# Unedited Ai-translation 'the roots of my actions' book 2

Никита Александрович Капернаумов

Unedited AI-Translation of the original russian book "Истоки моих поступков" by "Никита Капернаумов"

04 april 2026


For those interested in the author"s personality: a reconstruction of the first thirteen years of life up to 2007. One of the largest childhood autobiographies ever (over half a million words across four books). AI comparisons include Proust, Limonov, Knausgård. Here, however - complete anti-literature, no artistry at all, and consistently very deep psychology.


Nikita Kapernaumov, born 1993, from Saratov. Attended kindergarten and school, played sports, rode a bike, saved money. Unrequited crushes from ages 2-3. At 10-11 - broke down. At 13 - involuntary psychiatric hospitalisation, labelled "schizophrenic," and then 20 years in a room in front of a monitor, consumed by destructive envy of other people"s sexual relationships in youth.


__________Book 2


.:.

___Part 17.

.::.

________________Mid-summer 1997 and the rest of the summer

.:::.

Part 17, Text 1. Clarifications on the previously written story

.::::.

For the sake of coherence, I aligned the funeral episode with the sharks, but in truth, I can"t guarantee exactly when it happened. It was dry outside. But it could have been autumn. Or maybe earlier, in spring. Or even a year before. Same with the sharks. And much else besides.

Now I"ll explain.

I"m writing this insert during the stage of final corrections, when my early childhood biography is already complete up to age eleven. Throughout the preceding events, I removed mentions of my age. The entire skeleton of my earliest biography-which ended at this point-I wrote from emotional memory. All the events, thoughts, and realizations described-did happen. But it was not a chronologically documented chronicle. Now we"re in mid-summer, and the story will continue precisely in "97, when I was four. And if we trace all the New Years back, the level of my thoughts seems logical and timely. So what"s off?

It all began when, after writing the skeleton in which the "Robot Policeman" and the vermicelli episode fell in the autumn of what turned out to be "96, I reached the TV archive and found "Robot Policeman" on 9 April "95. A whole year and a half earlier than in my emotional memory! Right on NTV, on a Sunday (just so my mom and I could return to L"va Kassily the following Monday and enact the whole vermicelli story). With this discovery, I seriously doubted my belief that I started kindergarten when I was four. Mom always said I started at three, but I didn"t believe her. I thought about it a long time, compared, also considered that, according to the laws of childhood amnesia, what is remembered more clearly often happened earlier than what seems later. And I realised that kindergarten did indeed start when I was three-in early spring "96. Yet I also remember that by the time I started kindergarten, I already had a huge pile of beach experiences and all sorts of early L"va Kassily idyll behind me. The beginning of kindergarten, that early first ascent, was hell precisely against the backdrop of that vivid past. And I had already concentrated that vivid past in the summer of "96. I also remember that during the days of "Robot Policeman" I was already old enough to sleep in the bed my father made, not the little cradle-bed. And yet I remember a significant part of the time in the cradle. So, considering that "Robot Policeman" really aired in early "95, I remember a significant portion of "94. My first memories of my aunt and semolina may go back to spring "94. And our walks with mom to the shop with the mirrored ceiling may really have happened with me in a stroller. Riding the carousel with animals with mom may not have been summer "95 at all-it would have been after "Robot Policeman"-but summer "94.

But I assessed my ability to rewrite all this time-which is already a whole big book-and realised I couldn"t. Firstly, I wouldn"t be able to make any single year feel full, so it would read the way you just did, because I simply lack the memories. And secondly, there would be chronological errors anyway, and no documentary accuracy.

So what was decided?

It was decided that I would move "Robot Policeman" from the completely wrong autumn of "96 to where you read it-spring "96-one year later than in reality. I could have placed it in its original time-April "95-but then I wouldn"t have been able to lead up to it, because I only began to fully describe visits to the grandparents, TV watching, etc., towards the end of "95. And that episode required those descriptions already, and I didn"t see how to insert them into the distant past.

The penis-cutting episode, whose date is in the medical record, I placed in the original emotional skeleton where it actually happened-end of September "95. That is precise. The appearance of the inflatable-tyre bicycle is also cross-checked with photos. New Year presents and main New Year details are also cross-checked with photos, though some of the memories described must refer to New Year "94-"95.

In reality, the summer of "95 was full of beach time, and the sisters could have been there then. But I concentrated all the beach story in summer "96. And given how well summer "96 turned out, how illustrative a concentrate of my childhood it was, it was decided to leave it as is and to place the start of kindergarten where you read it-at almost four years old in "97. But it should be understood that no, it actually started a year earlier. I spent not one month but all of spring "96 on that top floor in the first playroom, in that stupor, constantly crying. It was harsh. A lot, by the way, of what I emotionally remember or described was actually harsher. About the penis-cutting, for example, mom says I screamed so much she couldn"t stand it, and she was almost taken out of the clinic to finish it. And yet my episode, as I described and remember it, hardly conveys that intensity.

The transfer to the first-floor group and the clash with Kosarev were therefore in autumn "96.

The zoo trip with Baba Valya to see the lion I went on almost certainly in "95, not "96. Likewise the first circus and various other events. And the trip to the zoo with Grandpa was definitely a year earlier-I even have a photo on film, where I look small, just like in the New Year photos from slightly earlier. I left this zoo trip late too, to maintain the atmosphere of the last times before kindergarten.

I have a very similar situation of an important event being delayed by a year around fifth grade, which I will have to resolve after correcting the entire preschool period. All this consumes a huge amount of time-I have already spent years. It"s not just writing a book. This is a whole detective job and eternal problems of coordination. So here I finished writing in a semi-artistic form and pseudo-present tense; from now on it will be predominantly retrospective.

But I must warn that the rest of the preschool part, especially the near end of "97, may also contain delayed memories that in reality could have been a year earlier. For example, a trip to Grandpa"s work or a walk with Uncle Valera and his sons. But that"s not as important, so it"s no problem.

.:::.

Part 17, Text 2. Buying The Lion King with Baba Valya, Spider-Man, leisurely Irina and Lidushka, evening walk with Valera and his sons, shaving a bald patch for dinosaur bones

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One day, Baba Valya and I bought a cassette of The Lion King at a cassette stall near the police station by the Sharik market. I didn"t have a VCR yet, just begged for the cassette. It ended up staying with Baba Klava.

I can"t, without destroying the already chronologically messy narrative, insert Spider-Man into last spring, so I"ll place it here. In "97, on NTV, all spring through the end of June, the most modern Spider-Man series of that time aired. It quickly became my favourite cartoon, even surpassing The Lion King. I was fascinated by the theme of agility, control over circumstances-and the modernity. Spider-Man had skyscrapers and everything like in the movies. In toy shops there were models of Spider-Man everywhere, and I also begged for a decent one, though ideally I wanted him Barbie-scale. I was also drawn to the bright, juicy red-and-blue colours of his costume. I endlessly fiddled with him in my hands, sniffed him. The plastic had a special Spider-Man smell.

Mom, through some line-possibly very informal, not work-related (most of her acquaintances were lifelong friends from school, university, or work)-had a friend named Irina. She looked like Andrey Malakhov-I single out this type as a type of appearance, and I have it for both genders: usually brown-eyed, dark, slightly long hair, glasses like John Lennon. If a man, could be mistaken for a woman; if a woman, always associated with the name Irina. Choleric, extroverted. Women of this type I always associated with asexuality, so I never liked them.

At that time-before Malakhov-this friend of Mom"s reminded me of the song "The Boy Wants to Go to Tambov," which was everywhere then because I apparently saw the video clip, and the singer there was the same type. She was civilised, modest.

And she had a daughter, Lidushka-slightly younger than me, overly timid and naive, a real mama"s girl. Later, Mom explained that she had a mild, but real, delay.

Irina"s father was a musician, a trumpet player in the Engels Theatre orchestra at Teatralnaya Square. He lived at 98 Petrovskaya-a nine-storey brick building. Irina and Lidushka were not from Engels, coming only for the summer from the Moscow region, as I recall from Odintsovo, though maybe not. At that time, I didn"t yet understand all that: I thought if it"s the Moscow region, Moscow must be somehow above, and the Moscow region below.

They also told me that Moscow had everything-I was especially interested in the Bird Market, which made me jealous-but here we had nothing, except the Volga and the beach. And so, from summer "97 (or "96), after some vaguely formed acquaintance, we met and hung out in summer with Irina and Lidushka, and sometimes went to their home once or twice late in the evening.

I was in that child state, sleepy, so I remember little of what happened, except the special feeling of being a guest, which was rare. For some reason, Mom and I were alone in the apartment for a while, waiting for someone. Its layout reminded me a lot of our three-room apartment.

My father later nicknamed Irina and Lidushka "the Leisurelies" for their unhurriedness. Episodes with them will appear later in my story-in school years.

There were some very hot days on Frunze, and Mom"s cousin Valera came with his sons. I mentioned them in a few episodes before. They are among those people in my life I could never memorise well-they were so rarely seen, plus I wasn"t interested. Valera"s appearances on Frunze were generally rare: there was some Frunze tension, partially mentioned earlier, though I only knew superficially. Briefly, Valera"s mom, Aunt Lusya, was at odds with my Baba Klava because of the house on Frunze, which everyone lived in together before I came, and then it was taken over by Baba Klava. But Valera and we, and Aunt Lusya with my mom, got along fine.

In short, after an evening on the bench, late, in the dark, we all-really the whole gang, maybe except Baba or Grandpa-went to see them off towards Aunt Lusya, who lived in a Khrushchyovka in the "Melioration" area, further along Frunze, at the edge of Engels. That night, the moon was full. Along the way, everyone looked at the huge moon, and besides the moon and the black crickets on the ground, what impressed me was a terrifying water tower standing between Melioration and Poligraficheskaya Street, on Sanatornaya Street, along which we walked for the first time for me.

It was already, as I understand it, the end of summer. One evening I was sitting with Grandpa in the living room on the sofa, and tomorrow or in a couple of days I was supposed to return to kindergarten after the summer break. By that time, I had started getting into dinosaurs; I already had some books-about excavations, about bones. And so, sitting on the sofa that evening, I imagined my hair as dinosaur bones-and cut off part of it from my head, making a little tepee. Within a minute Grandpa came into the room and rather snatched the scissors from me, looking annoyed. I looked in the mirror-and there was a bald patch. Now I expected ridicule and shame at kindergarten.

But nothing serious happened, and on the first day at kindergarten the kind teacher on the first-floor group just made a playful remark, and someone laughed once more, but mostly it went fine-I combed my hair over, and it soon grew back. I should remind that, given how I framed the early story, by this time I had already been in kindergarten for a year and a half. By the time of this hair episode, I wasn"t particularly burdened by kindergarten; there was no strong "knot in the chest." I remember, on the contrary, some social confidence and having companions-even beyond Artyom.

________________Autumn.

.:::.

Part 17 Text 3. The swamps... going with Mum to Lipki Park... shoving a girl in kindergarten... pushing a little cat into the drain.

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At some point, a new anxious theme appeared in my mind - swamps. It probably started when I saw the drowning girl scene in that famous black-and-white film The Dawns Here Are Quiet. Then, apparently, on the way to the aforementioned Aunt Lyusya - either visiting her or coming back - Mum and I were on some bus that passed by a district next to Melioryatsiya called "Lyotka." It"s literally just a block from the city stadium - everything was close. In our Engels, one block is called a district, whereas in Moscow, a district is as big as Engels. Anyway, in that Lyotka, at the edge of the road, there"s a reed-overgrown swamp. Mum said it was a swamp. Ever since, I couldn"t stop thinking about it.

Trips to visit Aunt Lyusya, which started around then or even earlier, and happened once or twice a year during my childhood, I"ll describe later.

Once Mum and I went to Saratov, to Lipki Park, and sat in the section with the playground - still there, I think - in its corner closest to Engels. It had slightly more advanced ladders and slides than the usual post-Soviet playgrounds with a couple of rusty bars. There were some wooden ladders, and something looked Old Russian or fairy-tale-like - like a hut on chicken legs - meaning a structure within the playground you could climb or slide from. Although the hut referenced Baba Yaga - the child-eating witch - it had none of that discomforting edge; on the contrary, it reminded me of the film Morozko I"d watched at home at New Year, as well as other fairy tales, Pushkin, and The Green Oak. Later in childhood, thinking about fairy tales, I often recalled that playground and our time there with Mum. We probably went there again.

On the way back, on the bus, I ate peanuts - I remember that. Those were already the last years we bought peanuts, as in, they stopped being a regular thing. Peanuts were a marker of my early childhood. They came in a green, opaque, crinkly packet that you had to tear open, and it was stiff. I think we completely stopped buying them for some reason when I started school.

At kindergarten, on the first floor, there was an episode where I shoved some girl. In the evening, when Dad came to pick me up, the teacher told him. It was incredibly awkward, and I didn"t know what to do. It would have been a worthy introspection episode if I remembered more. But I only remember that the girl was weak, and I took advantage of that intentionally - my main motive being a desire to feel some physical control for once. Dad reacted without approval but without scolding: before my teenage defiance, he tended never to reprimand me.

Although I became a bit more confident in kindergarten - enough for such an episode to occur - the evenings still instinctively carried the same anxiety and nausea in my solar plexus. My innate neuroticism didn"t disappear. I just got used to that environment, and if I"d faced some stressful new situation, I"d be in the same hell as on my first day of kindergarten.

I have one vague memory associated with kindergarten, that first-floor group I attended, and lessons on crossing streets at traffic lights (which Mum had actually taught me before kindergarten, at the light near the monument to Grandma with Children, on the way to my grandparents or the clinic). Most likely, the event that triggered this memory happened a year earlier - in 1996. It was as if the teachers in that playroom were teaching us basic rules of life. And, besides traffic lights, we were taught how to meet new people. Something like: "Hi, my name is so-and-so, and you? Let"s be friends." Or maybe it was my adult self teaching me. Either way, it coincided with my fully developing theme of "strangers," my sense of separateness, and my problem with the tiny likelihood of connecting with those little sisters on the beach. I never saw anyone connect that way. That lesson seemed about civility, about tact, rather than actual opportunity to bond. Later, in the school playground, I watched kids in the playroom and couldn"t see a single moment where someone could approach another and introduce themselves "manually." Everyone was either already playing together or busy with their own things. If someone tried to approach, they"d probably hear: "What"s wrong with you? Are you stupid? Get lost." I kept recalling that lesson, and later in school, attempts at such approaches looked even more ridiculous. That lesson became a symbol for me of adults instilling false illusions in children, and ultimately, even a symbol of the foolishness of placing a child in an institution. Had I not remembered it, I probably wouldn"t have felt so disappointed and resentful later when I wanted to connect with girls but that early lesson kept popping up.

With Mum, in the evenings on L"va Kassil Street, every few days or so, our bathing idylls with toys continued. I had one of those cat figurines from Frunze at home - and it fell into the drain while water was running and got stuck. I panicked, screamed, and Mum said: "Shall we just push it through?" I remembered this in my diary in the context of some psychology - about how sometimes in hopeless situations Mum preferred to surrender. I had heard her say a few times: "If violence is inevitable - relax and enjoy it."

After bathing, her requests to pull my penis so she could wash it continued, and I tearfully refused.

At that time, Mum had installed an iron door in the middle of the shared vestibule with the neighbours - who had previously been hanging around on their haunches in cigarette smoke, sometimes leaning against our front door. Thanks to her connection with Uncle Sergey, she officially claimed that square metre. With the neighbours, there was now a silent tension.

She constantly went out for work, and I stayed home alone, because by then the "Golden Lvakasyl Era" was beginning - when I had long breaks from kindergarten, and just lying around in the apartment watching TV was the best time of early childhood, completely free of stress and unwanted exertions. Even visiting Grandma Valya - under hyper-care - always required dressing up and going somewhere. Here, you just lie down and flip channels. That blissful experience at the dawn of life probably formed the basis for my later reclusive tendencies - which, when realised, led to an absolutely hellish life in other ways.

Once I told Mum in the kitchen the plot of some action movie I watched without her on TV. I mentioned guns, bullets - in the context of our iron door (I perceived the door as a safety measure, not Mum"s impatience with the neighbours). During my ramble, Mum, realizing I already knew what it meant to die, gave a general explanatory speech about death. She ended with: "...so dying doesn"t hurt, don"t be afraid." Of course, this stuck with me for life, but at the time, I was specifically worried about helplessness against bandits with laser guns. In Spider-Man, I saw that with laser guns they could cut through any metal. Against a laser gun, nothing would help.

.:::.

Part 17 Text 4. Father to Moscow... balcony glazed... visiting Grandpa at work... with Grandma Valya to her acquaintances.

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At that time, Dad was still selling something by the library, but now he had connections with artists - selling them paints and accessories. For this, he went to Moscow for a few days, and brought home high-quality red-handled scissors for us - the ones we still use today. Before that, they were the iron USSR ones. The red ones weren"t for everything - they had to be preserved.

This was the last known trip Dad made outside Saratov until 2018, and I think it"s the one he told me about in my youth. He said that near the end of his youth, he tried to catch up on what he hadn"t done, and when he was in Moscow, he got into circles of serious billiard men, who dressed him in a proper suit and took him to play, to feel important. He talked about and dreamed of billiards all his life.

I don"t remember if we were still taping windows for winter. Window-taping is associated with the earliest childhood. At some summer, it stopped forever - we just didn"t remove anything from the gaps, and the windows never opened again. Only the small vents.

Around that year, Mum also glazed the balcony. As usual, after staying with Grandma Klava for a while, we returned to L"va Kassil Street - and there was something new. But the frames were wooden. Plastic windows and structures were still elite at the time. Our new wooden sashes stuck, and the far one never opened. We didn"t go to that part of the balcony - it would remain cluttered with sleds and god knows what until the end of the Lvakasyl story. The balcony could barely fit two people at a time.

I continued, though less frequently, to amuse myself by turning on every possible light in the apartment during the day. It felt like being in a lamp and light shop, which I loved - as it was associated with something inexplicable yet better than what we had in life.

As I mentioned, I might delay recalling trips to Grandpa"s work. The atmosphere was similar to visiting Grandma Klava"s workplace, but even worse. In my memory - pure greyness, harsh, industrial. I don"t know exactly where or why. Somewhere at the edge of Engels. As Mum told me in childhood, and as I thought throughout my early years, Grandpa worked in a plumbing brigade - climbing into wells and doing work there. But that day, I was in some industrial building or place - with the hum of ever-running generators, large pipes wrapped in fiberglass, industrial zones and dirt around. It was either pouring rain or even snow. Only later did Mum explain that Grandpa worked at the city power station (CHP), and that"s probably where we were.

Sometimes, for a weekend or a few days instead of kindergarten, I went to Grandma Valya"s during this busy autumn period.

At that time, when we were at Aunt Larisa"s, I visited Igor for the last time. I never saw him again, not even in the hallway. And from some year onward, they would move back to Voronezh, I think. They will forever be associated in my mind with classic 1990s life: an apartment in a grey panel building, toy cars in the boys" room, console games, visiting each other between identical apartments, a neighborhood older brother, embossed brick-style wallpaper, heating pipes, sewage smells, iron garages, kiosks, clattering old lifts...

At that time, in the same area as Aunt Larisa, once I went with Grandma Valya to a similar ten-storey panel building across the street, probably to visit one of her acquaintances. There were souvenir reindeer antlers on the wall in the hallway - serving as a coat rack. These antlers are also one of my 1990s associations.

Also with Grandma Valya, again in the cold season, we visited: 23 Krymskaya Street, or the neighboring building. This was on the way to Grandma Valya"s dacha - the last residential high-rises before the road over the bridge - uphill and out of town. By the end of my childhood story, this route would become a regular path - which is why I describe it. There was an apartment of another acquaintance of Grandma Valya - either Nina Fyodorovna (mentioned in Dad"s biography) or Taya - a formidable aunt, mentioned in earlier trips to the dacha, whose husband, also a brute, Valera, drove a UAZ and had a brick summer house.

Both Nina and Taya were rare "brick" acquaintances of Grandma Valya. Simply put, not poor. Associated with brick buildings, multi-room apartments, owning a car. Solid-boned, money-loving aunts.

In that apartment, as I recall, there was also a dog - apparently a poodle. And I think there were antlers on the wall there too.

It was the first half of some sunny autumn or early winter day. From the windows - it was the top floor - I saw epic views of the Saratov hills, mixed with power lines and some road junctions. In reality, there was just one road, a bridge, and a small hill, but in my childhood it all seemed like some part of Western Canada.

I don"t remember whose apartment it actually was; maybe it was some other aunt entirely.

By the way, that Taya was the mother of Dad"s acquaintance, Sasha Belyshev. In my childhood biography, he will probably appear only once.

.:::.

Part 17, Text 5. On Frunze, pooping under the sink... in kindergarten on the second floor with the boys... returning with Mom from Frunze at the end of the year... about tearing up toys... toy gun... Lesha Vasilyev.

.::::.

Because the kindergarten was close by, I spent most of my time living on Frunze.

There, I continued to poop in the potty while sitting under the sink - and then Grandpa would take it out. I no longer said "poo-poo" when straining. One time, a mouse crawled right in front of me from the dirty laundry - sticking its grey little face out. There were mousetraps all over the house. Mousetraps even sat on top of the fridges. There were two fridges in the hallway room, and above them - a clock on the wall that I always watched when lying on our bed there with Grandma. Next to the clock on the wall was an old electric switch - when a similar one was removed and disconnected, you could play with it: press a button, and another part would pop out with a quick click.

The beginning of that winter in kindergarten is associated in my mind with the second floor. There was a small assembly hall where we rehearsed for the upcoming New Year"s performances. I had already developed a friendly companionship with some boys. Besides Artyom, I was in contact with Mark and another boy, Maslyonkov, who lived at the intersection of Persidskaya and Moskovskaya. For my upcoming birthday in "98, I would receive a congratulatory note there on plain paper - written in multicoloured markers, neat adult handwriting, signed "your friends," who didn"t exist, except for these companions.

Meanwhile, leading up to New Year"s, we were learning "A Fir Tree Was Born in the Forest" - along with other collective creative activities. They took a photograph of us in that hall by the New Year"s tree. I was dressed as a "star-gazer." One of the teachers played Father Frost. Grandma Klava later kept that photo.

Dad and I went together to buy a tree on Lva Kassilya and Gorky. When I first wrote these lines, there was an outdoor sculpture in that spot, shaped like some kind of ship or something else - based on a story by Lev Kassil. Dad had modelled it in 3D Max during the coronavirus, at the request of the administration. By the time I was proofreading this text, the sculpture was gone.

On the night of December 30th or 31st, Mom and I stayed over on Frunze. We woke up early - it was still dark outside. Since we were going home for the holidays, they began giving me local gifts right that morning. From Grandpa - or rather, from Father Frost via Grandpa - I received a bag of toys. From Grandma - something else, probably a candy set. At the time, boxes shaped like treasure chests, like in fairy tales, were popular. Inside was a candy assortment. Then, along the still-dark street, Mom and I walked to Lva Kassilya. At home, the floors were washed, and preparations began for the long-awaited evening - which, I repeat, I don"t remember: whether it was that same day or the next. Probably the next day - otherwise, getting up so early, I would have fallen asleep again before evening.

Throughout my story, I"ve often mentioned my tendency to tear up and destroy toys and gifts in a fit of rage, yet I haven"t described a single specific incident. No matter how I dug through my memory, I simply couldn"t recall any concrete events from past years, and I probably won"t remember any from the next couple of years either. Such episodes certainly happened from time to time - as my mom and my two grandmothers have recounted - and some will appear later in my story, but emotionally, it always feels constant, an inseparable part of my childhood. It"s not the specific events that I remember, but the state of mind in which I wanted to rip things apart - that was literally always there.

Mainly - whenever someone gave me something. And the tantrum wasn"t so much because I disliked the gift or the item, but because deliberately destroying it was an easily accessible, effortless way to create a lot of pain for both the giver and myself. It was like a nuclear button - right there at hand. And, as I"ve said, I had habits like sticking my finger into dangerous door gaps - all of that sort of thing, tempting danger, stressing myself out.

The state that gripped me in those moments also triggered a "genital neurosis" - something I"ve already touched on in my story, which will come up more later. Going forward, I"ll write more and more about this topic, and eventually, as it becomes more significant in my story, I"ll even invent other terms and neologisms related to it.

In short, by ruining gifts or planning to, the suffering that triggered the tantrum mainly came from an empathetic imagination of the giver"s feelings about me destroying their gift. And in a tantrum, I sometimes lost control - and did things I didn"t want to do.

From the pre-New Year"s evening, I remember lying on the floor in the middle room, shooting pellets - which gradually got lost - at some targets with a toy plastic revolver. One of Dad"s two acquaintances gave it to me - either Dima Artoshkin or Lesha Vasilyev, both of whom were artists. I need to make a note about them now.

There"s no doubt about the infantile, drinking little Dima Artoshkin. But the second one - strange. The name "Lesha Vasilyev" was familiar to me throughout my early childhood. A man with almost greyed long hair tied in a ponytail, who came to our place for two or three New Year"s in a row - that"s who I always knew as Lesha Vasilyev.

But after writing all the texts, I asked Mom some questions, and she said he never came to visit. Moreover, the Lesha Vasilyev I later learned about - after writing everything - was the husband of a friend of my mother who lived in Saratov on Rakhova, at whose birthday Mom and Dad had met. Mom was friends with her, and Dad with this Lesha, as I understood. I recorded this in my parents" biography during the proofreading stage.

Back to Lva Kassilya and New Year. Dad confirms that Lesha Vasilyev did visit us. Well, of course - I didn"t make it up.

I did a simple thing: I googled "Alexey Vasilyev artist Saratov." It turned up exactly the man I remember visiting us those early New Years - born in 1952, fourteen years older than my parents, a well-known local artist. So why did Mom say he never visited us? I couldn"t ask her direct questions about the past - she would immediately shut down. But at one point, we talked, and it all became clear. There were two Lesha Vasilyevs - a crazy coincidence. Dad meant Lesha the artist, apparently. And Mom had never thought of Lesha the artist since then: he was completely unimportant to her.

Mom said the "main" Lesha Vasilyev had schizophrenia and eventually moved away from his family to a sort of creative retreat. Also creative. He made the jewellery box that stood on our piano.

So, I never actually met the "main" Lesha Vasilyev. Only the artist. The artist has a page on VK. It"s striking to see "online ten minutes ago" and compare it to when he last visited us. That was probably that New Year.

.::.

___Part 18.

.::.

...............1998 ---------------------------------------------------

.:::.

Part 18, Text 1. New Year... Gremlins on Frunze... sofas... there may still be chronological errors... last train ride with Grandma Valya... melancholy... tooth extraction... Titanic - beginning.

.::::.

During the holidays, other acquaintances of my parents came - probably that uninteresting girl Inga with her parents. And I fear that I may have jumped the gun recalling the parents" wedding tape. Perhaps it was only brought to us that New Year. In that case, it was my second videocassette, not my first. It just happened to be the first at Lva Kassilya - because "The Lion King" stayed with Grandpa until we got a VCR.

On January 10th, the film "Gremlins" was shown on TV, and we all watched it on Frunze in the evening. By "we all on Frunze," I almost always mean me, Grandma Klava with Grandpa, and Mom. Dad visited rarely - and when Mom and I went there during the holidays, he usually went to Grandma Valya.

The green-cushioned sofa in the hall at Lva Kassilya was already gone - it had previously been moved to Grandpa"s on Frunze, as I wrote. I sat on it in August and shaved a bald patch then. But from that set, the armchairs with green cushions remained. Also, throughout the Lva Kassilya years, the six plaid cushions I used to build a maze remained. The sofa itself - apparently the one Grandpa slept on in the hall on Frunze. At this point in the story, there were two sofas in the hall at Frunze, and it would remain that way until the end.

I mention the cushions for a reason - various episodes in the story will involve them. Part of childhood.

All day long, when Mom didn"t take me to kindergarten and ran errands herself, I sat in the hall, often on these cushions, in front of the TV, endlessly flipping through dinosaur books that I had been given. It was paradise.

Right now - as I"m proofreading - I suspect that I may have shaved the bald patch on Frunze at the end of those New Year holidays, before resuming kindergarten, rather than in September. Perhaps only during these holidays I got my first dinosaur books and discovered the topic of excavations and bones. I sometimes spend a whole day verifying a chronological detail - the past feels so much more important than my shitty present and even shittier future.

In the draft from September 23, there was a paragraph of despair here, hinting to the reader that I was in such a mess it would inevitably affect the narrative. In the proofreading stage, I removed that paragraph but will try to keep the rest of the events up to my school biography at a satisfactory level.

I was at Grandma Valya"s - and we again, for the last of two or at most three times in my life, took the train. There was snow and grey weather. We wandered through the Sharik market nearby - killing time, clearly just before the train, which ran a couple of times a day - and then headed to the station, which I never visited again, called "Primykanie."

A very industrial area - heat pipelines, over-track structures, under a grey sky. While waiting, trains passed, wires hummed, and other melancholy... I didn"t understand geography at all, but apparently, we went either toward Komsomolsky or toward the Polytech district.

We got out, and right nearby was a nine-storey building. Again, the theme of "everyone"s got the same" - all the entrances, apartment layouts. We visited an acquaintance of Grandma Valya. The apartment was just like Aunt Larisa"s neighbours" - all dark, facing the shady side. Even then, as always later, I thought how some people must suffer in such apartments compared to our sunny Lva Kassilya or Aunt Larisa. It"s a completely different mood, a completely different life - living on the shady side.

Once again, I was sitting on the kitchen, gnawing on something, and a tooth started to wiggle. And again, Mom and I went to the city children"s dental clinic. I already knew what a nightmare it would be - and it was again.

For my falling teeth, we went to the dentist about six times, and there was never any anaesthesia, and I always screamed, yet surprisingly: I never developed a fear of dental treatment, while that bullshit with my penis pretty much shaped my life.

In February that year, "Titanic" came out in Russian cinemas - probably causing a stir. I recently read that our TV channels were too stingy for many years to buy the rights to show it, so at that time, a two-part precursor was broadcast on TV. But I was still too young to know all this.

Mom and I were at Grandpa"s on Frunze, and it was the evening of February 19th. That"s when I first heard the word "Titanic." It was shown on Channel One after the evening news. At the time, I thought this was the actual new film. There was a scene where the main, as I thought then, hero threw chairs to those drowning in the water, saying, "Grab these, they"ll help you." Only later, when I watched the main film, would I realise that Grandpa had shown something else that evening.

My thoughts that arose that evening - that brief viewing - even though it wasn"t the original "Titanic" and thus not the original Jack Dawson, not really Jack Dawson, I recorded separately in my diary in early 2017 and autumn 2021. Both records concern the psychology of my complexes. Jack Dawson and "Titanic" are strongly tied to my sense of inadequacy. Here"s a snippet from 2017:

"...with things like this film, with such content and such a hero as this Jack, one could as well slap on a "Parental Advisory" or "don"t try this" warning in bold letters, which, regarding characters like this Jack, would say: "Do not let yourself dream of being like him, because if you aren"t already, you will never become him.""

Also in 2017, I noted that based on this "Titanic" and similar dramatic love-story films, I naively perceived a pattern: that for romantic happiness, one must suffer seriously. I foolishly applied this idea in reverse in my youth: seeing my lack of romantic happiness as hope that fate would credit me for it and spare me other suffering or a painful death. Obviously, it was absurd, but, perversely, circumstances unfolded exactly that way - I was literally lucky in almost everything else - and so I didn"t rush to educate myself or purge these fanciful beliefs.

And in 2021, I wrote about all this in general - and about how in "Titanic," it wasn"t the ship sinking for me, but my self-esteem.

.::.

________________I am five years old.

.:::.

Part 18 text 2. Birthday,,, end of the first kindergarten,,, first day in the second kindergarten,,, everything melting everywhere,,, I lay in hospital with Mum,,, the polyclinic and Mum"s reverence.

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Birthday - five years old. Some guests. Until about the age of seven, Mum always invited guests for my holidays. More and more new books about dinosaurs. I was switching more and more from mammals to reptiles, though I kept drawing tigers and other cats. In general, I drew a lot. Many primitive drawings have survived. Mostly animals and dinosaurs. Properly worked‑out drawings with shading would only start to fascinate me in the first years of school.

At kindergarten they were already taking us for walks closer to the far end of the yard. Behind a simple chain‑link fence you could see the yard of a private house inside the block - not the house that actually faces Persidskaya Street, but one inside the block - and I was always interested in how one was supposed to get to such houses. I never saw any little driveways leading into the blocks. And yet there were plenty of such wide city blocks packed with obviously internal houses and courtyards. Even right in the centre: the whole pentagonal block bounded by Lev Kassil Street, Khalturin Street, Teatralnaya Street, Kommunisticheskaya Street and Freedom Square was huge and clearly contained hidden private properties inside it. But I had never been anywhere inside there.

Among the children in the kindergarten, as I already mentioned, there was Maslyonkov (or Maslyakov). By now it was already March - it was getting warmer, there was sun and a clear sky, though there were still snowdrifts and snow. And once during a walk this Maslyonkov scooped snow into his palms and melted it into water, and when they asked him why, he said: "Where else would you get water if there was suddenly a war?" I often picked up other people"s behaviour - I"ll mention that more than once - and that day after kindergarten, on Frunze Street - the sun was still out, they must have picked me up early - Alina and I were hanging around in the snowdrifts near my house, and I copied and performed for her that Maslyonkov melting‑snow‑in‑the‑palms routine and the explanation that went with it.

From what I remember, that day with the snow melting in our hands was already one of the last days of me going to that kindergarten on Telegrafnaya Street. Mum had apparently enrolled me in that kindergarten so far away because there were no places closer. And now - there were.

My second kindergarten was at 10 Lev Kassil Street - just one house away from ours. It was all hidden behind trees, and among the trees there was also a gazebo‑veranda, and next to it - a frightening sculpture of Baba Yaga, which I was always afraid of.

I remember that on the first day there was a training session in a small little gym. The floor was rubber and it smelled of rubber. I think they were teaching us to do the birch‑tree pose, but I already knew how to do it. During the walk - it was already warm and we were in spring jackets - on that first and the following days I, as usual, stood aside by the mesh fence there as well and looked towards the yard of my house - there is a passage there from Petrovskaya Street, and Mum could even have walked through there. When they led everyone back into the building, there was a knot of anxiety in my chest because of the coming lunch, just as there would be all the rest of the time in this second kindergarten, but that first day was sunny, and in general the whole year afterwards in this kindergarten is associated for me with sunshine - which is why this kindergarten felt much "lighter" to me than the first one.

I"m not sure: did I move to this kindergarten already in the spring or only at the beginning of autumn? It seems to me it was still in the middle of spring - somewhere in April - and I went there until the break for summer. And summer itself, in my memories, was very Lev‑Kassil‑and‑Frunze‑centred; no kindergarten is remembered at all. Nevertheless, other events connected with this second kindergarten I will begin only after the summer.

Everywhere the snow was melting, the first grass. Mostly Frunze Street, Alina. Perhaps I"m hurrying one year ahead, but it seems that already then I could write something, and I walked along the thawing Frunze with Alina and, with a businesslike air, wrote something down in a notebook or at least sketched things naturalistically. Once Mum and I were walking to her workplace in the centre, and I was scribbling something along the way, walking along Persidskaya.

During those days on Lev Kassil Street I fell ill, but instead of lying it out at home for some reason they called an ambulance. Mum and I were taken to the city children"s hospital, which you can see from our window - five minutes away. Father came on foot afterwards. The admissions ward - instant stress, instant fear that they would separate me from Mum. But they didn"t separate us. They admitted us together. This was my first time in hospital. In the ward there were several beds, and other mothers with children.

There were injections and constant stress and fear. Fucking white coats, the fucking clinking of glass test tubes. Blood taken from the finger. All that fucking crap. But it was good that Mum was there, because I already knew that in adulthood you"d have to lie in hospital alone - and that"s completely fucked, I didn"t even want to think about it.

Gradually I even started playing there with some boys. Father brought parcels and came to the window and waved. We lay there for about a week. Returning home felt like heaven - there"s no better feeling.

For a long time now I haven"t devoted any significant passages to the polyclinic, but that doesn"t mean it wasn"t there. My medical file is stuffed with sheets covered in illegible doctors" notes dated to those years, and in my memory the polyclinic is the third most significant place in Engels after Lev Kassil Street and Frunze Street.

You constantly had to undergo examinations: any admission to kindergarten, school and so on, as well as routine mandatory check‑ups, meant the same forced routine for a week and a half or two weeks for the sake of some fucking certificate. But it didn"t end there. The doctors would always find something and prescribe coming back again after some time. That was how an endless bondage would begin.

Meanwhile the polyclinic supposedly gave Mum a sense of support, protection, relief from parental responsibility. She had no support otherwise: Granny only panicked and confronted everyone, Grandad stayed silent and was useless, and my father - especially on serious matters like health, where he had his rastaman‑style views - simply wasn"t taken seriously. She had neither the time nor sources of information to study anything on her own. So she relied on those women in the consulting rooms, who moreover were often old enough to be her parents and inspired trust on a personal level as well. But that was only supposedly the reason. The matter went deeper. She might not treat herself and might let things slide with her own health (which she later did), but with me - even without neglect, merely if she missed something somewhere - the controlling authorities could already intervene.

Veiled even from herself under that feeling of support, she had a reverence before the state. That was what I always sensed intuitively, and it was the key reason for that knot in my chest in kindergarten. My whole childhood story, and especially towards its end, when I would be controlled by a state body that does not develop a person but suppresses him and his rights - is tied to this thing. Father feared psychiatric hospitals and the police even more, and it is curious that none of that prevented these two system‑phobes from deliberately giving me the most vulnerable possible status inside that very system.

.:::.

Part 18 text 3. Nosebleeds,,, films,,, childhood cartoons,,, about Granny,,, about Grandad.

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I counted how many words there are in the text for each year described, and this ninety‑eighth year - especially its spring (at this point I had wanted to move on already to the summer) - is the shortest part. So I decided to gather all the small scraps of memories that I couldn"t find a place for and insert them here now. There may be abrupt jumps from one topic to another.

I noticed that I had never mentioned my nosebleeds in the biography at all. Twenty times or more throughout my childhood my nose bled, and it would only stop around the age of nine. And I"ll jump ahead right now, because I can"t guarantee it anyway and won"t describe it in detail: there was apparently an episode somewhere around the first or second year of school when, during lessons or simply during an argument, Mum smacked me in the face and my nose started bleeding as well. That could very well have happened, because with those fucking lessons anything could happen, and there will definitely be an episode like that later in the childhood story.

And in moments of idyll with Mum, as I call them, our shared vocabulary kept filling with more and more little words. Things like tsyts and kozashtra, hound - usually about young male cats - and many others that I will mention later. As well as phrases and intonations that only the two of us understood.

Together with Morozko, ever since the earliest childhood my favourite domestic film was The Incredible Adventures of Italians in Russia. When I stumbled upon it on some channel, especially if it was just starting, it was a little holiday. From that film Mum and I laughed at the lines "By the matryoshkas!" and "Grandad, you"re a born racer." The film created the idea of a merciful and indulgent mentality among Russian people. Everyone is naive, comical, as if performing for one another. No one is truly strict or dangerous to anyone else. Giuseppe will be forgiven everything. The mafioso will only blow up a car - mere hooliganism. The lion will not attack. The grandad, a born racer, only looks angry. Olga only pretends to play hard to get with Mironov. Everything is just for the sake of play. Everyone chases everyone else, and in the end some fair adult will arrive and divide everything equally among these children who never grew up. That was how it all seemed to me. Thanks to the dubbing - to those intonations and timbres peculiar exclusively to the S‑S‑S‑S‑R mentality: as if everyone were Levitan. And above all thanks to the absence in the script of any truly serious harm to anyone, as would happen in an analogous Western film. After all, even in the closest comparable French comedies with Pierre Richard there is still plenty of real damage and negativity. Russian comedies in general were like Italians in that respect. And this was reinforced by reality, where everyone everywhere looked after me, except for a few fuckwits among my peers, like Kosarev.

Different, special, which I saw on television from the very earliest times - from around 1994 - was the cartoon with Crocodile Gena and his accordion songs. I already hinted that it was for me the perfect example of the Soviet puppet animation that I could not stand. And it was the most Lev‑Kassil cartoon imaginable - perfectly fitting that living room, with me sitting there, playing with buttons at the age of two, perfectly fitting that grey television set and the same associative row where all those grey coats of Mum"s also belong. I remember how I - still not knowing about any other animation at all, not even about colour television - sit watching the final song about the blue railway carriage - and everything is simply grey. This should have been inserted into the paragraph where I spoke about Mikhalkov and his I Walk Through Moscow. That cartoon made you not want to live, though I didn"t yet know such a thing was possible. And it forever linked trains with sadness for me (almost the same atmosphere as in the film The Thief - I will mention it too), forever created a visual association with something post‑Soviet, some suburban landscape of decay and railway tracks under a grey sky. I remembered that cartoon again when I travelled by train to Kaliningrad in my youth.

And yet the melodies from it, despite the associations, are still among those I call genuine hits, and I can cite them as examples of something valuable when I hate the meaningless set of notes that most music in the world is for me. And Cheburashka, because of the brown eyes and those little dot‑like eyebrows, was always associated for me with that girl Lidushka, about whom there will be more later.

Another cartoon I hadn"t mentioned before but which also belongs to my earliest childhood memories is the one about the parrot Kesha. Mum told me that he was voiced by Khazanov. I then saw Khazanov on television, and after that every time I remembered the parrot Kesha I could never shake the image of that big man in glasses, who even looked somewhat like the parrot. I didn"t understand any of those cartoons at all. But a little later, in that same year 1998 perhaps, I remembered one particular episode from that cartoon. When the parrot Kesha starts going hysterical: "I can do it. I"ll prove it. I"ll show them. They"ll hear about me, they"ll talk about me." That was exactly me.

Another thing I couldn"t shake off, like that association with Khazanov, were certain obsessive thoughts. At the time described I already knew about death, and somewhere I also picked up the theme of the desert, thirst, and that a man dying of thirst would drink anything. Since then all my life, looking at rotten puddles or filthy water in a toilet bowl, I would think - would I drink that if I were dying of thirst?

Since early childhood there stood in the wall unit on Lev Kassil Street some Soviet children"s book about the tropical forest. For some reason it was called Behind the Glass. Half a year later, when I learned to read, I would read there about a naturalist pushing through the tropics who was swarmed by a million mosquitoes and crushed them by the thousands at a time, ending up completely smeared in dirt and blood.

Although for a while - from the summer of 1997 to the end of 1998 - I was immersed in the theme of Spider‑Man and fictional superheroes in modern cities with skyscrapers, technological mutations and laser guns, in parallel I was still following my original naturalist line, and I needed to become capable one day of going out "into the field". For instance, I thought that somewhere in tropical lagoons I would need to dive for long periods. I began to train holding my breath. As with all the other skills from that series (later there will be jumping from heights, throwing knives), I would never achieve any success in it: the standard one and a half minutes was my childhood record, and after that I was afraid of dying.

My collecting of accessories for life in my own cottage, which I would someday have, also continued. I had started this theme in earlier years with the inventory of unused dishes in the cupboards. Now, in particular, at Granny Klava"s place on top of one of the two refrigerators in the middle проходная room there appeared a water filter. For those years - a novelty. Someone must have given it as a gift. I eyed that filter like a predator and let Granny Klava know that when I grew up I wanted to take it. In such situations she would say, "Well, that"s after me," and when she was especially categorical (usually during quarrels with Mum) - "only over my dead body."

One evening I was running from the living room into that проходная room and deeply cut my leg on a piece of metal sticking out near the floor behind that refrigerator. I immediately fell onto the bed, screamed, burst into tears, and they bandaged me. The first scar on my body.

In the small room there always stood a hockey stick, or rather a walking stick. Great‑grandmother Shura used it to walk. I wasn"t planning on becoming a decrepit old man, so I didn"t consider it as something I might need.

I don"t think I have mentioned this before: under the entire house on Frunze there was a crawlspace. There were two openings into it: one in the small room and another in the kitchen. Grandad very rarely crawled down there with his torch - mostly to access the drainage pipes under the kitchen. The linoleum would be rolled up, the old men would lift a large board we walked on, and there was at least a metre down to the unpleasant earthen floor. I never climbed down there and it disgusted me even to watch where Grandad was fiddling about. That concerns the opening in the kitchen. But in the small room a similar board was lifted, and there were jars of jam there - only half a metre to the ground at most. The most frightening thing was to think about the crawlspace under the living room, because most likely nobody had been down there for a hundred years, and who knows what might have settled there in all that time?

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Part 18 text 4. Little things at Grandad"s,,, the cemetery visit,,, about Oleg Nikolaevich,,, about Ghost,,, about Larisa,,, about early theatre with Granny Valya,,, about Vanessa‑Mae.

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Grandad had a workshop in the yard - I mentioned it only in passing. He sharpened knives there, made various contraptions. My father, when later - after Grandad - he was drawn into helping with some of the house"s utilities, remarked on various innovative inventions of Grandad"s there, what you"d call made out of bits of shit and sticks. But I think that was just my father"s envy - he had always dreamed of having both a house and a workshop. In my early childhood Grandad and I sometimes did things there. There was a vice, a grinding machine. There was almost nowhere to stand; the light came in only through the open door, and most of the workshop was piled with all sorts of technical junk, behind which along the far wall stood nothing less than a Jawa motorcycle. I only saw its rear wheel, and I liked both its shape and the name "Jawa" (it went nicely with "Jamaica", which I was becoming interested in together with my reptile‑fascination) - and so the Jawa motorcycle became my favourite. As I remember, the old men even said I"d ride it when I grew up. Yeah, right...

Sometimes, especially at the breakfast table, Granny would stir Grandad to life: "Vovk, tell Nikita what we"re called in Japanese." And Grandad, having picked up this information from some newspaper, would pronounce our names with the suffixes. I would be Nikita‑san.

Mum often recalled the same stories of Grandad"s, of which there seemed to have been only a handful in his whole life. One of them was about what kind of wave there would be if the Balakovo dam burst. Grandad said it would be exactly as high as the sixth floor of the building on Lev Kassil Street.

Granny Klava told more stories. Once we were walking from her place to the city centre, and instead of Persidskaya Street we went via the mosque and along Nesterova Street - there were more streetlights and passers‑by there in the evening. And near some kiosk she told me that earlier someone had been blown up there with a grenade. In Engels, and even in Saratov, it turned out there had been their own gangs - I only learned that later in my youth. But back then, in childhood, I thought all that existed somewhere in other cities. So I didn"t really believe the story about the grenade, especially since it was incomprehensible anyway: the story must have been told before I had learned about death.

But somewhere after I already knew about all those coffins and corpses, apparently in that very spring of ninety‑eight, we had another visit to the cemetery. It started at Aunt Lyusya"s place. Most likely it was some Easter, or whatever day it is when all the Orthodox flock to the cemetery with offerings - it was grey and muddy. I was with Mum, and it seems even Granny Klava came despite her quarrel with Aunt Lyusya. We gathered in Aunt Lyusya"s yard and, together with other little clusters of elderly people passing by - all those old women in headscarves and men in old people"s clothes - surrealistically moved towards the cemetery through the courtyards. A mass of old people, all going in one direction. Like the cows moving through the Frunze passage.

We arrived at the cemetery; Uncle Valera was there (among all those aunts he was the main instigator), there was a grey sky, there were little gatherings around a table near someone"s grave, eating boiled eggs and cheap sweets. I was bored out of my mind. But Mum, of course, understood that, and we left earlier. Since then I have never again been to a cemetery.

Everything in the district beyond Poligraficheskaya Street was associated with pensioners and Khrushchyovka blocks.

Many days, probably even weeks in total over the whole childhood, were spent covering the three‑kilometre distance from Frunze Street to Lev Kassil Street. Every bump along the way was already known. But sometimes Mum and I would go out to Poligraficheskaya and Nesterova to take a bus. Once, just as we left Frunze heading for the stop, bird shit landed right on Mum"s head, and we went back home. And she again remembered how once a bat had got tangled in her friend Shurygina"s hair, which had been a horror for everyone.

