality and their relationship has an important role in her characterization and her way of dealing with the emergency. (And, the two of them don't get put through any trashy sex scenes, especially since trying to make her a lust object to the reader would be distinctly uncomfortable considering the way the story goes. Additionally, and this is important, Alvo never finds out about it and Tomas knows about rumors but doesn't care, so it's not something that the male characters have from her either.) Also, I feel like establishing her as a lesbian in a dedicated and important relationship protected her somehow from the reader wondering when she was going to fall in love with and/or start screwing one of the two guys, which makes her interesting. I was just about ready to think, "Okay, the novel's going to treat her as a shallow sex interest without a personality so I can basically ignore her," but that wasn't the case.

The third guy, on the other hand, is Alvo, is a disgusting middle-aged club owner who is obsessed with Elvis. Although he sexually prefers women, he's a serial killer who likes cutting open young guys who offend him morally (moral offenses include looking like Kurt Cobain or wearing a Sex Pistols shirt, because these things are the antithesis of Elvis). But he knows that eventually they'll be rescued and he can't exactly walk out of the elevator with a bloody knife.

So, as you would guess, the narrative force of the novel is how long Alvo is going to last before killing Tomas and raping Claudia, as horrible as that is.

After I finished the book, I wandered online and found that it had been made into a movie a couple years ago, which is available for instant watching on Netflix. Great!

In the movie, Alvo Karl is turned into a likeable, paternal everyman with a dead wife and adorable daughter, Tomas Tommy is basically Sid Vicious, and Claudia is a strong three-dimensional queer woman pasty asthmatic probably hetero teenager. Also, they're all American. And the credit sequence rolls over close-ups of a woman's naked body while ambient moaning plays over trance music in the background.

Jeez.

( It was boring and it sucked! )

Anyway, in short, you should probably read Blackout by Gianluca Morozzi. It's not a masterpiece, but it's good enough that I'm trying to avoid spoilers above. But avoid the movie, it's just forgettably bad.

Он сказал меня - will you be better when I get back. И я говорю - да. Да, возможно - конечно. Да конечно я возвращайтесь.

Водка. Водка опять. Гидрокордон. Кодеин. Порошок. Порошок опять. Опять. Оппать. Игла.

Игла.

Ничего. На свете наркотик нет. антидепрессант нет. антипсихотический препарат нет. слово нет. дозддь нет. любовь. Я - пропавший.

Врушка я.

Мне грустно и легко; печаль мо светла; печаль моя полна тобою,
Тобой, одной тобой...

It's Ilya's birthday! *confetti* Now he is twenty, which means he's old like I am.

I got him the solo album of Yuri Shevchuk (main guy from DDT) which is a very shitty present. First of all, I bet he already has it. Second of all (like I explained to Mikel) it's extra special shitty since I spent a long time debating, "Should I order this special from Russia so I can scan in the album pictures and everything, even if I have to give money to oligarkhs?" I'm morally opposed to buying Russian music because you know at some point your money is certain to end up in the pocket of a bastard. And especially since I wasn't sure where to get it, they were dicks in particular at the music store in New Haven and I kept forgetting to save money to go down to Brighton Beach and start irritating people over there. But then I just downloaded it from online. So if he even wanted it he could already get it by himself. Third of all, I think everybody likes DDT as much as I do and if they don't it's like I spend all of my time trying to get them to like it. It is a terrible habit. I haven't listened to it yet because it's Ilyukha's present and it has to be his first. I bet it's not even very good.

The worst thing is, I kept thinking it was on the 21st. It was Mikel who brought up it being today (he was wondering if Ilya's birthday was being any good).

WORST

Mikel's in the hospital. He almost died, but now he'll be fine. He talked to me an hour or two ago while he was in the hospital and I held him gently until he fell asleep with me. He just wants to come home.

I lit novena candles not for any special reason but because they've been on my desk doing nothing for a long time. I could pray for him like a Muslim prays but I don't want to go down on my knees to any god that would do this to him, and I haven't for a very long time. Candles you can light standing. Nuestra Senora del Carmen, Nuestra Senora de Altagracia, The Lord's Prayer, and San Judas Tadeo. The first three lit fine (Jesucristo, salvador dei mundo, hijo del la virgen Santa Maria, purisima i beatisima senora que pariste sin dolores, ruega por mi a vuestro hijo que me libre de las adversidades y peligros de la vida, y alcanzame la gracia de vuestro hijo generosa, para que me perdone mis pecados. Fix Mikel. Amen.) but I've wrecked the wick of San Judas Tadeo somehow - "patron de los casos dificiles" or hopeless cases as I see it put so honestly in English - and it wouldn't light.

I held it in my hand and looked at it. I thought, if you won't accept my prayer, I'll make you. So I cut at it with a blade, chopped the candle down all around the wick, cut away the bits of burnt debris and matches I had so carelessly left in there, thinking all of the time that this was probably a sin, maybe they made it with holy water in the wax, I don't know. But I cut it in anger and melted the wax around the wick away and poured it down the sink, very careful. I waited for it to dry. I did this one or two times. And even then it wouldn't light, and when I dipped the long match into the flames of the other candles to relight it, they went out with a snap. As if they were angry with me. The fire rose up the match and burnt my hand, there was ash in my eye. Just Our Lady of Carmen, or however the hell else you say it in English, flickering away with patience, looking down and to the left.

I thought about calling work and telling them that I couldn't come in Saturday. I want to spend the weekend with him, I want to, I need to be here. With him. I don't know what to say. My partner is in the hospital.

I hate the way we say partner around straight people.

I hate the way I use that empty, loveless word to refer to Him.

I always spit out that word. But I can't bring myself to call him my boyfriend around people who don't know.

When I'm with straight people it becomes their word. When a woman says boyfriend, it means some other thing. Your whole culture of romantic comedies and dating tips in trashy magazines. Smug soccer moms on cell phone commercials and fatassed cuddle bears. Staying together for the kids.

This is not what I mean when I use your word. This is not what I'm stuck with. This is not what I have. And I don't mean whatever feminized obscenity you picture when you know I'm with another man. That little recoil. That unpleasant little pause. I mean love when I use your word.

But you don't know it, and I hide it from you all. I use a stupid, shallow, emotionless word. Your breezy, simpering little euphemism. A word that means what you people mean when you say boyfriend.

We don't love like you do. We have something more.

The word's too fucking good to use with you.

Mikel tried to kill himself and it's my fault.

After the ambulance took Mikel away I lay there for a long time in the dark beneath all my blankets and didn't think anything or feel anything, just lay there and understood without any emotion that there was nothing but him. Nothing else, only him. Or my love for him. That's left.

Someone called me about an hour later. I didn't answer it. I just lay there. It didn't really register that someone was calling. Finally I sat up to find the phone, in the bed somewhere only when I put my hand down on it it stopped. The phone number was withheld, so that I couldn't call back. I shut the phone off after that. What could I possibly have to say to him or to anyone? And if I don't pick up the phone I won't have to hear anyone tell me that he's dead.

I lay there for a long time. I thought about him. I thought about his soft body in my arms, with his eyes shut and his lips parted, moving beneath me, so warm, so pleased, so calm, telling me, whispering, more quiet than usual, it's good, it's good, it's so good, Sevastian. Thought about opening his legs so I could watch him, how hard he is, watch him come softly, deep inside of him. Giving it to him, giving that to him. A little pool of opalescent come, peaceful-looking somehow. His eyes closed, half-asleep. So happy and tranquil and safe.

With Mikel and I, we don't have two souls, one soul for each person. We have half of one soul, as long as that half still exists somewhere I'll always feel that call. Pulling at me, tugging, drawing me out somewhere. My whole life I've felt it pulsing out there somewhere, and I won't know the happiness until I've been with him and the two halves of us can be whole.

Mikel and I are drifting. After all this suffering, the long year is finally over. Our lives used to be about waiting, and hurting, and being hurt. My whole life was just about waiting and hoping for so much. Pain and more pain. Life attacked us both ... it was like one long attack. And now it's done and over with. It's finally been taken all away, and we have to decide what our lives are going to be about now. What we have is two new lives, and we can be two new people now, like newborns. We're not just victims anymore - so who are we going to be? All of a sudden, we've both been told, "Okay, now you get to be yourselves." But we've been victims for so long, it's like we've forgotten. We have unsteady footing.

It feels like everything, our future, our relationship, even my own life, is over. I can't see or feel anything in the future anymore. Before, I was waiting and hoping, that was all that I did. But now I've got what I want. Mikel is safe and I am with him soon. Now I don't feel the future because it's totally a blank slate. In reality, I must have thought that I would wait and hope forever - I didn't actually think about what it would be like if I had everything! I was used to doing nothing but waiting and hoping, I was used to the long attack, and now it's over. I forgot how to feel anything else, because we didn't feel anything for a long time but suffering and hope - the truth is, we don't feel anything now because we won! We're not used to this. Being able to feel other things. Being able to be free, being able to breathe, to have a future. Taking our first steps forward is so hard. I won this life ... But I'm not sure yet how to live it.