I couldn"t tell it earlier because I was writing in the present tense, but back then, during that visit to the gymnastics training, the coach there - Oleg Nikolaevich - rejected me not so much for the pull‑ups as, as Mum later recalled with irritation, because I didn"t have a father. And therefore, supposedly, there would be no backbone either. I think Oleg Nikolaevich saw right through me, and the real issue was precisely the backbone. I think he mentioned my father only as a convenient excuse, while in reality that part didn"t matter - he simply saw my psychological type. Olympic champion Nikita Nagorny is also a "mummy"s boy", even a granny"s darling. And his coach is a woman. Yet look at him. It"s about the psychological type. And bullies saw straight through me in exactly the same way, that I was touchy and reactive, and that"s why they went for me.

Watching the film Ghost, apparently for the first time on Frunze Street, together with Mum - who had already seen it - and with the grandparents, was a special episode. It seems this was already after I knew about death, and the film plays on that tear‑jerking idea of a soul after death that cannot reach the living. Somewhere much further on in the biography I think I already described the mechanics of tear‑jerking sentimentality - in any case I analysed it in detail in my diary, though I don"t remember for which year or how to find it... Damn it, I have millions of words. Well, I"ll return to such themes many times towards the end of the childhood biography...

The film, in general, left a strong impression - one could even say it caused a trauma - and it would have been better not to watch it and not to know about death at all. Better to be an animal, and ideally not to be born in any form.

In Ghost there was a short‑haired actress, and my Mum too was beginning to gravitate towards that style. And once the topic of models came up - some Miss Russia or other - and I instantly declared: "We should send our Aunt Larisa there." Mum said, "Is she really beautiful?" I said, "Of course." This was around ninety‑eight, when Mum was already thirty‑one and Aunt Larisa twenty‑six. That blond Aunt Larisa, who neurotically fussed over her appearance, seemed to me the standard of model beauty. Only several years later did I realise that what I had said might have hurt Mum. Especially since Mum actually saw better and later more than once pointed out Aunt Larisa"s overly large head and short legs. Mum didn"t have that neurotic race for appearance. She had a small section with women"s tubes and cosmetics in the wardrobe in the corridor on Lev Kassil Street, but she only lingered there before the most important outings, like going to the theatre with me.

I didn"t mention it before, but Granny Valya, roughly around the time of the baptism episode, took me to the Saratov Drama Theatre. They were staging The Scarlet Flower. For some reason I have the memory that right after that performance there was suddenly a concert by none other than Vanessa‑Mae. When I later watched her most popular video in the Royal Albert Hall on the internet, I had the feeling that I had seen exactly that live back then in childhood in a dark concert hall with Granny Valya. More likely the concert was simply shown on television around those days, on some advanced channel like Second Sadovaya (there was a local channel with that name), and that created this illusion in memory. Those few main compositions of that violinist became tied in my mind to the centre of Saratov, to the words "Second Sadovaya", "Bolshaya Sadovaya", to autumn Saratov parks and cultural places. These are exactly the compositions I spoke about in the episodes of walking around Saratov with my parents. Interestingly, only now I learned that Vanessa‑Mae actually came to Saratov in the year 2000 and performed in the Ice Palace.

And afterwards, from that drama theatre, Granny Valya and I left by tram, and it was obviously number nine, because it went through completely unknown places to me - meaning the upper of the two routes from the centre to the industrial district. I never travelled that way again until I was fourteen, always along Chernyshevskaya Street.

At Aunt Larisa"s place at some point I watched the film The Abyss - another film Mum already knew and often talked about, especially when we spoke about the Mariana Trench. About the trench the adults told me that it was as deep as the distance from Frunze Street to Saratov railway station.

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Part 18 text 5. A lot of Uncle Sergey,,, at Uncle Sergey"s workplace,,, buying a VCR with Uncle Sergey,,, picking up a kitten with Mum,,, the chapiteau and the last time at the circus.

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Uncle Sergey, Mum"s teacher from her student years, was now fully established as the chief architect of Engels, living in Saratov and driving from there in his grey BMW - which I soon understood to be the coolest car of all those driving around the city. In fact Mum worked and drew at home, and when I say "Mum is going to work", I mean either that she went to measure plots with a tape measure and discuss things with clients building cottages around the city, or that she went to Uncle Sergey"s workplace. His signatures were needed, and he gave them to her without any queue and dealt with all the other bureaucracy. Because of this the other professionals in the city, to put it mildly, did not like Mum.

I"ll devote a passage to Uncle Sergey"s workplace. It was a branch of the city administration located on the second floor of a building at the corner of Teatralnaya and Kommunisticheskaya Streets, house number forty‑three. The entrance door was next to a bread shop popular with us. Important people would go in there and climb to the second floor, where there was immediately a stinking toilet full of cigarette smoke, and to the side - a door into a corridor with offices. Here it was cooler, and here there was what became my visual association with the concept of an "office": everywhere cabinets with files and folders, office desks, all that clerical paraphernalia; those with more important positions had swivel chairs on wheels.

And the most important thing was that a couple of people there had something called a computer. It was unclear what it was or what it was for, but it was like in films. I still hadn"t fully realised, by the way, that the films and series I saw on television were not simply not here or in neighbouring cities, but actually on the other side of the globe. Why not here? Look - the same offices, papers, paperclips and staplers, and the men in the same shirts and jackets. Only in films there were skyscrapers, and here - a three‑storey building. The planetarium and books about space already existed in my life, but I hadn"t yet formed any understanding of what was where and in which countries.

Somewhere in the middle of the corridor there was a door, and behind it was the most important office - with Uncle Sergey. Actually he didn"t sit there immediately. When you entered, his secretary Aunt Katya sat there at a desk (she seemed like an aunt to me, but she was about twenty‑two) - without a computer of course, only papers; on the sides there were chairs and a sofa for those waiting to be called. And to the side there was another door, behind which was the office with an air conditioner and Uncle Sergey sitting at a computer. When we came there, I mostly sat on the sofa with Aunt Katya while Mum went in to Uncle Sergey. Everything was civilised: when he came out and passed by, I would greet him, and he greeted me too. It was impossible to imagine that someday in the future I would be masturbating in shit and posting videos of it on VKontakte so that at least some girls might hear about me.

I often waited for Mum on that sofa for a very long time. While sitting there I thought about the future, about skyscrapers and about how I would drive a car. Afterwards Mum and I usually stopped to buy bread and a sunflower‑seed bun, which I ate immediately on the way.

There started to be a lot of Uncle Sergey in my life. One day the three of us drove in his BMW to a home‑appliance shop in Engels, near School No. 1 - at 67 Engels Avenue. It was the first time I had been in a huge electronics shop, at least it seemed huge to me. Washing machines, televisions... I had a strong premonition that something cool was about to happen - and I was right: we walked around and around - and bought a VCR. It felt like the beginning of a new life.

Uncle Sergey drove us with the purchase to Frunze Street and left. He himself, by the way, never got out there or interacted with the grandparents - all because of Mum"s abortion in the past.

We carried the purchase into the house, and soon the main Gavela came, and he tried to connect it. Something didn"t work, something was missing. And so the VCR began standing there on Frunze not functioning yet.

I constantly trailed around with Mum on her boring errands. Once we were walking from Frunze to the centre, and we took a rare route - through the clearing between Persidskaya and Nesterova Streets, right in front of the bathhouse. Along that clearing flowed the so‑called Rotten Stream, with reeds on both sides. Along it ran a wild path into thickets of trees and bushes - in general, a super‑dangerous place, not for children.

And there, on our path, there was a kitten. It looked like it belonged to no one. We picked it up and went on with it to Uncle Sergey"s. I sat beside Aunt Katya holding that kitten. And then in the evening we went back and left it in the same place where we had found it.

I can"t figure out what I looked like in ninety‑eight, and so I"m not sure when the memorable last trip to the circus happened. There"s a photograph where I"m sitting in winter clothes with a peacock on my lap. Either the beginning or the end of ninety‑eight. And that determines whether the last circus visit was in the summer of ninety‑eight or ninety‑nine. Just in case I"ll finish with it already here.

It was already hot - either still spring or already summer. And although we ended up in the Saratov Circus, it all started with a chapiteau, again near School No. 1 in Engels. It was my first and last chapiteau - I didn"t know then, and still didn"t know then, that that was what this word meant. We simply arrived there with Father and Mum, almost across the road from the same electronics shop, and on a large lawn there were travelling attractions, and among them - a big round yellow‑and‑blue tent.

But we never paid or went inside it; instead we decided to go to Saratov, where a circus had also arrived at that time. We took a bus to Saratov right from there and, with the familiar elements that accompanied every trip to Saratov and which I"ve described a hundred times already, we reached Chapaeva and went to the circus. Everything there was as usual - first a performance with people, then with animals, and afterwards, when the circus ended, you could approach the lion"s cage standing at the edge of the arena and take a photograph with it in the background.

From that photograph one could probably determine the time, but I don"t know where it is. In it I"m standing with Father with that lion behind us, and behind the cage in the distance you can see Mum, and I think she had some funny expression on her face, because that photo made us laugh later.

Almost every trip to Saratov traditionally included walking along the entire Kirov Avenue. Along both sides of the avenue there were mostly two‑storey old houses with archways into courtyards, and there were no gates yet. From some point on Father and I began going into the courtyard of house number twelve or ten and pissing against the wall of some house there, and we went into paid toilets less and less often. And we never in our lives went into the blue portable toilets.

.:.

___Part 19.

.::.

________________Summer.

.:::.

Part 19 text 1. The boredom of existence on Frunze,,, with Alina and Anya,,, wandering around the yard while the adults are away,,, hooliganism with Uncle Tolya and punishment,,, "The Wind Blew from the Sea",,, concerts by the bench,,, dancing and my complexes.

.::::.

As I said, especially before the start of the beach season - which began roughly in mid‑June - it was a very "Frunze" kind of summer. Anya, Alina and I spent whole days there outside. Near Anya"s house there was a huge pile of sand - we were always building something in it. But the reader shouldn"t expect much Tom‑Sawyer‑type adventure or anything particularly exciting in my memories of how we spent time on Frunze. The girls seemed quite content with life, while for me there was simply a hellish boredom and emptiness, in which nothing remained except to stare into the distance toward Saratov, dreaming and inventing for myself some thrilling future based on what I saw on television. But that is precisely what matters - that is exactly what shaped those inflated expectations of life and the painfully harsh disappointments later.

Besides boring games of "mothers and daughters" and hide‑and‑seek, we had plenty of completely made‑up amusements. For example, fortune‑telling of various kinds. You pull the skin on the side of your hand, and supposedly the outline of the name of your future bride appears there. Or even better: you pour sand - either into your palm or somehow onto your hand - then spit on this little mound of sand, fiddle with it a bit, and wherever the wet lump rolls, that"s how things will turn out. Brilliant...

As for the dacha theme and animals? At first I was still more interested in snakes, but that summer I must have been switching more and more to lizards. At my grandparents" dacha there were especially many of them in the spot where some boards lay at the edge of the plot. The lizards were beautiful - descendants of dinosaurs - and I wanted to be with them and to be like them. Their life seemed interesting.

Just as on Lev Kassil Street, I now stayed alone for very long stretches on Frunze as well. There I could watch television to my heart"s content, and that was the best thing of all. BabKlava, it turned out, was still working, Grandad too, and Mum as well. Those were the busiest architectural years of her career. I would wake up and there was no one in the house; I"d eat something, and I could go out into the yard. It was the beginning of summer there, and everything connected with nature was coming alive. Spiders, mole crickets - all sorts of things. For the first time I saw a spider with a cocoon from which a whole swarm of tiny spiderlings came crawling out.

In the yard, on the side closer to the Fatyushkins, the ground had been dug up - Grandad was building a garage there. In that heap of earth I found a plastic figurine of a squirrel with half its head sliced off. Probably cut by a shovel. I showed it to Mum later, and she said it had been her childhood toy.

Once, still before noon, Alina and I were racing around Frunze and generally fooling about. Behind the fence from us was that neighbour Uncle Tolya - the husband of the fat Fatyushkina, who was always drunk and staggering about. As I already wrote, he was half his wife"s size, with whitened hair, and he also stank of sour rot - which made it easy to laugh at him and joke. He was doing something in his yard. Alina and I - either through some hole in the fence or somehow else - stood there calling out to him and pestering him. At the same time we were a bit afraid of him, and whenever he moved in our direction we ran off. Most likely we called him a fool, and for calling someone a "fool" Mum and Babka punished me strictly. I probably should have introduced the punishments earlier in a separate passage - because they had been punishing me for a long time already - but I don"t remember anything before this episode.

What happened next with Uncle Tolya I don"t quite remember: either he himself came to BabKlavа to complain, or Fatyushkina told her - though she was kind, and if she"d known how it would end she probably wouldn"t have said anything. Or maybe BabKlavа herself came out into the street and saw us tormenting Uncle Tolya. In any case, I was soon summoned into the house. Fatyushkina was sitting there, and Babka in the kitchen slapped me across the lips and scolded me. I burst into tears. She told me to go and apologise. And so I went, tearful and guilty, and that Uncle Tolya - apparently already a bit drunk, but kindly - said something to me, and I remember the words "Alinka‑malinka". As I understood it then, the point of his speech was that I shouldn"t pick up bad behaviour from Alinka‑malinka. I felt sorry for him in his naïveté, because in reality I had been the main instigator. But perhaps his meaning was subtler - that my hooliganism, even if I were its main "parent", would still have remained "unconceived" if I hadn"t been keeping company with someone equally capable of mischief.

Summer, with all its Engels heat, was already in full swing, and the girls and I would sit for hours in the shade of our front garden: sometimes on the bench, sometimes on the little fence, and I - often up in the bird‑cherry tree. Saratov glimmered blue on the horizon. Everyone had the radio hit "The Wind Blew from the Sea" in their heads - everyone was humming it, especially Alina. Back then I didn"t know who performed the song, and it was amusing in adulthood to see how much that singer, Natalie, resembled Alina. Alina might have loved the song partly for that reason too, if she"d seen the video on television. Anyway, I hummed it as well - you could say I hummed it endlessly. So much so that that entire summer and that whole period of life are forever associated for me with that song.

And then there was this toastmaster Anya - constantly taking initiative in respectable directions. She was a proper mummy"s girl, capable of proposing some help for the adults or organising other acts of diligence. Or, for example, rehearsing and staging a concert for the adults when they all sat on the bench in the evenings.

We started rehearsing. To sing "The Wind Blew from the Sea" and various other things. We prepared for a week or two. Anya told us who should come out "on stage" and when - the stage being the space in front of the bench - and we even had to perform some dances. Dancing bored me terribly; I didn"t see the point of it. But even then there was another problem for me in this whole matter. Dancing is a purely bodily thing. When someone sings, the listener"s attention goes to the voice, or at most to the singer"s face. But with dancing people look directly at you physically - at your body. And the problem wasn"t the fear of violence, of someone taking your body away from you as in the clinic, or interfering with it. That had already happened there anyway. The problem was that twirling this body - which people who feel full control over it are supposed to do - in my case looked like bravado. As if I were in control of my body. And I wasn"t in control of a damn thing. The very next day, at another visit to the clinic, I might burst into humiliating tears from some pain. Or I might suddenly have a scuffle with some Kosarev and he"d throw me to the ground. Or right there on Frunze by the bench the word "fool" might slip out of me, Mum or Babka would hear it, slap my lips, and I"d burst into tears in front of everyone. What kind of control over my body was that? I wasn"t my own. Dancing was absurd for me.

Later, in my school years, there would be more and more episodes connected with this theme. It is almost the main line of my story.

But I still had to dance. We even rehearsed some partner thing, and I even touched Anya"s waist while she was teaching me. But those were brief moments during rehearsals, lasting only seconds, and nothing sexual awakened in me then. I rehearsed the dances in the house with Mum in the living room too - she showed me the most primitive sort of waltz.

I no longer ran around the table with the adults, but I still sat on the floor like a little kid, fiddling with nonsense like plasticine, and from that place on the carpet where Marsik had vomited a year earlier there was still a rich smell.

.:::.

Part 19 text 2. The romance of Saratov in the distance,,, Lyosha Fatyushkin again,,, Ghostbusters,,, a neighbour on Frunze lends a bicycle,,, cosmic themes on the square and in the park,,, a boy with swagger - and I pick it up,,, Mum and I buy an enormous bicycle,,,

.::::.

It was already fiercely hot - blazing heat - and Alina and I, just like the year before, slid down the straw and messed about near the Chizhi place, though most of the time we simply sat there talking and dreaming. For the latter, that particular spot by the Chizhi wasn"t ideal, because there were trees ahead and no view of Saratov. When I dreamed, I wanted to look at Saratov. All my dreams were there, not in boring Engels. That summer, by the way, I didn"t see the sisters on the beach anymore and didn"t miss them.

Lyosha from Novorossiysk - Aunt Valya Fatyushkina"s grandson - came to visit again. I still had no idea what Novorossiysk actually was, and the name didn"t impress me as much as Moscow because of its too‑Russian ending, but Lyosha himself - having come from somewhere I knew nothing about, meaning he had seen more than I had - impressed me anyway. And he was older than me, tanned, with light hair that was darker than mine and tougher, slightly wavy - he seemed almost like the type of those daring boys on the pier of the brave. And since he wasn"t malicious and treated me almost like a teacher would, I didn"t feel envy toward him; rather, I saw in him an example of what I wanted to become, and even hoped I would.

His father, incidentally - as Mum later told me when I was grown up - had been exactly the opposite in his childhood: a real hooligan boy, and it was precisely with him that my uncle Valera had been at that moment when he climbed on my mother with sexual intentions.

Lyosha mostly hung out either with the Bobry boys, whom I didn"t even remember by face because they hardly ever came near our house, or with the two sons of the Petrovs, who lived after the Fatyushkins. And Lyosha also kept going with his father to the Volga - naturally he knew how to swim - and all that impressed me too.

The fat girl Katya also started appearing again at our bench. But that was the last summer. She lived permanently in Saint Petersburg, and it was because of her that I first heard about that city.

One evening at my grandparents" place we were all watching television, and close to bedtime I begged to watch a bit more. There was a strange film where some odd ghosts were flying through tunnels; they had tails and heads like light bulbs. They were all grey, and among them there was this youngest one whose name sounded something like my surname, and his head especially resembled a light bulb, so someone in the film even called him Lamp‑Head. Ghostbusters. I began to want to watch it properly, from start to finish, without any of that "go to bed". The most interesting films always came on when you had to go to sleep.

The Fatyushkins lived without a television and without any conveniences, in one half of their house. In the other half lived another family - a man and a woman - and they seemed to live even worse, and the man drank. They had no children or grandchildren, so they mixed less with the neighbours, and when they were outside they always sat on their own bench.

But once that man dragged a bicycle from somewhere, and through my adults he lent it to me for a while. It was a primitive Soviet teenage two‑wheeler with medium‑sized wheels, and when I tried it I could barely reach the ground with my feet. I still couldn"t keep my balance myself, and Mum pushed me along by the handlebars. Lyosha, naturally, already knew how to ride. I kept trying endlessly to ride it on my own. For a couple of days the bicycle was completely at our disposal, and we could even take it into the centre.

I should have described all this earlier. I had a note here - about some boy somehow connected with the bicycle... and something about space. But by the time I actually got around to describing it, by the end of 2024 I didn"t remember a damn thing anymore. Which bicycle exactly, which boy exactly... it had all vanished to hell.

I only remember the space theme, and even that associatively: a hot day, me on the bicycle in the square while Mum is off on business at the administration building; something about the park; some monuments, boards of honour and images of cosmonauts somewhere... maybe on some concrete wall in the park. And all of it tied together with Gagarin, with that song "The Final Countdown", with the planetarium, and also with the space section of the Engels museum, where I had already been and where there was a spherical capsule for returning from space. All of it mixed together into one cosmic stew in my head and was perceived not as something historical but as something mythological. Imagine the beginning of The Lord of the Rings, only instead of all those Isildurs and Middle‑earth there are cosmonauts, rockets and space. Something that had sunk into history and become legend.

And about the boy - perhaps I meant the following. He was some boy connected with that Lyosha, slightly older than me, who came from another street. Or maybe he was the one with the bicycle who let me try riding it. Although he was almost my age, he was even more of a street kid than Lyosha, and certainly more than me. That must have been my first contact with a completely unfamiliar boy - someone not connected by our parents" acquaintances, nor by neighbours, nor by kindergarten. He chewed gum and had a kind of relaxed swagger in his manners. And I, as always, wanted to seem grown‑up and confident and, as I wrote, I tended to pick up other people"s manners - so I picked up his swagger and later, when the adults came out to the bench, I demonstrated it in my behaviour. BabKlavа was sitting with someone - probably with Fatyushka - and said to her reproachfully: "Look how he picks things up."

Despite the fact that I still didn"t really know how to ride, and certainly needed a smaller bicycle, Mum and I once left Frunze, walked along Poligraficheskaya Street toward School No. 1 - there, in the area called "The Living and the Dead", in a Khrushchyovka block along the road, there was a shop on the ground floor that sold bicycles - and something happened to Mum there, or they talked her into it, and in the end we bought a huge, ugly bicycle with the biggest wheels imaginable. It had no top bar and it folded. Judging from the internet, the model was called Salut. Big saddle, luggage rack, tool pouch. A proper kolkhoz bicycle. We brought it back to Frunze, maybe went somewhere nearby with it once, and then it stood in my grandparents" garage for the rest of its life. Only once more would it appear in an episode during my school years.

.:::.

Part 19 text 3. Last visits to Semyonova and pentatonic evenings,,, the rabbit on Frunze,,, Mukhtar bit me,,, video on the street,,, the woman with the bucket of leftovers,,, me as a rhinoceros idiot and shame in front of Anya,,, note on shame and disgrace.

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Most likely, this was already the last summer we visited my mother"s classmate Semyonova and her daughter Yana. In those years, on birthdays - mostly mine - they would come to visit us at Lev Kassil, and my father would see Semyonova too, because later, when she was mentioned, he often joked about the size of her gum - twice the height of a tooth. As for their house, number ninety-three on Revolyutsionnaya Street, there"s nothing new to recall. While my mother chatted with her, I got bored somewhere near their front garden under the poplars, and in the distance from their hill, you could see Saratov. The visits to Semyonova usually took place in the evenings, when a haze from backyard fires hung over the entire neighbourhood - everywhere, people burned brushwood - and its smell would forever be linked in my mind with summer evenings in low-rise areas, with summer itself, with the girls, and for some reason, even with the forest, and something old-fashioned - some kind of paganism, or just Slavic traditions - and also with pentatonic flute melodies. The connection to Slavic culture might have been reinforced by repeated trips at that age to the museum in Engels, which had exhibits of bast shoes, hut models, and other wooden artefacts.

Also on Frunze, there was one day when a white rabbit appeared from somewhere. I fussed over it in the house, carried it around, even though I was scared it would bite my finger. And that same day, Semyonova with Yana, or Marina with her daughter Olya, came by. Marina - I mention her for the first time - was a blonde classmate of my mother. She appears only once more in my childhood story, I think, during school years. She had a daughter, Olya, similar to Yana - a couple of years older than me - whom I had only seen a few times in early childhood and with whom I didn"t really interact.

So either they or the Semyonovas dropped by briefly at our Frunze place, and this Olya or Yana, fussing with the rabbit, picked it up by the ears. I protested: "You can"t do that," but she said it was okay, that this is exactly how they are handled. Then the rabbit was left to sit in the garage we were still building, and I got distracted - maybe for lunch or the TV. Later, it turned out the rabbit was gone. I cried, and for some reason the Petrov neighbours came, and their heavyset matriarch, Aunt Tanya Petrova, comforted me, saying that they had taken it because they had livestock and other rabbits, and it would be better off there. Later, it became clear that the rabbit had probably slipped out of the garage and ran along the path toward Persidskaya Street, where their aggressive dog constantly ran out of the Petrov yard, and that"s what got it. The Petrovs apparently gave us a replacement cat, but it disappeared quickly too.

Once, with Alina, Anya, and already Alyona, we were playing some kind of "mother-daughter" games as usual - and despite the adults being watchful, something happened involving Mukhtar, the dog from Anya"s yard. They either let him loose to run in the yard or something else, and I - which was rare - ended up in their yard behind the gate. He came up close to me, and I instinctively got scared and ran away, even though I knew you shouldn"t run from dogs - and he barked loudly behind me, all black and loud, right at my rear, so he didn"t even need to bite me - I had already started crying anyway. He didn"t really bite; I didn"t even understand what happened. I was just scared and confused - and cried in front of Alina, and most importantly, Anya and her strict mother - behaving like a small child with no control. And crying, as I said, doubled the shame. It left a scar, in general, and a decision to be more teasing toward the dim Alina for this. In my "Weakness" boat, I felt alone, and I needed companions.

There was a brief episode with someone"s TV and our VCR taken outside. Probably it went like this: Gavel had a portable TV, or just a small one, and in their yard, there was a long extension cord. Some adult suggested we try taking our idle VCR outside and play The Lion King again (everyone knew I had longed for it). It didn"t work - blue screen again. But I kept talking about the cartoon, and I told Alina that after The Lion King, there was supposed to be a dragon cartoon, which - relevant to my lizard obsession - I wanted to see even more. She agreed. Months later, when I sorted out the VCR and tapes better, I realized she probably didn"t understand what I meant, and just agreed without thinking. There were no dragons - it was just a tape with two cartoons in a row, apparently Yana"s.

When we played with the girls, at lunchtime, a strange small woman constantly passed by, holding an enamel bucket with a lid. Such buckets are common in canteens, hospitals, and kindergartens - inside, there was first-course soup for many mouths. We knew that inside were some food scraps, most likely from the hospital on Poligraficheskaya, so she was disgusting to us. It was unclear where she was taking it - on Frunze she always just passed and disappeared under the hill, toward Persidskaya. I guessed it might be for feeding pigs.

The woman was mute, and we teased her childishly - saying mischievous things, and she couldn"t reply. I mean, Alina and I did this - only when Anya wasn"t around. With proper Anya, such antics could even have caused a quarrel. Also, the woman looked strange and wrinkled. Since then, I"ve noticed how neurological and physical troubles often come in pairs.

One day - I can"t remember for what occasion - the whole extended family on Uncle Valera"s side came to Frunze. Adults prepared a feast in the yard, and out of boredom and a desire to stand out, I grabbed a narrow plank and, like an idiot, ran around the yard holding it to my forehead - imagining myself a rhinoceros. Eventually, I found nothing more interesting than pretending to ram a brick wall with my "horn." It ended with a wound on my forehead - I held it with my hand, and I was ashamed because Anya saw it.

A small note on my use of the words "shame" and "disgrace." In the Mukhtar episode, I wrote "shame," though I referred to the balloon episode, where I used the word "disgrace." I am very weak in the semantics of words, but ideally, shame is about self-reproach, and disgrace is about experiencing mockery and censure.

Until recently (as I write this in the editing stage), the word "shame" barely appeared in my text. Though, in fact, I should have used it exclusively, not "disgrace." Because, as you might have noticed, there was not a single instance where, in a situation I called "disgrace," anyone outside really mocked or reprimanded me.

It"s a very tangled psychological knot. Everything is mixed: from what I described at the very start about the psychology of crying, hiding my genitals on the beach, to practically any other part of my story, even those not seemingly related to shame and disgrace. Because it"s just life - just what exists. What"s involved in everything.

And this "what exists" - my experience of shame as disgrace - could roughly be called a "delusional belief" (and where it"s maximally delusional, for example in the Mukhtar episode, where nobody even thought to mock me, I still replaced "disgrace" with "shame" to avoid any suspicion of irony). But it"s not nonsense. It"s simply what would require an explanation spanning my entire biography - and it would have to be written in reverse.

But why do that when you can read it linearly in the right order and, if you have brains, feel the answer yourself? By the way, some things can only be understood by feeling.

.:::.

Part 19 text 4. Fantasies about friends while home alone,,, scared of a frog and crushed it,,, ate all the cervelat recklessly,,, hooligan Sergey on Frunze,, fight.

.::::.

I think by then the grandparents were already retired, and they spent the first half of the day at the dacha. As I mentioned, my mother often wasn"t home until lunch, so I sat alone in the house - the greatest happiness I could have then was not to be alone, but with a peer I liked. This is not a "grown-up" remark with a tone of regret, but my actual fantasies from early childhood, from which I suffered nothing. As I said, when alone, I was always mentally with someone. Even in adulthood, after youth, when fantasies are no longer possible, I still tend to roam the apartment imagining scenes of youthful domestic romance. In childhood, I might have even spoken to imaginary invisible companions, and from the outside, I might have seemed schizophrenic with voices. There was self-tickling, running, jumping, and frolicking around the house. And all this was with imaginary companions, not just by myself, though in the narration I attach the prefix "auto-" to these activities.

The most memorable states - yes, it"s better called "states" - were when I walked around the house giving her a tour. The desire for her to be in my home was always the main one. I wandered, looked at things, and imagined how I would tell her their stories. When watching a film and the adverts came on, I imagined her sitting next to me, and we shared opinions and guesses about what would happen next. "She" - could be anyone. At the time - mostly Anya. But sometimes Alina. Later, even boys, or some adults (at the start of first grade, there is an example). But mostly, it was those who were more pleasant - so girls. It was a desire for company, not sexual. And it didn"t torment me. On the contrary, I felt good. Loneliness only became painful when a sexual urge was already present. You can live without company. You can imagine company. I, for example, now while typing this, imagine the reader. But without sexual drive - you cannot live. And explaining why is like explaining why a broken finger hurts. Words won"t do. The etymology of "sex" is enough.

With the TV off, the house was quiet, and there were different rooms - and still, childhood fears that someone might crawl out from under the floor. But it was sunny, summer, so that was fine. Once, I passed through the middle room, where our bed and two fridges were, and saw a frog hopping on the carpet. It was disgusting: frogs outdoors are one thing, indoors another. For some reason, I panicked, grabbed a slipper and a chair, and somehow pressed it with the slipper, then put the chair leg on top and stood on it for confidence. When the adults later came and cleaned up, I didn"t see what happened to the frog. After this act, I carried a sense of a small "sin" for a while. Adults often talked then about sin, about what you shouldn"t do - else hell, and so on. In the frog case, I calmed myself only by considering it a domestic pest, like a mouse. I wouldn"t have dared outdoors... But still - I intentionally killed a living creature. A creature with eyes and a head, which possibly had thoughts, and also a concept of what is right - sin. And now that frog looks at me from heaven, knowing who broke the commandments. Also, by some superstition, after crushing a frog, it was supposed to rain.

Regarding my kitchen incompetence, I think I last wrote about it before switching the narrative to past tense - I didn"t cook anything, not even sandwiches, and didn"t take anything from the fridge myself. By this point, nothing had really changed, but one day, with no adults home in the morning, I woke up and, seeing no food on the table for me, went to the fridge and took some cervelat sausage. Cervelat was considered a delicacy and normally served by Baba Klava in small amounts on a sandwich - on my then-favourite black bread. But here, having a good excuse, I got bold and didn"t even take bread - I ate it plain. I took a knife - probably the first time I cut food - and sliced rounds. Normally Baba Klava would remove the inedible skin from each slice, but I ignored it, eating the meat core, and threw away the rest, even though there was still a lot of edible meat. I threw away almost the entire stick. By lunch, my mother returned and, lamenting this waste, retrieved what she could from the trash to feed at least Marsik.

On Persidskaya Street, which Frunze leads into - basically nearby - lived a boy named Sergey. Cars sometimes drove there, so I wasn"t allowed. But Sergey came to us himself. He wore some very old coats, just like people in the movie The Thief. Blond and freckled, like me. About a year and a half older. Just mean. I realized it immediately. On one hand, he had the boldness and courage I always dreamed of, but when adults weren"t around, he was openly a hooligan, causing trouble. Once he trampled a frog just for fun.

It all led up to this, and eventually I clashed with him. Alina was nearby, maybe someone else too. He naturally overpowered me, and when I got up, I cried and ran home. Mega-embarrassment and a big scar on my self-esteem. I couldn"t imagine someone being that strong. In that conflict, I was of course right - he started picking on me as soon as he realized how weak I was. But usually - in movies, for example - those who are right and defeated don"t cry, or even react in other ways. But I - always cried immediately and ran to the parents. I complain to those who brought me into this world, raised me in society, and triggered my instinctive need to exist here. I didn"t end up here on my own. Those who are right and defeated but don"t cry or complain - I envied them but considered them idiots... Since they don"t see the logic, don"t think about it. I didn"t understand them. My envy existed because the non-crying psyche was valued and idealized, and maybe I would have tried to adopt it sometimes for its advantages - but I couldn"t. Hence the "disgrace." Also, physically weak.

When he left after the fight, my adults told Alina and me that Sergey had no mother - she had died. This created a super-strange mix of feelings: pity, hatred, and confusion. I couldn"t even imagine living without a mother. And he not only lived, but caused harm. And he didn"t care what his mother would think. So parents don"t watch from heaven, like in The Lion King? They completely die? I was glad Sergey didn"t come around anymore.

.:::.

Part 19, Text 5. The hateful subordination of childhood... messing around in the sand with Alina and Anya... trips with Uncle Seryozha to Shumeyka... visiting Aunt Lyusya... the gypsy figurine.

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According to my memories, I spent almost that entire summer on Frunze Street. Whole days with the girls by the front garden. Anya"s sister, Alyona, as I mentioned, was also allowed to play with us under their supervision. Spending time with all of them was the absolute best thing. With my parents - specifically Mom and Grandma Klava - there was constant tension; I was always bracing myself for some unwanted nonsense. I mean, they could just decide to take me to the clinic. Or get ready with Mom to go to Lev Kassil Street. Three kilometres of boredom, followed by Lev-Kassil-stuff, with a badly functioning TV, cleaning around the apartment, maybe even some vermicelli if Dad wasn"t home. Sitting on Frunze Street, everything"s fine - and then Mom says, "We"ll be going soon." Or in the evening, when an interesting film was on: "Right, bedtime." "Let"s go wash your feet and sleep." And all the other boring, unwanted, or stress-inducing crap. But the girls, and kids in general, never forced me to do anything I didn"t want, and they couldn"t have; with them, it was all rest.

This was a time of active construction in the private-sector neighbourhoods. Everyone was building something - a house, a garage, a sauna. Next to Alina"s old blue wooden house, there was movement; her father was doing almost everything by himself. Across the street, the same. Back then, they weren"t building with light aerated blocks like now, but with heavy silicate bricks, usually light-coloured. Near the Gavels, as I said, there was a pile of sand and leftover bricks from construction. Once, we supposedly built a house for ourselves there. I already knew how to lay bricks, but when it came to the corner, I froze, and Anya knew what to do and made the corner. I was impressed and asked her how she learned it. She said, "I just figured it out myself." I felt ashamed that I hadn"t understood it on my own and that I never would, because I had already learned it from her.

Anya would bring out her Barbie dolls, Alina too, and I, as always, wanted Ken - specifically for my own particular reason why I needed those dolls. And I noticed that my friends weren"t tied to Barbie-scale play and could amuse themselves with others just as well, or maybe even more, for instance if there had been a walking doll with a motor. This continued my observation that what other kids entertained themselves with, I did too. That I was a nerd.

Mom would sometimes come by in Uncle Seryozha"s car - that is, occasionally he would drive his BMW right to our house on Frunze, and she would get out, or they would pick me up. I felt like the coolest kid in that "village," even cooler than the Gavels. The Gavel family still had a Russian Zhiguli, but here - a proper BMW - and I"d say, "Bye!" to the girls and climb into the cabin - it was triumph and glory.

Once I got in like that, and Seryozha drove us somewhere. By the way, I wasn"t supposed to call him "Seryy" - I just made up that nickname for myself. Earlier, I had somehow been smacked on the lips by Mom, but I don"t remember exactly how, so I didn"t make it a separate episode.

In that distant childhood, as I"ve noted, I often had no clear idea where we were going, what was happening, or what would happen. Mom and I would leave the house, walk, chat, and then it turned out we were heading to the clinic. The same with the episode of buying the VCR. Adults didn"t always explain what was going on or why, or I couldn"t always picture it if we were going somewhere new or if something new was happening. This was a special feeling of life, unique to childhood.

That time, we first ended up in some building supply store at the so-called "Mashino-Dorozhnaya" - the bus stop towards the dachas. There was the smell of primers and wood, all very adult and comfortable. Comfortable mostly because Mom was with Uncle Seryozha, and when she was with him, everything was best for me: she wouldn"t force me to do anything I didn"t want. Being with Mom and Uncle Seryozha was like playing outside with kids - pure relaxation.

Then, after that store, we drove somewhere else again. All those Engel"s streets were still unknown to me, everything like in a film, like on TV. Summer, Kamaz trucks, as if some road junctions, like in Los Angeles, like I"d seen in films. In reality, there were no junctions - it was all just my imagination, associating it with what I"d seen in films. I still didn"t fully understand that it wasn"t the same as on TV, that we were just driving through a village, and the only similarity was that cars also had four wheels.

And so we arrived in the area called "Shumeyka." It was closer to the new bridge. According to Mom, Uncle Seryozha had a dacha somewhere in Shumeyka. The word "Shumeyka" made me think of noise and motorboats.

Anyway, there was a beach and quite a few people that day, with some small islands close by. It was the first and last time I was there. The three of us swam, though Uncle Seryozha less so - mostly it was Mom and me. It was sunny and already well past noon.

Aunt Lyusya - Mom"s cousin Valera"s mother. Though we called her Aunt Lyusya, in age she was more like Granny Lyusya. Aunt Lyusya had beet-red dyed hair, was small, with eyes close together, worked as a nurse, and knew how to give injections.

I got sick, and apparently there was no one to look after me, so I think they took me in Uncle Seryozha"s car to Aunt Lyusya"s home. A five-storey Khrushchyovka at 32A Kolotilova Street. The stairwell smelled old, everything was unfamiliar; the apartment doors were covered in soft leather or just wood - very post-Soviet. First or second floor. At Aunt Lyusya"s, you enter: one room on the left facing the courtyard, ahead - the toilet, far right - the living room facing the street, and between the living room and toilet - the kitchen, also facing the street. Everything was tiny. Carpets everywhere, wall units - that is, cabinets. In the wall units behind glass doors - dishes, photos, figurines, everything. We had already been there; Aunt Lyusya was kind, and I felt fine.

Mom left. I lay down in the small room, it was cosy. I went through a feverish crisis, slept it off. Aunt Lyusya came by to treat me. Morning or evening - I was typically disoriented - I"d wake up and go eat. Aunt Lyusya liked milk noodles, but that didn"t scare me - she wasn"t the type to force anything. Then we played with something in the living room, and she spoiled me a bit. Mom came in the evening.

I have to mention the gypsy figurine at Aunt Lyusya"s separately. I remember it all my life, even if I didn"t mention it often in my diaries. It stood in the living room behind glass in the cabinet, among the dishes. We"d been visiting her since I was about three, and I saw it immediately, while Mom explained it was a gypsy. I began to fear it so much that it was almost hidden from me. Even at the time described, and later, when visiting Aunt Lyusya, I always glanced at that cabinet where it stood. Initially, I also connected it in my mind with the actress from the film Amphibian Man, which we watched there on one of the first visits. That figurine seemed to have the same overly graceful eyebrows and eyes.

The theme of dangerous, cunning women, witches, was always the scariest and most neuroticising. I"ve mentioned my fear of gypsies, Snow Queens, the fear of being kidnapped from Mom right at the beginning of the story. A very ancient fear of mine, probably original - and at that time purely fear of the unknown and inexplicable. Later, genital massacres, gastro-thrillers, kindergarten, and finally delving into the psychology of all those dead princesses and sad women turned witches - only refined it further. Sometimes leading to perverse sexual fetishes, sometimes to psychological lines like those I called in my diaries by the neologisms "nktsm" and "yamamiy dead-end." But there"s nothing new there - in essence, I"m already writing about all this in the childhood biography here, in a more meaningful and chronological way.

.:::.

Part 19, Text 6. Some girls at Grandma Valya"s dacha... buying Spider-Man with Grandma Valya... with Dad to Saratov city park and boating... watching Spider-Man on TV and going with Mom to the kolkhoz market.

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At Grandma Valya"s dacha, the entrance to her wagon was still at the far end - near the wild rose (in the 2000s it would be closed and accessed from another side). Once, I climbed onto the wagon roof via the stair railings near the door. On the lot diagonally across the passage, there were two girls. Probably that"s why I climbed up - to watch them. Grandma Valya, as I recall, understood who I was watching - I didn"t hide it. She likely didn"t know the owners of that lot, otherwise, being overly caring, she might have tried to introduce me to the girls.

I only saw them that one day and thought about them for a long time afterwards.

In the shopping complex on the first floor near Grandma Valya"s building on Entuziastov Street, we bought me an electronic watch. It had some other functions, some buttons. None of it worked, or I didn"t know how - it barely fulfilled its main function, and only for a short time.

Grandma Valya and I constantly went to the dacha. We"d sit in the bushes, pick berries - I mean, me too. I don"t remember enjoying it all that much, but there was also an element of accumulation, and the results were obvious. In general, it was a good time - we joked, something was happening, and on the way, we"d always buy me some ice cream or chewing gum, and I"d look at the inserts. I continued my Spider-Man obsession.

One day, we walked for a long time with Grandma Valya through the small markets in her neighbourhood, through various stalls - there were no big supermarkets back then, goods were mostly sold outdoors - and I kept looking at VCR tapes. Mostly Ninja Turtles, which I hadn"t seen, and Disney cartoons for girls. None of it was for me. I wanted cartoons with the most detailed graphics and realistic proportions. The best example of that was Spider-Man - which is also why I had loved it a year earlier. It was in the same vein as my Barbie-scale obsession: toy models should be Barbie-sized, cartoons should have correct proportions. Sometimes, such correct proportions were in Soviet fairy-tale cartoons, and also in the Ninja Turtles, but fairy tales weren"t about modern life, and I hadn"t seen the Turtles, so - only Spider-Man.

And so I spotted one at the big market on the east corner of Entuziastov and Kavkazskaya Street (there was a vacant lot). We walked for about three hours from Sharik to that market, through various other shops, back and forth, and only at the end of the day returned to that stall and bought it. There were several episodes, as I understood. I wanted to watch it as soon as possible.

On this or another occasion, Dad picked me up from Grandma Valya, and we went through Saratov City Park. We got off at the Chernyshevsky stop. It was late afternoon, summer, and there were lots of people. By then, I had already been there once with Grandma Valya, but I didn"t know when, so I didn"t lie or move it earlier. Most likely at age three. With Grandma Valya, I saw squirrels there for the first time in my life - we had been there in the cold season.

Now I went with Dad. We looked at squirrels and swans. It felt strange to see all this in the city centre, not somewhere at a dacha in real nature.

Then we went to the ponds in the southern part of the park, where there was a boat rental - it had always been there and still is. We paid, got in, and Dad started rowing. It was my first time ever floating on water. He arranged it for this experience. Willows hung overhead, there was some bridge - we passed under that too. The water was green - well, that was just the reflection of the trees. Everything looked like in landscape paintings.

Then we arrived in Engels, and somewhere halfway between the centre and Frunze, he handed me over to Mom. I told everyone there how I had rowed the boat. The Spider-Man cassette ended up with my grandparents alongside The Lion King.

On Frunze Street, one evening stood out. Late afternoon, scorched summer, grass bleached everywhere. Mom was constantly busy. She had to go to various government offices dealing with city infrastructure, submit or collect documents. That was her work, besides drafting, or even more often drafting, because Grandma Klava had taken over much of her drafting work - she also had construction education and could draft correctly, especially with engineering calculations. It was very complicated - huge technical sheets with communication diagrams and numbers, and the only electronics assistance was a calculator.

So there I sat on Frunze Street, at home, watching Spider-Man on TV, nearing evening. Then Mom came in and said we had to go. That"s why I didn"t like being with Mom, but loved being outside with kids or just home alone. Even now, as an adult, when I dream of returning to childhood, where you had to worry about absolutely nothing, I still remember that feeling and the endless life grind, the eternally nagging tasks. You didn"t have to care, but you had to do. Now - you have to care and do, and all of it while life is completely screwed and there"s no hope.

So, well, we went. Or rather, I think we even drove, because it was quite far - to the kolkhoz market, to the main Engels fire station, their office. I stood on the street while she went inside to take care of something. It was already closer to evening, and opposite was that empty kolkhoz market, where soon we would have to go again to buy me all sorts of clothes for autumn and winter.


.:::.

Part 19, Text 7. With Dad at the shooting range,,, on Neptune Beach,,, the beginning of Xena, Warrior Princess,,, Anya"s dad brought a VCR,,, gave us some tapes,,, we took the VCR to Lev Kassil,,, got hooked on Spider-Man,,, Yeltsin on Poligraficheskaya.

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I"d been to the beach with my dad. Often just the two of us - Mom was working. On the way, we sometimes stopped at the shooting range. It had no windows, was dark, and the brightest light was at the far end where the targets were. Right as you walked in, it felt cramped, and you immediately ran into what looked like a bar counter, on which lay these pneumatic-or whatever kind they were-rifles, tied to the counter with braided metal cords. You shot little metal pellets, which you had to buy at a side counter, where a man sat. You could also pick up stray pellets from the floor and shoot them, and the guy at the counter didn"t care (it was a state-run entertainment place, after all).

At first, Dad did most of the shooting, but later we grabbed a stool, I stood up, and tried it too. I had moderate success. Over my childhood, we probably went there about fifteen times - sometimes with Dad, sometimes with Mom.

Afterward, Dad and I would go to the beach, and along the way, there was that already-familiar promenade atmosphere. Dad, as usual, lectured on all sorts of topics. I remember the myth of Icarus - who was warned not to fly too high so his wings wouldn"t come apart, but he disobeyed and fell to his death. Already aware of death, I thought to myself - it"s a fairy tale, but such a cruel one.

One day at the beach - it was lunchtime, sunny, hot, with meat pies and stews - a motorboat suddenly approached, and Neptune stepped onto the shore. A man in an elaborate costume of the sea god. Dad explained that it was Neptune. It was some kind of performance for children. I already had a small understanding of gods and Greek mythology, knew it was somehow connected to Hercules, and I think in some episode of "Hercules" a god emerged from the sea, which was impressive. Actually, no - Neptune appeared at the start of every episode of the series "Xena: Warrior Princess." I was late with the introduction again. It started that spring, in "98. I remember always watching "Hercules" and "Xena" at Frunze - apparently the NTV channel didn"t air it at Lev Kassil back then, or more likely, we just spent most of our time there. Because I barely remember anything from Lev Kassil at that time.

With "Xena," I immediately understood it was like "Hercules" - same era, same world, seemingly the same pantheon of gods. Xena was cool, an acrobat woman - for the first time, acrobatics grabbed my attention - but she was adult. She seemed ten years older than my parents, so I didn"t really envy her; I still had growing to do, and Hercules was even farther away. Xena couldn"t trigger sexual anxiety either - she was a kind, sensible superhero. She also had that signature move - two-finger neck poke - and she constantly knocked out men with it. She had a blonde companion - quite a simpleton, now way too simple. At some point, there were episodes with both Hercules and Xena, but eventually only she remained (I think until my first grade or a bit into it), and Hercules disappeared for good.

Anya"s dad at Frunze, along with his family, were what my parents called "cultists." Some kind of Adventists. His wife, Aunt Sveta - Anya"s mom with Alyona - was an English tutor, and he had some connections to America. My mom, who visited them, said that Sveta would call America and relay messages from her husband. Their family life was therefore civilised, even strict, and not poor. People would visit them about once a week, I think.

I didn"t understand any of this then, and because of their dark hair, brown eyes, and the word "sect," their family"s cultish nuance reminded me of Muslims and the mosque in our neighbourhood, which howled every evening. I thought it was about that. So in the episode of meeting Anya, written in pseudo-present tense, I mentioned Muslims. These Adventists had their own church.

This guy Havel - Volodya, his name - was building a church in Engels on Engels Avenue. We"d go there once. I didn"t understand it was a church; I thought it was just another house of theirs. Mom was doing the design, basically. Volodya often visited our house; he and Mom, along with Grandma Klava, would stare at blueprints for two hours, boringly discussing things with the TV off so it wouldn"t disturb them. He always limped, barely dragging his feet, and Mom later told me they had cut his tendons in prison - a common practice to stop someone from escaping.

One day, Volodya brought us a cable or some adapter - and miracle: we got a picture. He also brought a few tapes of Anya"s Disney cartoons. I somehow endured "Beauty and the Beast" for fifteen minutes - there was a scene where the diligent heroine picked a book in the library, which immediately reminded me of Anya - then I turned it off and started catching up on a year-and-a-half backlog of "The Lion King" and Spider-Man.

Soon we took the VCR to Lev Kassil. I sat there watching Spider-Man on repeat. The intro music combined with the vivid red-and-blue visuals triggered a tangible dopamine surge. The music had dark chromatic guitar lines - I didn"t know they were guitars then - reminiscent of "In the Hall of the Mountain King" or "Morozko." It shaped my lifelong attraction to these melodic solutions.

The Spider-Man tape began with a lizard-man episode - a scientist merged with a lizard. I became obsessed with the idea, wanted to be a mutant myself, a lizard in a white coat - that was the aesthetic I formed. I annoyed all the adults with my obsession. I also became more interested in reptiles.

The last episode on the tape was called "Black Death." It featured the iconic Spider-Man fight with the dark villain in some tower or cathedral. I adored all the visual aspects of that cartoon, including architectural elements - skyscrapers, townhouse-style human dwellings, New York in general. A year later, I would become obsessed with New York.

I wanted more. I wanted the episode I"d seen in a commercial - where Spider-Man mutates into a six-armed form. And, of course, Mary Jane - with her perfect figure, Disney-style eyes, and ideal feminine character - I immediately saw her as the perfect girlfriend. I would save her like he did, be full of surprises for her, be a proper man with her. That was my dream and hope for the future. This dream stream ran separately from my reptilian fantasies.

On 26 August, Yeltsin came to Saratov, and he was supposed to visit the military airfield near our Engels dacha. He was to drive along Poligraficheskaya. Toward evening, I went with my grandfather to watch. There were, of course, many cars, and we couldn"t tell which one he was in.

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___Part 20.

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________________Autumn.

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Part 20, Text 1. Jurassic Park,,, Hollywood music,,, second kindergarten and knots,,, fell in love with Masha,,, Sasha Emelyanov,,, Nikita Kozlov,,, karate.

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I think autumn starts here, because the next episode was in cold weather.

At one of the tape stalls - they were on almost every corner of major intersections - at the intersection of Penzenskaya and Entuziastov, BabValya bought me "Jurassic Park" - the first main film. I had seen the tape on the shelves for a long time, with a dark cover and the official dinosaur logo, and I didn"t know what it was - I thought it was some boring cartoon. But it was everywhere, and I realised I had to have it. Especially with a dinosaur.

The dinosaur theme, special effects, and all the characters impressed me deeply and for a long time. But I"ll go straight to the music. It stuck in my head. Not that I replayed it intentionally later, but the choice of notes and melodic style - "Hollywood-level memorability." Like "The Lion King." That"s how I formed my musical taste, not on some other nonsense. Perhaps I consider it ideal just because I formed my tastes on it, simply because it was first. If it had been another tape I now call rubbish, I"d consider this one rubbish instead.

I watched "Jurassic Park" many times, like all my other tapes. By the end of childhood, I"d have about twenty-five tapes. Around this time, BabValya also gave me "Free Willy" - another early tape. Nothing much to say about it. A boy acting independently, I envied him and all kids like him. I couldn"t even cross streets alone yet.

Earlier that summer, when we often visited Uncle Seryozha"s office, I sometimes went in with Mom while he was away. It was cool inside because of the air conditioning, as I said, and there were darts and a target. We would throw, trying to hit the center. That fall, he gave us some darts to throw at home. Thus began the Lev Kassil era.

Now back to kindergarten, which I paused describing last spring.

The first days, I immediately fell in love. Masha. I don"t know what I saw in her, I just needed someone to love, and she was the most noticeable, while the others were like moths. Though one of those moths was Olya - I remembered the name - who I recalled a year later with romantic feelings. Olya was quiet and unnoticeable; while I attended that kindergarten, I didn"t think about her once.

This Masha, as it seemed to me, was "dating" one of the staff. She called him not Sergey, but Sery. Why did I think it was a romance? Because it was the "90s, and on all garages were inscriptions like "Masha plus Sasha equals love." Masha was the most common name, so it automatically linked with "plus" and the rest of the phrase.

I wasn"t as timid as in the first kindergarten. A couple of days I stayed put, then gradually came alive, wandering around the playroom to the windows. At some point, I even made a bridge on the carpet and wondered if Masha could do it. Everyone sat or sprawled on the floor - during morning exercises or free time. In the bedroom, there were bunk beds; I was on the top. Everything else was as before: I didn"t nap; before lunch, wondering whether it would be semolina or milk tied a knot in my chest, and I never pooped there - except once, which I"ll describe later. I constantly waited for Mom and never wanted to go. Everything as usual, but not as harsh as the first kindergarten, which was a trauma for life.

In this kindergarten, two of my six long-term male companions from childhood appeared - Sasha Emelyanov and Nikita Kozlov, my namesake. Nikita and Sasha were a year older, as would be all my other companions throughout childhood. In kindergarten, us boys bonded over Spider-Man and Batman.

Sasha Emelyanov lived in a Khrushchev building opposite our house, across the yard. There was a grocery store around the corner, and we went there for bread. I can already see why I hung out mostly with Nikita and Sasha: their moms knew each other. Nikita"s parents were even connected: his mother worked in architecture, and her mother - his grandmother - too. Sasha"s parents - well, I didn"t know then - were having a house built on Persidskaya, and Mom was designing it. Perhaps my mom met the Emelyanovs while I was already attending kindergarten and then took on their house. Either way, they quickly became friends.

I don"t remember Kozlov"s mom, but Sasha"s mom was Vera, small and stocky. His dad was quiet, not intellectual, but hardworking and capable. Both sold clothes at fairs - typical "90s shuttle traders from Moscow.

I soon visited the Emelyanovs: a two- or three-room flat, packed to the ceiling with stuff - gym bars, shelves of tapes, game consoles. Mezzanines, posters everywhere. They had everything. They had a turtle, and even Sasha"s older brother - I forget his name. Quiet, with intellectual potential. Sasha himself was lively, not very smart, but not mean. He did karate, stronger than me, seemed capable of much. But fickle, aimless. Later, Mom said he got dumb, but his brother didn"t. His brother was asthmatic and weak; they"d moved from another region because of his health. Our informal friendship with the Emelyanovs lasted about three years.

Nikita Kozlov was more intellectual than Sasha, because he was more neurotic. His father came and went and was somehow connected to karate. At that time, everyone did karate. I"ll pause here.

In Engels, our district"s karate section was at the "Palace of Pioneers." I hadn"t mentioned it before - very close to Lev Kassil: Svobody Square, 15A. By then, I had been there a couple of times with Mom: there was a children"s library, and I first saw a grass snake there. Otherwise, sometimes on the way to Grandma, we passed through the Palace yard and looked through the first-floor windows: boys in white kimonos waving their hands, sometimes practicing throws on each other. I already envied them. I understood that even if I got hit in staged fights, I"d cry. I had already studied myself, my psyche patterns, suspected I was a neurotic and could end up in a mess. But I still hoped for the best, encouraged by that one extra year I had before my peers in kindergarten and later school.

Like Sasha, Nikita Kozlov probably attended karate too. He was more obsessed because his father encouraged him, bringing him tapes. I learned this years later, when our friendship was ordinary, visiting each other. His grandmother lived in our building, in another entrance, and Kozlov himself lived ten meters from the kindergarten fence - 65 Petrovskaya. Knowing about his karate, no one called him "Kozel."

There was another harmless kid, Rinat, but he drifted away after kindergarten. There were no mean or really dumb kids; it was a normal kindergarten overall. Perhaps I noted other little things about this kindergarten in 2016 or 2017 diaries, when my memory was fresher, but I can"t find the entries.

I also remember that at the very beginning, when I knew no one, they lined us up and led us somewhere through the streets. I remember we reached the museum - the Motherland. That occasionally happened in the city - children taken for walks through streets. Hard to imagine now. I haven"t seen that in twenty years. At the same time, I"ve hardly been outside for twenty years.

.:::.

Part 20, Text 2. Her name was Nikita... The X-Files... Wrestling and volunteers of pain... hair-flailing and rock guitars.

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Even though the kindergarten was right by the house, we still visited my grandparents often. What stuck in my memory most were the evenings there. Everything was as usual: sitting in the living room, Field of Wonders, Fatyushkina on her special chair, munching sunflower seeds. BabKlava was knitting me socks, sometimes playing cards with Grandpa. Local idyll.

From autumn, on some of the channels that were better than ours at home, the show La Femme Nikita started. I had long been irritated by my own name ending in a vowel, like a girl"s, and now this on top of it. I didn"t watch the series. The woman was beautiful but peculiar. Maybe the whole show was just gloomy, but I never once saw her smile. She always looked worried, and mostly, because she seemed so physically delicate, she looked sick to me. And that jawline-so square-felt over the top. I remember it aired late.

Also, in October, The X-Files began. It started close to bedtime, when we were all settling down, and it also had an anxious atmosphere. I remembered the main theme. It seemed to me that with that warning music, there could be monsters and something interesting. Once there was even something close to it-but never again.

Another evening at Frunze. I should note that, according to various sources online, this was either late September that year or December. This episode is in the present tense.

Now, when all the adult entertainment and news on the main channel had ended, when the grown-ups were just chatting, there was a little time before bed, and the remote was mine, I started flipping channels. And I stopped on something strange.

Muscular men with broad shoulders in rubber trousers, bare-chested or in torn shirts, often with long hair-or bald-without gloves or helmets, throwing and beating each other on a wrestling ring with arms and legs as if there were not just no boxing rules, but no rules at all. Jumping off ropes or being thrown by an opponent, they came crashing down from two metres straight onto another person"s body-or onto the ring itself. For those who haven"t fallen in a while: half a month afterwards you"d be covered in bruises and lumps-and that"s from a child"s height. Here it"s from one and a half adult heights. And all this in front of thousands of spectators, cheering for every hit and fall-the more painful, the louder the cheers.

I couldn"t tell if it was real or not. Surely not a cartoon.

Some referee ran around near the fighters, ignored or shoved aside-they really had no rules. Nor any real goal. Their apparent goal seemed to be shaming the other person. To make them lose control over themselves, while the one causing it asserted their own power and perhaps gained more, as if taking it from the one they overpowered. You could do it in different ways, but here they chose the simplest, most primitive method: inflicting excruciating physical pain.

Watching it with my parents made me deeply uncomfortable because all these things triggered an erection-which, as always, I tried to suppress unnoticed-but it was pointless.

Soon, from some scenes-like when someone was about to do something reckless (usually jumping from a great height onto an opponent already lying on the ring), knowing full well the lying one would probably dodge at the last moment-this was painfully clear even to the jumper. I imagined the agony in advance. This became a mental seed for a new idea: voluntary self-flagellation, "volunteers of pain." I couldn"t imagine why anyone would do it, nor could I imagine myself doing it. But I could imagine myself in their place: he"s about to jump, and I already feel all the pain he will feel. And all of them there were like that. All those shown, including every spectator. They all rejoiced, not empathised. They were my polar opposite-me, for whom avoiding any discomfort, let alone pain, was a core principle. Usually, they inflicted pain on opponents, not themselves.

Then it got even worse. Fighters would talk to each other mid-brawl, stealing moral strength with words: scaring, mocking, gloating. And suddenly words like "I"ll kill you," "you"re gonna die now!" sounded. What the hell? Do they actually kill for real? Some part of it is a show, but someone could fall forever, dying in front of thousands in the arena and on TV, in front of the whole world. The world could imagine him in a coffin in a few days. Everyone goes to goddamn kindergarten, eats noodles and milk, but this dying guy couldn"t even move. And he probably had plans in life. He watched TV shows. Now he will miss everything. Punished by death. By some bald, sweaty degenerate. And he went there himself, jumped on the ring enthusiastically. No one helped, no one stopped him. Everyone wanted him dead. And where were his parents, what were they feeling, and his relatives?

Nothing like that actually happened. My imagination just painted these scenarios. But the fight went on, and they continued threatening murder, which would naturally become reality.

Grandpa says: "This is wrestling. On this channel, they"ll show it in the evenings. And listen: bvvzzzdyshh-when another volunteer rushes toward his next pain."

I sat in stunned silence.

Later, right before bed, flipping more channels, there was another show: similar to the wrestlers-hairy, one a shaggy blond, on stage with everyone. Only this time they had strange aggressive-shaped guitars, like rockets or lightning bolts. The blond whipped his hair like a fan. Strange music played-never heard on the radio. An immediate, special atmosphere, with speakers, mic stands, stage lighting. A distinct vibe. Somehow connected to wrestling-how? Through the same anxiety, the fear of losing control over one"s own body.

That was it for the evening. Time for bed. Tomorrow, Mom and I would go back to Lva Kassilya, grandparents coming along-they had to drop some boring papers into boxes in the building "Rodina." A thing called "voting."

.:::.

Part 20, Text 3. Father leaves... Lvakassil"s regime with Mom... buying the Cross bike... beginning of preparatory lyceum.

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The rest of 1998, I lived with Mom-back to the classic Lva Kassilya regime: strict, electric, with quarrels and punishments. Preparatory school had started, but that"s a separate story.

As for Dad... over the years I had noticed the pattern: periodically, usually with the onset of cold, Mom"s work, my trips to kindergarten or clinics-all the serious fuss-he"d go stay with BabValya. Now I also noticed the tense, silent atmosphere when he packed his suitcase, and it was clear they had quarrels-so he left, because the apartment belonged to Mom. We called it "the kick-out"-Mom ironically, BabValya seriously, and Dad with a sense of injustice. Mom said he always left voluntarily.

One scene stuck: probably during this "kick-out." Evening: I sat on the floor in the living room, counting coins I"d been saving, while Dad gloomily packed in the corridor. I asked him, "You"re leaving?" in a pitying tone. I pitied myself more than him-already feeling the knot of upcoming Lvakassil"s regime.

When he closed the door, a new life began. Without Mom I couldn"t manage; we immediately slept together, and we had what I call idylls. The rest of our life was a mix of her nervousness and the authoritarian strictness of a teacher, combined with her insecurity and panic in any problem-especially domestic-and my constant worry for her. Until her last attempts to educate and push me to study, until I was eleven or twelve, I experienced her insecurity mostly subconsciously; consciously, it was penitentiary. Especially now, when Mom was at her most confident in my life, her corrective acts came to the forefront. Their peak would be in the first three grades.

I will return to Mom"s regime and Dad"s departures later, especially at the end of my childhood biography, when the main storylines appear. For now, this is a condensed period. There"s no time to dig up little scenes for literary smoothness. This year, up to first grade, is filled with discrete, significant episodes-usually one per, though many could have been lingered on.

One idyllic evening (though still with tension) Mom and I left the house and went to the "Melodiya" store on Lva Kassilya, building one, which sold all sorts of electronics-and bikes. There was a "Cross" bike, and we bought it. Red, almost perfect size for me, with a black plastic piece on the horizontal bar, probably so you wouldn"t smash your balls on the metal if you fell off the pedals.

Soon I was riding confidently, but the goddamn cold came, and it sat in a corner Mom claimed in the shared hallway with the neighbour, after installing a metal door. On the floor, in bags, were still jars of jam from Frunze.

And so began this shit called school. Some preparatory preschool lessons near the still unfamiliar stop toward Saratov, on Telman Street, building three-either a lyceum or the "Eleventh School," as Mom and I alternately called it, and as I would continue to call it in my story. These lessons were held in the evening after kindergarten.

From the start, the only thing I liked about school was that it was progress in life, a path to adulthood-which for me meant freedom. I knew I had to survive those damned years-didn"t think exactly how many, just that it would feel like three more lifetimes-and then you"d be grown-up, and all this childhood slavery would end: hated obligations from the first kindergarten day, or maybe even clinics-waking up when I didn"t want to, going where I didn"t want to. So in the early years I accepted this shit even with enthusiasm; I genuinely liked the pencil cases, pencils, numbers on the board. Finally, something adult compared to nurseries, all that nap time and compote for snack. For now, there was no homework.

I started early: at five, no one else went yet, not even my kindergarten companions, who were a year older. Mom wanted to give me an advantage for first grade-maybe to get me into a better school, or just to get me used to school early.

These trips to the lyceum are associated with November, cold, darkness, and streetlights. Since September, Engels had become a kingdom of mud, so right away there was a story with indoor shoes, and soon with wardrobes, down jackets, and all that.

:::.

Part 20 Text 4. Shoelaces, hatred of leaving home, hatred of school.

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Suddenly, I"m going to dive into nothing less than the subject of tying shoelaces.

I could already tie them by the time I started kindergarten, and I briefly mentioned how mastering this skill was overshadowed by my inability to do it as deftly as my mother. I should emphasise this more strongly. It was a deeply frustrating problem for me, and by the time of the events I"m describing, I hadn"t made any progress. I crossed the laces with both hands, tied that initial first knot, then with each hand I folded each end and tried to push what was in one hand under the other"s loop with some finger - and tightened. Even the folding process took several seconds, and the laces kept slipping from my fingers. When threading the folded ends - even worse: they either flew out of my fingers, or I missed completely in the dark (this always happened in some dim corridor, on the floor) - or I pushed the lace too far, and when tightening, the lace from that end, or even the other, popped out of the knot, leaving me with a damn tight knot that, if the laces were thin, I would struggle with for a full minute. I cried, everything pissed me off, I wanted to smash everything. It was the usual: when I failed at something, I threw and tore toys. And I had no intention of learning my mother"s technique. Soon she realised I was prone to tantrums and stopped teaching me. If I can"t do something immediately, I don"t come back to it. If I try again, despair will flare up, tears over the shame of failing at adult tasks, anger, and I"ll become destructive.

A crucial detail: in these moments, I felt a kind of physical connection of my thoughts with my loins. It wasn"t an erection, but a similar, genital-like unease of unrealised sexual arousal - a more general neurological rebellion, an electric tension through the nerves of my lower body. In this state, my action options narrowed to extreme physical ones - only those could release the tension. I couldn"t deliberately try again. It would only get worse. I could only smash. And even now, I still haven"t learned to tie my shoelaces properly.

Over the first years of kindergarten, I gradually came to terms with my shoelace ineptitude, no longer crying or thinking about it. Partly helped by the fact that I rarely saw other children dressing themselves (they were picked up at different times, as I said), but mostly because the kids wearing lace-up shoes didn"t tie them at all. Their laces were always tied, and they just slipped their feet in like slippers, without bending over. Straightforward extrovert Sasha Yemelyanov was one of them. I imagined how he felt in his loosely tied sneakers (they were loose enough to slip in easily) and couldn"t understand how he could feel confident and in control, how he wasn"t itching down there from all that slackness. It was like a shirt pulled out of your waistband, exposing your belly, or a book sticking halfway off the desk. I considered such kids - the bearers of this kind of brain, this perception of circumstance - what I would later call "idiots" in adulthood.

The other kids wore Velcro shoes or sandals. I didn"t see a single child in kindergarten meticulously tying laces like me. In this, I was lucky, and I considered myself - at least for shoelaces - already older than the rest.

But subconsciously, the problem lived on. I saw too few adults tying laces, and it"s very possible most did it as deftly as my mother. My father also tied laces - he was moderately skilled - but, thanks to my mother"s devaluing of him, he wasn"t a model to emulate in household matters. So, though not as vivid as in the early days, each time I crouched in the hall or vestibule to tie my laces, it was a literal humiliation - a reminder of my incapacity, tendency to tantrums, and thus, mental weakness.

Tying laces in cold weather - most of the year - was coupled with irritation from the accompanying crap: melting puddles under my boots, the lace or scarf slipping into the puddle. I fucking hated it. Sitting there, looking at the floor under everyone else, lower than everyone, poking my fingers in the filthy mud - it was inherently shameful, about losing control rather than gaining it. And poorly tied. Day after day, sitting in a puddle. And all for what? For some goddamn, fucking school. While at home, Spider-Man is on TNT.

What stuck in my memory wasn"t the information taught, the knowledge, but all these shoelaces, the steps of the stairs, the cold, the children there, and small informal situations. Occasionally, something from the lessons remained, but not in a form that counted as knowledge. I went to school just to go. I had no interest in the lessons. I came alive thinking about Spider-Man, the Lizard, Jurassic Park. I don"t understand how this educational system could engage a child, even by the late twentieth century, with so many far more interesting things than all the boring school bullshit. I sincerely, as a thirty-two-year-old, don"t understand how other kids - even idiots and simpletons - got through it, passed exams, went on to higher education. My main guess: they weren"t as dopamine-driven as me; they weren"t obsessed with entertainment the way I was. They might or might not have watched Spider-Man. I couldn"t miss it - I"d have rebelled. And I never saw these kids rebelling.

.:::.

Part 20 Text 5. Didn"t fall in love at the lyceum, a bit about love and critics, Lyuba Sedneva, warm clothes, cold, penis pain, searching for a coat, swimming in Saratov.

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At that preparatory lyceum, I didn"t fall in love with anyone. It was an evening school, so the whole experience is tied to evenings and cold. I was basically tasting this cold-dark shit for the first time. And when it"s cold-dark shit, the mood isn"t romantic. I never fell in love in the evenings. Even when I got hooked on Dasha in 2011 (first time I mention her in this biography), I wasn"t going out, I woke up in the evening, and it was a dark December, continuous night for me - I fell in love with her in photos. And she was in London, in daylight, outside.

By the way, the stereotypical objection, "That"s not love, it"s obsession, you didn"t love her," only applies if you ignore what I"m describing and will continue to describe. That objection essentially says: "If love isn"t reciprocated, you have no right to call your feeling love," which immediately implies "obsession," "compulsiveness," and "you"re sick until it happens," eventually meaning: "you"re dangerous, unnecessary." Talking to people who don"t need you emotionally is pointless.

No girl from that prep school made an impression. My classmate was Lyuba Sedneva, the daughter of my mother"s acquaintance or distant colleague. She was blonde with grey-blue eyes like mine, wore glasses, and was a classic nerd. In adulthood, she pursued a technical field. She"ll appear later in the story.

Notice that in this almost single snippet of several months at the prep school, I write more about other things than school or lessons? There"s nothing else to say about this shit. Also, my tone - when I think of school, I get angry. Always has been.

From the cold-dark shit, my mother bought me a sheepskin coat. I hadn"t seen kids in the 2020s wearing anything but light, comfortable down jackets, but back then, sheepskin was in fashion. My mother"s coat was a puke-orange colour, which stood out among the dark coats - I could spot her in a crowd of parents immediately. She had a short haircut too. There"s even a photo a couple of years later - short hair, same coat. My coat was beet-red. I hated it. You couldn"t lift your arms beyond a certain angle - I wanted Spider-Man mobility. Still, it was warm.

Why my mother wanted to protect me from the cold is a long story I haven"t yet told. Memories suggest it started that year or earlier. There were stings in my penis - what I always called that. Almost half of my clinic visits were for those stings. Dumb doctors misdiagnosed it as cystitis. It wasn"t cystitis; I first wrote about it in 2016. "Penis" is what we call my penis in the family - the word online seems feminine to others.

In short, the cause of the sting was, first, frequent sexual arousal - which I mention less than deserved. My whole childhood and Lycée Lvov Kassil are tied to pressing my penis down to calm it. And the natural lubrication sometimes reached the urethra connection - and boom, excruciating stinging above the balls for about half an hour. I endured it, sometimes relieving it by dripping into a cup in hot water to ease the nerves in the lower body. Only the penis and anus seemed involved. I explained the connection between warmth and pain relief to my mother and doctors; the white-coats concluded it was cystitis, and a lot of useless money went on clothes and pills. Better would have been to teach masturbation. By the next summer - I"ll describe - I learned a technique better left unpracticed.

At Lvov Kassil, near the kindergarten at house 14, there was the autumn market, a mini-Venice, wooden planks between stalls. We stood around while mother bought herring, then went through the clothing section, looking for warm stuff. We usually bought clothing, including coats, in proper stores in Saratov. Mother had real leather - coat, bags, boots. Money flowed from her projects.

That summer, I almost learned to swim, but not fully. I had no big complexes, but mother thought I should, for experience and general awareness. She put me in a swimming section in Saratov. The proper pool was in the city park, but that was for adults. I needed a kids" pool, closer to Engels, so we chose the sports complex pool in the Glebuchy Ravine near the bridge. Mother called it the frog pool.

We probably went ten times. Late autumn, cold, unusual for swimming. There was a coach and a couple dozen boys. Shower first or after, I can"t remember. Smelled of chlorine. Water wasn"t blue like in films, but greenish under dim lighting.

At first the coach held me, then I swam alone. No impressive progress, just experience. Except one tiny time, I never swam in pools again.

These trips were my first regular visits to Saratov. Snowy Saratov, afternoon sun over the Volga, the view of the embankment from the icy trolleybus. Engels offered no perspective; my mind floated in Saratov from the first years, now finally life moved toward regular trips and connections there.

.:::.

Part 20 Text 6. My drawing - endless praise - enrolled at the House of Architects - exhaustion and a pounding head.

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I had been drawing from the very beginning. Before computers, together with writing little "literary" pieces (which never worked out for me - I"ll get to that soon), it was the only way to create my own reality. While editing this biography, I got to my childhood drawings - they survived. At the very start, around the age of three, there are some bizarre monsters there, half‑insect, half‑reptile. Then mostly animals - inspired by The Lion King and animal books. Sometimes drawings of a private house, an ideal life, where I was there with imaginary companions, though always in secondary roles (the opposite of reality). Then, from about four, a flood of dinosaurs, and soon after - living reptiles.

Jumping ahead, by the second year of school there will be vampires, skeletons, coffins, together with reptiles that still interested me, drawn with tiny details and shadows (still amateurish though). After that drawing will decline, although sometimes, killing those shitty school lessons, I"ll still occasionally make detailed drawings about whatever I was into then - gymnastics or cycling.

There"s a sketch of a tiger (clumsy - it looks like a Chinese dragon) signed "three years and nine months". As I remember, it was copied from some illustration in Chukovsky. That same sketch was probably the draft for the main tiger drawing that I made as a birthday present for Grandma Klava. I don"t have it here - it always hung on the wall in the living room on Frunze, and I only reached the archive pile. I won"t insert the episode about that drawing into the corresponding year of 1996, because things around it weren"t simple, and I"ve forgotten the exact details, so it wouldn"t be documentary anyway. There was some sort of hysterics. I think it wasn"t going well - some perfectionist obsession, or an accidental line I couldn"t erase - and I wanted to tear it up and smash everything, as always. But Mum intervened and said it was fine, and I gave it to Grandma. That"s how it remains in my emotional memory. And hysterics like that, with varying intensity, happened almost every day throughout my childhood.

Just like with the stories I tried to write - none of which I could develop beyond half a page (except those where the main character was me living an ideal life, the only non‑existent thing I could imagine) - I invented plots for drawings with titanic effort. I spent more time sitting there straining to think what to draw than actually drawing.

Adults nevertheless praised my drawing, and I didn"t understand that it was parental flattery - that I was good only compared to total non‑doers, complete Yemelyanovs who never bothered about anything. Compared to truly gifted artists and their childhood drawings I was nothing. Yet I fully imagined a future as an artist.

Technique and execution didn"t interest me. The way I drew was fine for me. I needed not form but content. If there had been content, then it would have made sense to work on form. The adults around me never noticed this root problem - the absence of content, the absence of meaning - and simply pushed development of form (schooling).

We stopped going to the swimming pool, and some evenings were free from the preparatory school. Then something new began.

One evening after kindergarten Mum and I went to Saratov and got off at Moskovskaya and Chernyshevskaya. From there we walked along quiet, sloping streets to Pervomayskaya and then up it. Cold, darkness, already frozen puddles. Along the steep stretch stood a large residential building - number 34/45 - and on the ground floor there was an entrance to what was called the House of Architects.

Mum enrolled me there for drawing. I had to come in the evenings for a one‑hour lesson. There was a group of children; we sat in front of easels painting with gouache while the teacher walked around instructing us. Parents sat chatting in the foyer. Sometimes after the class the teacher spoke individually with parents. And there, too, they began praising me.

Damn it, everyone praised me endlessly.

I wrote my first words in a notebook, plant names at the dacha - good boy, a little botanist, future scientist. I drew the wrinkled head of a lizard - good boy, an artist. And my father drew a bit too, and Mum was an architect who knew perspective and shadows - who else could grow up from such parents if not an artist?

They praised me so much that I already considered myself, if not a genius, then outstanding. And I was quiet, tearful, shy. Poor little thing. Everyone would pat me on the head, give me a sweet. Better than the other children.

Just as summer and Engels had the smell of bonfires and the Volga embankment, this time and place - the evening centre of Saratov - acquired its own scent marker: the smell of gouache paint. It had its own smell, different from watercolours and the oil paints I sometimes sniffed in my father"s easel when it stood open at Grandma Valya"s place.

As for painting... I didn"t like watercolours - you can"t draw sharp lines with them, and I like precise, detailed drawings. Gouache too was kind of smeary. But oil paints - not the kind my father valued (I"ll explain later), but proper ones - those were perfect paints. The paintings I liked most were made with them - things like Shishkin. Only usually such paintings required larger canvases.

We returned from the lessons through harsh November dampness. I was exhausted - not in the mood for skating rinks. Half an hour on the bus, sometimes longer. At home I still had to eat and learn something for the preparatory school. All that shit was already starting to wear me down.

Once - I remember it distinctly - walking home from the stop at Moskovskaya and Chernyshevskaya, Mum said in some context:

"Girls like confident boys."

I remembered those words for the rest of my life.

From Engels to the House of Architects we travelled alone - another difference between me and "the masses". Sometimes I thought about it and started listing to myself all my differences from the masses.

With all this Saratov life came my first real exhaustion - headaches. Beastly cold, long hours on my feet, no food. In the evening my temples or the back of my head would pulse, it hurt to shake my head, I wanted to wrap myself in sweaters and not move, to hide.

I already knew about Grandma Klava"s headaches - Mum told how she had suffered all her life and tormented everyone with her sick head, lying in bed like on a deathbed while the house stayed silent and tense (very much in the spirit of Lev Kassil - and it literally happened on Lev Kassil Street). The phrase "to hide away" came from Grandma. Mum"s headaches too were a constant topic.

So even then I already treated my aching head as a hereditary problem. We talked about it constantly at the clinic.

But the main problem was the sting in my penis. That worried Mum, Grandma, and the clinic the most. For me too it was the worst thing. With it I felt completely "not here". With a headache or fever you can still think about something, even in delirium. But when my penis stung - even though the pain was tiny and local - it was absolute fucking hell, impossible to think about anything.

We thought it was caused by cold. In reality it happened just as often in heat as in November and passed just as quickly. Contact of the genitals - especially the anus - with something hot could suppress it. I wanted to press my legs to a radiator or sit on it with my arse, ideally both at once. The radiators, by the way, heated poorly, and we walked around the flat in sweaters.

.:::.

Part 20 Text 7. The time when Mum devoted herself to raising me and trying to live like everyone else - buying a video camera - a bit about degenerates - a Saratov café - a guinea pig.

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All that was a time when Mum was intensely occupied with me. With me and the household. She was constantly washing things, bending over basins in the bath, nervous, washing dishes, emptying the damn rubbish bucket into the garbage chute (sometimes sending me with it "to teach me labour", which I hated - the hole blasted stench into your face).

The whole Lev‑Kassil atmosphere of burden and shitty tension in the flat was always there. She was always cooking something.

She was socialised, and sometimes colleagues came to visit (which gave relief from the pressure for a while). Among them were Aunt Olya - narrow‑eyed, an electrician - and Aunt Tanya Kiskina. The latter was the wife of an architect who was often mentioned then; he will appear once later in my biography and in 2011 will even become chief architect of Saratov. He also made wooden things and around this time gave us a standing coat rack he made himself. They all worked in Engels construction and stayed connected.

So Mum tried not to fall behind - taking me to activities like they did with their children, basically living like them, except she was alone with me.

To record life for memory like others did, Mum decided to buy a video camera. It was probably a weekend - we were in the shop in the morning. The pre‑New‑Year atmosphere had already begun in the streets and shops.

The shop was near the stop towards Engels at Chernyshevskaya and Moskovskaya - Moskovskaya 10, ground floor. A shopping centre like those years always had: a mini‑bazaar where one department flowed into another - food, tapes, clothes. We often went into its foyer to avoid freezing while waiting for the bus.

There was a department with cameras and cassette tapes for them. Together with the camera we bought one cassette - the only one we would ever have.

We went home. The camera came in a modern blue lacquered box. The brand was Sony. Immediately Sony became my favourite video‑camera brand.

At home we put the camera in the small room. I examined the box, but we didn"t dare unpack it yet - we had to wait for some Uncle Sergey.

And right then Mum and I quarrelled about something. Somehow the camera got dragged into the conflict - perhaps deliberately. In the sense that the camera became forbidden to me. As I already noted in the distant episode with Johnson"s Baby shampoo, whenever Mum needed to pressure me she forbade something important to me.

I don"t want, at my already quite adult age, to sound like I"m simply accusing her - especially since Mum always takes it painfully when I bring up childhood complaints. I"m just documenting what happened. Those were her methods - that"s all I"m saying. They were normal methods for a neurotic woman, almost still a girl - she was only thirty‑two then - in the information‑poor year of 1998. What other methods could be expected?

When I read internet forums now with women that age - they"re outright degenerates compared to my mum. And thank God she didn"t tyrannise me; she herself grew up in real tyranny so severe that later in my adulthood she even wished Grandma Klava dead. And I think that later she reconsidered her whole upbringing system and regretted it - that"s why she fell into depression in the late 2000s and long after, clearly blaming herself for how I turned out, believing she had shaken my psyche.

As for that evening - we soon made up. But the camera still stood there, unused, like the VCR had stood.

At that time there were no McDonald"s yet, and people didn"t even know the word. But something similar began appearing in Saratov, in the neighbouring building to the circus, at Kirov Square 4, where there is now a square.

A café of an unheard‑of modern level opened there. Everything was new - unlike somewhere like "Skazka" near the clinic in Engels with its old wooden door. New toilets where you could wash your hands and piss. Waiters who came and cleared dishes. And most importantly - a children"s play area, also brand new, not old dolls like in kindergartens. Completely different.

And they had French fries. Mum and I started going there for them. Fries and sauce. It was a delicacy and a celebration.

That whole time is filled with memories of Mum and me, always just the two of us, going somewhere - often to Saratov, either to the pool or drawing lessons. All that late‑autumn Saratov.

I don"t even remember whether Uncle Sergey drove us in his BMW then. In my memory we mostly went ourselves by buses and trolleybuses. Though he must have been around - otherwise Mum wouldn"t have had work, and she was putting me into all those extra schools.

Mum and I developed a small family signal: when she held my hand and wanted to turn somewhere, she pressed my palm with her little finger, and I knew we were turning. There would be many such family habits and jokes; I"ll remember those I can.

At that time we briefly had a guinea pig in a cage. It stank, and Mum had a super‑nose all her life - she couldn"t tolerate even faint smells and became nervous. Smells, drafts, annoying sounds, uncomfortable clothes - things like that irritated her throughout life. At the time I didn"t realise how serious it was, because Mum commanded our household and eliminated irritants instantly.

Only in adulthood, when I became more the commander of our household, and when things like uncomfortable mattresses made her talk about suicide, did it become clear what we had been living with. Sometimes I"ll have to jump ahead like this, even beyond childhood, to make certain things clearer.

So the guinea pig cage stood in the toilet and only briefly. The pig disappeared somewhere, and the smelly cage went to my grandparents" shed.

By the time I reached first grade there would be another big cage there for birds and parrots we never actually had. We grabbed that cage from a storeroom in a building in Engels at Kommunisticheskaya 22 - the design organisation "Geopolis" was there, where Mum apparently even worked during the hours when I was in kindergarten and later in my first school year.

I sometimes went there with her. That"s where Aunt Olya and Kiskina were from. One episode there will appear later.

.:::.

Part 20, Text 8. The Land Before Time cartoon,,, a bit about dinosaurs and my first mythologies,,, trip to the Philharmonic,,, Spider-Man and a fight,,, TYUZ and why I didn"t understand plays.

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The cartoon The Land Before Time... One day during these months, or maybe a year earlier, but let"s put it here. Lev Kassil, grey outside the window. Mom, as usual, was cooking in the kitchen, her phone rang from time to time - basically, she was busy, which made the apartment have a good atmosphere. I was lying on the carpet in the living room by the TV - apparently it was a day off or I was on sick leave, so free from those damn kindergartens and schools. I remember it was on the local Saratov channel "Vtoraya Sadovaya." Around ten minutes to four, some cartoon was on. I switched over - and suddenly this colourful cartoon with dinosaurs appeared. As if someone had turned it on just for me. I was obsessed with them.

But even then I realised that it wasn"t really the dinosaurs that hooked me, but the theme of losing parents. This fear of losing my parents was growing every month. There was that song "If We Hold on Together" - naturally, one of the musical inspirations for me. Musically, it was kind of uplifting... Overall, everything around me was encouragement, reassurance. Children were being prepared for life - toughened up in advance by all these cartoons about losing parents, while simultaneously being reassured that, well, it wasn"t the end.

But it didn"t affect me at all. I remembered from The Lion King that if you fall from a height - you die - and I increasingly thought of it as an exit plan. In general, according to some comforts, we were all supposed to meet again in the afterlife. So all the more reason: to reunite sooner.

A bit about dinosaurs. Initially, they attracted me, like all children, as a "safe fear attraction," the same reason people watch horror movies. But over time, I don"t know about others, but for me dinosaurs acquired a mythological quality. Like in that segment about space, astronauts - dinosaurs became one of my first mythologies.

And just as songs like "Earth in the Porthole", synthesizers, and "The Final Countdown" were associated with space, all that orchestral, epic music from Jurassic Park, and even the sad melodic motifs from the cartoon, were linked to dinosaurs. Unlike space, though, dinosaurs involved a lot of nature - green valleys and wide landscapes. And this alternated with scenes of massive catastrophes associated with dinosaurs: huge meteors, fiery objects falling from the sky. An atmosphere of inevitable tragedy always hovered over the world of dinosaurs. These catastrophes embodied gods, who controlled the fate even of Earth"s mightiest creatures - the largest herbivores and carnivores. That"s how it became a "mythology."

From this first mythology of mine, it was already clear how I was captivated and how I would continue to be: I cared not for meanings, but for visual and emotional impact. The same would apply to my later interests: the game world of The Elder Scrolls, Norse mythology, Tolkien"s universe. I didn"t care for the details of the dinosaur world or catastrophes, or the pantheon of a fantasy game, or Tolkien"s plotlines. What mattered was the impression and feeling formed by immersion in those worlds. Ultimately, over time, what becomes important is simply nostalgia for that first immersion, which, having receded into the past, becomes personally mythological.

At the preparatory lyceum, it seemed no one became friends with anyone, because there was no time: we only came for a couple of hours, and had to mess around, not make friends. Student turnover was high anyway.

By December, our whole preparatory class was supposed to go to the Philharmonic in Saratov for a concert. I had never been to the Philharmonic before, and this would be one of only two times I was there (the other was in fifth grade, but nothing happened and I don"t remember it). We, all the kids with our parents, were going there separately and met at the entrance.

It so happened that that day there was a Spider-Man episode, the very one where he becomes six-armed - the one I had been waiting for, obsessed with it for a year and a half. Spider-Man aired in the morning and repeated in the evening. But in the morning there was crap on the channel - static - couldn"t see a thing. And in the evening we had to go. I was furious. Probably the first time in my life that such terrible coincidence and bad luck happened. We argued with Mom, and went to the Philharmonic in a shitty atmosphere.

The Philharmonic wasn"t as big as when orchestras appear on TV, but still, an orchestra, playing well-known classical pieces. One even amused me - finally hearing it live (though I knew it and hummed it before). I never cared about classical music or knew its titles, and at first had no one to ask - and I"d forget anyway - even years later with online friends, I forgot. Now, while checking the spelling, I have absolutely no one to ask. Being a perfectionist, I decided to find it. I spent an hour just for this damned melody to finally hum and identify it: some damn Boléro. A few hours before, I wasted trying to find it from TV schedules of the dinosaur cartoon.

After the concert, Mom and I returned to Moskovskaya, accompanied by some other parents and kids. A few. There was the shy nerdy Lyuba Sedneva. Evening, downtown Saratov, lights everywhere, pre-New Year atmosphere. Back then, Decembers were different - not mild like now, but full-on winter, with ice slides in the square. We, the kids, went on the slides a couple of times. Then everyone went to the bus stop at Radishcheva and Moskovskaya. Until around 2007, the stop was not at the edge of the square as now, but further along Moskovskaya, opposite Green Lyceum No. 4.

One of the kids we were with was a non-Russian boy, not extremely mean, but mean. At the stop, we got into a scuffle and fight, slipping on the ice as we struggled. It was next to a small shoe store. I remember losing, he somehow pinned me down. I cried again. It was mega-shitty - girls were there. Left a shameful scar for life.

By the way, it was the end of Spider-Man that year - both on TV and for me, forever.

I don"t remember a single specific trip, but throughout my childhood, up to about age ten, I went to the TYUZ - Saratov Children"s Theatre on Volskaya and Kirova - about fifteen times. Trips there were either parent-initiated, school-directed, or class outings.

There was a cloakroom, I think in the basement, with the usual procedure: undress, get a number. I liked the velvet seats, remembered from Teremok.

Until about ten, I didn"t understand plays - their plots. I just watched. At some point, this even hurt my self-esteem, thinking other kids understood while I was stupid. Only once, at eleven, I understood a very simple play from start to finish, and I even liked it - but I never went to theatres again.

Because I didn"t understand plays or books, people might stereotypically assume I was autistic, unable to grasp human relationships, hence couldn"t understand anything - like many films until I was twenty (I didn"t understand Eugene Onegin until twenty, Dostoevsky until twenty-five). I am capable, even better than others - I"ve made all kinds of analyses of relationships in this biography.

Why I didn"t understand plays or books? I wasn"t erudite, couldn"t grasp anything beyond human relationships: technical, cultural aspects of interactions, and plots. Cultural traditions, meanings of words (classics are stuffed with archaic, rarely used constructions). How would I know the word "deskat""? Not used in my family. Children"s plays can have words like that.

So any phrase with an unknown word went straight into the trash. "Obrok" or some old Russian nonsense. Our family had a very small vocabulary, limited concepts. Life, food, who would clean the siphon - that was all. If plays were about our life, I"d sit mesmerized. But everything was foreign. Seeing peers understand those foreign things only made me feel more alienated.

Yet the trips stuck in my memory: Saratov, evening, lights, weekend atmosphere, usually near New Year. Theatre always associated with holidays.

.::.

___Part 21.

.::.

...............1999 ---------------------------------------------------

.:::.

Part 21, Text 1. New Year,,, DiCaprio,,, again about wrestling and the danger of Stanislavski theatre.

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Until I was twelve, my father was always with us for New Year. This time, of course, he was there. Everything was as usual - atmosphere, gifts, then a week or even ten days of holiday paradise, free from burdens - Mom laughs, Dad laughs, we eat dried fish, they clean it. Beer for them, caviar for me. Break off a bit - they won"t take it anyway, they"ll give it to me. Cracking nuts with a dragon.

At night - sparklers from the kitchen drawer. Films, all kinds of Shuriki and foreign ones on TV - one after another. Likely, there was a videotape among the gifts, and definitely the first book about Prostokvashino and Uncle Fyodor - which I would soon try to read. It contained that thrilling and even somewhat painful theme for me: growing up and becoming independent. I was still a preschooler, but soon it would start, and knowing my hysterical, reactive nature, I sensed problems would arise.

That New Year, they probably showed Quick and the Dead on TV. Dad watched it, and Mom, as I learned decades later, didn"t understand films at all and watched just because. She tells me this herself. She had the same condition as me - no broad knowledge or erudition, but hers was far worse, because she was nervously preoccupied with family life. In my memory, she never read books, never watched films beyond primitive melodramas, never interested herself at all. This isn"t a complaint - living with a child in the nineties, without support, left no other choice.

I didn"t watch Quick and the Dead, but I ran around the apartment, picking up scenes, and remembered DiCaprio"s line: "I don"t want to die." Dying young - unimaginable. Already aware of death for a few years, I still couldn"t process it. I knew no real cases of children dying, or young teens like DiCaprio. The actor himself was still unknown to me, but soon there would be a tape.

During that holiday, there was a film or miniseries - maybe The Adventures of Sinbad - about a giant cyclops and some swamps. I remember men lured him into the swamps, but first, a scene where some guy got sucked in, to introduce the swamp theme. Death haunted me, these scenes stuck for a long time, maybe forever.

The climax of my Spider-Man obsession had been earlier, but that missed six-armed episode was an unresolved gestalt. Eventually, someone - parents, grandparents, or Bab Valya - bought me a tape with season two. One evening, while running around with it, Dad, who never watched this cartoon, called Spider-Man "the six-armed fool." Mom laughed, and so did I - we"d remember it later.

Besides the six-armed episode, there was one with the Goblin - he intrigued me more than the vampire from the cartoon. The vampire had a personal issue, but the Goblin was just an inexplicable, cunning psycho - scarier. I drew him often. That was the end of Spider-Man forever.

That New Year, the family with Inga came - an unattractive, un-feminine girl with a crooked nose, low voice, and for me associated with the song "Chunga-Changa". One of their last visits. We tumbled on our square cushions in the living room, and they left us a tape of DuckTales.

By this point, temporal distances of the past already existed for me. Summer "96 - switching from a small bike to a bigger one, throwing stones into the Volga - felt very far away. Summer "95 - Karik-Valik, first impressions of the Volga, boat noise - insanely distant past. DuckTales - once on puzzles or stickers - were in that "95 year, horribly far away. Memories at five of my third year felt like those at thirty. Memories have a sense.

Perhaps the Yemelyanovs visited once. By my birthday, we were friends for sure, and they would come.

Trips to Frunze, ice slides. Ages five to seven - main years of my winter holidays at Frunze, with Alina, Anya, and now growing Alyona. A couple of winters later, it would all end. I"ll describe our winter scenes there in the following years.

In early "99, TNT started showing wrestling regularly, and when at Frunze, where the channel broadcast properly, I was constantly drawn to watch - to try again and again to process this phenomenon.

I want to add, it wasn"t a primitive issue of naivety, misunderstanding that it was staged. Even if I knew it was staged, no one actually killed anyone, I would still feel that - as the saying goes, "there"s some truth in every fairy tale" - the roots of the entertainment, the instincts behind it, are real and dangerous.

Meaning, accidents could kill, or even intentional actions - in the flow of physical activity and Stanislavski-style emotional simulation, you could cross the line, triggering instincts that the show relied on. Like a scene I remember from Young Gods (I watched it at eighteen), where the hero goes to a BDSM session and is raped. That"s why, when later captivated by Shakespeare, I"d consider it childish, just fancy-worded fairy tales. Theatre was different then.

Themes of wrestling, BDSM (as well as sex), army, and other voluntary suffering and even death - remain for me major life issues, leaving me psychologically screwed and estranged from people who appear free from such problems.