It feels almost like we don't feel anything anymore, as if we have no future, as if we don't love each other, but I know that's not the truth. Everything's just new. We're newborns ... we're still. Our eyes aren't open yet, and we haven't yet cried out.

Open your eyes, Mikel. Look. Everything's so beautiful now.

I still love him. I fell in love with him from before ... I kept on loving him all through this, and I'll keep on loving him for the rest of my life. We have so much. It was at a distance for a while, I didn't feel it. And now it's here again, and it feels so new and strange, to feel it this way, to have it not wrapped up in this waiting and this pain. But we've kept it for this long, and we can make our lives together now. I never gave up on him. We won.

Mikel, don't be scared.

But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption, clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

Mikel was looking through some pictures of cats ... he likes cats a lot. I got him that kitten he wanted, mostly for his birthday, mostly just to get him something. We were talking about what kind of animal he would be, he showed me a picture of a cat with big blue eyes.

"Actually, I think I would be one of these types."

"That one's pretty, like you."

"I think its eyes are like mine."

I nodded. "You have eyes like a cat's eyes. Big and wide... " I told him. "You're like a good animal."

He laughed. "A good one? Well I'm glad I'm not a bad one."

I nodded again. "Yeah, a good one."

"Babe, what does that even mean?"

I didn't know how to explain it. So I just said I'm sorry.

He kissed my cheek. "Don't be sorry, I just want you to explain it to me. I want to understand what you mean."

I tried to figure out how to put in words.

"I mean, you're like ... no animals ever scared me, even though I've been around bobcats, alligators, wolves ... any animal, you can understand them and know how to act so that they don't hurt you. You never have anything to fear from animals, they don't have anything hidden, like people do. But you're not just like an animal, it's not just that things are safe and easy and free with you, you're like a good animal. A cat that lets you pet it, or a deer that lets you get close. Like that."

He smiled at me. "That's so incredibly sweet, Sevastian. You have no idea how hard that made me smile." He added, "And I understand, too. I get what you mean."

I knew he would. I smiled back, and I told him, "I'm glad you get it."

He showed me a picture of another cat. "I think you would be this cat because it's really beautiful and wild looking."

We talked for a little while about what kind of cat I would be. Then I said, "If you were a dog, I think you'd be really sleek and beautiful, and probably a tawny color."

He nodded. "Yeah, that sounds good. I definitely wouldn't be a poodle. Yuck. They aren't even pretty." He asked, "Why do you say tawny color?"

I told him, "You'd be one of those really noble-looking hunting dogs from Finland or somewhere, with a cool name ... I don't know, it's just that those dogs, especially if they have short hair, they look golden, like sunlight. Sort of like how you're like."

He smiled at me. "I love your mind."

I told him, "It loves you."

I showed him a picture of Finnish laika. He thought they were adorable, like fuzzy foxes. I told him that even if he were a sleek, refined hunting dog, he'd be cuddly and affectionate too. He curled up next to me and said, "Of course. At least to you. And I'd be the most loyal too."

I rubbed my cheek against his. "Yes, you would."

He nuzzled me. "I love being your pet."

My little kitten.

I rested a hand on the small of his back. "I love having you. Nobody could be better than you."

I wanted to stay up with him, but I put him to bed soon after that. He was so tired, and he needed it. He felt guilty, and I was sad to let him go, like I am always, but I told him not to be worried. I would see him tomorrow, and we'd be together very soon.

These are Finnish laika:



Things are real good ...

I just said in response to a comment:

"That's sad. I don't know how anyone can look at Mikel and just see a fag. He's so beautiful, he's so beautiful he should be impossible to hurt. I don't mean just how he's handsome, I mean that you only have to have him look at you, with those clear eyes, and you know how he is beautiful inside and out. They're totally bottomless ... You look into his eyes and you can see straight down into his soul. The first time I ever made him mad, I thought, I don't know how I can ever again even look him in those eyes. I was so ashamed, it hurt me so much, I almost didn't talk to him for the rest of my life. I don't know how anyone, anyone could do that to him.

Mashallah, it's all over for him, though."

It deserves repeating, though.