I write this to explain that psychological issues, at least mine, are often multilayered, and passing one layer leads to deeper ones. Being told wrestling is staged wouldn"t help. Perhaps better that my obsessed mind clashed with the naïve surface layer and didn"t get trapped in the stickier one.

.:::.

Part 21 Text 2. Out into the yard so I wouldn"t sit around like a homebody... ice-skating... fights with boys... all kinds of hoodlum antics.

.::::.

For the winter episodes in my story, I think it"s important to remember the climate. I touched on it a bit in my parents" biography. It"s different in the Saratov region than in the northwest of the country. There wasn"t this feeling that you step outside and are immediately tested for waterproofness. In Saratov, most of the winter was dry, always below zero, with heaps of snow. Winter felt somewhat like summer does there: you could literally live outdoors, even sleep outside. You don"t get that in the swampy regions of the two capitals, where it cools down at night. So in winter, the streets in Saratov weren"t associated with natural hostility or wet discomfort. That left room for other associations-fairy tales, places you"d only seen on TV or in pictures, ski resorts, Lapland. I didn"t feel that in the northwest, and I imagine even Scandinavian countries, associated with winter, wouldn"t have felt as "wintery" to me as my Saratov region did.

That day I was sitting on the floor in the hall on L"v Kassil, flipping through books about dinosaurs or drawing something while nothing interesting was on TV. Outside it was grey and snowy, probably late January, no sense of the approaching holidays. Mom came into the hall and said, "Come on, go out and play like the other kids." I didn"t protest but got ready without much enthusiasm and went out. Alone. It was the first time I left the building by myself. There was no intercom yet-still that old rotten wooden door. I stepped out and immediately turned right, past the trash room door, and right by the first-floor windows-where in summer there had been a small patch of grass, and in autumn it flooded and formed a puddle-I stationed myself there. The puddle had frozen under the snow into an ice patch, and I cleared the snow and started skating back and forth with the kind of autistic obsession I had. All nine floors could see me from every angle. Mom watched from the balcony at first, then went back inside. I was maybe fifteen meters from the main playground under the poplars along the entrances.

I didn"t skate for long-soon Mom came out. She had an acquaintance who lived on the first floor in the next building, and she had a son older than me. Besides this episode, this acquaintance will only appear once more in my story. I never met her son, but he was there, obviously, like everyone else-playing in the yard and all that. A typical boy with boyish interests. And he could skate. This acquaintance gave us his skates. We went upstairs, put on some thick socks so the slightly large skates wouldn"t wobble, and went out to try them.

Now we moved to the area with poplars and the playground-there had also been a huge puddle there in autumn, and the neighborhood boys spent the winter playing hockey on it. I stationed myself under the poplars and tried to skate from one tree trunk to another. Didn"t succeed even once, kept falling. Mom stayed for a while, sat on a bench, watched, and then went back inside. But I really wanted to learn-so I kept at it until evening. All this time, the boys nearby were playing their hockey game. When it got dark and they got bored, they came over to mess with me. I immediately knew what was coming. And they did. They mocked me, belittled me. Soon physical contact started, taking advantage of my clumsy stance on skates. By the end, they were trying to knock me over, pulling my hat over my face. I ended up crying, and Mom came out and took me inside.

That was my first uninspiring experience of going into the yard. One or maybe two more times that year I"d go out informally with Sasha Emelyanov, but the next yard-level social experience would only come in the summer of 2003-and never again. I mean hanging out with peers in these post-Soviet apartment-block courtyards-the kind I observed all my childhood from my sixth-floor window. Sure, I had Frunze, but on Frunze it was always the same few companions, a very limited and super-safe experience with no real "informal" life schooling. Neighborhood kids in these apartment courtyards were always ahead of me in every yard-related skill.

One more thing from around that time, related to hoodlums. My father told me how, in his childhood, older idiots played a prank on a younger boy: on a freezing day, they told him to lick something metal. He did, and couldn"t get his tongue off. He had to take it inside to thaw. Ever since hearing that story, whenever I saw a metal gate handle on a frosty day in Frunze, I"d stress myself thinking, "Maybe I should try it to see what happens?"

.:::.

Part 21 Text 3. The film The Thief and complexes... my useless obsession with lizards.

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By then, the Russian film The Thief was already well-known. Mom knew it, Dad had seen it, so when it came on TV again, I watched it. I was quickly drawn in because, unlike other adult films, the main character was a boy almost my age. He even looked a bit like Sasha Emelyanov.

This became one of the core films of my childhood. I mention it many times in my diary. It immediately felt close to me, with its grey atmosphere, so similar to Engels, where I lived. All those landscapes of mud stretching to the horizon-like the outskirts of Engels. Yards full of delinquent boys. And the melody-it inspired many of my own musical ideas later. There was also Mashkov-he was so cool, I wanted to be like him. Only, it made me even more depressed, like every time I saw someone I wanted to emulate: I knew I couldn"t because I"m a weak-minded psycho.

But the main thing in that film was that actress and the theme of losing a mother. Naturally. I don"t think I fell in love with the actress immediately-she played the mother-but I would later fall in love with someone in 2011 who resembled her. The theme of mother-loss, the anxiety around it, is basically the leitmotif of my entire story. I could start crying just remembering this film. I often thought about it during school lessons later. I wasn"t concerned with anything else-just wanted to get home to Mom and make sure nothing like that film ever happened to me.

Around this time, I fully formed the idea that if my parents died, I"d immediately jump out of a window. I was ready to jump even if the grandparents died. I constantly thought about this mess.

After my phase of fascination with extinct dinosaurs, I returned to modern reptiles, especially iguanas.

I probably made it clear earlier in my biography that my interest in reptiles and snakes was tied to thanatophobia, fear of death-basic psychology. But I also had a nerdy interest, or more precisely, a nerdy tendency and desire to act on it. Finding books, comparing information. One book might say one thing about iguanas, another something similar, a third something completely strange. That meant the third book was garbage, the author a hack-and I immediately felt superior in knowledge. That"s roughly what I liked about it.

It could have been any creature in place of lizards-anything useful or promising. Had I been my own parent and understood what was happening, I would have done everything to give myself something worthwhile to focus on. Too bad my parents didn"t care. Especially when you read biographies of accomplished people, whose parents actively nurtured these pursuits from early years.

I had dopamine like no one else-I"ve described before how agonizing it was not to have an outlet (and it recurs throughout the story, and by the end of childhood, it"s only about that). I had a piano at home, like someone like Vangelis-a self-taught composer from infancy-but I had no aptitude, was hysterical, and couldn"t develop with it (later there will be more about my piano experience), nor in anything involving physical skill. Even tying shoelaces-I couldn"t do it, had a tantrum.

But I could have developed in areas where you can undo actions and preserve results. I"m hinting at computer programs for creativity, accumulating money, investing. "Hobbit-like," as I call them, "safe" activities where mistakes or incapacity don"t ruin everything and trigger tantrums. Since I was reactive and prone to explosions, I just had to find what suited me. It could have compensated for the stupidity of my conception and birth. But would my parents have done this? Who raises kids like that? No, of course not.

Dad himself never could choose what to do, and materially could provide nothing. He needed just a person, a friend. Mom... well, she was just terrible. And still, she tried to guide me-but did it blindly, without understanding. She acted by imitation of other families. And those families acted thoughtfully.

With reptiles, there was no real way to develop. And especially without the actual reptiles, just reading encyclopedias, as I did, and would continue to do for another three years. Specifically, at that time, I was still at the very beginning, without the main books I"d later acquire.

I"d sit on the carpet in the hall, flipping through the massive dictionaries we had-three: Russian explanatory, English-Russian, and Russian-German-looking up words on the topic, looking for "iguana." It wasn"t there-only "igumen." I"d stare at this word every day. What was it? Back then, I didn"t understand. Now, twenty-seven years later...

I looked it up. Fucking hell...

.::.

________________I am six years old.

.:::.

Part 21 Text 4. Sixth birthday... the last Inga... Lyuba with Grandma... Uncle Seryozha gives Titanic... mainly about Titanic... inspiration from a snake‑keeper diarist.

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For my sixth birthday Mom gathered guests at Lva Kassil. Lyuba, Inga, Sasha and, though I"m not sure, Kozlov were there. All with their mothers. There was a huge bustle. It was like in films when they show parties. Someone was in every room.

Mom, I think, had already bought the main double bed with a spring mattress that would remain for all the following years. It stood in the small room, and I loved jumping on it. I think someone else jumped there too, maybe Inga.

That Inga - the last time I ever saw her in my life - was wild and unfeminine, as I said: she kicked some ball of mine around the hall and booted it straight into the speaker of my father"s big Amfiton speakers he had bought when he was young and which always stood in our living room on Lva Kassil. The speaker cone was permanently dented inward. Later he said you could unscrew the casing and carefully push it back out, but it was never done.

Sasha - I don"t remember whether he caused trouble, but he could have.

And Lyuba was quiet. Someone gave me a big thick children"s encyclopaedia about everything (or maybe I"d already had it since New Year"s), and at some point I went into the middle room to get something and saw my grandma Klava sitting there with Lyuba and the encyclopaedia on their laps. They were looking at a spread about human anatomy. There was an illustration of a naked boy and girl. Grandma Klava was explaining something to Lyuba. Grandma herself was probably curious.

Grandma Valya must have come too.

Uncle Seryozha gave me felt‑tip pens. That was on another day. He never came to gatherings, of course: with Mom and me he was a special guest - only when we were alone with her.

Right after that came March 8th, and for that day Uncle Seryozha gave us a Titanic cassette. Wealthy Uncle Seryozha bought licensed tapes, and this one was even in a plastic case. So Titanic had the very best Russian dubbing. He bought it for Mom for the holiday, but while Mom was making some herring under a fur coat salad in the evening, I was the first to stick it into the VCR. And from that moment my Titanic began.

I thought about this film and about DiCaprio in particular all through my youth - I kept recalling it in my diary. Incidentally, after the end of twenty‑two there will be another "DiCaprio" in the diary for a long time, and if you read only fragments you need to keep that in mind. But that other one drowned me no less than the original (and with the original I didn"t separate the real DiCaprio - whom I didn"t know - from the role in the film. For me DiCaprio was Jack Dawson).

In general, it was a film where literally every scene reminded me what a psychoneurological failure I was - with all my constant fucking knots in my chest, neurological links between stressful moments and what I call with one compact word "genitalium", and all that. And the music - the tragedy of that music - gradually became connected for me not so much with the film"s tragedies as with my own tragedy of understanding that I would never become brave and strong, simply because it wasn"t in my genes.

I knew nothing about genes - the phrase "passed down by inheritance" existed in childhood but sounded like empty words, not taken seriously, and consciously I didn"t even believe in anything like that - but subconsciously I felt that everything was exactly like that: kids like Emelyanov or militant Inga perceived films like Titanic and stress in general differently. They didn"t have anxious reactions triggered. And that wasn"t thanks to their upbringing circumstances, let alone themselves, but thanks to how they were originally made - and by whom.

Titanic, by the way, differed from other dramas in how it revealed the contrast between me and others. There were many characters, and the risk of death touched everyone, leaving no one untested for resilience so that I could comfort myself with the thought that maybe at least that one might be like me. In the situation of Titanic I imagined myself extremely shameful; or, when I tried to place myself in Jack Dawson"s role, I couldn"t imagine myself at all - starting with the simple fact that I couldn"t imagine surviving without my parents.

So in those days I sat watching it on repeat day after day, sinking deeper into depression with each passing month. And the way the romantic storyline made me obsessed with love, obsessed with girls - that"s a whole separate topic. Rewatching the film now, after my youth, I drowned in it completely.

I had already been reading, and in one of my new books about snakes there was a story about some snake keeper who was bitten by a very nasty snake. Realising he wouldn"t survive anyway, he decided to do something useful - document how he would die, for as long as he could. That was the first time in my life I was inspired to keep a diary. But I wanted to do it like him - not describe myself but reptiles, to be a naturalist. Since I had neither reptiles nor much real interest, it never went further than a couple of notebook pages describing occasional encounters with reptiles. I still have that notebook from that year, and later that summer I"ll quote fragments from it.

I slept in the middle room, the one closer to the kitchen - my bed was there. And Dad, who at that time was apparently living with us - since we watched Uncle Seryozha"s Titanic together - slept with Mom on the new bed in the small room. When I went to bed I constantly heard their quiet laughter and conversations from there. I never heard the sounds of sex, which I still didn"t know about. Well, they spent time normally; later there"ll be a story about an abortion, so they definitely had sex. Only Mom, as I said earlier in the backstory, after my birth didn"t really want Dad anymore, and in my adulthood she often told or implied that back then it was all done so that I would have a father. By the way, they never kissed in front of me except on birthdays, when Dad tried to kiss Mom on the lips and she always first turned away playfully and with disgust. But since it always happened at the festive table during food, it was hard to tell whether she was disgusted by him specifically or just by his mayonnaise‑smeared mouth.

.:::.

Part 21 Text 5. Flipping through the encyclopaedia... conversations with Mom about birth... in kindergarten I slept and shat there for the first and last time... loss of control.

.::::.

I was constantly leafing through my books. In that big main children"s encyclopaedia the pages were stiff, and once I cut my finger on their edge. What I loved most were the spreads where one huge illustration covered both pages and contained many scenes within a single theme - its "concentrate", so to speak. For example, a modern city: skyscrapers, cars in the streets, a fire engine and firefighters, an ambulance, promenades with people walking, and above it all an airplane flying from the airport. That was, and probably still is, my favourite genre of illustration.

The picture of the naked girl didn"t interest me much. A slit is a slit. What difference does it make what"s there? I"ll never see it in my life anyway - no one will show me, it"s forbidden. And Rose and Jack apparently just got tired of kissing in that car, so they took off some clothes.

Around the same time I had an educational conversation with Mom about how I came into the world. She told me doctors cut her stomach open. I wanted to see the scar. We were in the small room, sitting on the edge of the big bed. She said, "Well, there"s hair there," and moved her underwear slightly and showed the scar. I just googled it again now to look - and it"s fucked up. I feel sorry for everyone now. I couldn"t sexually desire a woman with a scar like that, even the one I"m suffering over now. That"s not a woman anymore. That"s an инвалид you can only feel sorry for.

Other small Lva Kassil memories... Every couple of months Mom baked a charlotte pie in the oven on a special iron rack. Once when I was alone I tried to make ice cream. I froze water mixed with jam in plastic molds. When Mom came home she said you can"t do that, I"d get sick, that"s not how it"s done. Then I experimented again: poured something into the lower half of a wooden matryoshka doll and froze that too. The wood cracked.

Another time Mom, maybe lying there with her usual headache, asked me to pour tea, and I filled it with the hottest tap water and brewed tea in it. Of course nothing brewed, and Mom forbade me to do that because you can"t drink hot tap water. Years later she explained that hot water runs through rusty pipes. At first I thought maybe it had some toxic additive.

In general I kept learning about the world and poisoning my life with knowledge.

Despite my age, the VCR and books, I still spent lots of time sitting on the living room floor rummaging through the wall cabinet with books, especially the lower compartments with doors. There were Soviet postcards there, including a set with the city of Riga. By the way, I"ll now say "Soviet" instead of "of a past era", because by this age I had already realised that everything old and before my life was the USSR and Soviet stuff. I hated it.

The postcards and Riga were Mom"s topic: she often recalled how she had been there with Aunt Rita, whose name coincidentally was Rita too. The last time I saw her I was two. Aunt Rita, as a reminder, was Mom"s classmate at the Polytechnic; according to Mom she was a slut and used to drive off with strangers in cars. Her surname was Chernaya. Later Mom said that when they both worked in construction, Rita somehow used her and didn"t thank her, maybe even set her up - and they broke off forever.

It was already sunny spring, and one day in kindergarten I fell asleep for the first and last time. The teacher woke me. Everyone else was already awake and getting up. It was such a fucking humiliation that I remember it now as if it happened yesterday.

Psychologically the horror was simply the awareness that I had lost control of myself, had been unconscious. But the main horror was something else - the mental‑neurological state you wake up with after a daytime nap. I"m explaining this again to show that some problems seem unresolved only because they"re supposedly "unprocessed", as psychologists say - hidden traumas not relived - but that"s not the case. Even if I had been cured of the shame about sleep and loss of control, the psychoneurological - essentially physical - state wouldn"t disappear.

I don"t know whether other people feel that state after a daytime nap. As an adult I saw people sleep during the day on trains. When they woke up they didn"t look humiliated at all. They immediately talked, laughed. It didn"t even look as though, like in me (when I was in their position, also sleeping on trains as an adult), beneath the smiles there boiled resentment and internal manic aggression - the urge to compensate for the physical vulnerability by harming others.

Do other people also have that post‑sleep state but it simply isn"t connected for them with humiliation, shame, or trauma? Maybe in my case there"s some trauma attached to it? But I had no trauma. I remember the association between post‑nap state, shame, and compensatory aggression from the earliest infancy - from falling asleep in that sanatorium with Grandma Valya in 1995, maybe even earlier, in my cradle, where according to stories I also often got irritated and capricious.

If some trauma did arise, it must have happened extremely early, and I don"t know how to cure something you can"t remember or reinterpret. I understand it"s stupid to treat that psychoneurological state after a nap as a defect and want to harm others to compensate. But at the same time it isn"t stupid, because it doesn"t feel logical. It"s in the same category as instinctive needs, tied to instincts of safety.

Should it be treated through practice - doing deliberately what causes the feeling in order to retrain the mind? I lived four months in psychiatric hospitals where I slept while others were awake. And four times in my life I slept next to a girl I felt close to. Not a single thing changed: sleeping among strangers remained the same, while with close people - parents - there was no problem. I don"t think anything needs curing. I don"t want to cure it. Everything is as it should be. Among strangers you simply shouldn"t sleep, especially during the day.

And what about shitting - should the psychological shame and psychoneurological genital feeling connected with it be untied? Psychologically it"s the same story: shame. You produce a disgraceful smell, squat down, can"t interrupt it - you lose control over your body. Then comes that uncontrollable pleasant tremor when the "larva" comes out. No one should see that. It"s the most shameful thing.

That"s why twenty years later I shat on camera for the whole internet - to shame myself to the limit. I would feel just as humiliated filming myself sleeping. But I chose shitting because there was also the goal of attracting attention - and for that not just shame but disgrace is needed. Or dying. Or vomiting. It"s all about the same thing: shameful loss of control.

There"s also the psychoneurological state connected with genitalium and dopamine sensations. That will appear closer to second grade. Unlike the post‑nap state, that one isn"t destructive - quite the opposite - and it definitely shouldn"t be eliminated.

I neurotically wanted to be an adult - not want sleep, stay awake at night, be independent. I wanted to be Jack Dawson without any fucking parents. But without parents I couldn"t do anything - I cried without them. Even now in kindergarten I sometimes cried when no one saw. Not a psyche but a fucking disaster - and I understood it. Each month worse, as I said. Outwardly it wasn"t noticeable and practically didn"t interfere with life. It never would. It simply shaped tendencies, values, and eventually a lifestyle - one in which the very thing life is supposed to contain would be absent.

And by the way, if I had such hang‑ups about sleep and shitting - imagine what would start when the main function of the genitalium arrived.

.:::.

Part 21 Text 6. I shit myself... kindergarten trip to the dentist... broken finger... German language... Olya... the end of kindergarten.

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Once I shit myself. I held it from kindergarten until home and, stepping out of the lift on our floor, released a little into my underwear. That day it was already summer‑warm; our balcony door was open, voices of children drifted from below, the living room was filled with evening sun, and The Adventures of Sinbad was on TV.

But that spring I did shit in kindergarten once - the first and last time - during quiet time when no one was in the toilet. There was a long gutter with water flowing along it. The turd floated away to the side.

In those months I often didn"t have to sleep there anymore - I was some kind of exception. Everyone else lay down, and I sat on the sofa in the empty playroom waiting for Mom. She knew I hated lying there for two hours, so she came to pick me up. But I still had to wait a long time. I entertained myself by lowering my head and looking at my fists - watching kaleidoscopes appear in the darkness of my vision. I imagined them as space and planets. Then Mom came - and it was the best feeling, as always.

I didn"t know that in life all those lines would only worsen. That one day I wouldn"t just lose control of my body but would lie tied to a bed behind bars, drugged into a vegetable. That I would wait for Mom but she would no longer be allowed to take me home. That everyone would long be sleeping, cumming, vomiting in front of each other, dying, lying disgracefully in coffins - and I would still sit in my room, nervously picking my fingers bloody, thinking about all this with the awareness that I remained a coward. Because the psyche cannot be changed.

The whole kindergarten walked in a line along Petrovskaya Street to the city dental clinic where sometimes Mom and I went to pull my teeth, and of course I always cried there. That day with kindergarten I was terrified they would do something and I"d cry in front of everyone - but nothing happened.

A boy named Rinat, while we were waiting in the corridor, said: "We"re done for." At that moment I imagined a tin can with its lid bent open. Later I often remembered that scene - Rinat saying those words and my association - and now all my life whenever I see canned food or open a can I can"t separate that memory from it. A quirk of memory.

Near the kindergarten yard by Petrovskaya Street - where I sometimes watched hoping Mom might pass - syringes lay behind the metal fence. Adults said: those are from drug addicts, don"t touch them or you"ll die. I already knew what "die" meant but not who "drug addicts" were. I imagined special people who came at night.

We boys searched for batteries. I liked their shine, their heaviness, and their bright coloured wrappers.

One sunny day toward evening after quiet time everyone was going wild in the playroom and I sat on the floor with the boys. We discussed Batman and Superman already with the mocking tone of kids growing up. I was leaning on my hand when some idiot ran past and stepped on my finger. I burst into tears - it swelled. Mom took me to the clinic for an X‑ray: fracture. First time in my life they put on a plaster cast. That special smell for the first time. I had to wear it almost a month like an invalid. But I didn"t perceive that as humiliation - on the contrary, as experience. Like: not everyone has broken bones, but I already have.

The end of kindergarten was approaching. It had the same atmosphere that later would come every May in school. Teachers no longer forced us to sleep during quiet time, we didn"t have to eat the food, and so on. For some reason right at the end they started teaching us German - they took us after quiet time to another part of the yard behind the building at Lva Kassil 14 near the once‑frightening sculpture of Baba Yaga, and we repeated words there. I stared at a girl named Olya. Masha hadn"t interested me for a long time already.

German, to someone like me who loved bright, melodic things and vowels, of course didn"t appeal. Our Russian-German dictionary at home was a hateful grey colour, and the language became forever tied with that dictionary and with a stupid uninteresting war. It would never interest me - although later I"d have to choose it instead of French, again because of a girl.

And finally there was some last day when all the parents came and we said goodbye. We were all photographed. But I didn"t really say goodbye to Kozlov, and especially not to the Emelyanovs. With them we were already close enough that we had visited them three times and they had come to us - so the next meeting outside kindergarten could happen any time. All of us kindergarten graduates were supposed to start first grade in September.

.:.

___Part 22.

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________________Summer.

.:::.

Part 22 text 1. Grandad buys a car,, with Alina to the rides,,, The Lion King II and the characters,,, Zira,,, Mortal Kombat,,, the embryo of gopnik culture.

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Once on Frunze Alina and I were hanging around outside my house when a car drove past - and inside was my grandad, driving it. He waved to us. There was another man sitting with him. Grandad was learning to drive, getting his licence.

At the edge of the yard the garage made of concrete blocks had already been finished. And one day Grandad arrived in a new white VAZ‑2106. Judging by the internet, that was the model. I liked it aesthetically - I preferred those round headlights to square ones. Our neighbour Gavela had a car with square headlights. But Grandad"s had round ones, and it was completely new, the inside smelled new. I immediately started playing with the windows going up and down. You had to crank them with a handle, but that was fine. It was just that Uncle Seryozha"s windows went up at the press of a button.

And the motor scooter disappeared somewhere - Grandad had sold it.

As I understand it, Mum was once again working herself to death, and it was easier if I stayed with my grandparents. But now the grandparents were breaking in the car and driving all the time - to the dacha, or somewhere else, to some potato fields. There was a thing that in Soviet and even post‑Soviet times there were these potato fields far outside the city where people, if they had transport to get there and a way to carry the potatoes back, could gather them for free. As I understand it, we had one trip there later - I"ll describe it.

So while the grandparents wandered around outside the city and Mum was working in the centre, I once again spent my days sitting on Frunze. The VCR was temporarily moved there, but for some reason without any tapes.

And then Grandad - "deda", as they taught me to say - one sunny day, apparently by arrangement with Alina"s mum, took Alina and me to a travelling amusement park that had arrived in town. It was the first and last time I went somewhere away from Frunze with Alina - apart from one time later when we walked together to buy chewing gum in a shop on Telegraphnaya Street. We both dreamed of being taken to the Volga together so we could swim there - but it never happened.

The amusement park stood at the corner of Poltavskaya Street and Stroiteley Avenue - a part of Engels that I had visited only once at that time. But I already roughly understood where I was. The most suitable attraction for our age was an inflatable trampoline. It was the standard kind for those years: an inflatable house where you could fall however you wanted or crash into the walls - everything was soft. But it had been heated by the sun, and Alina couldn"t stand it - she soon climbed down and just watched. But Grandad had already paid, so in the end I jumped a double portion.

After that he drove us to the then‑famous shopping centre on the ground floor at Prospekt Engelsa, building two - nearby in the same district. I remember exactly where we parked, how the three of us walked in together, how we entered. It had a passageway ground floor - you could go from shop to shop - typical for the shopping arcades on the ground floors of brick ten‑storey buildings of that time. And there, typically, was a bazaar‑style shop: sections ranging from food to costume jewellery, electronics and cassette tapes.

It was the peak of the cassette era. We went to the tapes and chose The Lion King II: Simba's Pride. Alina said she had seen it. Grandad paid - we bought it and drove home.

At home Alina came inside with us too - the first and, I think, the last time she was ever at our place. Grandma and Mum still weren"t back. We put the cassette on and watched it, the three of us. Right away that unusual, "stylish" music impressed me and influenced my musical taste for the rest of my life - even though I wouldn"t listen to it again for sixteen years, until 2019. Alina explained the plot.

In the first scene with Zira"s son I said it was Scar, but Alina said, "No," and pronounced another name that was still unknown to me. And in my head I still didn"t agree with her - even after the cartoon ended, and for some time afterwards I still thought I was right. That"s how slowly I grasped plots at that age.

And films were even worse. I mostly watched actions. Actions, emotions, music. But catching and remembering names - apart from the very main heroes like Simba or Hercules - would remain difficult for me my entire life. I was always amazed how children remembered the names of cartoon and film characters so easily - like Alina naming Kovu, or how people remember actors" names. Even now, for example, I can"t immediately recall the name of the actress who played Rose in Titanic. Most people my age would probably fire it off instantly.

Fuck, it feels so bad right now - thinking about the one I dream of being with someone else, young, while I"m already thirty‑two and nothing ever happened.

That lioness Zira also resembled the therapist doctor from the polyclinic who most often came to our home when I was ill. Actually the other way round - the doctor resembled Zira. Mum and I decided that together and started calling that doctor Zira. Doctor‑Zira also had animal‑like ears - with very attached earlobes. The one who"s now with someone else has ears like that.

I hardly ever crossed paths with boys - except maybe when Mum and I visited the Emelyanovs for half an hour once a month and I talked about something with Sasha there. But even that, together with what I saw boys playing in the game sections with consoles in shops everywhere and the corresponding tapes in every cassette kiosk, was enough to understand that at that time there was a boys" trend around something called Mortal Kombat. Again something about fighting and karate. Soon I heard that it meant "deadly combat", and the imagery of the trend matched that - dark and physical. And everything connected with death and the body was psychologically off‑limits for me to discuss with my parents, for reasons I explained in the early childhood episodes, so the idea of buying the tape and getting into it never even arose.

At the beginning of the next year I would figure out that there was a film and there was a TV series. For me Mortal Kombat: Conquest would mainly be that series. It would influence me and stay in my thoughts for life. In my diary it is mentioned no less often than Titanic and DiCaprio - though, as with "DiCaprio", one must be careful when reading fragments: since 2021 "Mortal Kombat", in the context of my psychological self‑analysis, has become my shorthand for human life in general. The series will appear later in the story, and I will devote substantial passages to it.

With Mortal Kombat my relationship would be, as always, unlike other people"s. All those boys" trends - fights, karate, console games, casually chewing gum and blowing bubbles, climbing around when parents probably chased the boys outside from their consoles - climbing on the garages in our yard behind the boiler house with the graffiti Sektor Gaza (which I thought referred to farting), - none of that was mine. Not only because I was sensitive and would cry everywhere, but also because it was "not ours" - I mean my family. I didn"t explicitly discuss such things with my parents, of course, but I could read their hypothetical position simply from their interests, values and the way they raised me. I understood that for them those boyish things were like making fart noises with your hand in your armpit. That was Sasha Emelyanov, that cocky boy I fought after the philharmonic concert. But not us - the empathetic, Kapernau‑type neurotics (by then I already recognised my parents" psychotype by comparing them with others: Dad, Mum, both grandfathers, Grandma Valya - all gentle).

In general I was curious what this "Mortal Kombat" was that the boys were obsessed with - but not enough to regret not being part of that embryo of gopnik culture.

The association between martial arts and the 1990s is well known. Films played endlessly, from movies with Jackie Chan to some very authentic Asian ones where samurai leap into the air and fight each other there for ten seconds straight.

One morning on Frunze, while all the adults had again gone out and I was sitting alone, I watched some film with Asian girl bandits. They wore unusual dresses with lots of long strips of fabric, reminiscent of the outfits of the twins in a music video by Mylène Farmer where one of them gets kidnapped (she had more than one video with twins). They used those dresses in their fights. They were antagonists and picked on some comical, timid Asian men - the main heroes. The film impressed me - naturally because of the theme of dangerous women, attraction and fear - and I, as always carrying a notebook, tried to invent some story with them. Not a sexual one, but in the spirit of that action film. Nothing came out - I had no ideas at all.

By the way, the Souviens‑toi du jour video had come out around those months and was a hit. I constantly waited for it to appear - and it will matter in my story, but that will come later.

.:::.

Part 22 text 2. The idea of collecting herbs and selling them to a pharmacy for money,,, the cassette of The Mummy and my future musical outsiderhood,,, apricot kernels and Anya performs a scene for me.

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At that time I was getting into the habit of saving money. I was already collecting coins if I saw them on the ground. At home I stacked the coins in little columns and counted them.

At my grandparents" dacha there were surplus crops, and once the three of us - Grandma, Grandad and I - drove somewhere to sell them. After a small bend Poligraficheskaya Street becomes Studencheskaya Street - and on the site where a building now stands at Studencheskaya 64, between my grandparents" place and the cemetery, there used to be a little market.

We drove into the parking area and I sat bored in the car for a while while they sold buckets of fruit on the corner. It felt strange seeing Grandma Klava trading. The thing was that Grandma Klava had always been perceived as dominant in every situation - always the customer, always the one being served. And here suddenly she stood like ordinary old women wanting something from other people - practically asking. Because if no one bought the goods, they would simply rot. The buyer with money was the client, and Grandma Klava had to deserve it. It didn"t suit her image. But they sold everything. And they often went there like that.

Later Mum told me that when she was a child they used to collect medicinal herbs along Frunze with other children and sell them to pharmacies for money. Soon I had gathered a lot of the right herbs too, but didn"t know where to sell them - and Mum couldn"t advise me. By that time pharmacies no longer accepted anything like that.

The nearest pharmacy was on Telegraphnaya Street, building eighty‑one, on the way to the kindergarten. Opposite the pharmacy there was also the district children"s library - that"s where Mum had borrowed books as a child, since it was near her School No. 10. I also knew that Anya Gavela, the little botanist who could already go there alone, borrowed books there (and I imagined her walking away from it with a book, like the heroine at the beginning of Beauty and the Beast, the cartoon her father had brought me once). Next to the pharmacy was a small grocery shop, and next to the library a hardware shop full of nuts and nails - my father liked going in there when he took me from Frunze back home or to Grandma Valya"s.

In the end we never dared to go into the pharmacy to ask whether they accepted herbs, and instead we just went into the grocery shop, bought me chewing gum, I took the little insert out of it - and was happy.

Back then in childhood it was a regular thing for me to go with Mum and Grandma to markets and wander along the rows for hours choosing clothes. Sometimes we even went to markets in Saratov. The main one there was the Sennoy market, but we almost never went there because there were markets everywhere anyway, and so I wouldn"t get bored we went near the circus - where the dull bazaar business could be combined with a walk later along Kirov Avenue and pastries.

One market stood at the south‑west corner of the intersection of Chapaeva and Kazachya Streets (behind the circus), another near the Covered Market, as I once mentioned, and another right in front of the entrance to the "Children"s World" shop. Practically on every corner. Near "Children"s World", on a rainy day, Mum and Grandma chose a jacket for me for first grade.

Another time - it was hot, around midday - I was in Saratov with Grandma Klava alone. We went to Chapaeva and Kazachya. Having recently already bought the school trousers I hated for their formality, we were now choosing the first jeans of my life. I fell for a pair and we bought them: classic light blue - like in films, like in America. It felt very cool. And we also bought a black belt, like adults wore.

And then, as the final part, we went to the cassette stall at that market and, on the seller"s advice, bought The Mummy - it had just come out then - another film I would watch all through childhood on Lva Kassil over and over again. I had no particular love for Egypt, Africa or the early twentieth century, but that didn"t stop the film from seeming perfect in every way. And the most important thing - if not for this the film would have felt completely different - was, of course, the music, the unforgettable motifs. That level was a phenomenon which, as it turned out, would end only four years later, when soundtracks even for the biggest‑budget films would turn into an empty collection of notes.

A bright example of that decline is The Hobbit compared with The Lord of the Rings.

I lived by the television; the tapes we had were enough - I didn"t need any game consoles. Consoles, those courtyard boys and their hobbies - none of that contained the beauty that the films I watched had.

And yes, it bothered me: I knew those boys were braver than me, that I was a fucking neurotic - and they weren"t, they would impress girls, they were future Jack Dawsons, while I impressed no one, only adults praising my drawings. Yes, yes, yes. But I knew one hundred percent that if I went down into that yard I would immediately fight with someone, burst into tears and come back traumatised, and therefore I had no intention - literally or metaphorically - of going down to those boys.

It was the season of apricots. One evening at my grandparents" place, when the adults were already sitting on the bench and the four of us - Alina, Anya, Alyona and I - were running around Frunze in the evening light, we had the idea of searching for apricot pits: if you cracked them with a stone there were edible kernels inside (by the way, until adulthood I thought that was almond).

People were making jam, so the pits often lay in rubbish heaps outside. We found one pile near Alina"s house and another somewhere else. And then I found them right near my house - in a heap of boards and grass at the edge of the площадка by the garage entrance. Grandad burned that pile every other evening during the bench gatherings.

In short, there was such a huge heap of pits that I shouted with delight and began calling the girls. Especially I wanted to show Anya - I always liked impressing her because, well, no point hiding it now, I had a childish crush on her.

Where I stood there was a sandy patch. It was already twilight and cool, and in the evenings our parents dressed us in jackets. Anya was wearing a jacket with a hood. She ran up to me and, seeing the pits and catching my excitement, gasped loudly, pressed a hand to her chest - and fell backwards as if she had died of happiness.

She fell flat. I was surprised it didn"t hurt her, though the ground was sand. Probably in my excitement I simply didn"t notice that she first dropped onto her bottom and then lay back fully. She stayed there about five seconds and then stood up.

She did it partly as a little performance for me, partly for the others and the adults on the bench beside whom all this was happening.

Until this moment, remembering it now, I had never thought about it - but that was actually my first and almost complete sexual act. I was romantically excited, and Anya, by performing that scene, relieved my excitement. In the fully realised version she would simply have fallen for real.

.:::.

Part 22 Text 3. Already able to swim,,, genital agony,,, into the forest to the Bridge Squad with Mom and Dad.

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Some days had both beach and "BabaValya" themes. But from that summer, I don"t remember anything specific. I carried a notebook everywhere, drew reptiles, pretended to be a naturalist, and acted important.

There"s a photo from the beach of me by a floating hut where the little sisters used to be (though I no longer met them there, so I didn"t remember them). I"m wearing those swim trunks in which, in moments of solitude, I would constantly get an erection and push it down.

At home - I"ve already mentioned this - I often joked that when it stood up and the lower part of the trunks stuck out, forming a hollow space, I would insert my fingers on both sides into that hollow, close them, and try not to touch anything. Like the joke of dipping a finger into a water vortex when swimming with Mom (always supervised, of course).

I already had a strong genital itch, yet I had never had a nocturnal emission, so what was about to happen was inevitable. Fate only decided the accident through which I would discover and learn it.

As for bathing and swimming - every time it ended with the same torture of exposing the glans, which had to be done but I couldn"t. Whether shivering on the cold beach or struggling with the foreskin after a bath - my penis was tiny, with a slightly protruding glans - bluish, like a hard-boiled egg yolk.

I had long known that to the left before the bridge exit in Saratov, there was a forest. We had already taken the trolley there with Mom once, but not far. This was the first time in my life I had been in a forest with that special atmosphere: no asphalt, silence, trees all around. I don"t remember if it was last autumn or spring, so I didn"t make an episode of it.

Mom was in a light wool SSS (Soviet) coat, and there were a few mushrooms - it all looked like something out of primers or children"s books. Mushroom caps, woodpeckers, birds, herbarium leaves - all of it. Entertainment before the internet.

Now Dad was with us, and he had a camera - something that appeared on holidays or New Year"s, either kept at home or borrowed each time from Ivan, whose it was. So the three of us were going into the forest with the camera. This would be the main forest in my story, and trips there would always be called "to the Bridge Squad." I don"t know what exactly "Bridge Squad" refers to - a village or an institution with a cluster of bridge repair structures on the shore. That"s just what our family called it.

Getting ready - especially for the forest - took a lot of time for Mom and me. Dad was always ready in a minute, but Mom and I had to pick clothes and fuss about things. It could take hours. Dad would play guitar and piano, all the songs he knew, over and over, then go outside because he couldn"t stand it anymore - and only then would we finally get dressed. His songs, full of funny neologisms from the daily beach in my early childhood, were already becoming a thing of the past.

We reached the last stop in Engels, crossed the road. Parallel to the road was a railway, and we had to look both ways - trains rarely went to the Bridge Squad complex. Then we went down and crossed another road, and a bridge began over a river-like lake. That bridge led into a small private area before the forest. There were shops and a bit of commercial bustle, but it wasn"t clear how anyone could stay there at night in winter: for civilisation, you"d have to take a bus, which didn"t run late.

Like the first time with Mom, we didn"t go far - just the forest"s edge. But even there, the hilly landscape under the trees, grassy slopes - you could run, tumble into ravines, climb the opposite hill by momentum - and there were no human traces. I climbed a huge fallen tree trunk. It was a forest amusement, and we took some photos there. I don"t know where they are. That dry, hilly forest always reminded me of a scene from Morozko, when Ivanushka went on adventures over similar hills. The streams in those scenes looked like the ones at the Bridge Squad - the forest opened onto a surrounding lake. In the distance, beyond some dachas along the Volga, you could see Saratov.

.:::.

Part 22 Text 4. Dad"s "Kulugury",,,, with grandpas in Podstepnoe.

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Dad picked up new words. Back then, I didn"t understand them at all and couldn"t explain them, but I felt the essence. He began calling people "kulugury." Not knowing who they were, I didn"t even know if they were people. He mocked them, but always in a kind way - kulugury seemed like poor creatures, getting into trouble through their own stupidity, whom Dad wanted to help but they refused and continued to suffer. That"s how I felt.

The internet later shows he must have read local history articles. Kulugury were odd, superstitious folk from the Volga region, and the name became a pejorative in local villages. Dad used the fact that no one knew about them except him. For himself, he knew exactly who he meant. He started talking about kulugury when Mom and I fussed over trivialities or took ages getting ready. Or when there was a domestic problem, like with potatoes. Everything to do with everyday life, domestic problems, and, mainly, inability to live in a city. "Living like kulugury." He also said they should be sent to islands to pick blackberries because they were good for nothing else.

Over time, he would call Mom, her relatives, and us kulugury directly and insultingly. But I instinctively understood from the start that he was picking on us. Not so much us, not so much Mom"s family with their quarrels over potatoes, cellars, outdated traditions - but generally, everyone in Engels. Over time, he developed hatred for Engels, really for his fate: to end up not among any creative intelligentsia, but in Engels, dragged into unplanned family routine, unappreciated under his Rastaman values and domestic incompetence. Mom, in my youth, told me she always felt he considered her a village fool. She intuitively understood his kulugury talk from the beginning but tolerated it. I also think Mom wasn"t particularly clever. But unlike her, Dad never adapted to capitalist urban life. In old age, he would wallow in kulugury ways - trips to dachas, caring about pickle jars, fixing household items from poverty instead of buying new. He"d ride buses with a cart and smell. Mom tolerated it because she knew where she stood compared to him and didn"t consider his opinions on lifestyle authoritative. If she were shallow, she"d have been offended.

"Kulugury" was Dad"s early circumlocutory synonym for "Mordva," which he would later use for Mom"s side when he became even more frustrated.

That summer, I went with him to a dinosaur exhibition on the Saratov embankment, in the river station building or something.

Also, walking together on Kirov Street, we approached an "Oracle" machine. You placed your palm into a huge bearded face, and it printed a prediction. I don"t remember what it predicted for me.

The grandpas continued testing the car: they fished, scouted spots along Engels" maze-like Volga shore, brought back lots of fish, and Grandpa sat on the porch, cleaning scales and guts while Marsik circled nearby. Then came fish feasts - soup and fried roach with roe.

One day, we planned to go with Grandpa, Grandma, and Mom. That trip marked my first encounter with a grass snake. I had no idea where we were going or what awaited.

We drove past the cemetery, past the turn to the dacha, toward the town of Marks, associated with Mars and Marsik.

The road was endless, trucks and cars like ours - Grandpa"s Zhiguli - drove by. His Zhiguli was my favourite domestic car then; the low, boyish, impractical Nine like Ivan"s no longer appealed. I wanted not only one like Grandpa"s but with a small rear trunk for carrying reptile research gear. Grandpa"s equipment fit in the small trunk: rods for us all, buckets for fish, some tackle, even rubber boots for him and Grandma to wade into the water. Next summer, he"d also have an inflatable boat.

There were many exits from the highway; at one, we turned left. That led to the social potato fields I mentioned, from which grandpas brought bags of potatoes. I might have seen the fields, but that day was all about fishing, not potatoes. The place was called Podstepnoe, which I forever associated with grass snakes.

From the potato fields, a slope led into a ravine with a small stream, beyond which stretched swampy forest for kilometres, crisscrossed by Volga backwaters. Truly wild, compared to the Bridge Squad forest, which was almost a park.

There, by the water, we had barely descended when a grass snake crawled - exactly like the illustration in a children"s book I mentioned once from the Pioneer Palace library, spanning a whole spread with "orange headphones." I don"t recall exactly catching it, but I did. It was scary and disgusting - but necessary. I was fascinated by them. They lived in swamps, and I feared swamps. I kept recalling that scene from The Dawns Here Are Quiet, the cyclops film, and more. Swamps are deadly for people. Swamps are for snakes. All about phobias, phobias, phobias.

I probably hardly fished, mostly looking for grass snakes, so I"ll leave fishing descriptions for next summer.


.:::.

Part 22 Text 5. Overnight at Aunt Lyusya"s,,, lack of friends,,, to Aunt Lyusya"s dacha,,, renovation on Lev Kassil,,, pull-up bar.

.::::.

There was a time I stayed overnight at Aunt Lyusya"s - even more than once. We slept together on the sofa in the living room. The same gypsy doll stood in the wall unit, impossible not to glance at. During the day, we went to some store. One morning, we wanted to go to the Volga - the same Shumeyka where we had been with Uncle Seryozha last summer - and I really wanted that, because I could already swim and wanted to show Aunt Lyusya. But somehow it didn"t happen; Mom picked me up in the evening.

I always loved spending time with such adults, who felt like friends. Not just my parents and grandpas. By the end of childhood, I counted maybe a dozen such moments.

Childhood was mostly a lack of socialisation. Girls on Frunze were rare - only on holidays - while grey weekdays, like kindergarten and school, were all Lev Kassil. Plus Lev Kassil was there on holidays too. Lev Kassil = apartment and TV. I didn"t care about rough kids downstairs or their playground antics; I would just envy them and their girls, but that"s for later.

Another day with Aunt Lyusya, perhaps a year later, we went to her dacha in the Shumeyka area, near the Volga. Rain, even a downpour. The dacha looked like the others - standard rows of plots, one-car-width paths.

Fuck, I feel terrible right now... Right now, Anya - another Anya, from late 2024 - is skating in Moscow with her twenty-year-old peer, sending me videos... And I, deciding this is better than nothing, am writing this biography to distract myself from the pain.

The house was like a hut, cramped and furnished minimally - as much as lonely Aunt Lyusya could manage. No husband - Mom"s brother, Uncle Tolya, was long gone. Only her son Valera. Maybe some electricity, one lamp. Cold. I don"t remember the plot; it rained. We didn"t stay long - I was freezing.

Later, Aunt Lyusya will appear very little. She worked as a nurse in the hospital where I"d stay with Mom next summer.

In the grandpas" area, little was left unexplored. But one spot by the bath - a plot of that rotten stream where Mom and I once found a kitten, not there, but between Persidskaya and Telegrafnaya - had reeds, and I needed to check it: maybe snakes. Alina was ten; once, we were allowed to go alone to that little store near the tenth school. Felt so grown-up - buying chewing gum, blowing bubbles. I envied Alina, but sometimes succeeded too, and felt cool.

On the way back, we cut through the reed clearing between the yards, along the swamp from Telegrafnaya to Persidskaya, and came out near the bath. There was a half-submerged Zaporozhets. Disgusting - yard waste poured in, the water foamed. I never went there again.

At that time, Dad was with us - or rather, he was on Lev Kassil, and I was on Frunze, and something was happening on Lev Kassil. Mom said it was renovations. Dad helped. Later Mom said he broke a toilet - dropped it by accident. She bought everything - her apartment.

He laid plain tile floors in the bathroom and toilet without adjustments. In the kitchen, hired workers did the proper work. They replaced old plastic tiles (the ones from my earliest memories) with cheap, simple ones - like those in public toilets. Walls were paneled halfway like parquet, above with rubber wallpaper. Where the table and mustard armchair stood, they framed and parqueted. Suspended ceiling of square foam panels, lying loosely as in offices. Small kitchen, about six squares.

Instead of a glass door, an arch was made, likely drywall, painted white; also a niche for the fridge and a shelf above for the TV. On the hallway side, above Kiska"s hanger, a cupboard above the TV niche held a box of Christmas toys and household chemicals.

All that parquet, tiles, ceiling, and structure over the fridge was called a "European renovation."

Above the kitchen table, an aquarium appeared, with a filter buzzing and standard fish, fed sparingly, or they floated belly-up.

I saw all this completed when we returned from Frunze. Goodbye, childhood door with coloured glass inset, associated with a chicken and that morning/evening memory. Goodbye, tile I vomited on. Everything moving further from the beginning...

But one novelty awaited me. Mom had mentioned it in advance: a "pull-up bar." I had no idea what it was.

It turned out to be unusual. In the middle room, a blue metal pole from floor to ceiling, flat round base, crosspiece at ceiling. On the crosspiece, near the window - rope ladder with metal rungs; near the wall - rope; near the door - gym rings; near my bed - a punching bag.

Nothing to do on the ladder - later we dried laundry there. I constantly climbed the rope or slid down it. I hit the bag - half-heartedly, then stopped entirely. It swung - ideally should have been tied to the floor.

On the rings, I swung or did pull-ups. When I did many, parents praised me. They praised me constantly.

.:.

___Part 23.

.:::.

Part 23 Text 1. Masturbation by leg squeezing.

.::::.

Approaching the topic of masturbation, I"ll remind you: aside from growing complexes, back then my life was soaked in genital stress. Mom kept treating my penis - all those stings I complained about. We kept going to the clinic to see idiots who invented some kind of cystitis for me, but I was only happy about it because at least that diagnosis didn"t threaten anything beyond slow examinations and preventive measures like dressing warmer and dipping my penis in some potassium permanganate solution, for some reason.

But there were two other things. First - what I mentioned in past episodes, and recently reminded of - sooner or later, what mom called "pulling the penis back," exposing the glans, was necessary, which for me was impossible. I generally didn"t touch my penis except to pee, and when I had an erection: I had this penis phobia from that day of the cut in September "95. Every time at the end of a bath, mom asked me to try pulling it - and with huge stress, I would try: the tip of the glans would come out, as I said, but it wouldn"t go further - the skin felt like it was glued to the glans with superglue. Mom would ask me to pull - maybe it would loosen. But even without much pain, I was just scared: what if something tears - well, the skin itself - and there"d be a sharp pain like that cut back then. And the glans itself was clearly hypersensitive.

It was bad enough when mom asked, but I was in total stress every time I saw urologists: they would also try to pull, saw the problem, and I feared they might order some surgery to, again with cutting instruments, separate the skin from the glans. Because everyone said the glans should be exposed properly. And I was scared even to see it.

The second stress - a truly hellish one - was conversations about some operation for the stings. Fucking hell: like cutting something under anaesthesia to fix something there. That alone... And although I saw that mom was against it, especially since there were no acute indications for it, I understood that in the end, everything depended on the opinion of the white coats. If they deemed it necessary - she would likely rely on them.

In general, I lived in this life-poisoning stress about my penis. And this was on top of the stings themselves.

And now, with the arrival of the rope - and after years without any release - another long-present, sucking feeling manifested, that itch I mentioned recently - clearly, as I felt, intricately linked to my neurosis and complexes. It couldn"t go on like this.

Even though the rope and that pipe were at home, the first experience was outside.

We were walking with my father from the city centre to my grandparents" on Telegrafnaya Street and stopped at the sports bars on the territory of the tenth school. Back then, school grounds were all open. There were parallel bars and some high crossbars. And having learned to climb the rope, I now climbed everything I could - so I climbed a tall pipe there.

Maybe I climbed because of that sucking feeling. Only I don"t understand what pleasure or "enjoyment" people online describe when talking about their first time. For me, it was - and is - like picking at an already bleeding hangnail.

Near the top of the pipe, I realised that this neurotic sucking feeling between my legs, in the tendons of the muscles engaged when pressing something with the legs, was unbearable. It overpowered all thoughts. I was usually talkative with my parents, giving updates. And I could barely report to my dad below: "It even hurts!" (couldn"t describe it otherwise), when immediately after came the climax of the torment - and it suddenly felt light and good.

I wasn"t rubbing my penis against anything. The penis was, on the contrary, pressed downwards toward the balls - tightly pressed. The tension happened, as I thought as a child, in the tendons of the inner leg muscles. Later, when I studied anatomy as a teen, I understood better. The penis isn"t just the dangling part; it continues under the balls toward the ass. And only that inner part filled with blood, not the dangling part, which was pressed and couldn"t fill. And how the nervous system reaches climax - with blood in the whole penis or just the inner part - the brain doesn"t care. So it climaxed as it could.

Since then, whenever the sucking between my legs started - I immediately pressed the penis down, went to the bars, and brought it to calm. Sometimes I did it two or three times in a row, and on some days even ten times - almost endlessly. If done in succession, I could barely breathe. I barely breathed at that moment, from the start of the squeeze to the end. The whole process from start to climax could take only ten to fifteen seconds the first time after a long pause. When done in succession - I was all red, legs trembling.

I also soon learned to do it sitting on a chair - crossing my legs and pressing them together. Later, two or three years on, when neurosis and stressors escalated, I did it not even crossed, just pressing knees together like pincers. Later still, it could suck so strongly that lying down, I simply tensed my legs and came, as long as the penis was pressed down. With an erection, it never worked - I never had long enough abstinence to climax that way.

From the outside, it must have looked terrifying, especially for a child. It looked like a seizure. I trembled violently, usually had to hold onto something with my hands. No semen appeared, and I didn"t check. I didn"t even really connect it to the penis - more to the leg tendons.

At some point, by the start of first grade, mom understood I was doing something - and she immediately assumed it was about the penis. Maybe she saw somehow. But I think if she saw me shaking like that, she"d have panicked and taken me to a doctor. She didn"t. She called it "playing with the penis." "Again playing with your penis? Sitting red as a beet." I also had red spots on my chest and neck, which I didn"t notice at first. Likely she assumed I used my hands. With the school year, new discipline would start - she would spank me for it.

This left a lasting psychology regarding her throughout my youth. Even now, I could tell her about anal masturbation without a care. But until recently - even at 25 - it was different: I hid even wanting girls, even that I wanted to put my penis in someone, that I had hair, that I was an adult. At 25, I still spoke to her with childhood intonations. It affected my life, making sexual life impossible. Even if I somehow got a girlfriend, I couldn"t meet her. I don"t regret it - miracles don"t happen, and circumstances would have been different anyway.

She spanked me a few times, maybe just a couple, but there was much stress from supervision and belt intimidation. Scenes were no different from punishment for lessons - and lessons weren"t far off, which I"ll describe.

I didn"t think about girls doing this, didn"t associate it with them. It was proto-masturbation, or a separate type unrelated to sexuality. As I said, it was intricately linked to stress and neurosis.

I mostly did it when anxious, like rushing somewhere. At school (I could do it even during class, among people, unnoticed except for red cheeks), when the bell rang, everyone stood and left, I froze, crossed my legs, thinking "what a mess I"m making," which was abnormal - sitting unresponsive like that could draw attention, someone could shake me: "What"s wrong? Are you frozen? Everything okay?"

Or I imagined drowning - mine or someone else"s - in a swamp. Impending death triggered the sucking under my penis; I couldn"t resist. I wrote this often in my diary - my life left only writing about this. Searching "leg squeezing" or "without hands" yields plenty.

It became addictive; the more I did it, the more I needed to do it again. Willpower weakened. Sometimes I masturbated so much I couldn"t do any lessons. From that perspective, mom"s attempts to stop penis "play" were justified. But her motives were clearly puritanical or medical prejudices.

And after this masturbation, often, though not always, came the stings. No exceptional connection - even as an adult, stings happen after normal masturbation with the same frequency. Stings usually appear even without masturbation.

The main harm, as I realised by youth, was that my erect penis bent sharply downward. I never saw this in photos of other penises or porn. Everyone else - straight or slightly upward, sometimes strongly upward. Mine, seemingly, was downward even in early childhood, before leg-squeezing from age six. Perhaps wearing it dangling and pressing it down or pulling up the briefs influenced this, because it constantly got erect. I"ve mentioned this a hundred times.

In short, if I"d been taught normal masturbation, I"d likely never have discovered this strange thing. My foreskin might have retracted earlier, I"d have resolved the stress, and become "genitally" confident. But now it no longer matters.

.:::.

Part 23 Text 2. Preparing for school... blazers... Uncle Seryozha the strongman... eating "poop" with Uncle Seryozha and going to the canteen... slow visit to the Lev Kassil museum and funhouse mirrors.

.::::.

Fucking school was approaching. As I explained: if I had any enthusiasm for studying, it was for finishing quickly, becoming adult, and finally leaving for South America, living like Steve Irwin, climbing in the tropics after reptiles. So I liked those last preschool weeks. I got supplies: pencils, sharpeners, graters, rulers. Almost none would ever be used.

I picked a plastic pencil case at the fair with hidden sliding compartments. A backpack. We went to "Detsky Mir" with mom and grandma Klava and bought black formal shoes. The trousers were ready - hated them, wanted jeans, but couldn"t. A small-check beige blazer - although I liked it - my taste preferred an ash-grey blazer (like my father"s). I wanted black leather shoes, jeans, and an open grey blazer... or even sneakers, not shoes. Watched too many US shows and Western aesthetics. In my early years, "Miami Vice" aired on NTV - which I referenced earlier.

About Steve Irwin - I"d find out later, next year, on Animal Planet at Aunt Larisa"s place.

Mom also had to decide which school to take me to. One day we visited school thirty-three individually. At the start of Telman Street, past the lyceum with prep classes. Big, new school, opened that year. Something felt off. Our guide - a teacher or deputy - half-Russian, maybe fully Armenian. The school immediately connected in my mind with non-Russians. We walked corridors, entered a classroom, she asked if I liked it.

I didn"t envy kids who went there - Emelyanov and Lyuba Sedneva did. The school felt foreign, degenerate... rumours and associations - like a school for "degrods." Strange that Sedneva went.

That second half of summer, I sat on Frunze Street looking at a May photo from my last kindergarten. Seeing shy Olya, I suddenly desired her, belatedly. That was, by the way, when I could masturbate by leg squeezing - the painful understanding that it was too late, I"d probably never see her, missed a chance. I never saw Olya again.

When Uncle Seryozha came for lunch and mom served him soup, I occasionally ran out to them. Once, I ran out, talking about male strength. I was now hitting my punching bag. He sat in a mustard armchair, I stood with my back to the kitchen drawers. Maybe I was cheeky, maybe not, but he pushed me back to demonstrate real male strength. I pushed the top drawer back with my back. I cried and ran. Mom was upset, thought he overdid it - silly with a child. But that was Uncle Seryozha"s style. He was touchy; mom said he once left her midway on the street or tore her documents - she went to restore them. Mom exaggerated things, so imagining major tantrums from Uncle Seryozha would be overkill, but minor ones existed.

That summer, many trips with him and mom in his "BMW." He drove us everywhere. Sometimes mom brought leftover shashlik - it became my favourite food.

Once, we went to the south-east edge of Engels. During spellcheck correction, I passed it 26 years later and immediately recalled the place. The last street - Khimikov Avenue. Then, a wild industrial area, big trucks, like in action movies. A strange two-storey café, we went up, sat together, and were served meat shaped like poop. Mom and I laughed quietly. They lay in lettuce. The salad was special - linked to my reptile obsession. Lettuce, ferns (not grown locally), and palms - the plants that triggered my naturalistic excitement.

We ate the "poop" but I mostly wanted shashlik. I want shashlik now writing this. I never ate it except in childhood, mostly leftovers mom brought after Uncle Seryozha meetings.

Another time, we three ate in a canteen inside Engels" dullest building - corner of Pushkin and Persidskaya, address: 24 Krasnoarmeyskaya. First and last visit. Even now, seeing a 2021 photo - that hairy pipe along it, pavement, building across, the beginning of Persidskaya. Fucking trips to the clinic and grandma - exhausting, no rebellion, just inner exhaustion. By then, I hated all of Engels, especially these areas tied to boring walks and stressful clinics.

That summer, the Nespeshny family - Lidushka and her mom - came, and we walked together again. Me, mom, and them.

First and last time, I visited Lev Kassil"s little house under our apartment windows. Summer evening, mosquitoes, the museum had open doors - you could walk through, hear the caretaker"s stories, wander rooms. Felt unusual - like a private home, with a garden, but surrounded by nine-storey buildings and Emelyanov"s Khrushchyovka.

Another evening with Nespeshny, we went to the main amusement park. Attractions like the ones Grandpa took me and Alina to often had funhouse mirrors - crooked mirrors. Same in Engels" local park. First and last visit with Nespeshny. We rode the Ferris wheel. In childhood, I rode it about six times.

On the embankment, a memorial under construction - no tiles or memorial plaques from my earliest memories.

.:::.

Part 23, Text 3. First Trip to the Sea with the Emelyanovs by Bus.

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The time came when I was about to be like everyone else - namely, to actually go to the sea. At my grandparents" house, there was always a large, apparently lacquered, souvenir seashell, and since I was very young, I had the pastime of "listening to the sea" - pressing it to my ear, and somehow it would make a sound. By then I was six, everyone around had already been to the sea, and I had only ever listened to it in a shell like a total loser.

This word, by the way, was already floating around and was one of those you weren"t allowed to say. You couldn"t say "shit," "crap," or even "damn." Mom would smack my lips, and so would grandma. And this happened frequently, as I"ve already mentioned: I"d forget myself, say it in front of them, and get punished. In a sadistically caring tone, they"d say, "Come here," and I"d go over, and they"d hit me, and I"d immediately start crying, especially if it was Mom.

The word "devil" was also forbidden, not just because of punishment, but also because devils would come, like in that movie Ghost, and take you to hell. Of course, I was growing up, and I hardly believed in it anymore - but what if?

I didn"t yet know the harsher words - those would come around second grade, and I"ll describe them there.

So the plan was that Dad wouldn"t go; I"d go with Mom, and we"d go together with the entire Emelyanov family - Sasha, his brother, and their parents. And we"d go by bus.

In Engels, there was a place where long-distance buses parked - behind the Children"s Park near the church on Pushkin Street - and it was always crowded with market traders: either lining up for the Moscow bus or unloading their huge shuttle bags from the lower compartment of the buses. The bus trip to the sea seems to have been organised by the Emelyanovs since they were shuttle traders themselves. Instead of going to Moscow, one bus gathered people for a trip south.

The bus had some kind of bench at the rear that could recline flat. I think Mom took our blankets and sheets and spread them there. Overall, there were maybe twenty-five passengers at most, or even fewer.

There were two drivers, and the main one looked like Mashkov in the film The Thief - dark-haired and hardened by life. His name was Gosha.

And off we went. Apart from going fishing with Grandpa, this was my first time leaving Saratov or Engels. The fields stretched endlessly, the sun was shining and hot, the radio played hits like "The Wind Blew from the Sea" and "Poplar Fluff."

It feels like the trip took two days. I remember the sensation of heading to the ends of the earth. One evening, on either the first or second day, there was a strange adult moment on the highway. Some men entered the bus. Mom later explained that they were bandits with guns, and Gosha told the adults to sit quietly and bribed the bandits so we could continue.

But now, being older, it seems to me that those weren"t bandits at all, but benevolent law enforcement looking for fugitives or drugs. I once took a similar bus from Moscow, stopped the same way, and the scene was identical - only there the authorities were openly armed (as a child I hadn"t seen guns), in uniform, with dogs.

Eventually, Mom said we were about to see the sea. It was a sunny noon. We entered Novorossiysk, though strangely there were no buildings, just forest and a road in the mountains, with the city somewhere to the side. Soon the trees ended, and the view opened up to that blue sea stretching to the horizon. Finally, in this sense, I was no longer "not like everyone else" - I was seeing it too.

We stopped somewhere, got out, and were soon on the shore, on rocks. Behind us were cliffs that seemed enormous. But with the wind and the rocky terrain, we didn"t go in - only brave men like Gosha dived in. Off to the side, the city and some ports were visible. It felt like the outskirts.

Then we returned to the buses and went to some wooden guesthouses in a sanatorium-like zone, surrounded by either forest or a park. Everything was in trees: chestnuts, oaks - rare for Saratov, where mostly poplars and elms grow. We went into the houses and into rooms with beds and bedding, and started to settle in.

We were there only an hour, yet these houses slept in my memory for ten years, long before I would connect them with Scandinavian music, Norwegian violins, and Sweden when I became interested in it in youth... I mean, nowhere else in childhood or adolescence did I see anything closer to authentic Scandinavian landscapes. Later - Engels and Saratov with their very steppe-like, barren landscapes. When I visited St Petersburg districts, that was adulthood, so no matter what, the sound of a Hardanger fiddle always takes me back to those guesthouses in Novorossiysk.

No one wanted those rocks and cliffs, so we went on to Anapa.

A few hours later, we were in Anapa, in the northern part. There was a long Pioneer Avenue along the city parallel to the beach, and we were at its very end. Around us were wastelands, even reeds, and a parking lot with a restaurant where we all ate - something like what Uncle Sergey served - and it was fine. The bus became like a home to us.

To get to the sea, we passed through an area with small houses and food stalls, and after the dunes began the beach.

We all went swimming. It was my first time in that salty water, with waves and the vast beach stretching to the horizon on the left, and many people even at the edge of the city. The centre was swarming with crowds. We never went there that trip.

On the dunes, there were local thorny bushes, and in them were lizards. They were different from the bright green or grey-brown striped ones in Saratov - more blue-green, smaller. I liked them less than ours, but at least they were exotic. There were also snake tracks, which thrilled me. I never actually saw the snakes, in all three trips south.

I was more interested in the fauna than the sea, which I saw as a pleasant bonus and deserved rest after my naturalist work in the dunes. Walking the dunes was tricky because the sand was scorching, and I had to run from shade to shade.

I still rested most of the time, learning to swim, playing in the waves with Mom. The water was warm, like the hottest days in Engels, no freezing.

We slept in the bus throughout, except the first night in Anapa. That first evening, we drove into a private sector, like typical Engels and Frunze. A woman hosted us in her house, we watched the classic film King Kong on TV, and slept on beds or floors. But something didn"t work out, and the next morning we returned to the bus station, sleeping there for the rest of the trip.

Regarding my problem with tying shoelaces, I also had a silent battle with the crawl stroke. I couldn"t swim it like adults - their faces in the water, turning their heads to breathe. I needed it to swim fast, escape sharks in the tropics, chase iguanas, or win races. Like many things, I never mastered it. I didn"t even try properly - afraid I"d inhale water and drown. I swam crawl without submerging my head.

Sasha, though keeping his head under properly, also couldn"t swim crawl - he just slapped the water with his hands and hardly moved. His brother was different - quiet, civil, didn"t thrash at all. Everyone said he had asthma.

I got sick for a few days, lying in the bus, and we bought souvenirs, including a dried starfish.

I remember nothing more about this trip or the return.

On TV at the time, there was a "Baltika" beer ad. The soundtrack was from the old Soviet film Sibiriada, with teasing images of fountains and beer flowing in Peterhof. I didn"t yet know these fountains were in the north, or that "Baltika" was about the north. To me, that beer and music were associated with the Russian south - the atmosphere of daily celebration, drinking beer on plastic chairs under umbrellas, the heat, men in striped shirts like in the band Lyube, eating shashlik, August sunsets over the steppe on the way to the sea, and the Black Sea itself, which I didn"t understand why it was black.

.:::.

Part 23, Text 4. Allergy,,, Godzilla Tape,,, Fiction Doesn"t Work,,, Notes from a Reptile Fan"s Notebook.

.::::.

That summer, another feature of my body manifested - a real problem this time - allergy.

I was allergic to dust and pollen, seasonal, only in summer and especially in August. My nose itched constantly, ran endlessly. I sneezed constantly; my eyes itched, especially in the evenings and especially in Frunze, where I was always outdoors.

Let me emphasise now, so I don"t forget, that every summer was hell: my face would just be wrecked - it was no life. I looked at other children - and none of them had this. Everyone was happy, laughing, enjoying summer, while I had this disaster.

This compounded my complexes. I looked at terrarium keepers, athletes (later, when I got into sports) - none of them had anything like this. I alone was a loser. I lived and knew I was a genetic failure.

Of course, I didn"t know the concept of "genetic" - I knew nothing about genes - sometimes I even wondered if God existed, and I was afraid to say "devil" - I was totally backward. But instinctively I understood that my problems of this kind were congenital, a bio-failure. This subconscious understanding made me sadder and sadder.

We started medical check-ups for allergies - more clinic visits in my life. This face wreckage lasted until I was fourteen. After fourteen, it suddenly vanished, though some years it returned. At fourteen, it felt like instead of allergy swelling, acne would take over my face - making me ugly through adolescence and into adulthood, leaving scars.

In mid-August, Mom and Dad and I were walking along Kirov Avenue. Stalls with books, Buddha figurines, and souvenirs. And stalls with tapes.

I knew the time had come, and I begged to buy Godzilla - a film sold almost everywhere, with a cover resembling Jurassic Park. The cover showed a reptilian paw, and I was already familiar with Godzilla from the classic Japanese film I watched earlier with Mom and Grandpa in Frunze.

What I begged for was new; even if it was the same clumsy Japanese Godzilla with a funny bear-like face and some driftwood on its back, I thought at least I"d try to love this Japanese stuff. Three hours of anticipation. I made it home and started watching.

No Japanese clumsiness. For me, it was just a super film: mutations, lizards, iguanas, Nick Tatopoulos - my namesake. I watched it over and over; it became my favourite film, and New York became my favourite city. I found New York on my large wall map, hung by my parents in first grade, and kept returning to it. The letter N became my favourite letter.

I wanted to be like Matthew Broderick in everything. I wanted my name like his, not a feminine Nikita. I wanted to be a nerd and still desired by girls. And I hated my light brown hair.

I saw Broderick in another film on TV, about young men visiting a prostitute. I learned for the first time that a prostitute is a woman who lets men into her apartment. In the film, Broderick had a comic encounter with her; she kept calling him "sonny," and he asked her not to, otherwise "nothing would work out."

By then, I was trying to force myself to write fictional stories, still not realising that it was pointless, like with toys I never learned to play with.

I have my notebook from that year. Here"s the first page:

-------start insert-------

"Snake or Viper."

I was in the yard. Anya passed by, and I was alone in the yard; I wanted to play. Mom scolded me. I went out of the yard and suddenly saw a snake. I only noticed that it was green-striped, or maybe only the head was green, or the opposite. I called Mom. I thought it was a viper, heading to the front garden. Mom came out and found tracks. She saw the track going into the yard and a hole near the step! Some boys came from nowhere and pulled a rubber snake from the grass.

-------end insert-------

Another spread:

-------start insert-------

Observation: first three lizards.

I was going to the dacha with Grandma and Mom; I thought maybe I could catch a lizard. We arrived. An hour passed. I stood near a big...

Southern lizard.

Sasha and I went to catch lizards. As soon as we approached the grass, one suddenly jumped out, stopped sharply, and looked at me.

-------end insert-------

These were my stories.

.:::.

Part 23, Text 5. The final part of summer in Frunze - punishments from Grandma - Grandpa"s hat - throwing stones with the boys.

.::::.

The final stretch of summer had begun. It mostly took place in Frunze. I suffered there with that allergy like a freak.

What can I recall... Some "The Thorn Birds" - an obscure adult series - was on TV around those months. In my memory, it seemed like it ran throughout an entire part of my childhood, like "Santa Barbara," but now I"ve looked it up - there were only four episodes, and I couldn"t even find the exact broadcast days in the TV schedule. Yet it stuck in my mind as part of evenings in Frunze. Coming home from the street to the TV - there it was. On the shelf with the small number of books at Grandma"s, among which were the Bible and King Arthur with Dragons, which I wanted to read once I was smart enough to understand it, there was a book connected to this series, or at least it seemed so to me.

On that same shelf was also a glossy cookbook, and sometimes I"d take it around like an adult, like a nerd. I always tried to look that way, because that"s what children are praised for most - while streetwise mischief is scolded.

Mom would bring large sheets of paper, called "drawing sheets," and I would draw. At that time my usual subjects were "my brother and I, we have a sports car with an open top like in the movies, and a cottage with a garage." I"d been inspired by the Emelyanovs, as I mentioned before. I wanted a younger brother, so I could be a mentor to someone, and so that at least one of the boys would respect me.

Once, Grandpa drove me in his car again to the same place he had taken Alina and me for the inflatable trampolines - only this time a bit further along Stroiteley Avenue and on the other side, near the cemetery. There was a vacant lot, and there was a show - a giant cage, like a sphere, with stunt motorcyclists riding inside, flipping all the way up to the ceiling. It was already evening, and the sunset was glowing red.

Grandpa often wore a wide-brimmed hat, and I wanted it - I was obsessed with this aesthetic, maybe influenced by some gangster movie. Except for one strange moment - which would happen about five years later - when I got close enough to him to spend a couple of days talking non-stop, all of my childhood he was silent, and I hardly ever spoke to him, even when later we would go fishing together. That"s why I never asked for his hat. But I would take it when he wasn"t around. Once, on a windy day, I entertained myself by tossing it around in the yard, and it almost flew to the next property. I generally loved windy days - Alina and I would run around, tossing bags into the air and watching them drift, sometimes attaching a toy to make it parachute, and I dreamed of a paraglider to soar and fly away.

Probably, at the start of my upcoming first grade, Grandpa gave us this hat to satisfy my obsession, and we had a little photoshoot in the kitchen on Lev Kassil Street with me wearing it and a coat, pretending to smoke.

Sometimes in Frunze I still got in trouble. Grandma Klava didn"t deal in violent punishments (those would come a few times in school years). Instead, she liked to forbid me things, though of course she would forgive and return them later. She could ban the TV or forbid me from leaving the yard. I became a punished "prisoner of the yard," hearing girls play beyond the fence but not daring to go out, because committing another "crime" during punishment would only bring harsher consequences.

When I was innocent, I could already wander far from home. Usually, Alina and I roamed toward the Bobrovs" place - the area where the big winter hill was. If adults wanted to find me, they couldn"t yell loud enough and had to come searching.

In the spot where Sanatornaya Street meets Frunze, there"s a slope with goats belonging to some woman below. The grass on this slope was already dry and flattened in the second half of summer, and I could slide down standing on my slippers. Alina and I were often there. I always wanted to slide down something standing. I wanted a snowboard, surfing, to live in America, not here among goats with a silly friend. I didn"t yet understand the main thing - I thought she was just dumb, an ordinary person. But she was "legally incapable." In Russia, this meant a citizen had no rights, and after her parents she"d be forcibly sent to an institution, even if she could take care of herself. Nobody would care what she could do there if she was legally documented as such.

We hung out in that place with Alina, kicking and passing around "poo balls," with a view of Saratov. We wanted to dream, and we watched the crimson sunsets - though you could see those sunsets from anywhere in Frunze.

Nearby, on another upper corner, there was a private house - Frunze 29. They had a pigeon loft, and from the yard there would occasionally emerge a small, sly boy, maybe a bit younger than me. With him was another boy - older than me, also nasty, but not a daredevil, otherwise he would have confronted me physically. He never did.

I don"t remember exactly how it went, but with the little scoundrels, we quickly got into a fight, throwing stones at each other. Alina sided with me and threw stones too. I generally liked throwing stones - I loved the feeling of the throw, especially when you hit your target.

Alina and I were on the slope with the goats. There was nowhere to hide except behind a tree below and a wooden post, while the opponents were above in a better position, building fortifications. For a long time, nobody could hit anyone. Once, the older boy caught a frog and threw it at us. I wanted to check if it was alive, but we weren"t allowed to leave cover. Their stones bounced off the post we hid behind, while mine hit a wall they quickly built from spare bricks.

They had a lot of sand, and often threw dried clumps. Eventually, I got hit - the small boy threw a hardened clump that hit my head and crumbled - it looked like an explosion. The boys cheered, and the little one laughed, pretending it had blown up. Feeling victorious, they disappeared into the yard. Soon after, we left. I was indignant. That summer, I never hit them back.

.:::.

Part 23, Text 6. Frunze cow surrealism - visiting Anya and Alina - mom bought a computer for Uncle Sergey - messing around in Frunze.

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Frunze cow surrealism continued. Sitting on a hill with Alina, suddenly you hear lowing - and soon cows appear from all directions, down every road, around every bend. A huge herd, like in the canyon in The Lion King. They move quickly, thundering, breaking branches. It"s dangerous - they could trample you - so even as kids, we were told to stay close to the house when they passed. Afterwards, the street would be covered in manure.

The Gavel girls - Anya and Alyona - were endlessly studying, even in summer, now with violins too. I visited their house a couple of times, maybe with Alina. There was a pie, perhaps for someone"s birthday. The house had a wooden lacquered staircase to Anya"s upstairs room. You could slip on it. I had been in a "cottage" for the first time - all these stairs, toilets on both floors, passage from house to garage, many rooms. This cottage inspired my drawings; I imagined such a place as my own, with balconies and staircases. In reality, their cottage was tiny, and I was impressed only because otherwise I"d only been in cramped, rotting wooden shacks.

There was always a strange, unpleasant vibe with the Gavels, as if they were Adventists, somehow different from us. One evening, Mom and the main Gavel went to 86 Engels Avenue, which she had designed. I thought they were building a second cottage, but as an adult I learned it was their church.

Alina"s family downstairs was also building a cottage next to their wooden house-hut. Two other childless households downstairs were also building. More and more construction surrounded the cottages, and Mom, including Grandma Klava, drew, planned, and legalised things for them. In the evenings, the dull discussions of blueprints continued in our living room. Often it concerned land plans more than house layouts because people were still trying to privatise plots advantageously, and Mom, through Uncle Sergey, helped them. She made it possible for the Gavels to grab the entire plot next to our wall, though it wasn"t allowed, and she would later tell me this was a big favour.

Earlier in my childhood, Mom even coloured her blueprints - all walls, how houses would look, every square meticulously done. It smelled of paint - probably watercolour. But in these last years, I didn"t see her do that. And before, if her blueprints were not just technical but visualisations of house facades, now it was mostly just plans. Everything moved to computers, and by then Mom had bought a computer for herself, but Uncle Sergey worked on it at his office. They had an arrangement: she bought it, but he used it for now - Mom wasn"t tech-savvy, and our camera had just been sitting idle for a year. Since last year, Uncle Sergey worked on her computer, and now everything could be coloured with one click.

In summer, it was Alina"s birthday, and I was invited alone, without parents, to their old blue house. First and last time I was there. The house was long, with a central entrance from the yard, and had only a couple of rooms: one on the left, one on the right. The entire house was as wide as a single room. In the main room, there was a table and lots of food and guests.

I already knew the pattern - in groups of peers and boys, I was likely to get into a fight - and I was mentally prepared. But although there were some boys there, everything remained friendly. Alina had cages with lamps along the wall, and inside the house where they slept, there were almost chickens. Most importantly, there were quails. Throughout childhood, adults had occasionally mentioned quail eggs as a delicacy. At Alina"s birthday, I tried them - and I didn"t notice a difference from chicken eggs.

Down in Frunze, near the almost corner house on Persidskaya, there was a girl Yulia, older than all of us. Sometimes Alina and I played with her. In front of her gate was a water pump - the entire neighbourhood came there for water since many had none at home. The pump was a metal lever, and you had to press the handle to get cold water, probably central supply. I once got sick after using that pump. It had existed since Mom"s childhood, and so whenever we discussed a sore throat, we both remembered that pump. Between it and Persidskaya, there was a small flowerbed with cherry bushes, through which water from the pump ran, and it was always damp. There grew poisonous wolfberry, chelidonium (whose juice you had to apply to wounds), and white chalk-like dog droppings littered the ground.

When there was absolutely nothing else to do, we"d climb a tree in front of Yulia"s and Alina"s houses, where the seeds were "helicopters," and drop them - like I had played with Mom in the park in my earliest years. Day after day, month after month, summer after summer. Alina had nowhere to rush, but me! So much time... I constantly thought about Vangelis, about childhoods like his.

In the evenings, as always, everyone sat on the bench. We, the kids, lit fires, threw potatoes into the red embers, baked and ate them - considered a delicacy. At the very end of summer was City Day. There was supposed to be fireworks over the centre, where the Ferris wheel was. Everyone sat on the bench waiting. I climbed the bird-cherry tree and sat on my favourite branch. I didn"t know what else to do. But Mom and I had to go to Lev Kassil Street, so we left late in the evening. The grandparents saw us off. We walked through the square celebrations - they coincided with the fireworks. There were many adults and music, and I hoped to see exactly where the fireworks came from, but I never did. Probably from the platform in front of Lenin"s monument.

.:.

___Part 24.

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________________Autumn 1999 - started first grade.

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Part 24 Text 1. The first of September, why and where I cried, kids, Anna Viktorovna, parent unions and the "yamamiy dead end."

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That damned first of September arrived. The end of all the Frunzas, Godzillas, and idle days. They dressed me in that jacket, put on my backpack, and led me toward the fair. It was a classic rainy, grey first of September. Along the way, other schoolchildren walked with their parents, holding bouquets, following some tradition I didn"t understand. The school was just past the fair, for some reason called a "peduchilishche" [teacher"s college], now it"s School Twelve. My father showed me how, and my mother photographed me with him at the entrance.

The whole atmosphere of "Electronics," "The Wonderful Far Away," flowerbeds, and all the super-boring, unnecessary stuff, even some artificial, lifeless crap I hated (basically - damn Soviet nonsense - I couldn"t stand it). And the bells calling us to class, the demand to sit at the desk in the exact correct posture, the strictness. The end of preschool lounging and doing everything however I wanted. The start of doing what strangers tell you to do. I hated it immediately. I hated following parent directives, let alone being a slave to other people. Compared to summer life, this was another reality.

I remember the stress vividly. Alone again, among a crowd of children. Waiting for the bell - it rang like a machine-gun burst shooting at you. There was a constant feeling that anything could happen, so you had to stay alert, vigilant, not zoning out, not closing your eyes. Everything was alien. The only reminder of home was my stuff - maybe a candy in my backpack, my clothes. Remembering how my mother had ironed those clothes, how she"d put that candy in - it made me want to cry.

But in first grade, I didn"t feel like crying as much as, say, in sixth grade, at School Thirty-Three, when I even carried a toy with me like a little child - it was harsher there. Then, for a couple of years, school felt like home again. Later - in the psychiatric hospital - it went back to the very first day of kindergarten, even worse. I want to describe all that damn shit.

In previous parts, I already explained or hinted why I cried in some places but felt almost at home in others. I didn"t cry if my mother talked to the teacher and the teacher was friendly to her, and I joined their conversation, so that we spoke as a trio. Then, when alone, that teacher might cut me some slack - remembering we weren"t strangers, remembering my mother and what we shared together, even if just that one conversation. In first grade, it was simpler, because there was only one teacher, and of course my mother spoke with her soon, and we talked as a trio, quickly "bonding" this way. Later, at School Thirty-Three, that didn"t happen - those teachers didn"t know my mother, so there was no connection.

Same in kindergarten: I noticed which caregivers were close to my parents and which weren"t. I felt motherless around those who weren"t. This pattern persisted my whole life, to this day, in all social situations. It"s closely connected to what I call in my diaries the "yamamiy dead end" (which I will address in the childhood story).

The other children - classmates - caused stress, but it was the stress of sheer numbers and real danger, especially during recess when teachers weren"t around. Kids are little idiots; they could even physically harm you, even in games. And no adults were around to protect you - that"s the stress. But it wasn"t like in kindergarten, where I always arrived to everyone already being there - we all arrived at the same time. We were all equal. If someone appeared mid-year - not just first grade - I felt like a "veteran" immediately. Often, that mid-year newcomer integrated faster and better than me, and I would fall back into quiet, outsider shit again.

Our teacher"s name was Anna Viktorovna, about fifty-five. Soon all the kids considered her crazy. But I don"t remember any real episodes with her. She seemed absurdly strict. A few years later, on the "children"s playground" [daytime alternative near home], a boy who had been in her class said, "Anna Viktorovna? Who doesn"t know Anna Viktorovna?" I don"t remember any real harshness from her toward me; otherwise, I probably would have cried and remembered it for life. There"s a faint memory - maybe she grabbed or threw my notebook roughly. Mostly, I just didn"t understand why everyone thought she was crazy. I went along with the opinion just to fit in. No Anna Viktorovna could compare to my mother during our arguments.

There was some kind of connection between Anna Viktorovna and my mother, like she could even come to our house for some reason. I sat at home on L"va Kassilya Street, watching "Godzilla" - the beginning, all those shots of radioactive explosions and iguanas - imagining explaining it all to Anna Viktorovna. This ties into the same theme as wanting to go to the Volga with Aunt Lucy, and other manifestations of having no friends. Anna Viktorovna never came.

I had no friends at that school - again, because there was no "mom union" to connect me. I didn"t see my mother interacting with another mother in a way that would "bond" me to her child. Again, part of the "yamamiy dead end."

I"ve never seen any psychology book or forum that examined the mechanics of social anxiety in this way, and when I wrote about it, socially anxious people mostly called me a schizophrenic. So I don"t adopt terms like "mother fixation" or "mama"s boy" - I named my own dead end. Later, I"ll create more neologisms for phenomena that resemble accepted ones but differ in my personal experience.

.:::.

Part 24 Text 2. A bit about lessons, eating stress and the plate trick, Dinara, "Yeralash-style" crushes.

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First grade left the smallest impression on me in life. At first, we went through material I had already done in preparatory lyceum: primers, writing letters, basic words. All lessons were in one classroom. I sat in a row closer to the window. There was also physical education - we went to the gym - and toward the end of the year, we went to another classroom for some music-related lesson.

The school building was square - like millions of schools in Russia - with a courtyard well, where our first-of-September assembly took place, and we never went there again. We were never taken outside. My "peduchilishche" had only primary classes, as far as I could tell. I don"t remember older students there.

Many children sucked on pens - it struck me immediately. This continued for years in every school I attended. I never did it; I found it idiotic and disgusting. I wouldn"t touch it even with my own dried spit, let alone someone else"s. Some even sucked after dropping the pen - I noticed that. I sometimes bit my own pens; the plastic broke a few times. I also picked at the skin around my nails, sometimes drawing blood - a trait to keep in mind across my biography.

One classmate was Seryozha, who will reappear later in my story. For some reason, I always thought his surname was Varanov, probably because his notebook had a monitor lizard on it. I constantly looked at it. Naturally, I wanted my own notebook reflecting my interests. That mattered more than studying.

We came in the mornings, not at some sadistic eight o"clock, but later. Around noon we went to the cafeteria on the first floor. There was the same fear as in kindergarten, though milder. One time I pulled a trick: I asked a friendly boy for his empty plate and gave him mine with food he had already eaten - I avoided trouble during the plate check. I was proud of that. After an early childhood trick I"d done with my parents at the beach, this was my second life trick - a clever escape in a tough situation. I"ve always dreamed of outsmarting problems. I wanted to be Guy Ritchie (when I learned about him in youth). I wanted to make stories like his. I only managed plate swaps and similar tricks in life.

I was proud because I broke my ultra-civilised, obedient nature and, most importantly, took a risk. If the teachers realized I hadn"t eaten, how would I have gotten away with it? That would have been worse than just sitting by my uneaten plate. For my father, I bragged later, and he said, "So what did you do, stick the plate on the wall?" - apparently, that"s what they did in his childhood. I often delayed the main point of stories with "Guess what I did?" questions.

There was also a vomiting incident with pies. They gave pies in the cafeteria, and I ate them. But one time, rice pies were given. I didn"t eat it there, put it in my backpack, and during a noisy break, tried to bite it - almost vomited. I spat into my backpack. After that, I couldn"t eat rice for a long time.

During noisy breaks, I masturbated by clenching my legs. It had nothing to do with any girls. It was a nervous connection, like I described earlier. My mother also had a new warning: she told me my penis would fall off if I "played in the ring" [as she called it]. I seriously believed and feared this.

That"s all I can remember about first grade in the peduchilishche. Except Dinara.

Dinara was slightly bigger - her head bigger thanks to a hairstyle, with side locks hanging down and a bow on top. Everyone was about a year older. She had blue eyes, light brown hair, which made it easier for my parents to know about my crush (if she"d been darker or Asian, it"d have been harder).

She was my first crush I told my parents about. Not the Olgas, not the beach sisters. They knew about Anya from Frunza, but not that I liked her (I didn"t know myself - I only see it now, as an adult).

Perhaps I had told them about Masha in kindergarten before. Why did I tell my parents about Masha and Dinara? Because both represented proper, correct behaviour. A children"s show, "Yeralash," aired on Channel One - school jokes, crushes on classmates. Parents knew it as proper. They told me: "Nikit, Yeralash is on." I understood that having a school crush was proper.

I never spoke to Dinara. I never followed her after school; it wasn"t allowed. I only saw her turning off school with her parents, heading down Pushkinskaya Street toward the Volga. Big houses were there, under construction at the time.

That year, I had a dream: Dinara living in a classic Russian private house - wooden, with patterned sheer curtains, tablecloths, dishes behind glass. Dinara was absolutely quiet, unremarkable. I will return to her one more time - more precisely, "after her."

.:::.

Part 24, Text 3. At Home by the TV - Shows and Movies, Knight Rider, Pterodactyl, Mom"s Work, First "Fuck," Arrival of the Down Jackets.

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Here, I"ll shift focus to home life. Lessons and homework will be covered separately in detail. I"ll start with my daily life on Lva Kassilya Street-or rather, my leisure.

It was minimal. It all boiled down to watching television, and-still-the endless digging through the wall unit in the living room, the drawers. I was drawn there year after year. There were records of fairy tales, reminding me of New Years-the best moments of my life. And there was tableware-sets of decanters I imagined I"d take to my own home when I grew up. As I"ve mentioned, I was already, in a sense, gathering things for my independent life so I could live long enough to reach it, which was why I went to that damn school, did homework, practiced writing the letters of the alphabet. I was constantly counting my money, my savings. In the wall unit, there were also jewels: my mom"s earrings, chains-in a small box. On the piano sat a wooden box with gold crosses inside. I counted and inventoried all this for my beautiful distant future. By the way, I don"t know what that song is about-I hadn"t watched the film-I hated the USSR atmosphere in it. Maybe "distant" there meant something merely far away. But I always took it as "distant future." I lived on a strong dopamine-driven enthusiasm to reach that future. There would be no school, no grey autumn. Only Dinara, my own home, and iguanas.

On TV, various series and shows aired: Guess the Melody. I didn"t like that Pelsh; he seemed unempathic (this was before The Weakest Link started). I didn"t understand KVN at all-I didn"t understand anything. There were also shows like Smart and Clever. A lot was about history; that"s where I first heard the word "Vikings." Perhaps there were images of them. I immediately associated them with fur clothing, Heracles, Xena-this whole incomprehensible, old-time, fairy-taleish world. I was only gradually realising that fairy tales, superpowers-all of it-was unreal. I still believed in Santa Claus. I thought that maybe, at one point, Heracles, a woman-snake, and Xena with her boomerang could really have existed on this planet.

But armour, horses, tattered dirty clothes attracted me far less than the other reality-skyscrapers, sports cars, and palm trees.

The best time in life was lying in front of the TV, forming my idea of the beautiful distant future while watching all these films and series. Jacket, wristwatch, shirt unbuttoned at the chest. Sunglasses. Convertible car. Oh... Miami Vice.

There was, for example, a series called Knight Rider. That really got to me. The idea was that the protagonist drove this talking supercar with artificial intelligence. They always understood each other. It reminded me of my dream at the time-to have a portable mini-TV. Only cooler, because here you had a friend built in, and everything felt cozier. You sat in your car, which thought for you, protected you. You could watch films inside, live inside, not even go out. You could drive wherever you wanted. It was paradise compared to school and the shit of homework I will describe soon.

In this series, an episode with a gangster aunt stuck with me. She approached the side window of the hero"s car while he sat inside. She said something-some final words. She had a gun and meant to shoot him. He replied calmly, looking at her from inside. In the end, she fired, but nothing happened. He sat with the same calm look-the glass remained intact. And the aunt, apparently, soon fell herself, as the bullet ricocheted back. It felt so dissonant. Nervous, upsetting, sad, painful for her, while knowing she was bad and "deserved it." A whole jumble of feelings that twisted between my legs, and in those moments I went to my pull-up bar, hung on the main pipe with my legs wrapped around it, and came.

I"ll also touch on Frunze a little. The start of school wasn"t hard in terms of homework, and we used to go to Frunze. One day, my mom and I went to Saratov, and we entered the Elektronika store at Chapaeva and Moskovskaya-the ground floor of a large nine-storey building. It was a typical store of those years, selling everything, but mainly electronics. There was a musical instruments section where I saw, for the first time, real rocker electric guitars in bright colours-blue, different shapes, maybe even a "V" shape. But that was too adult. There was also a toy section with very high-quality dinosaurs. Expensive. There was a Tyrannosaurus, but we decided to buy a pterodactyl for some reason. Its beak opened, wings folded-fabric, like stockings, formed the membranes. Its claws could detach-you could hang it on a stick. This was one of my last animal toys. Perhaps some snakes came later for New Year. But basically, it was all ending. I even fear it may have been a year earlier. But I remember that grey autumn day so clearly, and how we came back from there to Frunze-from the pure centre of Saratov to the middle of the village. Outside, there was Alina, mud everywhere, and I went inside and sat with the pterodactyl, pressing the button on its back, like a spine, and its wings flapped. The pterodactyl stayed at Frunze forever-it lay on the living room shelf next to my train set we bought with grandpa. And there was also my mom"s childhood doll. We bought the pterodactyl purely for aesthetics and quality; I wasn"t planning to actually play with it, otherwise I would have taken it to Lva Kassilya.

During the day at Frunze-Guess the Melody, later Xena, and in the evening, after initially simple homework, Yakubovich with his drum and "prize sector." Fatyushkin, grandma, grandpa, mom, Marsik-all in the living room, all sitting, watching, and eating sunflower seeds. Sometimes someone shelled a handful for me, sitting like a little king on the dresser, and everyone else ate them at once.

Around that time, my mom started having troubles at the institutions where she worked-architecture, administration. A woman named Lobanova appeared-some rival of Uncle Sergey, still chief architect with his BMW. Some schemes came from Lobanova. Mom"s work depended directly on Uncle Sergey. Mom would tell me a bit about all this. I had never seen Lobanova, but I imagined her as a mega-evil snake. Mom herself wasn"t liked either for how well she was connected to the chief. Everyone envied her, she said. She was always envied in everything-she said so herself, and it seemed true.

While I was at school, mom still worked-went, sat, drew-in the little house at the corner of Kommunisticheskaya and Gorky, in Engels. I had been there a few times. That"s where we grabbed a forgotten birdcage from the storage closet-I mentioned it before. Everything was wooden, smelled of an old house, and you had to go to the second floor. There was a hall with drawing tables like mom had at home. By the way, I might not have mentioned the board-scribbled with tiny numbers, punctured by pins holding papers. Usually it lay on our kitchen table, where mom worked, drawing-tilted: she put thick dictionaries under it, where I looked for an iguana and only found an igumen.

The same boards were in that office, with women sitting behind them, drawing. Aunt Olya and either Yulia or Natasha-Kiskin"s wife-whom I wrote about in earlier years; mom was acquainted with them and sometimes they might even appear at our house.

Sometimes I had to sit bored there while mom finished something, then we"d go home.

Perhaps that was why they didn"t like her-mom, that is. People envied her. Everywhere. Her modesty, good looks, and luck (which mostly only looked that way from the outside) caused problems everywhere.

Yet the last thing I remember about that office was a mini-party, some meal right at work. Tables were set; the women prepared something (probably in their thirties, maybe younger). I remember Aunt Olya-a small Tatar-Asian-cutting herring while I stood nearby, and she cut her finger. She said: "Fuck." It was the first time I heard that word. I even saw the blood. I was amazed at how grown-up she handled it-didn"t cry or anything. Another cut to my masculinity.

At the mini-market on Lva Kassilya, where everyone bought that herring, there were also clothing stalls. Mom and I wanted to buy a down jacket. Before that, I had only worn some soaking-wet jackets. All jackets, including mom"s green down jacket-I probably described it at the start of this biography-which she never wore and which lay in the corridor wall unit on Lva Kassilya-were made of very absorbent material. Now began the era of a new down jacket material. I mean the outer material. It also got wet, but it shone, was light, and still absorbed less.

We looked at such jackets at the market. There were puddles on the ground, reaching into the stalls, and wooden planks everywhere. The jackets were expensive. We noticed a black-and-red one, cheaper, but second-hand. I tried it on inside the stall. We thought and thought but didn"t buy anything yet.

Mom didn"t have much money at that time. And as I recall, after living with us at the start of school, my father was in Zavodskoy, and now it was just mom and me.

.:::.

Part 24, Text 4. Lessons and Spankings - The Psychology of Hating School and Nonconformity.

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And so it was time to return to Lva Kassilya Street, sometime in late autumn. School had become hard. No longer was it just "draw this letter, then that one." Things got more clever. Reading started, and accordingly, it was necessary to understand and think about things.

After school and other errands, we came home. I reluctantly ate, drank tea, maybe watched a bit of TV-just a little...-and here, that whole nauseating Lva-Kassilya-with-mom autumnal atmosphere was shattered by one word: "HOMEWORK."