All the things I've said to him over the past few days, over the months. I love him. I love his beautiful body, his glorious body. It overwhelms me, pulls me in. The shape of him, his thinness, his long stomach. Once while I was in captivity I though of him, how his long stomach reminds me of the steppes, how I feel when I look at them, the vast expanse, that makes me feel so wild and free. That same pull, that same tug, the same intense longing. When I see the steppes I want to lose control, to just run across the grasses forever and fall down in the warm dirt, in the sun, and with him, I want to press him close to me, kiss him hard, run my lips over his bare skin, rest my cheek on his stomach where the skin is softest, I want to swallow him, breathe him in, as if just loving him with my own body will never be enough.

I talk about his body because there aren't enough words to describe the way he is inside. I don't know how to put it ... like he's made up of so many delicate things. I don't have the words. When I try to think of a way to put his being, I think of raindrops, ice, clear glass ... I don't mean, "something in danger of breaking" but a thing that you just sit and look at quietly, in awe, out of respect. I mean that I always think that it's out of respect that you don't touch raindrops or ice, not that you're afraid of wrecking it ... Alhamdullilah, I don't know what I'm saying. There's just no way to put it, I'm too in love with him. But like that. A thousand clear, delicate things. Like a chandelier, or a branch which is heavy with the ice, or a scatter of raindrops on a broad leaf. I don't know why this metaphor but this is what I think of when I try to describe the way he is inside. I mean everything, what he is, and what he likes, his intelligence, and the music he listens to, and the way he talks to his friends. I don't know how to describe. In more regular terms I try to put it, you're so sweet, Mikel, you're so kind, so pure, so innocent. He's heard each of these words three hundred times from me. He says sometimes, laughingly, in a way, that he's not innocent. But I told him one time, recently, "I speak a little Chechen, I have not all of the Chechen language but enough. The word for innocent is bekhkaza. It comes from the word for beauty, which a surprising number of Chechen words are derived from - don't think that this is just the language of thugs. And it comes from the word for loving or feeling strongly. So it means that you still feel beautiful things after all this time. You're still able to love me, you still love everyone around you. You give yourself to me so easily. You're still so innocent and pure, in any sense of the word. Or at least as how I understand it."

I told him, one time, a long time ago, that he was like "subhan'allah" ... It means, making Allah pure, that Allah is absent of all evil and everything that he embodies is beautiful and good. I told him, he wasn't bad, there wasn't an inch of darkness inside of him. He was just suffering, so I never mind and always forgive it when he hurts me. I told him, This is a very serious thing, that I've said only these two times. First in reference to God, and then in reference to you. You are like subhan'allah, Mikel. You are void of all evil.

He told me, "His wife's spending the night in jail too. When they were reading off the sentence, she got up and spat on me. It stuck all in my eyelashes."

I said, "I hope she dies." It sounded too serious, though, I didn't like it, how grave I was about that wish. I really meant it. Because I had spent the last year preparing to kill this man and now I have no one who I should wish to die. I had wanted to take the right to vengeance, to protect him more so than anything else, but even then, Mikel asked me that I shouldn't, he let it happen all this time because he didn't want him to die because of him. He just didn't want anyone to die because of him, I still can't believe that. So all this time I have not killed him, and it burnt inside of me for a long time, what was happening to him because I was obeying him in this, and I'm only just now able to let it go. But to his wife - I added, to soften what I had just said, "Fucking bitch."

He says to me, I don't blame her. If it were you, I could never believe that you had really done all those things, I could never think of you that way.

I felt like a sliver or a needle, of ice or water or one of those pure things that I was just talking about, had hit my heart. I mean, that I was struck by Mikel's being. I mean, that it hit me right through to the core, it penetrated me, slipped right into my soul. I looked at him and I said, with all of the intensity that my heart has for him, "You are so good, after all of this." And I felt myself becoming better too. Just like that. Only a year ago, I believed in compassion, understanding. I thought that the best way to overcome everything was to forgive. And understand. I believed that even the tyrant Kadyrov deserved forgiveness, and I didn't pray for his destruction but I prayed that he would someday understand. I understood myself why he was doing everything and I couldn't help but wish that he would make amends so that I would forgive him. (ETA: just as I mentioned it, it seems, the Chechen men accused in Politkovskaya's murder case - almost certainly a murder by the government - were acquitted. What a good day!) Compassion - I don't like the word in English. In Russian (another language which I speak a little of but do not have completely) it's sostradanie. Sah-strah-dah-nee-yeh. It's the most beautiful word to me. I lost that for a little while, the sostradanie, even though it wasn't me, but Mikel never did. I love him so much for that. And when I'm with him I know that we, the both of us, can heal. We can take back what we lost, or what we should have had.

I am repeating all of these words that I feel for him to remind myself after all of this time that we are still alive.