Mom drew at the kitchen table, and I spread notebooks somewhere near her, at the edge of the table. Above, the aquarium bubbled. Behind me, some soup simmered nervously. By the wall, on the table, sat the phone, sometimes ringing, sometimes mom dialing. Outside, bare poplars swayed. It was close to three, already dark-and the bullshit began.

Something had to be done, solved. When you figured out how-paradise. Sometimes it worked by itself-I didn"t even try; I just guessed, and mom checked and said, "Correct"-and I internally rejoiced. Maybe that was how parents were supposed to supervise and check (otherwise, how would the child know if they did it right?). Maybe everyone did homework this way. Or maybe it was just me and mom; in other families, kids did it as they could-parents just checked if they did it at all, leaving the final grade to the teacher. But mom needed to check, and the assignments had to be error-free.

Her patience with my slowness was short. She could say something sharply, correct sharply. She could hit the table. She used suddenness, unpredictability. You tried to answer the task, understanding nothing, speaking nonsense-and then, suddenly, something exploded. A shout, a shift to super-strict intonation. A bang on the table. Tears came immediately. Why the hell did school bring this shit into our lives, these causes for conflict? Some fucking nonsense in a book deprived me of mom"s attitude toward me, without which I couldn"t live.

It was already dark outside. And nothing was done. You remembered the pterodactyl, cartoons, Knight Rider. Nick Tatopoulos and his beloved. Mary Jane. You realised all of this was absolutely inaccessible now, blocked by this bullshit, these letters you had to copy with perfect loops, some poems on boring textbook pages under the lamp light. Cold, wearing a sweater. What Mary Jane...? They were all in another world, another life. Would I reach that life by copying these letters? Did Knight Rider do homework? No way. He was already in that car, already grown-up, lucky to be in warm America, no textbooks, no Russian. He didn"t study any language; he just did everything. All those people on TV. And me-in some hell. And the constant deprivation of mom, her all-forgiving maternal attitude.

I formed a perception of school, of all those strangers, of the whole structure-as absolute evil. Invading our lives, destroying it.

We did homework until bedtime. Most days, there wasn"t even a thought of a relaxed TV life. No free moment for a whole film. Only snippets-when mom went to the shop or a long phone call. To play a cassette film required two hours and a "free" mood. That barely existed. Only Friday after school and Sunday. But Sundays often had laundry and cleaning. The atmosphere was still charged with tension. Saturday was also homework. Friday, I relaxed; it was the most carefree time of the week. Saturday, homework started. "Do the work-walk freely." Sometimes homework spilled into Sunday. The worst was when both laundry and homework coincided.

I brought home good grades, of course. In first grade, all homework was done with mom, so no mistakes or bad grades could occur.

But let"s dive into the shit again. Another day: you sit, solve, understand nothing. Mom assigns the task, indicates the workload. You try. Mom gets a call-twenty-minute conversation. You accomplish nothing. But no sharpness-her tone softened. Now she explains the task... You nod out of habit... Now, while you work, she silently draws in front of you. You try, but don"t understand a thing. She finishes the drawing and starts checking.

I don"t remember her exact words. Around fifth grade, it was "little bastard," "scoundrel." At the time I"m describing, maybe "little shit." Whoever I was, the key words were: "Now I"ll fix you." She"d leave to the next room. The wardrobe door clicked. She returned, standing behind me with it. Through rising tears, I tried to see... Nothing worked-I was stuck. She said, "Come on"-all with electric intonation-and I, in tears and daze, was led into the room. She told me to pull down my trousers, and I had no choice; it hit me immediately. I bent over, screamed, cried-well, that was all, really.

Recalling this now brings tears-not trauma. Not like those abused children who curse their parents, blame them. Not at all. I even searched my diary for hours-there was a clear text, but I couldn"t find it. Need to rewrite...

Firstly, of course, I was scared for mom. I felt she was unsure about the rightness of her measures, however aggressive she seemed. Her aggression was desperate. The thing is-it was emotion. What she did wasn"t punishment. Punishment is carried out by someone sure of the guilt and the correctness of the penalty. Mom seemed unsure of everything. I"ll return to this, maybe find that diary entry.

Tears then and now weren"t even about that. They were about how all this happened unnecessarily, unbidden. Not "as if," but exactly that-now I see what it led to. Before school, even before kindergarten, we were the happiest family. New Years, the beach. Now, somehow, strangers convinced mom homework was the most important thing in the world.

Compared to my three- or four-year-old self, I was smarter, and no longer saw these evils personified in teachers giving homework. I saw clearly-teachers just performed duties. The driving force was a depersonalised system, social norms and obligations. No one to hate directly, I began to hate almost everything and everyone. Only those who defied norms I forgave; conformists-almost everyone else-I hated. Back then, lightly-just despised. Mild background misanthropy.

I constantly wondered: how come? Even conformists acknowledge hardship, that studies are tough, require enduring discomfort. I also saw whippings, punishments for nonconformity in life and on TV. And yet, the same people admitted the rightness, appropriateness of these punishments. Fuck! It was like those wrestlers I called "volunteers of pain." I lived feeling everyone around was sick. I even became disappointed in those I forgave-criminals breaking rules-because in TV and books, they usually repented and accepted the punishment. Or, if villains to the end, had their own morality and ideas of punishment-seed of another system, like the common one. Where were the people resisting to the end?

I increasingly wondered: why do people live like this? Doesn"t anyone want a mansion by the sea, never worrying?

By evening, I had the characteristic "sigh after crying," that special chest inhale. It became almost daily. School began to associate with it. Textbooks, damn problems, poems, little roosters. All of Lva Kassilya, the whole apartment, life-became even more Lva-Kassilya-like. Everything was fine, as long as it wasn"t Lva Kassilya.

.:::.

Part 24 Text 5. Polyclinic stress... sleeping with Mum

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And again - anything to avoid the polyclinic. Fuck... some kind of shit started. It"s both about my dick and my allergies. If not school - then the polyclinic.

It always started in the morning: needing to shit and not flushing. Mum would scoop the turd out of the toilet and put it in a mayonnaise jar. Another jar - for piss. No breakfast - you have to go on an empty stomach. In that end of the corridor with the lab, looking out onto the confectionery shop - there"s a queue. We join, standing, nowhere to sit. Mum places my two jars on the little table set into the doorway of the lab room - they already have all sorts of jars like that. We wait for our call. I"m not going pale with fear like before, but my knees still shake, teeth chatter. "Next!"

I go into the room alone, give the doctor my medical card myself. Damn lab coats, damn women, damn sounds. It hurts like the first time, impossible to get used to. I squirm, tears stream - I can"t hold them back. But not so much that it"s impossible to hide the shame when leaving the room. I wipe them and go out, acting like I haven"t cried, like I"m cool. But inside I know. I squirmed and cried, and above all - I was scared. And I keep being scared. There will be countless tests like this.

Then a new horror comes up: blood from the vein. It"s floating in the air, I hear about it in conversations - between Mum and the doctors. Mum tries to excuse it: "Maybe it won"t even be necessary." She knows how I feel about painful procedures. She says, "It doesn"t hurt. A finger prick hurts more." That"s how I understand - it"s going to happen.

Weeks go by, just the slow trudge through rooms and floors. Another test I can never get used to is the scraping test. They call it "egg-worm scraping." I don"t know what it means, it makes me think of boiled eggs, runny whites, and pricking a finger for blood, because whenever there"s a scraping - there"s always a finger prick too. This one is on the first floor, at the far end of the polyclinic, away from Frunze. They constantly do scraping on me. Even at the hospital, when we were admitted, they did it.

Once again - I"m stressed - we wait to be called in. We enter. The doctor first sadistically reads something for a long time, filling it out in her illegible handwriting. Then she goes to a cupboard with all sorts of scary stuff, takes some metal rod, wraps cotton around one end, and says to pull down my pants.

Damn "pull down your pants" - my whole life that phrase has only ever meant fear. Everything in my underwear is tied to pain and fear. The whole genital topic is associated with fear, pain, shame, and humiliation. Cutting of the dick. Sharp pain in the dick. Scraping. Humiliating, stinking shit. Embarrassing descriptions in bed. The shame of showing my dick, and that the next doctor saw me naked. Spanking the ass now too. Also that tormenting hard-on that leads to nothing. And since this year - some totally incomprehensible thing with squeezing the dick, bringing myself to that strange state - shaking all over, terrified for myself because I don"t understand what"s happening. There was an enema once. And shitting is painful and scary. I"ve barely lived - who knows what my body might do - constantly discovering new things. Maybe when I shit, my body will just explode, and I"ll die. The ass is terrifying separately. I already understand that the holes in ears lead to a dead end - the eardrum, and the nose is connected to the mouth. So it turns out the mouth and ass are the only two holes in human bodies leading inside. I"m even afraid to think about what"s inside. I don"t even want to look at what the ass looks like - I haven"t, and I don"t know what my hole looks like. But during this scraping, judging by the feeling, they are going right into that hole. "Spread the buns." Fear peaks. Then - a painful jab, and I bend forward sharply and scream. But luckily, one jab is enough for the doctors. That"s why I think I never actually cried during scraping. But still - the horror doesn"t go away. The issue is also that it"s done by another person. I never let Mum do anything to my genitals - I"d have a meltdown whenever I was sick, and she talks about suppositories. Never, after early childhood, did I let her put anything in me. And here - a stranger is putting something in me. That"s the ass. I already once let something be done to my dick... I"ll never forget. And I live in the slow fear of some dick surgery, related to the stinging.

One day they send us to the first floor, the far end of the polyclinic, near Frunze. "Day hospital" - it says on the door. Under the desk lamp light - several tables, women sitting, writing. We sit at one. She looks like Anna Viktorovna. I don"t like it. We sit for a long time, she asks me and Mum questions. Mum chats with her informally. Everything about my allergies, how I need to live by the sea, somewhere in Kaliningrad... And then it comes: blood from the vein. I"m doomed.

Days of preparation begin. Mixed in with school and other shit.

Last autumn, when Mum and I lived alone too, did I mention we slept together on the big bed? I think only briefly. Mistake. Important detail. I"m inseparable from Mum. When Dad goes away - I immediately run to her with blanket and pillow, jump - and bliss. Same this autumn. We understand it"s not quite proper, but she justifies it: why sleep on a hard foam mattress when there"s plenty of space on the springy one? And I enjoy it - both for the mattress and for our little idyll. We constantly chat and joke.

If lessons went well. But if I was spanked, even if we made up, everything is still soaked in that trembling breath... the feeling of some tragedy. Like, here we are, going to sleep, joking. But an hour ago I was snotty, my bare ass got the belt, I was just in hell and shame, not at all like the adult I wanted to be, but like the smallest, most servile slave. We lie, joke, but both remember what happened. And both know I"ll soon be crushed by another stress - at the polyclinic - despite all my posturing, all my hissing like a lizard and copying Spider-Man and other stress-proof pros.

.:::.

Part 24 Text 6. Blood from the vein... going to the grandparents... Alina... November Frunze... genital phobias... Kuzya

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So the day comes. No eating again. I"m spent. Life - just pure shit. That feeling of trembling breath after crying - as if it"s soaked through all existence. I wait in wild stress for the call to the room. I"d rather a fire break out, anything, just not the call. But the door opens sharply, and the doctor says to come in. Fear so intense it feels like I"ll go mad. Sleeve rolled, tourniquet tied. I squirm, tears well. "Make a fist" - pure hell. I turn away, try to distance my arm as far as possible, like a slave tied by the hand, some prisoner of this damn life full of fear and shit. I already have some anatomical knowledge; I know that removing blood from the body is tied to death, because I saw shows on dying from blood loss. And there"s pain. I also think the needle might hit the bone, break, then the shard will carry blood through the vein to the heart. I crumble, slide off the chair.

I"m not exaggerating - even in 2024, they drew blood from me in the psych ward, and I reacted exactly the same as in childhood. They even asked what was wrong with me. This doesn"t get cured. Phobias don"t get cured. At least not mine. All my childhood, fear of polyclinics and painful procedures only grew. For example, in very early childhood I let Mum insert suppositories for fever, but by six, I"d throw a tantrum. It"s the same with everything. I feared vomiting more, and so on.

Later, we go to the grandparents - now I can eat. Delicious food - boiled beef tongue. Then tea, Winnie the Pooh sweets, two at once - for the vein blood.

We can go for a walk. I put on a green jumpsuit and rubber boots.

I wander over Frunze, here and there. From the corner of my eye I see someone at Alina"s window moving the curtain, watching. Soon she comes out. We start our usual pastime with sticks, mud, puddles. We exchange news. I can"t really get a sense of her school life... She says she also goes somewhere to study. What school? Seems like she doesn"t really go, she can"t describe it. But she has new words and manners, I pick them up. At school I speak to no one. In kindergarten, there were other companions, but now only Alina, basically.

The sky above - grey, grim. Proper November.

Anya and Alyona don"t come out. No one here has the habit of knocking and calling someone outside. We wave from the windows.

They don"t come. Probably not home. Probably busy with music classes.

No other children on Frunze now, none really at all.

We try playing hopscotch with Alina. I never understood the rules in childhood. Some girlish game, jumping over squares, but Alina seems to know, though I think she only thinks she knows. We draw squares with a stick in the muddy mess by my bench. Jumping here and there, on one foot, then the other. I jump once, twice, third time - land in mud on the toe. Boot stays in the square behind. Funny and the game ends. We decide to go home. And we"re already cold.

At home I piss, soon my dick hurts. Because it often hurts after being outside, Mum and Gran get more convinced that the stinging comes from cold, though this contradicts reality - mostly after cold I have no stings. They make warm water with potassium permanganate. I dunk the dick in it. Stupid, doesn"t help. The sting - hell.

When the sting subsides, Mum and Gran discuss it. They partly disagree. Gran freaks: "Natasha, but there won"t be any children!" What do children have to do with anything? Storks bring them anyway. I joke, but without laughter. Of course, no storks - I"m already older and know women give birth through the ass. So "without laughter." The fact they give birth this way hits my masculinity like a brutal whip - I don"t even want to think about it. This topic - total hell. I"m here in my own stinging hell. And imagine the hell of giving birth through the ass! Sometimes it"s painful just to shit. Or, like my Mum - being in humiliating blackout while they cut your stomach. Well, that"s all...

I watch some strange boring kids" series "Sesame Street"... Also "Alf." They laugh constantly - invisible supposed audience. What nonsense... Give me iguanas, palms...

After the overnight stay, in the morning on Frunze I eat boiled buckwheat with strawberry jam. I love it. On TV - the interactive kids" show "Kuzya." Beautiful host. I understand you can call somewhere - then, watching the TV (it"s live from very far away, via TV towers on the Saratov hills) - either by voice or phone buttons (though unclear how, our phones have rotary dials, only Aunt Larisa has buttons) - you can control Kuzya, while he drives some vehicle through mountains and forests. Like those games boys play in grocery stores with coin-operated games. Kuzya himself - some little black curly devil, but kind. A devil like that won"t fly at your lips.

.:::.

Part 24, Text 7. Costume and reptilian obsession, first experiences with the video camera, visiting mom"s acquaintances.

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New Year was approaching. The past two times at kindergarten celebrations, I had been dressed as a stargazer. Mom had sewn some kind of black velvet cloak and glued foil stars onto it. I didn"t know what a stargazer was, but I appreciated that mom had gone through all that effort. It was a part of her on me. If some kids had torn my costume, I would have burst into tears.

But for this New Year, I"d already obsessed over my iguanas and lizard-person fantasies. Mom, of course, doesn"t know exactly how to bring it to life, but she still prepared some kind of long tail for me-wire, foam... I stalk around hissing like a reptile.

Sometimes I play with this hissing, other times I"m just a normal schoolboy, carrying my backpack in daydreams to Dinara, like a grown-up. At home-I"m a lizard. In public-I"m normal. But in my head, even in public-I"m still a lizard. At the same time, at home, when falling asleep, I"m more willing to imagine being normal and thinking about Dinara.

This New Year is also the Year of the Dragon. I"m from the Year of the Rooster. And my zodiac sign is Pisces. I like it-I love the Volga and the sea. But there"s a subconscious feeling that Leos and Capricorns are somehow cooler.

The reptilian costume doesn"t work out-it"s too grandiose, plus someone would step on the tail. There"s probably a school "tree" event. I"ll probably go as a stargazer again.

Snowdrifts, snow, hills. It will never end, it will happen every year, and that"s good. This is the eternal return to my early foggy childhood, the time when mom still carried me in her arms, and we looked out the window at the raging blizzard, like a little house from Lev Kassil"s stories sinking into the snow.

Mom and I also gradually figured out how the video camera works. It"s amazing. I spend all my free time staring through it. It still has a distinct smell-maybe from the rubber eyepiece. It has its own sounds when turned on and off-I get a dopamine surge from them. The main fun of the camera is zooming. I zoom in and look at pigeons on the roof of the neighboring house. They"re all pixelated at high zoom, but it"s still cool-you can"t see them with the naked eye. I mostly watch from the window of the small room or the hall where the corridor ends. I can"t wait for summer to take the camera to the dacha, to the forest-I"ll film lizards. I want to film iguanas, everything, and feel grown-up and cool. I keep trying to figure out if this camera has a little side screen. I really need it to look like the coolest kid. I"ve seen adult men with cameras that have a side screen, bigger, with a standard cassette inside. Ours is smaller, with special small cassettes. But still-Anya on Frunze doesn"t even have a camera, or if she does, only her dad knows how to use it. So in summer, I"ll look cool in front of her. Basically...

We periodically visit people with mom.

We visited Aunt Olya, an electrician-behind the city Engels library, on Gorky Street. There"s a big courtyard we never visit, with garages around it, and four Khrushchyovkas surrounding the garages. In the far Khrushchyovka-Lenin Street, number twelve-is Aunt Olya"s apartment. It"s a very classic Russian courtyard: clotheslines, broken swings, cellar-garages, crowded apartments with smelly entrances. Inside, very little space and lots of stuff. Being there makes me realise I"m not in the part of the world shown in TV movies.

Later, in the same Engels district, near Gorky 35-where I was photographed with a little train in early childhood, and a big billboard with a trolleybus nearby-the Kiskins live in a five-story building. They have an old mezzanine in the hallway and a kind of cupboard under the window in the outer wall with jars of preserves. They have kids too, but I don"t know them; they"re never home. But we sit there, and there"s a pull-up bar and lots of children"s things. Everything is foreign; I don"t touch anything.

Mom also has a few other acquaintances... a seamstress... in the "Lyotka" area, beyond Grandma Klava, near Aunt Lucy, mainly by the swamp I mentioned before.

I don"t understand the point of these visits. I always sit quietly where I"m placed. I don"t touch anything, even if told I can. But I look around, sometimes noticing things-like a popular book about UFOs-and I feel envy: they have it, we don"t. Or at Aunt Olya"s, there"s a gaming console, and I envy that too. Not that I really want a console-our family never even discusses buying one-but if I don"t have it, I"m behind the trends. I need to excel at something else. Be a reptile specialist. Or have a cool video camera. Otherwise, how will I impress Dinara? She"s meant to be mine initially, but I need to keep her interested, or she"ll get bored.

Otherwise, it"s extremely boring sitting so long in a foreign place. I want mom to leave quickly, even home at Lev Kassil street isn"t much better.

.:::.

Part 24, Text 8. To Uncle Valera"s sons, freestyle and advanced boys, dopamine escapism into utopias, New Year trees, year-end.

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Suddenly, mom and I decided to go somewhere completely unknown on a freezing day-by marshrutka. Marshrutkas were a new type of transport: a white "Gazelle" van, with a side door that only adults could slide open, usually filthy, requiring you to duck to get in. Smelled like gas or petrol.

We arrived somewhere outside the city, fields or outskirts, but somehow linked to Lyotka or some kind of army. In reality, it was complete backwater with old 2-3 storey buildings. Inside, they made Khrushchyovkas feel like luxury. At least Khrushchyovkas don"t burn down. Here, just wood, sheets drying everywhere, corridors, doors to separate apartments.

In one apartment lives Uncle Valera, mom"s cousin, his two sons Pasha and Dima, and their mother. Some other people are there too. I don"t speak to anyone-everything is adult. I start sitting bored again. Mom asks Dima, the older son, something. Dima sits by a tape recorder-modern, because now it"s trendy to have a tape recorder and listen to radio hits. Dima says, "I can"t live without music." Dima is slow; Pasha is brisk, lively, and very fair-haired.

We stayed a bit and went back by marshrutka. Waiting for it in the frost, looking at the sun sinking over snowy fields or a frozen swamp for four hours. Thoughts-like at the dacha with grandparents, waiting for the bus: hurry home.

Dima had songs playing-hits of the moment. One had the word "freestyle" repeated constantly. It sounded unusual, very fashionable. Nothing in my world was associated with it. Back at Frunze, I felt like I"d been living in a village. People still wore quilted jackets, looked like homeless people. The "freestyle" song made me think of tape recorders, pagers, sporty guys in light tracksuits walking apartment blocks. They always had friends with bold names: Igor, Stas, Maxim. Always autumn, but they weren"t sad. Sharp Adams apples, cracking voices. Girls" attention.

And me... I was like Vitas. Who also appeared on TV then, screaming his heart out. Gills, but sickly, not like an amphibian-person from a movie. Balding from illness... a freak. Suffering from autumn. Cold. Around him were jars with preserved freaks (fish?). Felt closer to that. I couldn"t be like "Freestyle" or like "Tatu" with "I"ve gone crazy"-audacious, confident, but cold, fighting fate. I was just... pathetic. Constantly trying to find strengths in myself.

Escaping stress was easier. Through special daydreams. There was a cartoon on main channel. I didn"t understand it-older than the year described. Musketeers... "Albert-Fifth Musketeer." It stuck in my mind for escapist dreaming. Unusual things: Robin Bobin, wine barrels, Tsar Guidon, Pushkin, old times... fields, snowy hills, windmills, under the sun. Just like looking at December white hills of Saratov from Frunze. Between the hills and me-the Volga, bridge, cars, Engels center, whole Saratov. The hills were a dream. All the chaos between-that had to be lived. Go through all the shitty schools taking mom, grow up to Dima"s age, eventually go to Saratov alone. I"ll find things to do. Shops. Saving money. Collect sets for my house, my cottage with iguanas. Even without iguanas, it"s cozy. No palms, no open-top cars. No cars needed.

No cars exist in that world. Tom and Jerry, secret burrow, food stores like Mole"s burrow in Thumbelina, safety, comfort.

Freestyle... forget it. Musketeers. Don"t need that primitive, endlessly repeating melody stirring November gloom in big apartment blocks. Eternal autumn stuck, trapped in stairwell with pager. Bold, confident-but cold. ARI-like. Eternal fight with fate like Vitas. But Vitas already lost, singing, while Freestyler holds on, strutting in sneakers with his boombox. Why? There"s a sunny land, always summer or snow. Summer-like "Morozko," Ivanushka on adventures. Pines, forest edges, sun... Winter-like Frunze here. Hills, sleds. Only windmills and harpsichord music, drums. Motivating. Always eating Winnie-the-Poohs, Koozy in the morning, buckwheat with strawberry jam... Bullfinches, snowmen... Hot radiator pipe by the bed... Clock shows half past two-already lunch, soon tea, candy, cartoon. Then outside to sled till evening. Endless when I reach those hills. No late nights, no early mornings. No big houses, boldness, pagers.

New Year tree-in Engels operetta theatre. Mom wears makeup-rare. Many people. This is pre-New Year, ahead of holidays. Will receive a box of chocolates-I already know the tradition.

First time in this theatre. Coat check like in TYUZ (Youth Theatre). That odd feeling of disproportionality: without outerwear, but still wearing winter boots. Some moms in fur hats.

Some performance. I even understand a bit. Intermission-musicians rise in the pit. Mom says, "There"s Grandpa Lidushka." That girl who comes with mom in summer from Moscow region-we"ve gone to the beach a few times together.

Kids now-various-not just our class. My Dinara is here. Lobby near auditorium has a tree.

Performance ends-festivities begin. Santa Claus and Snow Maiden. Obviously adults in costumes. Pretend Santa and Snow Maiden. Works fine. I didn"t fight anyone. Kids in costumes too. Circle dances, riddles.

Buffet later, food. Unusual drinks-Fanta, Pepsi. Received candy set. All in morning session.

Later that day, mom and I took trolleybus to either Poltavskaya & Stroiteley (where Grandpa and Alina), or further-to "Himvolokno." Rarely visited by me then. Everywhere Khrushchyovkas, snowy empty areas along buildings. In summer-overgrown with grass. Apparently planned for another road someday.

Don"t remember exactly what we did, but we bought a New Year tree at a local stand. Somehow tied it, squeezed it onto trolleybus, brought home. Tree reaches ceiling. First time with mom, not dad or me with him.

Dad came. Always comes for New Year and my birthday.

.:.

___Part 25.

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...............2000 ---------------------------------------------------

.:::.

Part 25, Text 1. Gifts of tapes,,, anaemic Aunt Larisa gave birth to Anya,,, about parents" divorce.

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As with all previous New Years, there was the New Year"s Lev-Kassil idyll.

Father brought various tapes back then. For the cassette player - the one he always had somewhere at our place - he brought an Ennio Morricone tape. The melodies and motifs were already familiar to everyone. Father liked western compositions, I did too, but what I liked even more was the one with the staccato-marcato strings... It seemed to be from the film Le Professionnel, which I had never watched. For some reason, it always reminded me of Gagarin, and also of central Saratov, Lipki Park, autumn, and laying flowers - all kinds of roses - at some monument.

During those holidays, they showed scenes from the film Léon on TV. And at the beginning of my Godzilla tape, there were trailers for other films, and Léon was among them. I thought that film was about transforming into a lion. There were shots of a scene where a junkie was bent over - I thought that was the transformation. So when Father said the film was good and worth watching, I found it strange. He wasn"t a fan of any foreign fantastical action films - usually he was even prejudiced against them. Just think how he had called Spider-Man a year before.

The gifts included more books on reptiles. I felt like I was really going to become a zoologist and terrarium enthusiast.

There were also Star Wars tapes. They were in Father-Christmas"s sack, but Father said he had a hand in choosing these tapes. I somehow understood that he probably hadn"t watched them - he just knew they were some sort of classic worth seeing.

I tried to get into it, but I was waiting for the film we had watched together in the cinema - but it wasn"t that one, just some other parts. Several tapes. The space theme didn"t interest me at all. In general, maybe I could have gotten into it if I had been smarter. But I could only understand that level of film at fifteen. At that time, I just watched the pictures, the emotions. I don"t remember - was the famous Star Wars music in those? I mean, in the films I had: where was the hairy creature, some Jedi with a sword, the golden robot, Jabba and others? If the music was there, I didn"t remember it at all. Probably it was. Usually I"m very drawn to music, but it didn"t stick. Strange.

But the main thing for me, of course, were the scenes with nudity and violence. Mostly related to Jabba. The disgusting and naked - that"s what drew me in. There was an episode where the beautiful female heroine was Jabba"s prisoner... Flat stomach, undressed... I could only watch all this without parents. And the one I remembered most - because it tortured my penis the most - was the scene where Jabba had some dancer on a chain. She was disgusting by herself - with some awful tentacle-like hair - which added cognitive dissonance. Because then Jabba dragged her to himself on the chain, a hatch opened beneath her, and she fell into a pit. Then a door started rising in the pit, from which someone would clearly emerge to devour her, and only her face with helpless horror was shown, followed by just a scream. I just masturbated to that. With my leg-compression method, I mean. That"s how Father set me up. If only he knew.

I was at Frunze - sledding down the hill opposite the Gavel house with all three of my companions from there. Also again on the tall hill at the top of Telegraph Street, where the daring boys were. Long since without Grandpa"s supervision. I"ll describe that next winter.

I couldn"t recall anything else about that New Year... Everything fades. I should have written a biography in my youth, as it happened... I tapped millions of words to correspondents on ICQ... Thought it would lead somewhere. It turned out - the opposite: I just lost forever what I had already had.

But I remember visiting Grandma Valya - not on New Year"s itself, but later. And there was news: it turned out Aunt Larisa had become a mother. She had a daughter, Anya. There had been a story that Larisa had struggled to get pregnant before, had some problems with it. Later, Ivan took her to some operation in Samara or Ulyanovsk, where he was from.

Grandma Valya, at that time, constantly visited Larisa. And once I went with her. Larisa - a rather nervous woman, and with the baby even more so. We stood in the living room near a sofa I liked, and they were holding Anya. Grandma Valya said to Larisa: "Let him hold her." Larisa replied: "What, she"ll drop her." I never held her. Thinking now - I would have liked at least once to hold, to cuddle. But only a girl. A boy - only my own.

Near the crib there were various toys, a musical one with a famous lullaby tune, forever etched in my memory and associated with those visits to little Anya.

Later, when I read "shameful" stories online in my youth, one recounted that someone"s aunt had died, and he, alone, looked in her coffin under her clothes. He lifted her shirt - there was a scar on her stomach, fat sticking out, and he vomited in the coffin. Reading that story, I imagined Aunt Larisa in her coffin in her living room. She had always been anaemic, corpse-like, like her whole apartment.

All my life I envied this sister of mine in different ways, and it had already started then - she was born in the Year of the Dragon, as I thought, on the first day of the year. I wanted, damn it, to be a dragon. Later, Grandma Valya explained - no, she was born on December 31.

Larisa had some gathering, someone came - maybe relatives from Ivan"s side. Maybe my parents too, but I don"t remember. My mother didn"t interact with Father"s side. And she divorced him around that year. It didn"t affect our family relationships. She divorced for government financial aid, which exceeded what Father gave. But he continued giving small amounts when living with us. Mostly, he just gave his company - like that, on New Year"s. And she tolerated this company for my sake - she later told me. Now, at the end of 2024, I understand better what she meant by "tolerating." They always had a good time - it wouldn"t seem she was enduring anything. She meant sex. Around December 16, 2024, I understood this from my own sad example, when the only girl I had any hope with in over thirty-two years explained that I was simply sexually repulsive to her.

Returning to Father and Mother, about how Father felt about Mother - I don"t recall if I mentioned in early biography - when I was about five, we walked home along Khalturina, and I asked if he still loved Mother. He said: "Probably not anymore."

.:::.

Part 25, Text 2. With Grandma Valya to her acquaintance and the boy,,, Father paints,,, Anaconda film,,, norm-breaker,,, escapism into infantilism and cowardice.

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With Grandma Valya, we went visiting, a five-storey building diagonally across from the Sennoy Market. There was a lady and a boy. While our women chatted, the boy and I spent a long time examining "jewellery" - trinkets in their boxes. I felt he had the same habit as me - returning often to all the little things, even if not his own, maybe just to imagine possessing it all.

Then we moved to another room with a TV and watched Home Alone for the first time. I had never seen it. The boy had seen it many times and was preoccupied with something else, eventually making crude jokes and calling me a "stone pig." I didn"t fight; no conflict - just strange. Then in a third room, all toys, little cars. Probably a real mama"s boy.

Also, when I visited Grandma Valya and, in a way, Father (as he was living there in the last months), there was an easel in their kitchen, the smell of oil paints, and Father sat painting. He gave me a new canvas, and I scrawled a half-iguana, half-Godzilla. He hung it in the hallway, where it would stay for years.

Other elements of Grandma Valya"s apartment and hosting remained, as in early childhood: bathing with boiling water from pots, tropical-scented deodorants, a shoehorn with a horse-head handle, "Bibigon" on the wall, currant jams, and the gloomy cat Hans with his rag.

By the end of the New Year holidays, I returned to Lev Kassil, and Father was becoming less and less present there.

I already had the Anaconda tape. It was the perfect film in every way. A solid horror, a perfectly modelled snake with an evil face, ideal opening music, atmosphere thanks to cinematography, and perfect casting. Leading roles: singer Jennifer Lopez, unknown to me then, who by the end of the year would become my first purely sexual object. The male lead was a cool good-hearted black guy - apparently also a famous rapper (I"d only learn that in adulthood). And a depressive woman, who suffered fully, even shown dying disgracefully. It cemented me.

And the main thing - the snake hunter and norm-breaker, antagonist to the heroes. I wanted long hair, to be cool, army boots, pants like his. I was captured by the aesthetic. Had to wear those pants and wade waist-deep in water. I didn"t understand how - wet, disgusting, boots won"t dry for three days. But I had to, because he did.

I admired his norm-breaking, but only to a point. I had limits. I could never commit a crime against life like he did. I just wanted to cheat the system. I knew about prisons, had started hearing about the army, forming an opinion. I hated "total institutions" most - I saw life and the human world itself as a total institution. I wanted no rules but my own. I didn"t plan to kill, but I didn"t want to be forced not to kill under threat of punishment. I wanted freedom, to decide myself. And that didn"t exist.

As I switched from Decl and "freestyle" to a cosy cartoon like the Musketeers one, I did the same after Anaconda with the Timon & Pumbaa tape. Pure infantilism. No erections, no philosophical questions. Comfort and woollen socks. Stand by Me... stand by me... Episodes about the island with natives and the short chief, the flying squirrel, the snake-trap restaurant, a prospector and gold nugget, and an episode with the Stand by Me song.

The nugget episode, set in snowy land with large firs, combined with watching other northern-themed shows, gave me the idea of Canada. When I thought of New Year, Santa Claus, I imagined it all from Canada. Always snow, carriages, horses, ladies in furs drinking hot chocolate, forests and stones to dig gold nuggets and live in perpetual celebration.

I also watched some sci-fi film where boys put on VR helmets, controlling themselves supposedly in the mountains on skateboards, going down an avalanche, shown sitting in a room, turning joysticks. I loved the idea - extreme, no risk. I couldn"t risk anything in real life.

Once I watched or my mother told me about a film where young guys competed in courage, jumping over a chasm... one hesitated, finally risked, fell to death... all for a girl, just as all my attempts to grow up were for girls, otherwise I"d watch Timon & Pumbaa forever. Moral - why prove courage, if it might kill you... I agonised, knowing I would never jump.

On the last day of holidays - swimming, then back to hell tomorrow.

.:::.

Part 25, Text 3. Lv Kassil stuff and laundry,,, "rowanberry groves",,, the apartment hermit,,, Beavis and Butt-Head,,, Lotto and other games.

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I hadn"t mentioned it, but recently a washing machine appeared in the far corner of our kitchen - some kind of Bosch. And there"s a cooker hood above the stove - that came along with this mini-Euro renovation. But the washing machine is used as a tabletop for a vase of flowers, and the cooker hood is only switched on for light by my mum. There are lights in the suspended ceiling, but after they burned out, mum hasn"t replaced them, so we only use the main ceiling light and a small red desk lamp. I don"t know why everything"s like this. Mum is never satisfied. About the cooker hood, she says it doesn"t suck well enough. So, basically, our laundry is hand-washed and brutal. And no matter how much mum washes, the laundry just piles up even more.

The cold weather came, and some frost-related topics showed up in the school programme. Some literary text. Some viburnums, rowans, and groves. The homework - somehow make sense of the text. And because there was no way to find a single "right" answer, because there wasn"t one, mum and I ended up in some kind of truly unhealthy confrontation in the kitchen. Everything I said, she would answer: "Wrong."

I"d been sitting, racking my brains, for two hours. In reality, I was just sitting there, not knowing what or how to think. We sat at the same table, I stared blankly at the textbook, occasionally offering guesses, and she would just briefly critique them - then continue drawing her diagrams. Hours passed. There had already been shouting, everything - I"d already cried my eyes out, and a tense sigh had settled in my chest. At some point we were making some progress, but now she wasn"t satisfied with something else. I constantly had to assume I was wrong. I couldn"t figure anything out, and she had no strength left to tolerate it; she thought I was mocking her - and she brought the belt again. Tears and snot ran, sometimes onto the book. I even deliberately tried to let it drip onto the paper so she would see. I thought maybe it would soften her. But no, it didn"t work. She saw that I did it on purpose - I could have moved away. Shouting, a smack on the chair. I whimpered like a scared dog. The phone rang. It"s currently plugged in in the little room. She left.

She didn"t seem to move fast. I had a moment to calm down a bit, dry off. She was probably sitting there thinking that in the meantime, I"d finally figure out a decent answer for the homework. But I didn"t figure anything out. And time kept passing. I tangled my legs, pressed my penis tightly under me, and started tormenting myself with that forbidden pleasure. But then - quick footsteps, suddenly. I panicked, the chair squeaked, and as I untangled my legs, I hit my knees on the cursed table legs. And there she was: "What, playing with your penis?" I shook my head. And I was probably all blotchy on the neck. "Playing with your penis, huh? Let me show you."

And again we start the torment with the rowan groves, or whatever that text was about - I didn"t even understand. Once, rowans had been mentioned alongside bullfinches, and bullfinches were a sign of winter and New Year... But now - all this... Now the rowan is the cause of the collapse of my idyll. I"m alone against everyone, and on her side - the whole world of these "proper" grown-ups who went to school - well, more precisely, she"s on their side; she"s taken it into her head that they matter more than my happiness. My torment in my loins hasn"t stopped even now, I want to masturbate right this second.

And then suddenly the doorbell rings. I"m allowed to stay in the room... Uncle Seryozha came for some errands. Rarely does he come this late in the evening, but today - of course. They"re in the kitchen with some papers, talking about something. I finish masturbating in the little room at the edge of the bed and lie down to rest. I hope they stay longer, while these new blotches fade. Damn blotches. I always get red blotches when I"m nervous or when I tire myself with squeezing.

She even serves him some food. She brings me a plate to the living room too.

We eat, he leaves. I return to the kitchen and spread the textbooks that had been pushed aside. Now she comes over, gives hints. She"s eaten herself too. Maybe I just needed to eat? But I haven"t changed: I still don"t understand. My explanation seems logical, but she says it"s wrong.

She begins to admit that the homework authors had overcomplicated the task. We reach some kind of consensus and decide to settle on it. The whole day was wasted on one assignment. "Rowanberry groves" becomes an ironic term for assignments that eat up an entire day. And such assignments happen often.

We fall asleep on the big bed joking about how the rowans shredded our nerves today.

The best thing that could happen - is if I get sick. All school is cancelled, all lessons. You have to endure the hell of the first two days when your throat hurts - then comes paradise. Mum constantly goes about her work, I"m left to my own devices. I can tumble or jump on the big bed when my head stops hurting, or be in the living room with the TV. Mostly always with the TV. Wrapped in sweaters and woollen socks, super cosy. I run my tapes on repeat. There"s not much interesting on TV here, we don"t have the most interesting channels like at Grandma Klava"s, or they work with interference, especially NTV. But there"s some TV3, and it"s really good - all day, adverts for inflatable mattresses, some titanium knives. Everywhere shows American life - everything seems the same as in our Frunze, houses for everyone, and so on. But everything"s brand new, everyone"s happy, everyone has pools and garages. No gardens, no sheds. There"s a lawn, a ball to play with. I lie down and watch it all in a loop.

For some reason, I"ve started opening the door for mum. Ding-dong - I run to open the apartment door, then the metal one, then the wooden one into the stairwell, and mum walks through and closes it herself. She taught me to ask, "Who"s there?", but no one ever comes besides her, so now when the bell rings - I run to open it without asking and hurry back to the TV, because something interesting is on. A few minutes pass - and suddenly a male voice in the apartment hallway. Shit. I probably went pale, peek out from the living room - and there"s a man. Pretty young. He says he did something in the toilet and closed it behind him. I close the door in shock. I realised he"d come for some work connected to the toilet meters. Fucking hell - what if it was a thief or child abductor? Mum had said cultists or gypsies could steal me. Of course, I"d tell mum about the incident, that I asked first and let him in only once I was sure.

Another day, while mum is out, Grandma Klava comes. That day I"m running around with the camcorder, zooming in on pigeons, dogs running through the dirty snow. Grandma Klava washes the dishes - it"s the first time she"s washed dishes at our place. I, by the way, don"t wash dishes. I do nothing, except sometimes take out the trash, or when mum forces me to mop the floor - I never want to, but then she yells, and I cry and mop. I don"t want to do anything except rest. I want to do anything only when I decide it"s time.

I want Grandma Klava to look into the camera too. But she goes into her Frunze-style refusal: "No, I"ll break it. I won"t, no."

I"ve long sensed some tension between Grandma Klava and mum. Grandma Klava is offended at mum or at circumstances that forced mum to do something that displeased Klava, and now it gnaws at her. And mum"s attitude towards Klava is such that she seems to think everything happened correctly, and Klava just doesn"t want to understand because she doesn"t like her.

On other days - I"m alone again. Watching the courtyards through the camcorder, sometimes I zoom in and see Sasha Yemelyanov with other kids. Probably I could already be playing down there with other kids. But I"ve been through all that and know it will end in a fight or some conflict. Some freckly Seryozha will sense I cry easily - and make me cry. He wouldn"t even need to fight. That kid who called me "stone pig" - a couple more insults and I"d burst into tears and run to the adults. So. I"d be embarrassed in front of some girls, and how could I imagine myself with a girl after humiliation? No way. I stay home and don"t move.

On the MTV channel, which often shows something new and unusual, and which I supposedly wait for, not just prettier pop videos, there"s now a strange cartoon series "Beavis and Butt-Head". Two drawn boys with disproportionate heads, mostly doing incomprehensible stuff, and sometimes watching music videos that aren"t even shown on MTV. I find this series boring. Nothing interesting happens. Their life is very ordinary, almost like mine. And I want flying carpets, treasure hunts in caves, scarlet sunsets, and music. Or chases, Jackie Chan, stunts. But you won"t see iguanas or the Amazon on TV here - that"s only on Animal Planet at Aunt Larisa"s, and we have only five or six channels.

With mum and my grandads, after I started understanding things properly, we always played chess corners, checkers. Also Battleship - usually with mum, on a grid notebook sheet. That winter on Frunze, Lotto also appeared. Here"s some background.

Sometimes mum and I would go into the Sberbank on Lv Kassil and buy lottery tickets - and we even won something. Back then, all over the city, usually near bus stops, there were kiosks full of lotteries. It was super entertaining, they were beautiful, and you could win an apartment, a car, and so on... On TV, as I mentioned in my biography long ago, some weekends there was a show - called "Lotto" or something - where a moustached man would pull random numbered balls from somewhere - and someone in the country would win something.

And one time, Grandma Klava took a little bag out of the small room on Frunze - and inside were balls or cubes with numbers. This was also Lotto, only a version you could play with multiple people.

In this Lotto, everything was about numbers, and I was really into numbers back then, constantly impressed with myself that I knew numbers up to a hundred. When I would know and work with numbers over a hundred in school - I"d be like an adult. But I knew that in first grade, we wouldn"t be dealing with numbers that big.

.::.

________________I am 7 years old.

.:::.

Part 25 Text 4. Birthday,,, hit Polina,,, Joe Young,,, BabValya"s spaghetti, other people and perversions,,, gifts with turtles.

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On my seventh birthday, there wasn"t that huge pile of guests at Lev Kassil Street like in previous years. My father came, and then some of his friends and their families visited. Sasha Belyshev - a kind man - son of that Aunt Taya from episodes at BabValya"s dacha in my early childhood. He came with his wife and their daughter Polina, about my age or a little younger.

The adults were sitting normally in the kitchen, and meanwhile Polina and I were in my middle room. We played on my pull-up bar and swung on the rope. I had my little pastime - swinging the punching bag. Sometimes it would hit the central pipe, and it was important not to let that happen late at night because it would disturb the neighbours. But now I was with this Polina, and we could swing the bag, push it back and forth like a swing. Occasionally, you could even hang from it, but I held back - what if the construction couldn"t take it, the bag was already heavy enough.

We were swinging for a long time, and I had learned a little about this Polina - she was simple and not mean - and then, when she started staring somewhere and looking bored, a wild thought flashed through my head: push the bag harder so it would hit her. I decided this in literally a couple of seconds - and carried it out. The iron part, which should have been fixed to the floor, struck her in the face. Polina grabbed her face with her hands and started crying.

Nothing happened to me then; it easily passed as an accident. I might have even been the first to run to the parents and tell them. This was my second attempt - after that push at kindergarten with some girl - at a girl. There was no misogyny involved. If it had been a boy in Polina"s place - assuming he was as easily made to cry as a girl or as I was - I would have done it to him too. I just wanted to hurt someone in return for what others had done to me a million times. Starting from Kosarev, to my mother, to the dog Mukhtar.

I still didn"t understand that my revenge would never bring satisfaction. Polina was just the beginning. One offended Polina or a thousand Polinas killed wouldn"t be enough. Until I was loved, I would never be satisfied. And by hurting others, I would only become more hated and unhappy. But I also didn"t yet understand that in doing this, I wasn"t really seeking happiness. I would return to this again - my biography is exactly about that.

BabValya, who always came from Saratov with huge bags of food, gave me the film "Joe Young" - about a giant gorilla, spectacular. I loved it immediately and watched it many times in childhood and a couple of times in adulthood. Naturally, I liked the music, and the main motif was even present in the tragic scene where the heroine"s mother dies - I always cried, so I only watched this film when I was alone. The main heroine resembled my mother and also had short hair. By this time, I already had a world map on the wall in my middle room - two hemispheres - and I was aware that I lived in a completely different place on the globe, in total shit compared to where that film was - Los Angeles.

The last year had been a year of intense early education - I received encyclopedias, maps, atlases. I already knew that in our country there were no skyscrapers, no interesting big cities. And that dinosaurs lived in America, not in our shit. And all that. Roughly speaking, I"m conveying what my feelings were at that time about my place in life.

Around the same time, BabValya for the first time cooked and gave me to try what she called "Italian spaghetti". Just long spaghetti, reddish from tomato addition, and also with her favourite, the garlic she liked with my father. These additions more or less neutralized the smell of pasta - the very first reason for the hellish stress in my life - and I could eat it and even somehow began to like it. She also brought it in her huge bags for my birthdays or gave it through my father. Meanwhile, my mother noticed all this - how I didn"t eat her noodles, but ate BabValya"s spaghetti. This went into her collection of observations, which mattered for her assessment of who was better for me: with her or with my father and his side.

At BabKlava"s, I saw a couple of episodes on my topics. There was some Russian series in the spirit of "Streets of Broken Lights", and someone - maybe even a woman, probably a woman - somehow telepathically influenced others. And there was some villain, like a corrupt official, and she made him vomit. He vomited right at his workplace; he could do nothing. I felt as if she had fucked him, that"s how I experienced it then, not knowing about sex. And again, a confusing mix - the villain, who shouldn"t have been pitied, experienced such hell for me that I could not help but empathize even with my enemy.

And the second episode... Three men stand at an open window. One says to another: "Do you see that little garage over there?" The other says, "No" - and peers. At that moment, the first looks at the third, who is behind the second, nods like "time", and they grab and throw the one looking out the window.

In the morning, BabKlava was tasked with taking me to Lev Kassil. From early morning, really. But first, we stopped in the area of the first school, and there, in a five-storey building - Prospekt Stroitel, house two - on the first floor were shops, a section with cassettes - and we bought me a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" tape. Even though I wasn"t a fan, it would do. This was BabValya"s birthday gift. Back at Lev Kassil, still morning, the air - Lev Kassil frost, no need to go to school today - and I lay in front of the TV, watching the Turtles.

And there was another turtle at that time. Uncle Seryozha came to visit and also gave me a tape. He said, "This is a good tape." Fully sealed with licensed stickers. It was called "Mel". A family fantasy with a talking turtle, and as far as I remember, even flying. I watched it one and a half times and never again. Mom saw the cover of this tape, that goofy turtle Mel, who reminded her of Uncle Seryozha - and it made her laugh. Later, we remembered the name "Mel" simply and laughed because we knew what was funny about it.

.:::.

Part 25 Text 5. Mortal Kombat and the series tape,,, with Mom at Mostootryad and her grievances,,, first cat.

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This part about the "Mortal Kombat" tape I insert after describing everything else up to 2002. From memory, I pegged "Mortal Kombat" to early 2003, but then I found a TV archive and discovered that the series aired in the summer of 2000, and considering that I already knew the characters - that is, I had the tape - I must have received the tape no later than early spring or late winter of 2000, if not earlier. With this reconstruction of chronology, I was shocked at how early these key psychological events happened to me, and I had to adjust much of what I had written further in the biography to match this.

It was some evening, I was sitting in the living room at Lev Kassil, and Sasha Emelyanov"s mother, Aunt Vera, came. She had come to my mother on business, related to the project or documents of their house under construction, which my mother was handling for them. But she entered the living room and gave me a tape. Well, she didn"t give it as a gift; she said she would take it back someday. Just out of courtesy, when she came to us, she brought something from their house for me.

It was the "Mortal Kombat" tape - the very thing all the boys were obsessed with. But it didn"t look like the tapes mostly found on shelves. In short, it was a series, not a film - I would figure this out soon. Knowing the images associated with "Mortal Kombat" - open bodies, skulls, death - I understood that I shouldn"t watch it in front of parents.

I still don"t really know the characters" names or the plot; it never interested me. I was interested in people"s relationship to death, corporeality, and my other themes. But for descriptions now, I"ll check who was called what, and use names.

The tape had two episodes. The first, in the beginning, Shao Kahn tortures some girl in chains. She screams, real fear and suffering, sweat, tears, semi-nudity - and in the end, she is killed with a blade. A very painful scream. I write from memory, as it imprinted on me. Someone closes their eyes at the moment of her death.

Then some scenes in a dungeon, where Shang Tsung kills a water-bearer with one move, and a beautiful woman, Vorpax - his ally, villainess - approaches him and sexually asks why he killed him. They are both trapped in this dungeon, though they can sometimes use magic to move into the normal world. And because there"s always war between prisoners, it"s the same here. Somewhere there was a scene where Shang Tsung threatens Vorpax: if she betrays him, he will kill her. Life-threatening, of course - in "Mortal Kombat" they don"t know other measures. She is clearly weaker and afraid, and this looked very cementing for me - cementing my penis, I mean. And by "sexually" I mean only that something made my penis react, not that I already knew what could happen.

Shang Tsung - mega-dangerous villain, like a villain from "The Strongest Punch 2", whom I would describe later. Only here he has this woman, obedient under threat of death. Also, by killing, he takes souls. This soul-taking was ultimate cruelty. It deprived the dead of existence even as a soul, destroyed the concept of "I will always be with you", made it impossible for the dead to stay with their loved ones - or just to exist. My faith in the afterlife was no stronger than in Santa Claus and would fade later, but at that moment it hadn"t. So soul-taking was total hell.

What else... When the action moves to these dark worlds and dungeons, there"s always a soundtrack - heavy metal, power chord sequences, evil sequences. They played when Shao Kahn tortured and killed the prisoner. Reinforced my fiber... my penis...

I remind that even though I briefly rewatched some episodes years later, I write from memory, to show how it imprinted on me.

Then in that episode, starting with the torture, there"s something with Kung Lao in the real world. Taja, actress Kristanna Loken - insanely beautiful, Disney-like eyes. She resembled a girl I knew, Lyuba Sedneva. Everyone in that film is beautiful, all with bare stomachs.

I rewatched the episode quickly - insane. Words like "die", "death", "dead" are probably the most frequent. And all of this with fearless beauties with bare stomachs...

Also, an adult man dies; this must be shown - his last breath, in front of another beauty, Kitana, who later resembled Anya from Frunze, and in my youth would resemble a friend of Dasha - Polina Two in my diaries. Vorpax"s facial features and brown eyes later resemble a classmate I would fall in love with in second grade.

In another episode - two other beauties: an Asian woman and one of her minions. The series starts with the hero Siro fighting scumbags in the market, then seduced by these two lesbian prostitutes, giving massages and caressing each other.

It was insane. Refreshing my impressions, I was stress-sexually aroused. And these lesbian villainesses (naturally villains: where there"s sex, there"s trap and pain) send Siro to a dungeon trap with a crazy black fighter in oil, metal stick coming from his hand, eager to kill. He even comes back as a spirit to the heroes" home and says - to those heavy chords - "You will die". Heard in Russian dubbing, one of my first English phrases (and other death-related words). In the end, the hero defeats him, but he survives as a spirit. And the lesbians too.

Damn, I remember her - juicy, beautiful Asian face, open body, navel, soft skin in vintage light... But she is death. Insane... I"m transported back and remember being utterly shocked. More than if I"d just watched porn. Here - sex and death. Complete removal from mom, childhood... They"d tie me to a torture table, cut my penis, twist my belly in front of me while I cried for mom like in kindergarten, and she wouldn"t be there... Smell of boiled milk vomit, vomiting spasms in front of these beauties... All under clanging pots, blood tubes, guitar fifths in minor thirds and semitones - soundtrack of unstoppable incapacity, self-deprivation, and above all, permanent separation from mom. That was this tape for me.

Spring gradually warmed up. Mom and I lived alone, walked, I rode my bike - my "Kross". It still had a rear fender and a black plastic thing on the frame.

We went to the forest at Mostootryad; grass and leaves were already out. We took a camera. A piece of footage remained on a kids" VHS. We lit a fire, grilled something. Mom filmed me; I climbed a tree - wanted to be some professional tree climber, live with animals.

In the video, I say to mom: "Can you bend like a snake?" - in a tone implying that I not only rank snakes as most flexible and she shouldn"t compete, but also that I, in principle, despise mom. In adulthood, Mom often recalled that I acted as if I couldn"t stand her. I don"t remember, but that tone and such behaviour at that age could come naturally. Plus mom herself - fragile after her shitty childhood and suspicious. I imagine how much she misread my words and behaviour. This eventually led to the outcome in 2006.

I jumped over the fire, there was a descent to a swamp ahead, and I went down there. Cows seemed to be around too.

At that time, a cat appeared in our apartment for the first time. Grey and white. We named her Masha. There"s a short video... I don"t remember where she went... She probably lived with us a couple of weeks... I recall she ran into the stairwell when doors were open, then was found but ended up with someone else... Maybe mom didn"t want me distracted by a cat because it was a difficult time for school.

.:::.

Part 25, Text 6. English Gymnasium in Saratov... Bookstores... Uncle Seryozha gives rides... Going with Lyuba Sedneva... A computer appears at home.

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And then it came. In the spirit of those lessons at the Engels lyceum, my mother said that I would now be going to Saratov, to the so-called "English Gymnasium," for preparatory classes. It was in a part of town I hardly knew, but not far from the centre - the intersection of Bolshaya Kazachya and Universitetskaya Streets.

In short, it was a whole new epic. I had to go there in the afternoon, for a couple of lessons. Not every day, maybe a couple of times a week. Lyuba Sedneva went there too - a blonde nerdy girl from my second kindergarten, who lived a couple of blocks from us. I hadn"t mentioned it before because I barely remembered anything, but about a year earlier, my mother and I had been to their apartment in the evening - at someone"s birthday. And they had also come to mine, as I"d mentioned. So my mother and I were already familiar with their family. There was a quiet, kind father and seemingly a kind mother. Her father had a car, and sometimes he would drive me too.

The area where the gymnasium was located was busy, not far from the station. Lots of cars. It wasn"t some semi-hospital-like place, with ladies in white coats, that mess on Telegrafnaya Street in Engels where there"d be some kind of noodle lunch. No, this was just for a couple of lessons. And that familiar Lyuba was with me, and I knew that our parents were waiting either downstairs or somewhere nearby. So it didn"t feel like I was without a parent. It was finally great - just like it had been at the swimming section and the House of Architects. Parents were always nearby if anything happened.

We were given some homework. At home, of course, there were scoldings and spankings because of it, but I had already cursed studying - any studying, anywhere, whether pedagogical college or a golden gymnasium. Everywhere there are textbooks and exercises - always evil, no exceptions. But here, they were giving us some basics of English - it was still an "English" gymnasium - and that was actually useful, and I liked it. At home, I made my first independent sentences. "Ai iz Rasha," meaning "I am from Russia." When I would ford the Amazon wearing the clothes like the villain in the movie Anaconda, and with the same long hair, I would speak English. And in New York, my favourite city, everyone speaks English anyway.

When my mother and I walked back on our own, on Universitetskaya Street, across from the university, we started going into the store Chitayushchiy Saratov and spent a long time picking things out. I noticed it was a chain - there were other Chitayushchiy Saratov stores elsewhere. But the main bookstore was Knizhny Mir, at the corner of Volskaya and Kirova. We had gone there once on purpose.

In general, this was another Saratov epic - like when my mother and I had gone to a café here a year and a half earlier. It was that kind of evening: the chill of the not-quite-gone winter, the smell of cigarettes, hot-dog stalls, cassette stands everywhere, fatigue, the impending return to Engels by bus, and a headache waiting at home, especially if the bus shook... But then you step into Knizhny Mir - and all the books you can imagine, huge encyclopedias about animals, and there"s one called Reptiles by Brehm. It was the perfect book. Perfectly large, glossy, cover with little bumps, perfect green colour. Perfect drawings of every reptile, in thin pencil, full of details, just as I liked. I wanted to study reptiles for the sake of this book. It was very expensive, but I already felt that I would have it. I even wanted to study for this book. Even when in the kitchen I hit a dead-end on some assignment, I didn"t want anything at all - as long as it wasn"t studying.

I remember once I was sulking about something, and I had to go to Saratov to this gymnasium, and Uncle Seryozha was going to take me without my mother. It was unusual - I had never gone anywhere just the two of us. We stepped out of the apartment toward the elevator, and I kept whining, and in the elevator he shouted at me. That was the first and last time he ever shouted at me.

Of course, I enjoyed going with Lyuba. I wasn"t in love with her, but I included her in my social-sexual fantasies with tickling torture, which I"ll tell about somewhere later. At some point, on the drive in her father"s car, we even started exchanging little hints. I mean, we hadn"t spoken before - I hadn"t even talked to her at the birthday, nor ever. But now, to break the boredom of a half-hour trip, the two of us sitting in the back seat came up with a game - kneeling on the seat and making faces at the drivers behind us. Most drivers ignored us, but once, when we were on Bolshaya Gornaya, there was a curly-haired dark man, like Giuseppe from The Italians, probably with his wife - they were driving almost a Zaporozhets - and in response to our grimaces, he made the Buratino gesture: two hands at the nose, wiggling fingers. Lyuba and I laughed, slid back onto the seat, and didn"t do it again.

I was already learning all these streets. I liked it when someone drove us around Saratov. It was fast and carefree - not like the lousy buses, where no one gave up their seat and you"d stand almost an hour in traffic. I learned that when going to Saratov by car, especially with Uncle Seryozha, you went via Sokolovaya, and coming back - via Bolshaya Gornaya. There was also a place on Sokolovaya where a long, steep slope made your stomach drop like on a swing.

At the gymnasium, as I remember, I often masturbated during lessons. That was because the lessons were already difficult - the kids weren"t just sitting idly looking at each other, but focused on their notebooks or the teacher"s board. I took advantage of this, and while they studied, I squeezed that sucking feeling from my genitals like in a vice.

But once I did it during break, and some non-Russian boy noticed I was red and in some kind of apparent fit. He told someone: "Look how red he is." I didn"t care - I knew the parents didn"t know each other. By the time this boy told his parents, and his parents met my mother, and realized that I was the boy he was talking about - these gymnasium trips would have ended a hundred times over.

And indeed, they were supposed to end in late spring - there would be exams to decide who would move on to the second grade in this gymnasium, and who was an idiot.

Uncle Seryozha brought Mom"s computer to Lev Kassil Street. It came with a printer and scanner. All of it was placed on the coffee table in the living room, opposite the piano. The monitor was always covered with a soft white material from the box - to protect it from the sun.

Mom could turn on the computer, but she was afraid of breaking something. And I was too - I wasn"t sure yet whether it was already ours or still Uncle Seryozha"s, and how much it cost... I thought it must be very expensive...

For several days, Mom and I probably tried things on it. There was ArchiCAD and Korol Drow... Probably Uncle Seryozha had shown Mom before, and we somehow managed to get a 3D model on the screen in ArchiCAD... It was incredible - I constantly felt like shitting from anticipation at a million possibilities, thinking there was a whole world: cars, people, houses - maybe all of it could come alive... It was like toys, but in the monitor...

And if you left the mouse alone and waited, a screensaver would start - those intertwining tube-worms. It was the beginning of something new. The computer and monitor smelled new, like a boxed video camera.

.:::.

Part 25, Text 7. Last weeks of first grade... Opening of the Stele on the embankment and first time alone on the street... Putin becomes president... Gymnasium exams... Showing off IQ tests and failure... End of first grade.

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I still wasn"t allowed to cross any roads or move around the city alone. After lessons at my pedagogical school, we kids all stood by the building waiting for our parents. I remember exchanging a few words with a classmate about which roads we were allowed to cross - he named some street I didn"t know and bragged that he was already allowed to cross it. I listened and remembered a story from my father. He once told me that in his youth he knew someone with a habit of a dumb prank: approaching a friend from behind while he stood at the edge of a road, and shaking him forward - supposedly to push him into the street under a car.

It was already sunny days. In the last months, a memorial dedicated to the Great Patriotic War was being built on the Engels embankment, where the flowerbeds with tulips had been that foggy morning at the very beginning of my biography. The "Stele" - we would call it that later. One time, as I saw in articles, it was inaugurated on May 9, and the eternal flame was lit there - so the next episode happened shortly before that...

Uncle Seryozha, it turns out, was one of the architects of this monument. One day, my mother was very busy at home, and she gave me a piece of paper and sent me to deliver it to Uncle Seryozha. I walked there, he was on site, there were people and various crews.

Damn, I"m sure it happened, not dreamed - I remember walking up and handing over the paper, even though I don"t recall the feeling of triumph, because it should have been my first solo trip down the street. I"m ninety-nine percent sure it happened, because soon there will be an episode where I go almost as far, feeling the legality of it.

Those days also saw Putin"s first inauguration. I was at BabValya"s with my father - probably evening, he had brought me and was going to stay the night, then leave in the morning as usual. It was probably an evening rerun - we sat and watched Putin walking on the red carpet. Father said something about his age. Well, that he was certainly better than old fart Yeltsin, about whom my grandfather also said, "ne be, ne me." Of course, I understood nothing except that he was simply the main person in the country.

The day of the exams at that English gymnasium arrived. It was a momentous event; my father came the day before. I remember him asking, "So, ready?"

There were stories that you should eat a chocolate bar to think better, like pilots do before a flight.

The exam was on a sunny, late-spring day, like a normal pair of lessons at the gymnasium. The point was that you had to hurry to solve the problems - time was running out. I don"t remember if I squeezed my legs while doing it.

The problems were unusual, most completely unrelated to what we had learned. Apparently, some kind of IQ test. Later, my mother told me that I solved all the regular tasks well, but refused to do some of the others. I don"t remember exactly, but it"s quite possible. In such a situation, I would have been inclined to give a respectful excuse: "We didn"t cover this, we weren"t assigned it" - and not even try. You want to teach me mathematics and proper writing? Or you want me to solve these IQ puzzles correctly? I don"t see my adults solving these puzzles. Shove your puzzles up your ass.

Mom could later see what the assignments were. And she herself said she agreed: they were too difficult. Clearly, they were IQ tests. My mother, who doesn"t even understand adult TV series on Channel One, would call such tests difficult.

So there was no scolding from Mom. I mean - naturally, I didn"t pass the exams and didn"t get into that gymnasium.

And on the day of the exam - or before, or after - I walked with my mother and father along Kirova Street. It felt like one of those summer trips to Saratov in early childhood, and they lifted me by the hands for the last time as I jumped over puddles.

Those days also saw the graduation concert in the assembly hall of my first-grade school. We kids had rehearsed it for several weeks, and finally performed in front of a full hall of parents.

And that was the end of first grade.

I didn"t know how life would unfold. I didn"t even think about it. Maybe I would go to this school in second grade. Maybe - another. Maybe I would see Dinara again, maybe not. Even if my mother had told me what would happen next, I still couldn"t have imagined it until I saw it. It was like when, in early childhood, BabValya wanted me to go to some club, and all I could imagine for such a club was a circle drawn on the ground, like in Viy, with children in the center.

In general, I thought about the coming summer, not what would come after it. We walked home with my mother and BabKlava through the fair, through the food stalls. They were talking about something of their own, and I hummed the melody "I"m blue da ba di da ba da" - it was becoming my favourite song at the time.

***

.:.

___Part 26.

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________________First Grade Done. Summer.

.:::.

Part 26 Text 1. BabKlava gets a job at the military enlistment office and the beginning of the army theme,,, Mom kicks me out because of that bastard Sergey,,, main stuff about reptiles,, flies.

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BabKlava started working at the military enlistment office on Telegrafnaya Street. She had to fill out some paperwork - the simplest kind of job. I heard she would be earning a thousand rubles a month. It wasn"t so much about the money for her as about having something to do, as I understood it.

The army was a new, looming fear - worse than anything I had known so far. Father had said it lasted two years, and you had to live God knows where without your parents. I couldn"t imagine how, where, or why. He also said: all men serve in the army. He had served himself.

I decided it was the male equivalent of childbirth. Women - obliged to give birth, endure that genital agony. Men - forced to spend two years away from home and parents. Two years - not eight hours in kindergarten. That"s almost half of what I"d lived so far.

But I wasn"t thinking about it yet. I still had almost two of my own lives before the army. No need to burden myself - summer was just beginning.

One morning - just the two of us - Mom and I woke up on the big bed in the small room, sunlight shining on us, and we lay there talking. Somehow, the conversation drifted to my resentments against people. I remembered the angry kid Sergey on Frunze Street and the fight I had with him. Tears ran down my face as I complained to Mom - the infantile mechanism of begging for empathy kicked in. I always started crying when I complained. And then I even said: "Good thing his mom is dead." That got an unexpected reaction. She shoved me off the bed and switched to extreme severity. She said she was kicking me out of the house. I put on some clothes and sandals. I bawled and screamed, and she pushed me out into the hallway and closed the door. I stood there, whining, for a long time. It was morning, nobody passed by in the hallway. I reached the buzzer, rang it, but she didn"t open. It was unprecedented - being thrown into the hallway, practically onto the street. She had said gypsies or Jehovah"s Witnesses could snatch me.

I had a few coins in my pocket. One ruble - enough for a bun with sprinkles and jam in the centre. I went down, out of the building, walked along Khalturina Street, then Teatralnaya, to the bakery. Bought a bun and walked back. This was one of my very first solo trips outside - and the first without permission. I rang the bell, and she opened. She had calmed down, but still everything was silent. Gradually she relaxed, and we talked. We ate that bun.

A few words about my crying when I complained. It"s so ingrained in me that it stayed even at thirty-one, when I complained to Mom about not wanting psychiatrists to jab me and take away my libido. And that was already after leaving the psychiatric hospital - not to mention how I used to cry there when she came and wasn"t allowed to take me. BabKlava had exactly the same mechanism. She started crying even before she began complaining - I"ll probably mention this in the biography somewhere, because I started noticing it around those years.

For all my achievements - finishing first grade, the exam, even though I didn"t pass it - I was still gifted that expensive book Reptiles. I spent endless hours poring over it, already understanding the text reasonably well. I was eager to go to the dacha with my camera and become a reptile researcher.

And so we went. There are clips on a videocassette. There were other recordings, but they were lost when I later recorded some dumb gymnastics over them. I filmed that pile of boards at the dacha, which I had described in the early biography. I think a lizard even appeared in the frame. They were some kind of live-bearing lizards. I could already wander off alone, and I would go down the big slope of the ravine under the blazing sun, overgrown with some prickly plants, where lizards were always present. I caught them, then released them. I caused many of them to lose their tails by catching them - they shed them. I collected the most beautiful ones in a zinc bucket, as seen in the video. I always had two or three lizards in it. I brought the bucket home to my grandparents on Frunze Street. They went wild, jumping on the walls, rattling, and when the sun hit the bucket, they basked in it. The lizard story was constantly shadowed by incidents of loss. No matter how you cover the bucket with mesh, cats always found a way to get in, somehow overturn it, and I"d cry afterward. On Lev Kassil Street, I didn"t take the lizards yet.

Once at the dacha, I went down to the reeds in the ravine and saw a snake slithering in there. I was irresistibly drawn toward it, knowing that where it went, it would suck me in like hell. Plus, the vile snake smell. I was drawn to it and repulsed by it at the same time.

On Frunze, I constantly caught flies for the lizards on the sunny brick wall of the shed. At first, I caught them by slapping my hands from above, trying not to crush them. But sometimes I still did, and I started noticing disgusting worms coming out of their backsides. At that time, I didn"t mind. Then BabKlava showed me how to catch flies properly - a quick sweep of the hand along the wall, grabbing the fly as it was flying away. I mastered this technique. The only risk was hitting my nails on protruding bricks - then it would be a disaster. If the fly sat on a dry plank and you hit it and got a splinter, that was an even bigger disaster. I especially liked catching fat flies. I would tear off their wings and throw them into the bucket for the lizards. The lizards would pounce and eat them, often squeezing out tiny maggots. I also threw a fly into a spider web and watched a spider come out from somewhere, wrap it up, and eat it.

Once I became a master fly-catcher, I bragged about it to Alina, Anya, and Alyona. We also collected ants - well, that was with Alina or the silly Alyona - and for some reason, ate their rears - they were sour. And in the yard, under the attic where the wasps lived, once a wasp finally stung me, and I cried.

.:::.

Part 26 Text 2. Trips with grandparents to go fishing,,, first time seeing an iguana at an exhibition,,, postcard for Mom.

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The four of us - Mom, BabKlava, Grandpa, and I - went fishing in his car, but never again to that Podstepnoe with the snakes, now somewhere closer, still with lots of backwaters. Grandma brought food, Grandpa wore full-length rubber boots to wade deeper, and we had something like a picnic there. I ran around, Mom fed me, and I wandered along the shore looking for snakes. Watching a snake swim across the water gave me an aesthetic thrill. Willow trees, the scent of the pond and reeds, all green around, and I - the snake expert reading Bräm.

And then I saw a snake, all its writhing movements, and I knew some phrases in English... I just had to be brave enough to dive into the pond. But I would"ve been scared; it would have felt gross. I feared everything: drowning, being bitten, etc. There were stories about horseflies and gadflies that drink blood. There were cows everywhere near the places we visited. All near small villages. In one little river - all of them part of thousands of small rivers - I saw local kids diving in masks and resurfacing with crayfish. Once it rained, and as we drove away, I saw those kids diving even in that weather. I would have been uncomfortable swimming in water that the sun couldn"t penetrate. Especially scared of the idea of being in water at night. But those kids seemed fearless.

I was some kind of naturalist coward. In stagnant water, in some pond, if you looked closely at the bottom, you could see creatures you couldn"t even imagine. Crustacean freaks, some micro-monsters. And if you looked closely, they weren"t so micro. There was, for example, some freshwater thing - not quite plant, not quite huge crayfish-octopus-jellyfish - but it didn"t move, just grew autonomously. It had long transparent tentacle-like structures, almost meters long.

Often we didn"t go to a specific spot on Grandpa"s car but explored. We"d drive along a road, get out at a little stream, cast rods - nothing bit - and move on... Once we ended up in a dead end in the dry steppe. Engels steppe made me think of the USSR, tanks, Victory Day parade - the most boring associations. Another time, there was mud, we got stuck, everyone pushed the car. Cold, no proper food, only boiled potatoes with onions and boiled eggs, just enough to choke. But there was some thermos with tea. Grandpa looked through binoculars sometimes - he had a big pair, and I wanted one like that.

On holidays, he usually got cologne as gifts, which had no place to put, but once he got a super-powerful big flashlight. On Frunze Street, you could light almost to the bathhouse - three hundred metres away. But it sat in the box in the cabinet all its life.

Around that time, a reptile exhibition came to our city. Somewhere again in that eternally unknown-to-me Khimvolokno district with large buildings, where advanced teenagers walk around with players listening to modern music, called Igor or Denis.

We went there by trolleybus with Mom and the camera. Into some courtyards, god knows where, under the Engelssky sun - into the dark corridor of an old Soviet building. I was already familiar with the concept of "Soviet". Previously, the entire place was the USSR, everything connected to tanks, war, and fields with nothing growing except narrowleaf thistles, and nearby - Engels cemetery, potato fields, and sweaty women. No iguanas or English schools. That was my association with the old Soviet era.

We entered the hall, with terrariums arranged in a circle along the walls. And right away - the first one - an iguana. I"m a professional, I"m not going to run straight up. I step back, turn on the camera, kneel on one knee - I"m a professional - and only after filming the terrarium from a distance, I gradually approach. I studied it for two hours. First time seeing it alive.

I circled once more to film the other reptiles. I wasn"t interested in them at all at that moment; I was overwhelmed with the desire to have such an iguana at home in a terrarium.

On the way back, there was a shop with some sports equipment. We went in and bought me a mask, to see underwater like those kids with crayfish.

It was Mom"s birthday, and probably with Dad we bought a blank greeting card with a hissing red-haired cat on the cover, and I wrote a greeting:

-------begin insert-------

To the black panther!

Happy Birthday! I"m sending you a panther with a cat almost like Mashka. I want to wish you happiness and health! I want you to become a panther, but who do you love more, Dad or me? Dots for an answer. (and then dots and outline spelling "Nikita") Congratulations.

-------end insert-------

On the back - a drawing of an iguana giving flowers to a cat. We were probably still thinking of the cat Mashka as part of the family, just moved to other owners. The card was placed on the computer desk on Lev Kassil Street.

.:::.

Part 26, Text 3. With the girls on Frunze..., Mortal Kombat on TV..., series at Lev Kassil..., beach and the Nespeshny family.

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Among non-reptile amusements on Frunze were still the same endless games with Alina. Down there at Alina"s, a sort of brick cottage was partially built. Overall it was finished: basement, first floor, and part of the upper. No roof, somehow covered. The structure stood on all the free space of their plot, next to their old blue house, where they still lived, and so to get into their house they climbed a wooden ladder, ducked through a window of this unfinished building, and then went somewhere inside.

Once, Alina and I were sitting near this entrance; Anya was with us, and for a smart-guy effect I had some magazine with musical notes. Anya saw it and said, "Let me see," and sang what was written there. I was impressed.

But that summer, or maybe since last summer, Alina and I sometimes started arguing, calling each other "fool" and "dummy," and throwing stones at one another. I always had the advantage because I was above and threw more accurately, while she ran below and couldn"t reach me. Mostly she just ran straight into their window. We couldn"t hit each other at all.

On Frunze, I was often with my bike, although I still wasn"t allowed to go far. But there was already a more grown-up amusement - to ride "around the block," around the entire neighbourhood of private houses where our house was. Two or three years earlier, when I was first learning to ride, going "around the block" with mom or granddad was a local thrill.

All June on the NTV channel, they aired that series Mortal Kombat, two episodes of which I had on tape. I spent half the time on Frunze, and four o"clock in the afternoon - when it was shown - was perfect, because everyone was busy in the kitchen with strawberries and jam-making. There was a stove in the kitchen.

I could hardly see anything - the whole series was dark, but the sun shone right into the living room at that hour. There were endless deathmatches, soulless robots fighting to the death: Scorpions, Sub-Zero - the main characters" opponents. I wanted to be Kung Lao, with his hairstyle and that fringe, his black hair, his mental stability. Back then I didn"t understand that if I became him, I wouldn"t be as neurotic, because I wouldn"t be as tense as I was. I only understood that girls liked guys like him, not neurotics. And what to do? Girls need Kung Laos, while neurotics need girls far more than Kung Lao. The injustice was obvious, this dead end, which dampened my hopes of attracting the opposite sex. But I still didn"t despair - after all, I thought, I had a million years before I reached their age; maybe I would grow up. I had no sense of age or time - for example, Kristanna Loken was only ten years older than me.

Some episodes I watched at Lev Kassil. Those days stayed in my memory. By then the Nespeshny family had arrived - Lidushka and her mom - and in the evenings we went to the beach all together: me with my parents, and them as a pair. Maybe that was when my father first called them the Nespeshny family. We would wait for them at home, because our house was on their way to the beach, and they seemed endlessly delayed. And before that evening beach trip, there were episodes of the series. I sat with the remote in hand, ready to switch channels if my parents came into the living room. Sitting with the remote in hand, ready - that became one of the things most strongly associated with my childhood.

Before one beach trip, there was an episode with some old monks, and one of them collapsed during meditation - dead. Then the villainess Vorpax appeared, and the monk"s body turned to ash and vanished. When she returned to Shang Tsung and told him, she said, "His ashes disappeared." I didn"t know the word, and thought it was a poetic synonym for "corpse," because the series" phrasing was pretentious in its poetic tone. Her intonation and expression had a trace of suffering, as always. She was clearly afraid of death too, clearly neurotic. And that was my torment: she - like me, afraid to die - fought fearlessly to the death and killed. In me lived the idea, constantly searching for confirmation, that people who do not wish to die (the main definition of neurotics, in my understanding) should show increased empathy, cancelling out any harm to others. And that with their own kind, neurotics would unite almost to familial closeness. But in reality, I kept seeing evidence to the contrary. Neurotics enjoy clashing with others. And when neurotics meet neurotics - it"s immediately a total war.

Once I rewatched episodes on tape, and there was a scene in a dungeon with two kind women. My father came into the living room, and I paused and started talking about some special-effects movie topic, just to avoid continuing the viewing. He said of that dungeon, on a still frame: "It"s all just scenery, these caves are made of cardboard." And I thought - real caves.

Another day I watched on the small kitchen TV - it was black-and-white, but brighter and sharper. You had to stand by it because there was no remote. My father was about to go to Saratov - he was shuttling between us and Zavodskoy. In that episode, a woman seduced Kung Lao. My father came in, but I didn"t switch; I wanted to seem like a kid watching that, not Timon and Pumbaa. The woman opened a magical portal, lured Kung Lao to jump, then jumped herself, and he was stuck deciding - jump or not. Friends were left behind, and he felt trapped. Father was about to leave but stayed: "Let"s see if he jumps." Kung Lao didn"t, and the portal closed. Father then left.

The forest in the series reminded me of our dry Mostootryad. Sun always shone there, dry - like us. And I had already heard the main Mortal Kombat theme somewhere (it wasn"t in the series, only in the main films) and hummed it constantly. That series forever became linked in my mind with sunny, late-afternoon childhood in Engels, beach trips, 90s-style synth soundtracks, cartridge games I didn"t have, and boys I would never become.

That"s it for the series.

.:::.

Part 26, Text 4. On Frunze..., going to the shop alone..., bird cherry and stunts..., unbearable boredom..., trip with withdrawn granddad.

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When I ran into the Frunze house during the day to eat, Fort Boyard was on TV. One of my favourite tunes. Someone was always sitting in a dungeon, and if it was a woman, it was immediately "below the belt."

Evenings were the same - Fatyushkina and Field of Wonders. While I was at Lev Kassil, Uncle Tolya, her sour-smelling little husband, died nearby - hit by a car ten metres from the morgue. I didn"t know what a morgue was, only that it was somehow related to corpses.

My penis often ached, those stabbing pains, and in spring my nose and eyes itched again. Soon we all knew, the second half of summer would begin, with dust, wormwood flowering, and I would go crazy again, as last year.

Once after rain, I was allowed to go alone to the kiosk on Telegrafnaya, maybe for bread for adults and bubble gum for myself, which I could already blow bubbles with and brag endlessly. On the way back, near where the boys" hill was in winter, the ground was now a muddy mess, and I saw hundreds of tiny frogs, miniature. I took one, put it in some container at home, but it vanished, as if dried up.

I was already pretending to be more skillful and dared to climb higher on the bird cherry tree - to the very top - sitting there like in a nest. That was at roof level, and I could see more of Saratov from there. From my favourite branch, where I always sat (head-level of an adult), I constantly jumped. I wanted to be a brave, nimble stuntman like Jackie Chan in Armour of God, which I had recently watched. I wanted to jump from the highest points without breaking myself. I even thought about climbing the garage.

From the least popular shed in our yard, near the outhouse, where granddad kept all sorts of flammables for a hundred years, I took a bottle of something that smelled good (maybe kerosene, I don"t know). Alina and I poured some into an open container. I knew from movies that it could explode, and I wanted some excitement. I had matches and almost did something foolish.

Nothing interesting happened. Last summer - I forgot to mention - I found a rat skull and ran around with it. Damn, what a childhood. Even setting kerosene on fire would have been more memorable than all this petty crap. But I"m trying to convey the unbearable boredom of my childhood.

I constantly thought about Dinara, but I didn"t know what to do with her - I knew nothing about sex and hadn"t even formed any ideas about affection. My parents never even kissed each other in front of me. And films... anything in films could be fantasy. I hadn"t been late at the park embankment yet and didn"t know what happened there.

Baba went to her work. She came home from Persidskaya, where the Petrovs lived, wearing a puritanical dress with puritan collars, and a cloth bag in her hand, like in the USSR. Granddad didn"t work anymore - he only fished, always went somewhere.

I hadn"t mentioned it before: for some years he had a "romance at work" with a female colleague at his long-time workplace. Mom told me. Considering he was always immersed in himself, spoke little, and seemed uninterested in much, only reading newspapers, it seemed to me he was not very educated (though I can"t be sure). In his diary, there were entries like "filled the tank" - you can imagine the level... Probably just a working, ordinary woman... She lived near Engels cemetery. A year later, the story of his trips to see her would begin.

There was a compartment in the wall in the living room with money - a little, a small stack. Vodka was there. But no one drank; granddad didn"t drink at the Frunze house. One evening he came in red-faced, smiling, and strangely talkative. He was never taken seriously, but then, even less so. I still didn"t know that what was happening to him was called "drunk."

Sometimes the cat Marsik got drunk from valerian, which made us all laugh. I didn"t understand that it was drunkenness.

Once granddad needed to go somewhere and took me with him. We picked up an acquaintance, and the three of us drove to an unknown district at the edge of the city, where there was some garage. They did something there, and I was bored. Later in life I learned that granddad had his own garage there. I never went again. That friend later came to visit on Frunze - he was as stupid as granddad but talkative. Later he became granddad"s drinking companion.

I occasionally washed in the granddad"s bathroom. But there was always some economy: a cesspit overflowing, so less water. Mostly, of course, mom and I went home to wash. Returning to Lev Kassil felt like a light burden off my chest, as always.

We moved between Frunze and Lev Kassil on foot - mom walking, I pedaling back and forth. I learned to ride without hands. My bike braked by pedalling backward.

.:::.

Part 26, Text 5. To Kozlov"s Birthday... to the Fair... First Trips for Bread... Along the Embankment with Mum and the Jackals.

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One time, Mum said I was invited to Nikita Kozlov"s birthday - a kid from the second kindergarten. She took me there with his grandmother on the fifth of July; it was overcast. His apartment, as I"ve already mentioned, was just ten metres from the kindergarten fence, a corner flat overlooking Petrovskaya Street, on the first floor. Entering the flat, there was a toilet straight ahead, then the kitchen, and on the left the main room: a window with a TV by it, and two doors leading to small rooms. One corner room belonged to his mother, the other to him. His mother had a short haircut and was very tall. Kozlov was tall too, taller than me, but not muscular. Slim, basically. His mother was kind of a mom-dad type - she knew which games he played on the console, and probably could have fixed something herself. Unlike my mother, who panicked at every minor household problem and had no clue about my boyish hobbies (though I barely had any anyway).

There were several other kids there. Besides lemonade and sweets, we sat in front of the TV with the console, playing "Mortal Kombat." I mostly just watched, barely getting into it, probably because Kozlov"s mother intervened soon. She strictly limited his console time - otherwise, he"d never leave it. So we ended up playing something real in Kozlov"s little room. Then one kid, maybe Kozlov"s older brother, a couple of years older, started messing with the rest of us. He did a stupid trick: lifted us by the ears against the wall. Kozlov, who always looked like Pinocchio, just laughed through the pain and acted silly. I didn"t want any part of that, but the kid started on me too. I ended up crying. After that, I somehow signalled I wanted to leave, and Kozlov"s grandmother took me home.

With Grandma Klava, we often went to fairs for ages. She"d look for shoes for me. I always wanted something cool, but it always ended with some rubbish. "Tapki" - cheap slip-on shoes, like moccasins but cloth. Usually for kids, no laces. They"d always get sweaty and stink. Whenever something else stank like that, I"d say, "As if a giant took off his shoe."

Once, Grandma bought me a hematogen bar at one of the fairs. It was blazing hot.

Also... Mum would sometimes send me to a tiny shop in the neighbouring yard, at the end of the building - Petrovskaya 75. Only about five people could fit inside. No chain stores, just tiny local shops like that, still everywhere. I"d go there and buy whatever she told me. I hated leaving the house - I wanted to sit in front of the TV forever. Once I bought the wrong thing and she had to go exchange it. I also noticed they accepted bottles for money. In the city, there were collection points everywhere. The biggest was at Lev Kassil, near Gorky, by the roadside, opposite that nine-storey building with Sberbank (also money-related, though bigger amounts - Mum and I sometimes won small change in lotteries, mostly nothing).

Still, I only went out with Mum. Sometimes we took the long route to Frunze - along the embankment, descending only at streets like Rabochaya. Along the riverbank were rich cottages - they looked like palaces. Artem Ovod, a kindergarten friend, lived somewhere there. But I knew his house was simpler, like most in the area: old wooden houses. I hadn"t seen Artem since kindergarten.

On the Volga side, along the dam slope, there were cobblestones, trees, and occasional stepped descents. Where Pushkin Street meets the dam (at the start of a long walk from the centre), there was a descent and a small pier; a boat would go to the islands, where there were holiday camps. Further along was a rusty pontoon; brave boys would run and jump into the water. Further down was a floating house, like the one on the way to the beach elsewhere. There was always music and adults - adult stuff. And so on - endless. Once we went very far, and Mum said we could go as far as the cemetery. Beyond that point, the embankment was deserted, and there were no houses along the shore - we wanted to turn back quickly. Yet barges and boats still moved along the Volga, and the river bustle was much the same as downtown. Logs were still floated downstream. A few years later, this practice seemed to disappear - by my later childhood, I didn"t see it anymore.

Somewhere along that stretch of embankment, Mum and I once descended the cobblestones to fish. I had my bicycle. Mum wandered along the shore, and two boys my age - two jackals - came down to me. I immediately knew trouble was coming. And it did: they started teasing me and tried to take my bike. I was a helpless wimp, could do nothing, and only Mum"s return saved me - they retreated. Naturally, I cried. That"s what happens if you"re without Mum.

.:::.

Part 26, Text 6. Dad"s Art Shop... Fantasy Paintings... Vomited on the Way... With Grandma Valya at Bazaars and Buying Tapes... Hospital with Mum.

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Dad was living - it"s unclear whether with us or not. Hard to believe, but he had his own art shop, selling paintings and artists" supplies, even employing a clerk. It was in a room inside the city"s Engels library. In previous years, he"d stood outside with a book stall, passing artists and city eccentrics - all the Dimas Artoshkins from my early years and others - and realised they always needed paints, brushes, and stretchers, so he eventually progressed as an entrepreneur. He came there from Zavodskoy or walked from our place when he stayed with us. At home, he"d prime canvases endlessly in the living room. He also had a worker, Aunt Lena, who would later become Mum"s phone friend, and my saviour during the rowan-cherry groves adventure.

Mum and I would visit him there, standing around while I stared at paintings. Dad taught me to love bold, garish brushstrokes - "That"s strength," he said - though I couldn"t digest them. There were always churches and grey landscapes. I was drawn to detailed paintings with beautiful scenery, especially fantasy landscapes. Some even had dragons. Most importantly, there were crimson sunsets, huge cliffs at the sea"s edge, ships, castles - like the harbour scene at the end of The Lord of the Rings. I wanted these scenes to come alive - to be there myself. The landscapes from these paintings mixed with scenes from the King Arthur book I"d planned to read, memories of Saratov from Frunze, and illustrations from my dinosaur book: meteor falls, global extinction - a sense of unstoppable history, endless cycles of things turning into legends of the past. I had a sentimental sense of loss, mixed with the excitement of finding a lost world - like the Great Valley from that dinosaur cartoon.

One day on Frunze, I devoured cherries from the Gavel tree, near where I"d met Anya. Around six in the evening, Dad arrived, and we took buses to Grandma Valya. We were nearing the glue factory stop when I started vomiting - all those cherries, right onto the seat. We got off, and I vomited on the asphalt. It was like a thunderclap in my life. Vomiting had always been the scariest thing for me - like unstoppable death.

With Grandma Valya, as with Grandma Klava, we wandered bazaars under the blazing sun, eating ice cream, buying me gum and clothes endlessly. We went near the Saratov station, to 153 Bolshaya Sadovaya, with tons of shops on the first floor. Near the long-closed aviation plant, we roamed a mini-bazaar behind the cultural centre where Grandma Valya once wanted me to attend a club. Bazaars were everywhere. Eventually, we returned home, then went separately to a grocery store in a Stalin-era building near the district administration, where we bought tapes, finally getting Morozko. I was tired of waiting for New Year every year. I debated Italians in Russia, but Morozko felt closer. All my favourite films were very musical.

Damn, childhood totally wasted - on fucking snakes and lizards... I disliked the Russian rock I heard on TV, like Agutin. Dad"s acoustic guitar and piano didn"t impress me either. The music I loved from films - I had no idea how it was made. Only by getting into metal music, which I could understand creating at home, would I truly take up musicianship - and that was still far off.

At Grandma Valya"s dacha, I caught lizards and so on. I also glimpsed a girl in the neighbouring garden, also called Alina, my age. But I didn"t interact with her.

Dad picked me up from Grandma Valya. It was hot, and a poorly showing TV played a clip with my favourite song "I"m Blue." Dad said - it"s computer music. We took the bus to Krytyy, and at the cassette stall at the stop, bought Godzilla vs. Destroyer. A shitshow: not only is Japanese Godzilla grotesque, he"s also all burning inside, fighting some other nonsense. I watched it multiple times anyway. What else could I do on Lev Kassil in winter, with nothing decent on TV and no lizards?

I got sick again, and this time - ambulance and hospital. It was late evening, and for some reason not the central children"s hospital, but the one near Grandma Klava - Hospital Number Two. We sat on metal beds without mattresses, it was already night, then moved to a proper ward. Everything was a blur. I remember almost nothing. Of course, Mum was there with me - otherwise I"d remember everything. Probably allergy-related, since I recall no fever. I remember only being discharged.

Firstly, that euphoric sense of wonder - feeling something impossible. Meaning: finally leaving that misery. It"s unbelievable that in an hour you"ll be free, and even more, you can"t believe you actually are. After a maze of stairs and corridors, we went along a long green corridor, seemingly underground, with pipes along the walls, lamps... Then the wardrobe for belongings - standard discharge procedure...

Finally, we walked back to Grandma"s. At home, I jumped on the bed in the passage room from sheer joy. Somersaulting, flipping. I did flips on the soft beds - not fully, just tossing myself in the air and landing on my back. Radio Mayak playing in the kitchen, returning to the old routine - sheer bliss. I hate confinement in hospitals so much. I didn"t yet know how much fate would throw me into it again.

.:.

___Part 27

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Part 27 Text 1. Fantasies about torturing girls, Anya touches with a blade of grass, ideas for catching pigeons and the beginning of sexual observation, dogs on the backside, bullying Alina, throwing stones, hyper-punishment on demand, butt-related writing, milk teeth and adult grievances.

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Back to Frunze again, Frunze. My allergies were already hitting, and by evening I was swelling up. Alina and I ran everywhere, fascinated by a berry bush opposite the Bobrovs" (a few houses down from ours, near the boy we threw stones at a year ago). The berry was edible, just a special kind of currant. She and I spent more than one day there, eating so much it"s strange I never threw up. Alena, younger and naïve, sometimes joined us, and I remember scaring her somehow. Later, during light sadistic fantasies through the rest of my childhood, she was there too. Mostly I imagined a torture table where the girls and I tickled each other. Anya was there, and anyone else I could recall. Maybe even Dinara, since by now it was no longer "schoolgirl crush" as in Yeralash, but regular-sex-related. We took turns tickling each other-me and them. Often, in the fantasy, it wasn"t so much tickling as threatening that we"d tickle-like when you bring your hand to a stomach, and the stomach flinches on its own.

The torture fetish definitely came from Mortal Kombat. I saw it three years before any porn. I can"t remember if there was anything harsher than tickling in these sexual fantasies with real girls. Alena probably cried sometimes, and it aroused me, but I comforted her rather than hurt her.

We didn"t play "mom-and-daughter" anymore. Anya could no longer organise proper games. Alina and I were already mischievous. One afternoon, before heading home, exhausted by the heat and boredom, Anya and I sat on my bench, and something physical happened. She ran a blade of grass across my bare knee with her fingers. That moment-etched in memory for life.

Near Chizhi, under some trees, bored, I started trying to catch pigeons or birds-this idea obsessed me. I imagined using an upside-down basin with bait underneath, propping it on a stick, and tying a string to it.

During trips with my mother to L"v Kassil, where my father was, we went to the beach, and I endlessly thought about catching pigeons or sparrows. Ideally, I wanted to catch them by hand, not understanding why I couldn"t.

At the same time, on these walks to the beach, I began noticing sexual behaviour in people on the embankment at evenings. Girls stood with their backs to railings, hugging boys who pressed against them. This clearly mirrored bedroom scenes in films.

Once in Frunze, Alina walked their small Rottweiler, and it lunged at me-I felt its jaws on my backside, got scared, and cried. Another time, I came up from Persidskaya where the Petrovs lived, and their dog attacked-again, I felt its jaws and almost cried. I always cried from shame at my fear-shame magnified in my imagination into disgrace.

Alina and I were fully in our "friend-enemy" mode. One moment we were eating berries, the next we were throwing stones.

In front of Fatyushkin"s house was a flower garden with plum trees. Well, they weren"t really alive-they were eaten by some parasite and wrapped in webs, crawling with worms. One day, a little boy wandered into Frunze. One of the rare instances of other children appearing there besides us locals. I teamed up with him to torment Alina. I fully assumed the role of a small-time thug for amusement. I even thought that in a bad company, I"d easily pick up all the bad habits. Later, I"ll analyse the psychology of this. Anyway, Alina wore a short top exposing her belly. I climbed one of the infected plum trees, gathered a bunch of worms, and threw them at her stomach. She was obviously disgusted and cried-the only time I saw her cry. I think it affected her that I wasn"t alone, but allied with the boy. She felt defenseless.

Another day, we threw stones at each other again. Suddenly her mother came out and walked toward my house. I knew trouble was coming. I don"t remember from whom exactly-perhaps Baba Klava too-but I got a proper whipping with a belt. I remember the absurdity-more precisely, the bureaucratic logic: my adults knew we were throwing stones, but they seemed to need an official request to execute punishment. This hyper-punishment for stone-throwing stuck in my memory (probably from my mother). Sometimes I lived at Frunze, misbehaved, and later at L"v Kassil my mother administered delayed punishment for all accumulated misdeeds.

I still struggled with urges to write stories. I wanted to create a reality and live in it. I imagined a tsiklyura (a kind of lizard) walking on two legs, talking, my friend. But I couldn"t get past one page of the notebook. I had no idea what should happen next. I was totally empty. Damn.

My baby teeth were falling out, but one got stuck. My mother and I went to the city dental clinic at the corner of Petrovskaya and Mayakovskaya. I cried there. Later, we took the bus to Baba Klava"s. I was still sniffling. But I remember it wasn"t just the pain-it was a conflict with my mother, a grown-up level grievance. I thought to myself: "Not ice cream, a real adult problem." I"ll never forget it. When we got to Frunze, my penis hurt.

.:::.

Part 27 Text 2. Boredom on Frunze, infantilism on Persidskaya, hitting the bastard in the head with a stone, fear of mom going to jail, buying me a Ken, walking with the woman who gave me life.

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Baba Klava made pastila from apples, constantly processed tomatoes for juice-half the Frunze garden was tomato plants. The juice was thick, not like store-bought, and unsalted-she added nothing.

In the yard was a raspberry bush under the Fatyushkins" window-I climbed under it imagining adventures.

Near the rubbish heap was a summer shower-apparently never used. I climbed it; the roof was scorching. I jumped onto soft earth-I was an aspiring parkourist, though that word didn"t exist yet.

Over heaps of manure behind the toilet-which, by the way, I liked the smell of, a mix of shit and wood-I learned to climb the shed with kerosene bottles, then another step up to the workshop roof, and then the cellar. I wanted to jump down, but it was like one-and-a-half human heights, and I couldn"t find a flat spot. Below was a stump, and my mother told me that in her childhood, her grandfather used it to behead chickens-later running headless around the yard. I hammered nails into that stump in early childhood.

I also climbed the attic of the house-an earlier wasp sting made me nervous. It was dark; I understood nothing. I climbed the sennaya roof via an iron ladder, but the view was blocked by bird-cherry trees. I wanted to see Saratov in the distance. Only the garage left. Once I climbed it via a fence, but either it was dangerous (mom said she hung on a nail as a child and got sewn up), or I wasn"t allowed to climb the fence-it wobbled-so I needed another route.

I wandered the yard clueless. Old boards everywhere reminded me of the time two years ago I hit a wall with a stick and embarrassed myself in front of Anya.

No more visits from Lyosha Fatyushkin or Katya like in past summers. But Fatyushkin"s granddaughter Natasha-almost adult-sometimes came to our house. She was around sixteen but seemed very grown-up.

My eyes, nose, throat itched. Scratching made it worse.

Eventually, I slipped through a nasty gap overrun with webs and hedgehogs, between the Fatyushkins" fence and our garage, and emerged at a dead end. I climbed onto the garage. Finally, I could show off to the girls my location, and most importantly-I could dream there. I lay on the tarred roof, still warm from the day, watching the sunset over distant Saratov, remembering trips, thinking of Dinara who lived between me and that view.

I got cocky-riding my bike down Persidskaya. Above, opposite the corner house where the boy Sergey sometimes lived, there was a neutral boy whose parents knew mine slightly. Alina and I hung out there. Some old folks chatted nearby; we, kids, were close.

That spot had a little platform with a beautiful sunset view-a cosy, hidden little cliff. Cars passed Persidskaya, sometimes turning onto our Frunze; you sat above watching Saratov, near the old-timers, who could protect from other boys, from any Sergey.

Eventually, I got fed up with this infantilism. I took my bike to the other end of the Frunze block to settle the score with the boy who hit me in the head a year ago. Alina and I had already seen him this year eating currants from that bush.

I arrived, and soon a long-range fight began. I threw stones at him for maybe an hour-alone, without backup. One stone hit his head directly. I didn"t check if he was hurt, just grabbed my bike and left. I felt triumphant and scared.

Adults warned that a hit to the temple could kill. I feared I might have hit him. That fear probably explains why, in childhood, I never contemplated murder. Maybe I thought no one would know it was me. Windows overlooked the spot only in one house, where an old lady with goats lived-probably she didn"t care. Still, I quickly left for the group I"d come from. Alina wasn"t there; I felt lonely and went home.

At some point, my long-standing desire for a Ken doll of perfect scale returned. That winter or spring, I forgot to mention: one day I sat with my mother on Frunze, and Uncle Sergey drove us straight to central Saratov-Detsky Mir-where I looked at sets with Ken in different camo and gear-radios, etc. Perfect. I imagined him under toy palms, climbing trees. I had such dopamine that day-I thought mom would buy him. But they were super expensive.

That summer, I kept thinking of the perfect Ken. One day we visited the Engels city museum, where a display of old-life dolls caught my eye. I couldn"t tear myself away. A museum worker, familiar with my mother, said: "Buy it for him. He loves people."

One day, we walked around central Saratov. Everything was familiar-I knew the blocks along Kirov Avenue, our location. We went into a store at Gorky and Yablochkova. They had a section of expensive toys. We bought Ken-a business Ken in a black velvet jacket, I think mom later sewed it. Real hair, rubber skin, bendable knees, some clicking parts. We returned home on Chapaev and Moskovskaya. Mom seemed unsure, but I was too old for dolls anyway.

Related to toys: one hot day in Engels, walking with mom, we met a boy with his mother. Mom knew her, arranged the meeting. Later I learned it was the mother from whose birthday my parents had first met. Her son was my age. They gave me puzzles. We walked the embankment and park, then amusement park. I rode a little train with the boy, then the boats-our favourite. Boats were like daisies among attractions. I got in with him; he didn"t know how to push off. I rocked him instead. His mom said, "Thanks for the ride." They left, we parted forever.

At home, I looked at my toys. I had the sense that it was over. I stored my toys in the pull-out bottom drawer of the cabinet my father made. Or rather, I scattered them from it; mom had to make me tidy up-something I hated.

We got a huge green grasshopper, lived a few days on L"v Kassil. Vibrant green, with that strange tail sabre. I had an insect encyclopedia. At night, it chirped in my parents" small room.

.:::.

Part 27 text 3. To the south, to Anapa with the Emelyanovs for the second time,,, guest house and surroundings,,, on the beach,,, I fell in love with a girl,,, got ill,,, Muscovites and iguanas,,, someone drowned,,, Sasha had a quarrel,, and I got hit for it.

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It was already getting close to the end of summer. Mum used to say that the end of summer was the best time to go south. We were going south to Anapa with the Emelyanovs again. This time we would go by train. The first time in my life I would travel by train.

It all began late in the evening on Lev Kassil Street. Dad was there. The three of us went to the Saratov railway station. It felt strange - I had never travelled to Saratov that late before, it was already past nine in the evening, on one of the last trolleybuses, almost empty. Inside the station - you go up the stairs, come out towards the train, and somehow end up at ground level. Mum and I got into the train. Dad stayed outside and waved to us. Was he coming with us? Of course not - where would he get the money? Somewhere in the carriage the Emelyanovs were already there, the whole family. Thinking about Dad, staying alone in Saratov, I burst into tears. Mum comforted me and said, "Look - Sasha"s crying too." Well, Sasha was probably crying for a different reason - everyone in his family was going.

We travelled for about a day and a half, maybe even longer. Back then the carriages still rattled and went tygdyk-tygdyk along the rails, like in old films. Through the window we saw that eerie Motherland statue. Then at some point we were crossing a railway bridge, and it seemed as if there was already sea all around. I looked down and saw what looked to me like a boat upside down in the water. On one side of the train there were still some shores - it looked like our wide Volga - and on the other side there was open sea. All my life afterwards I tried to figure out where that was. Probably it was over the Don River, where on one side of the bridge it spreads out to twelve kilometres wide - there is a railway bridge there.

Eventually we arrived. But we didn"t arrive in Anapa - we arrived in some other town, far from the sea. That"s what I thought then, and to this day I"m still not sure. Because there we got onto some bus and drove along a road through hills with vineyards, and it felt like we drove for about an hour before reaching Anapa. On one side there was a really big mountain, something like the ones near Saratov, if not bigger. And we arrived in an area that, as I understood it then, was called Dzhemete. But Dzhemete is actually right next to the "Anapa" railway station. Why would it take a whole hour to get there? And sometime later, years afterwards, there was even news that the railway station where we had arrived had been flooded. In short - God knows where exactly we reached by train.

We all got off the bus and went into a neighbourhood of private houses. The way we travelled to the south was called "going savage" - dikaryami. I didn"t understand what that meant. The word "savages" made me think of aboriginal people, and for some reason I imagined that spikes grew out of them like out of hedgehogs.

We went into some courtyard, and the adults were chatting with the landlady, while it felt to me like I was in Alina"s courtyard on Frunze Street - it looked similar. I had been there once, when I went to her birthday party.

Something didn"t suit the adults, and we left to look for another place.

In the end we came to a courtyard with several houses. It stood right at the foot of a huge dune, about the height of a three‑storey building. Behind that dune was the beach. Morskaya Street, house eighteen.

The main house was two storeys high, full of various extensions, and in the yard there were small little houses, almost like garages - inside there was just one room with beds, nothing else, no amenities. Between those little house‑rooms there was a path across the yard leading to the shower and to a place with tables and a barbecue - that"s where the adult men hung out. And right in the middle of the yard there was a toilet, and that was where I saw them for the first time - worms in shit. Sunlight came through some hole and fell straight onto the shit, so everything was perfectly visible. The shit looked like porridge, liquid. I only knew maggots as microscopic things - from flies" bellies - and I didn"t even know about intestinal worms yet, so I couldn"t figure out what kind of worms those were. But why would maggots sit in shit - what would they even eat there? And I remember they were really long worms. So maybe they were actually real worms from inside people. Those were the ones I later remembered when, in my youth, I wrote the lyrics to the song "Black Darkness of the Hole".

Mum and I settled in one of the little room‑houses next to the main two‑storey building, and the Emelyanovs stayed on the second floor of the main house. We went up to visit them a couple of times. The whole place reminded me of some kind of Santa Barbara - all that sunshine, the staircases, terraces, grapevines.

This whole courtyard stood among several blocks of similar courtyards, not far from Pioneer Avenue that ran across the whole town. On the other side of the avenue there were markets and all sorts of things. We went there to buy real fat cherries, peaches - that was the first time I had ever eaten peaches. In one place the concrete slabs of the pavement were pushed up, and from the crack a little shoot or maybe just grass was growing. Mum told me that tree roots are so strong they can break through asphalt. Afterwards I kept thinking about it. I often got fixated on small pieces of knowledge about the world - and often got them wrong, like this time. Because despite Mum"s explanation about roots, I decided that it was that tiny little stem itself that had lifted the concrete slabs.

There were all sorts of sea souvenirs everywhere, but we didn"t buy any. From our first trip to the sea we still had a dried starfish at home - it smelled salty and rich, but over time it kept decaying, eaten away by some invisible bacterium.

On that trip we again never went anywhere outside that district of the town. We didn"t go to the centre where the park was.

Climbing up the dune, we came out onto the beach.

Well, basically it was the same as last time. I had long since learned to swim. I had my mask with me. As always, I had a complex about it: my head was already big, and the mask was big too. And my nose was inside the mask - childish, some kind of overprotection again. Ideally I wanted just swimming goggles, or at least a mask where the nose stays outside... But when I was very little I had goggles like that, and you couldn"t see anything in them.

We saw jellyfish many times. I couldn"t understand - did they sting, or shock you like electricity, or could they even kill you? But I saw other people almost picking them up with their hands and not being afraid. And when jellyfish were washed onto land they dried out like water.

Of course I spent long stretches of time - even longer than the previous trip - wandering through the dunes looking for reptiles. Again I couldn"t find any snakes. And I was constantly afraid that one would bite me and I"d die. That was exactly why those dangerous bushes attracted me so fiercely.

The main entertainment, of course, was the waves - jumping on them. And when the sea was calm, Mr Emelyanov tossed Sasha up into the air, and me too.

Sometimes we went to the beach twice a day. But when the sun was already setting we didn"t go far into the water. Music was playing everywhere - nineties Eurodance. Eu-ro-pa Plus. "Galloping Across Europes..." I didn"t know what Europe even was - what was there. It was on our hemisphere of Earth, and that hemisphere didn"t interest me - iguanas don"t live there.

Where we lived there were many families, and the neighbours gradually became familiar. Could I possibly not fall in love with some girl there?

I didn"t know her name. She lived in some little house deeper in the yard, along the path to the shower. I was always looking out for her when I went past the worm‑filled toilet or towards the shower. In all those days I never learned anything about her, but for many months afterwards I kept thinking about her - even after she was replaced by another girl. I had those harem fantasies after all. This girl fit perfectly into that informal harem. It consisted only of the girls I didn"t publicly confess my crush on to my parents. Because with them we played tickling games and touched each other physically.

In the sea there it stayed shallow for a very long distance, then deeper, and then shallow again. And on that sandbar there were iron diving towers. Sasha jumped from them doing a cannonball. I never understood that kind of diving - just stupidity. I liked things graceful. If you dive - it should be without a splash, like a knife through butter. Of course I couldn"t do anything like that myself.

My throat was already tearing with allergy, and then once I dived badly - water rushed into my nasopharynx, everything burned, and basically I collapsed with a fever.

It was again like when I got seriously ill at home - I lay there delirious, it was impossible to tell what time of day it was, I woke up a million times, and Mum, always nearby, kept giving me something to drink. All of that was mixed with the fact that I had sunburn, and Mum was peeling strips of skin off me. And on the worst feverish night there was some story with something called zelyonka. I didn"t know what that was, and Mum also said that something was running around the room. In the end I concluded that zelyonka was some kind of insect, like a fast centipede. I believed that for quite a long time - my mind simply ignored the fact that Mum had smeared me with something and I was covered in green spots, which was in fact exactly what zelyonka is.

And of course I felt ashamed, knowing that I was lying there all wrecked, while that girl was walking past our house and she wasn"t sick at all.

At some point there was a discussion that we had all decided to extend our stay there. For that we needed money, and Mum and I went to the market area where there was a local telephone station with phones, and Mum called Uncle Seryozha, and somehow he sent money.

When I recovered, I even started going alone to the shop to buy food - like a grown‑up and like a local.

In the courtyard where we lived there was another little house next to ours with a big table inside, like a dining hall, and we all sat there late into the night - though only the families who lived in our part of the yard. That girl was never there. Huge night moths flew under the ceiling. There was one boy there with his mum, and they were from the Moscow region. When we met, and they already knew I was obsessed with iguanas, his mum grabbed him by the arm and said, "Go on, tell him about the iguana." And the boy told some story about how his iguana had run away somewhere and later he found it on top of the wardrobe. He even told it under pressure, without any interest, and when he finished he immediately ran off to keep playing. I couldn"t believe my ears. Could it really be that people who don"t even care have an iguana at home, while I"m rummaging around in stinking swamps, I"ve got nothing at all - just half‑measures, some tiny local lizards - and the proper iguanas I need exist only in my books.

It was already close to the time of leaving. We were on the beach, there was wind, and Mum said swimming wasn"t allowed. And some person had disappeared there. Mum was terrified that a corpse would suddenly float up somewhere - and then that"d be it, complete fucking horror. I was scared too. But some brave guys - the kind I already knew I would never become - dived into the waves and swam off to search.

And Mum also told a story about how, in her childhood, she had gone to the sea with her grandma and granddad, and during a storm her granddad stood on some cape looking like a man challenging the elements. I imagined him standing on that huge dune, with clouds and thunder above him.

Sasha Emelyanov was simple, and he easily made contact with other boys. There were local boys from a neighbouring yard. But at some point he had a quarrel with them, and there was this angry Armenian boy chasing Sasha and trying to kick him, while Sasha just laughed. I was standing in the gate of our yard. Sasha ran inside and into the house, and the boy didn"t dare go any further. Then, seeing that I hung around with Sasha, as he was leaving he hit me and said, "And you"re in his hands." I didn"t cry - I wasn"t even offended. It was different from my earlier fights. Those had been about dominance - measuring strength, where I always lost. But this was just stupidity, with such a crooked logic. I was even ashamed later to tell Mum about it - ashamed for that boy, I mean.

Well, that"s it. I don"t remember anything else about that trip to the sea.

Ah - except that before boarding the train we put coins under the wheels of the stopped train and watched what would happen when it started moving. They turned into flat spots. It may seem like a tiny, trivial memory, but that was exactly when I determined for myself the second - after jumping from a window - possible method of suicide.

We returned home to Engels, and again I never kept in touch with Sasha. We didn"t have any contact at all after kindergarten, even though he lived only a hundred metres away.

.:::.

Part 27 text 4. The computer enchants,,, on Frunze I found an egg,,, went to look for Dinara,,, came back and "Far Horizons",,, on the eve of the gymnasium resentment towards Mum.

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Before the trip south Mum bought a computer desk with a sliding shelf for the keyboard, as well as two swivel office chairs, a writing desk, a bedside cabinet and a wardrobe. While we were away, Dad and bab Valya dragged the big bed out of the small room - now it stood in the living room, and in its place they put the computer and all that furniture. I amused myself on the swivel chairs - lowering them all the way down and then, sitting on them, pulling the lever - and it would lift me up. And of course I spun around on them until I got dizzy.

There was a period when Mum and I would sit in that little room: she - at the desk by the window, doing her drafting, and I - at the computer. I kept looking for games there, but couldn"t find anything except some incomprehensible solitaire things and Battleship. But I found the screensaver menu - the ones that start when the computer is idle - and among all the morphing ones I found one where there was the façade of a three‑storey house at night, with an owl sitting there, a cat running past, the moon drifting by, windows lighting up and going dark. I sat and watched it for several days, completely spellbound - waiting for something else to happen. But nothing ever fucking happened, and eventually I got bored. And in fact, during the first years of having the computer I didn"t even know it had sound - that a computer could produce sound at all.

And again on Frunze - the nose‑tearing misery again. Mum and bab kept talking about some kind of wormwood. Some grey‑bluish weed... But it seemed to me it was simply the sun and the dust. All of Frunze was scorched. All of Engels was scorched and dusty. And we played only on those dusty, dry Frunze slopes with Alina. Every evening I sat there with a face like I"d been beaten by a rowan grove. I even started having that wavering inhale. My nose, my throat, my eyes itched - absolute hell.

Once, in the evening, there on the slope, I found a chicken egg in the grass. Where it came from was unclear - there had never been any chickens running around that street. Bab boiled it and I ate it. It felt like, say, finding mushrooms - and eating them. Or like getting food out in the wild. I liked all that kind of thing. All of it was tied up with my complexes and the urge to become more manly. There was no real interest in any of the things I was doing - from reptiles to survival skills. In reality I was interested in only one thing.

One time, after a heavy night downpour, I was on Frunze. It was sunny, but already cool in an autumn way, mud everywhere, little streams running. I put on warm clothes, went out as usual - supposedly to play with Alina - and instead I went.

I walked along Telegrafnaya Street, past the little grocery kiosk, turned towards the Volga and came out onto the dam.

It was my first real solo venture into the city without permission - and into such unfamiliar places, unfamiliar streets, that district of town - and straight to the Volga as well. I couldn"t stop myself. I walked along the dam, the water was dark blue from the cloudless sky, the wind was blowing, and I was warmly dressed, which made it cosy. I walked and felt freedom. Of course, I was walking to look for Dinara.

I thought - what if I see her, what if she"s playing somewhere near some house, the way I played on Frunze. I reached Pushkinskaya Street and wandered around the blocks there. But there was nobody at all outside, no children near any of those hundreds of houses in that district.

It was also an adventure - Mum and I had never walked around those blocks before, except along a couple of streets when returning from the dam. There"s nothing to do there - only houses. And there I was, wandering around, getting out of dead ends, and it completely captivated me. There"s some Astrakhanskaya Street there - that"s where I came back out onto the familiar Telegrafnaya. I was about to walk towards the military commissariat, but there was a man standing by the roadside. He said something to me, almost like "come here a second", and I immediately turned around and headed back towards Frunze. I got seriously fucking scared of that man.

After that - past School No. 10, I walked to Persidskaya Street, past the bathhouse. Everywhere there were puddles, slush, and it was already the second half of the day.

I climbed up to Frunze and met Alina. It seemed nobody had been looking for me. I revealed my little escapade to her, started boasting about how far I had gone. Then I went into the house. Indeed - nobody had looked for me. In the absolute worst case I even had an excuse: they had already sent me to shops before, so I thought - well, you can wander off somewhere nearby without asking. They"d never know I"d gone that far.

I went back outside. The sun was already over Saratov. Drying mud, memories of the blue Volga and the wind, leaves already turning yellow everywhere, autumn creeping in, and the distant view of the mountains on the horizon - a view into the future. Because Mum had already told me that I would be travelling to some gymnasium in Saratov. Not the English one, but still a gymnasium.

All of it felt like some kind of Skyrim, some kind of "Far Horizons". Literally Skyrim - not only because of the atmosphere of distant tundra landscapes, but like a game itself, because you change locations and ways of life just as easily: now some place is only on the horizon, and an hour later you"re already there, living a completely different existence. And then you can return back - and everything there will again be completely different, completely different affairs. And then you can go there again - endlessly. Nothing will change, nothing will happen to you, buses and Uncle Seryozha will carry you around, and your parents will never let you die... It"s like save files in a game. Downpours will fall and dry up, snow, heat, seasons will change - but absolutely nothing will happen to you, and there will always be only adventures and distant journeys.

The last days of summer became hot again, T‑shirt weather. Dad came - well, more precisely, he spent the nights with us during those days.

It was already the final day of summer, and tomorrow we would have to go to Saratov for the First of September assembly. My parents were actively discussing how it would work. Who would take me, how. Or with whom. Mum had an option connected with her colleagues from work in Engels. Someone had a car and could be asked. His name was something like... When discussing that option they called him by a friendly diminutive - like not "Aleksei" but "Lyosha".

The three of us were walking along Lev Kassil Street from Gorky Street past our building. And I decided to make a suggestion, starting with the words: "Why doesn"t Lyosha just...". I suggested what seemed to me a good option. But Mum said, "You just watch your mouth." Apparently I wasn"t supposed to call him Lyosha - only they had the right to call him that, she probably thought. Or for some other reason I wasn"t allowed to make suggestions. I never understood what exactly was wrong. I simply felt offended - that was all.

.:.

___Part 28.

.::.

________________Autumn 2000 - second year, going to the gymnasium.

.:::.

Part 28 text 1. First trip to the gymnasium in Saratov,,, the first of September and description of the building,,, list of classmates and about them.

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In the end, our first trip to the gymnasium for the First of September was just Mum and me, taking three buses. It was sunny and dry, early morning. I was dressed in all that formal clothing that I would keep wearing there for several more months. Jacket, trousers. That carefully ironed white shirt - always, everything serious, travelling with adults on the bus to Saratov, to the city centre, asphalt everywhere.

It was an extremely ambitious move Mum had arranged - I was a unique case. Nobody travelled that far to school, to another city altogether, especially at such an early grade, and being a year younger than all the other classmates as well. I would always be the only child on the bus in the mornings. No one from Engels would even have been accepted into a Saratov school, let alone Gymnasium No. 1 - you couldn"t just do that. It was all thanks to Uncle Seryozha - he knew some Petrovskaya, an official in the Engels administration, who knew the headmistress of the gymnasium or something like that. That was how I was enrolled there without a residence registration, which was required not just in Saratov but even specifically in that district of the gymnasium - and that was the city centre. All the children studying there lived in that part of Saratov. Mum always reminded me of that and said I must not let them down.

That very first time the trip took about an hour and a half. In Saratov we got off the bus at Chernyshevsky and Moskovskaya Streets, transferred to some minibus and rode along confusing streets, somewhere around the Architect"s House and the Lipki Park. We got off a bit past Lipki, either by mistake or for some other reason, and then took another trolleybus, and only that way finally reached where we needed to be.

The gymnasium stood on Michurina and Gorky Streets, a little further along Michurina from the intersection. I was there for the first time. It was behind a long black wrought‑iron fence, with a big courtyard full of trees and lawns, and then an asphalt square along the building. The building itself was red, three storeys high, with large white windows, and on the side there was a turning four‑storey section that looked more modern. And that was indeed the case - once the entrance had been in the centre of the red building, but now it was in the inner corner. Above the square there were some flags - everything ceremonial, with a strong gymnasium atmosphere.

There were many children and people there. There were also inner courtyards - a small one behind the new extension, and another large one behind the main red building.

Our gathering and formation took place in the courtyard behind the main building. There I saw my future classmates for the first time. It was already sunny, and there were many bustling women and teachers around. Parents stood nearby. I felt no stress at all. This gymnasium would become the most stress‑free place I ever regularly went to.

After that they led us out to the main square in front of the building, where all the second‑year classes assembled. In that gymnasium schooling began from the second year. Then teachers and the headmistress started giving speeches into a microphone. They spoke about the gymnasium, said that some of its graduates had gone abroad to study. The woman who later turned out to be our teacher said it was the best school in the world - and at the time I took that literally. A little later, when impressing my parents with my fate, I would say things like: "Wow... studying at the best school in the world...". Later of course I reconsidered that praise when I realised how enormous the world was, and that there were even in Saratov - and even in Engels - respectable gymnasiums too. But I always still went there with the understanding that I was a very lucky person - studying here rather than at some "teacher"s college" school or School No. 33 in Engels, where various Emelyanovs studied. Those schools were said to be places where people smoked, swore, and other bottom‑of‑the‑barrel things.

There was also some understanding that my gymnasium had a mathematical focus.

Then they led us children to our classroom for the first half‑lesson, a half‑introduction.

The school had three staircases. The first one was right by the entrance - it was four storeys high, and from the fourth floor there was a passage to the third floor of the old building.

After the first staircase, on the ground floor, there was the main hall - the cloakroom was there, a bit further the toilet and the passage to the sports hall. From the cloakroom began the corridor with classroom doors. In the middle of the building, where the closed doors of the old entrance were, there was the old large staircase to the second and third floors. Further along the first floor there was another small hall, with columns, from which there was a passage to a large choreography hall. All the doors in the old building were white, big and heavy. And further along the first‑floor corridor there was yet another old staircase to the second and third floors, and at the dead end on the first floor there was the canteen. There was no longer any obligation to eat there - people ate only if they wanted to, and for money. I never ate anything there except pies, and maybe that influenced my overall wellbeing. But soups and cutlets - only a few in our class ate those there, mostly the nerdy girls. Nothing happened to the rest of us.

From the second and third staircases, on the second floor, there was also a passage to the assembly hall - it had seats for spectators and a stage.

And from the third staircase there was a descent downwards - on the basement level there was a small gym and the workshop classroom, but that would only start from the third or later the fifth year. In the second year, handicrafts lessons would take place in the same classroom as everything else.

Our classroom was on the third floor, near the passage to the four‑storey section. We went up there by the middle large staircase. The windows looked into the inner courtyard, so the classroom was sunny.

They seated us, and I was placed at the first desk in the central row.

My desk‑mate was Masha Ermakova. She had chestnut hair (as my parents later explained it was more correct to say instead of "brown"), brown eyes, and she was extremely diligent and a straight‑A pupil. She wasn"t oversized, not small either - proportionate to me. To me she was the most beautiful girl in the class.

Other classmates I remember:

(I call "overgrown" those who were bigger than average - I myself was among the average.)

Girls:

Yulia Ermakova - a nerdy type. For the first year I thought she was related to Masha. But her eyes were grey.

Elena Dubinina - proportionate to me. A top student, looked like Björk. Disney‑like grey eyes and face. Beautiful.

Viktoria Plytkevich - brown‑eyed and slightly small. A B‑student. Pretty.

Anastasia Yudina - also small, brown‑eyed. I think she did dancing. A B‑student. Pretty.

Katya Ilyina - proportionate to me. A B‑student. For now unclear - pretty or not.

Irina Yurina (I think) - proportionate to me. Brown eyes. Also did dancing.

Nastya Berezina - proportionate to me. Dark‑blonde hair, grey eyes. A top student.

Elya Lainer - small. Brown eyes. A C‑student.

Sofya Morzherina - maybe joined midway through the year or in the third year. A B‑student, played the violin. Her voice was somewhat low. Grey eyes, I think.

Masha Pchyolkina (I think) - "overgrown", ultra‑quiet, I never had any contact with her. A B‑student.

Elena Zakharova - also "overgrown". Like her mum, she resembled the Channel One presenter Ekaterina Andreeva. I think she had brown eyes too. Slow. A C‑student.

Some Natasha - "overgrown". Plain. B‑to‑C student. Grey eyes.

Zhenya Zlotina - maybe joined midway through the year or in the third year. "Overgrown". A B‑student. Probably brown‑eyed.

Kristina Kireeva - "overgrown". A mostly‑A‑and‑B student. Probably brown‑eyed.

Tanya Petrovskaya - most likely joined midway through the year or in the third year. Tall, mischievous and strange. Strange in the same way as Evstifeev among the boys. B‑to‑C student. Brown‑eyed.

Boys:

Lyosha Korolyov - straight‑A student. Son of the most proactive mum, the one who supervised collections of money for events and similar things. Probably wealthy.

Sasha Boldyrev - straight‑A student.

Kostya Erokin - straight‑A student. Agile and sporty. His mum drove a convertible - an extreme rarity for Saratov. Most likely wealthy.

Evstifeev, I think Yevgeny - a skinny neurotic, always with a runny nose and a handkerchief.

Seryozha Makarov - small, fair‑haired and mischievous, but not too much. B‑to‑C student.

Vova Tyapkin - slow, straight‑A student.

Ozerkov, I think Aleksei - a prankster.

Kolya Guzhviev - C‑student, unclear what kind of person yet. Slow, timid.

Elchin Kyarimov - Armenian or Georgian. Straight‑A student, strong character, not a prankster.

Ara Harutyunov - large, fat, slow Armenian boy with a tendency toward sluggish mischief. C‑student.

Lyosha Belyakov - fair‑haired, B‑to‑C student.

Kryuchkov, I don"t remember the first name - bowl haircut and light hair like me. Choleric prankster, C‑student.

I noted the eye colour of all of them in the list. Because that was the first thing that struck me: most of them, especially the girls, were brown‑eyed and dark‑haired. Children who were really pale‑blond Mordvin moths like me - there were practically none, because even fair‑haired Makarov, as far as I remember, had brown eyes.

Our teacher"s name was Svetlana Gennadyevna, about forty‑five years old. She had a nineties‑style hairstyle, wore makeup, the perfect teacher - no stupidity, no malice, speaking clearly. She would teach all the main subjects.

Elya Lainer was a girl who had also been at the Architect"s House in those gouache painting classes I had attended a couple of years earlier.

Elchin Kyarimov was a boy who had previously gone with me to the preparatory courses at the English gymnasium - I was absolutely certain of it. But when I approached him during one break and asked whether he had gone there, he shook his finger in denial. Maybe there was confusion because I called that English gymnasium a "lyceum". In his facial features Elchin reminded me of that kind black guy in my film Anaconda.

Our class letter was A. I was in the best class of the best school - that was how I understood it.

The first day wasn"t long, and soon we went back home.

.:.:.

Part 28 text 2. The first days of travelling,,, various acquaintances of Mum giving lifts,,, returning around Saratov with Mum,,, Lipki Park,,, the old housing stock,,, Mum"s work record book and Grazhdanproekt,,, maximum Saratov,,, PAZ buses to Engels.

.::::.

The first few weeks of school were a very confusing bustle with my trips there and back. Father wasn"t around, or he simply didn"t get involved in these matters because he couldn"t really help with anything anyway, and in general he had always been sceptical about the necessity of this whole epic. But I was Mum"s child.

You had to be at the gymnasium by eight in the morning. If by bus - the journey took an hour or an hour and ten minutes. So we got up at six in the morning. At that time of year it was still light early in the morning, so I"ll describe the classic bus journey through the early darkness closer to winter.

There were five lessons - until twelve or one.

At the very beginning some man - the same one connected with Mum"s colleague, probably Aunt Olya, the one mentioned on the thirty‑first of August - took it upon himself to drive me and Mum, or sometimes just me. In the mornings we would walk with Mum into their courtyard on Gorky Street in Engels, get into his car, and leave from there. These were still sunny warm days, the very first ones.

Once, on some day after school - I"ll sometimes say "school" instead of "gymnasium" - for some reason I sat for a long time in this Aunt Olya"s flat. I was looking through what books the boy there had, and there was some thick encyclopaedia about animals. But it was too general - about all animals and biology - and I didn"t need something like that anymore. I was already deeper into the subject. For example, around that time I got the encyclopaedia Insects from the same series as Reptiles - a huge expensive encyclopaedia.

Later the boy himself came home - he was older than me - and he sat down to play on his console, and there was football on it. It already had 3D graphics.

That man only drove me there, but Mum always picked me up - either by buses or with Uncle Sergey.

For the time being school was easy, I managed almost everything on my own. All Mum"s attention was focused on finding the optimal way for me to travel to the gymnasium.

If it wasn"t with Uncle Sergey, every time we returned differently.

That year was probably the last when there existed a bus route to Engels that made a big detour: it started at the Covered Market, then went down Chapayev Street, turned left onto Chernyshevsky Street and along it - to the bridge and to Engels. After school Mum and I would walk either to the Covered Market or to Michurin and Chapayev and get on it there. Or maybe that route existed because of some repairs on Moskovskaya Street.

A couple of times in my life, at Bolshaya Kazachya and Chapayev, Mum and I went into a café called "Pink Panther". Pink Panther was supposedly some cartoon from very early childhood - I never watched it. But I often thought about some kind of "pink panther" in my earliest childhood, I just never mentioned it...

And so we went into this café after school and ate some mushroom soup that was almost like porridge. I was constantly hungry after school. I"ll describe all that fatigue and malaise later when it gets colder.

On some days we walked along Gorky Street to Lipki, and then turned towards the Volga, and there, where the building called "Antey" stands, opposite it across Oktyabrskaya Street there was a small S‑Zh‑F house with some tiny office inside where some women worked. Mum had some business there, and I waited again, bored. There was old office linoleum there, and I imagined an iguana crawling across it. Because I had once seen something like that in a programme where they showed an iguana living in an office and moving freely around the place.

SZhF - but for the audiobook I"ll write it as "S‑Zh‑F" so it sounds right - stands for "old housing stock". That is, old houses a hundred years old, often divided into several flats, or converted into offices or shops. This concept will probably come up often, because the whole centre of Saratov consisted of such houses.

Right there nearby as well, where Sobornaya Street branches off from Lipki, there is a nasty tall grey building. I mean, it"s either some factory or some kind of multi‑storey printing house. Although according to Google it"s something called "Irbis", some sort of institute apparently.

Anyway, it was grey and miserable there, like the workplaces of my grandfathers, and there - well - the mother of Lyuba Sedneva worked, or did something there. We were there once or twice. I waited again, bored, and for some reason it lasted almost until evening.

Mum herself actually worked from home, but as I once said before, she was always formally employed somewhere so that she would accumulate work record years in her employment book, so that later her pension would be larger. But when she eventually applied for the pension they counted almost nothing, and she receives the smallest possible one - as if she had never worked. Yet in those years everyone envied her.

At that time she was officially employed at Grazhdanproekt. Apparently it was the main architectural institution in Saratov - something like that. I was there several times. It was the tall building I mentioned during those childhood trips to the embankment.

We would go there around two or three in the afternoon, and there were large windows there, and sunlight shone right through the floors. The building was tall, and there was an epic view of the Volga. There were many people there - it was basically just like in films with offices in skyscrapers, where crowds of clerks bustle from one office to another and so on.

All of this was maximum Saratov, a super‑Saratov atmosphere. Constant Lipki, constant chestnuts on the ground in yellow fallen leaves, constant stops here and there - into shops, into someone"s workplace. I loved all of it and still love it. And I hated all of it and still hate it. I both want to relive it and don"t even want to remember any of it.

The whole thing is what I felt it was leading to, and what it in fact did lead to.

Today I googled my classmate Kolya Guzhviev... For all these years in my diary I built theories that maybe he was like me. Maybe he also hadn"t turned out well. After all, as I"ll describe later, we behaved the same way, we were both neurotic in the same ways.

But this time Google produced information - he works at some legal firm as some kind of manager. A respectable photograph. It"s unlikely he wants to die.

Whereas I already can"t wait to die, because living like this simply isn"t necessary - with such dissatisfaction, with a life in which there was nothing for which it was lived. There"s simply no reason to continue it. But I am a memoirist - I cannot not describe it - and I am writing this biography in order to detach myself from this life.

The main route that Mum and I eventually developed was from the gymnasium along Gorky Street to Kirov Avenue, then right along Kirov, then along Radishchev Street to Moskovskaya, cross Radishchev - and there on the corner at Moskovskaya there was the stop for Engels. The very stop where earlier I had fought some boy on the way back from the Philharmonic.

On the stretch from Kirov to the Radishchev Museum, on the opposite side where the small buildings were, there were loads of shops and little food stalls. All sorts of hot‑dog stands, little grocery places. We went there to buy some nuts, some small snack, or even tea in a plastic cup.

I hadn"t eaten a damn thing since half past six in the morning, and now it was already lunchtime. We never bought anything substantial like meat - there was always some saving going on. I even started looking at the ground and picking up coins if I saw them.

At that time small buses were popular between Engels and Saratov. I"ve just googled it and found out - they were PAZ buses. Short little things, but still with two doors. Besides them there were still some very old big Soviet buses, but fewer and fewer of them. My second year is remembered precisely for these short PAZ buses. They were warm and drove a bit faster, though what difference does it make if at lunchtime there"s a traffic jam before the exit from Saratov onto the bridge. That happened constantly. It started already on Moskovskaya.

On the bus no one gave up seats anymore, so you stood there suffering while the bus crawled for half an hour through the Glebuchy ravine and onto the bridge. A rucksack full of textbooks, you"re hungry. Your dick might hurt, your head often hurts. Basically this is where all that begins...

We travelled back specifically by buses, because only the buses went further than the standard Engels terminus near the museum. Unlike the trolleybuses, in Engels they went further along Gorky Street (now, by the way, in my story it"s easy to get confused because the streets in both cities have the same names), and we got off near the shop Beryozka right on our Lev Kassil Street.

To remind you: trolleybus number nine, which ran across the Volga to the Saratov railway station, went only to the terminus near the museum in Engels, and the line ended there. But buses went further - along Gorky, then onto Telman, and then either turned onto Volokh and went to the market fair, or continued along Telman and Polygraphicheskaya to Nesterov, almost to my grandparents, and then turned towards the stadium and Aunt Lyusya.

The bus stop at Lev Kassil and Gorky existed only on the way from Saratov. When we needed to go to Saratov, if we wanted to take the bus specifically, we had to walk to the museum - one kilometre in the morning. As I said, I"ll describe that separately when we get to a juicy icy morning.

The minibus terminus in the city was on the town square near the museum. Around the museum there was transport chaos, basically, and where the shopping centre now stands there used to be a market.

.:::.

Part 28 text 3. About lessons,,, subjects,,, informatics and games,,, mythology and its stupidity,,, choreography,,, either like Erokin,, or fucked,,, the cassette about alligator hunters,,, I"m a documentarian,, not an artist.

.::::.

As for lessons in the gymnasium in the second year, and what happened in them - just like with the first year, almost nothing is remembered anymore.

The tapping of the teacher"s chalk on the blackboard... Raise your hand if you know the answer, or if you want to ask to go to the toilet. Sometimes everything falls silent - people are doing an assignment or some test.

I don"t know about others, but during tests I masturbated. Not during the lesson itself - but after the bell during the break, when the noise and chaos had already started and no one cared about anyone else - everyone either handed in their notebooks if they had finished, or in agony tried to finish something or copy from someone. I was in my own agony.

Well, of course I solved some things too and was a B‑student for the time being, and very rarely even got A"s. When you get an A you feel mega cool.

Everyone had a school diary for grades - so that parents could look at it at home. And there was also the teacher"s register with grades, which lay with the teacher. At the end of the term the teacher put the final grade for each subject.

When you handed in notebooks, the teacher corrected mistakes with a red pen and at the end of your work wrote the grade number.

In literature class there was reading some story aloud in turns - you always had to follow where they were reading, because the teacher could pass the turn to you at any moment.

I don"t remember whether they gave behaviour grades... Google says that hadn"t been practised since the USSR. But for some reason I remember something like that.

I don"t remember whether it was in Russian or literature - sometimes there were essays. I liked that, of course. Because even if they gave some external topic, I would always twist it somehow so that I could insert something autobiographical.

There was English - taught by a young and not strict teacher.

There was drawing in some other classroom, I think on the first floor opposite the toilet. After the House of Architects, the smell of paint for drawing became strongly associated with Saratov for me. In class I was slightly known for drawing well.

In physical education I naturally got A"s as well. There was a young teacher. We had to march around the perimeter of the gym waving our arms, or run. There were changing rooms - for girls and boys - you had to change clothes and bring sportswear on that day. The regular clothes were still the formal ones during the first term - I had that jacket and those trousers with creases ironed by Mum.

But soon they started talking about sewing a uniform for our class. Each class letter - second A, second B and so on - was supposed to have its own uniform.

There was mythology, which impressed me: I couldn"t imagine such a subject being taught in ordinary schools. Although why it was needed - unclear.

That was when I first discovered how stupid real mythology actually is. One thing was those TV series about Hercules - logical and teaching nobility. Another thing entirely were these authentic myths, illogical and completely lacking any moral lesson.

Like some nonsense about someone in childhood - maybe even Hercules - being so strong that he accidentally killed his own nanny. Just stupidity. Or various completely uninteresting meaningless feats and actions. We"re not in Ancient Greece - we have different knowledge about the world, a different life. Why do we need all that? Might as well study what prehistoric people invented in their primitive mythology...

The teacher himself was funny. Extremely modest, a total nerd, young and already going bald, very tall. He walked in front of us telling all these myths - he seemed to live them. I think people even giggled at him. Well of course - talking about Hercules and Atlas while looking like that himself. He was more interesting than the mythology.

Informatics... another subject that seemed purely gymnasium‑specific to me, like mythology and the not‑yet‑mentioned choreography - something ordinary schools didn"t have.

It took place in a separate classroom on the third floor by the third staircase, because computers were needed. It was taught by another young teacher.

During the first part of the lesson we for some reason wrote zeros and ones in different sequences - no other digits were required - and then we were seated at the computers placed along the walls around the desks. Sometimes there was boring stuff, but more often - games.

Those computers ran Windows 95, and I was proud, because at home I had Windows 98 - I already understood things slightly. Only my home computer had no games, just the incomprehensible Solitaire and that screensaver with the house that I stared at at the end of the summer.

And here in the gymnasium, in informatics class, there was exactly what I wanted. In the game we played there was a house like the one in that screensaver, two‑dimensional, and you had to run with a little character through corridors inside it. Ahead of you either zombies or something like that came towards you, and you had to figure out logically where to escape from them - along stairs, into cupboards and so on.

It was incredibly exciting. That was the only lesson I really waited for. If I had had that game at home - if I had had games at all at home - then even as a child I wouldn"t have had any socialisation. It would have been a perfectly ideal childhood.

Music... As I remember, there was a piano in the classroom... We sang songs with accompaniment... All that school music was extremely boring to me.

Labour class... In this year it took place in our classroom just like all the other lessons except physical education. Just crafts.

There was choreography. The teacher was a blonde young woman - not thin, but anaemic‑looking. The lessons took place in a small choreography hall in the new section of the gymnasium building on the first floor. Parents could even watch us through the window - choreography was usually the last lesson.

We stood on the carpet in socks, with a wall‑wide mirror behind us, and we had to repeat after the teacher - heels together, toes turned outward as wide as possible. The teacher herself could spread her feet completely sideways and still stood like a roly‑poly doll. With our palms and fingers we had to make something like little brushes, and starting from waist level slowly spread and raise our arms and then close them again in a circle above our heads.

Completely unclear why.

There I would, supposedly accidentally and in full view of everyone, do my bridge exercise the way I knew how.

Later we had a couple of lessons in the large choreography hall. It was really large, with a wooden floor like a gymnasium but without sports markings. It was cold there - apparently it wasn"t heated.

In those large choreography and gym halls it became clear to me who among us was the most agile, the kind of person I wanted to be.

That was Kostya Erokin.

What did he do? He ran forward and flipped over his head onto his hands on the floor, landing on both feet. It was nothing like my bridge trick. Everyone watched him. He was tanned, full of energy. Good‑natured and not easily offended.

In that way he reminded me slightly of Sasha Yemelyanov, but he was also an excellent student. He had the perfect build - not thin like me but not broad‑shouldered either. Not short and not tall. Dark hair, grey eyes.

He ran faster than anyone - I"ll describe that later. At that time I set myself the goal of becoming at least second after him. Otherwise - fucked.

After lessons our parents were usually already downstairs by the cloakroom. We children went down, entered the cloakroom - there were rows of jackets, one for each class - and got dressed.

When snow began there would be the whole story with indoor shoes - besides the rucksack you also had to carry them. A schoolchild walking with a cloth bag containing indoor shoes was the most typical sight in the streets near the gymnasium.

Once I later saw a boy kicking such a bag through the mud like a football while walking.

But for now there was still no snow.

A couple of times after the gymnasium Mum and I went down to Chernyshevsky Street to a tall building similar to Grazhdanproekt that we had once passed when walking from the planetarium. I still count the floors. When it"s higher than the usual ten - that"s cool.

On the first floor there were small retail stalls, typical for those years. They sold cassette tapes. We bought a cassette with a documentary about alligator hunters - a National Geographic series.

At home I watched it.

Intelligent men chased alligators in some swamps under a grey sky - as if it were all happening here in our autumn. There"s a scene where the presenter stands on faded grass that sways under his feet like a membrane - water underneath. Another scene where leeches are stuck to his leg. I already knew about them but had never seen what it looked like, though I was afraid of them anyway. Not without reason - now even more.

There"s a scene with carnivorous plants. Horrible things going on.

That style appeals to me. Documentary style. I feel it as my own style - I"m inclined towards it in every sphere of life. I always have an unbiased approach to understanding things. I cannot call an evil person simply evil and stop there. There are always reasons.

I love artistic approaches - but I myself cannot produce them. Not a single story, not a single drawing valuable from a narrative point of view. I can only consume them.

I simply switch into the mode of an ordinary person "relating to things" rather than "studying things", and in that mode I love artisticness.

.:.:.

Part 28 text 4. On Frunze,,, studies are OK,,, father - a philologist, but not an academic type,,, a nostalgic autumn wander around the yard in Skyrim,,, already fell in love at the gymnasium,,, the twin Mylène Farmers and the Phrygian mode,,, the Bible and the alluring Mediterranean,,, the third eye.

.::::.

Frunze Street has long since disappeared, but once Mum and I still go there for the weekend - with a rucksack and textbooks.

Evening. I"m lying on the bed in the middle room, reading the English textbook. Everyone praises me - right now everything is going well for me at school, I understand everything. I flip far ahead through the English book - there are long texts there. Will I really understand those soon as well? That means I"m practically an American already.

Though actually the word "America" never appears in our lessons. It"s always some Big Ben, some London. Taxi - and there are these strange little cars drawn, like ladybirds. In Godzilla in New York everything is completely different. There it"s strict, clear geometry of yellow taxi cars - the police cars are the same. There aren"t these red toy‑soldiers in tall black hats marching to a drum roll. All of that feels somehow a bit wrong.

If the textbooks had New York in them - I would get much more drawn in. Though at the same time I"d probably feel jealous. I"d want to be the only cool New Yorker, while everyone else can fuss around with their Big Ben and their soldier‑drummers.

I"m learning the multiplication table. Even numbers are easier. I"m memorising poems - that topic has started in literature lessons. I don"t understand what these poems are about. Some sort of literary words and expressions, adjectives that nobody ever uses in real speech. Of course they explain them to us, but it"s like with the "circle", the "zelyonka", and other episodes from the past. Until I actually see something - explanations are useless to me.

I"ve already noticed many times how a fairy tale first read in a book and then seen as a cartoon turns out to be completely different from what I imagined. Because of that I have very little interest in literary artistry.

And I always remember that Father by education is a literature teacher - of all that sort of thing - and he always says that reading is necessary. But he himself doesn"t seem like someone who loves it either, and perhaps that"s why he never worked in that profession. You can"t imagine him like Svetlana Gennadyevna, who presents all those lines like "the sky was breathing autumn", "the birch upon its shoulders" as if she herself reads them in her spare time. Father clearly doesn"t read that sort of thing.

His aesthetic is some strange philological one, some Soviet kind. His thing is more like Moydodyr, if we go back to very early childhood. Or some Urfin Jus. His books have rough fabric covers. Not Pushkin, not landscapes, not kings and princesses. Not even stories about good and evil. And not about studying what exists here and now, like me - the documentarian.

More about technological progress and journeys. Jules Verne. Captain Nemo.

The next day on Frunze I go out for a nostalgic wander around the yard.

I remember the summer jumps from the shower, repeating them a couple of times in autumn. In that part of the yard there lies a big rusty knife. I get absorbed in throwing it into the wooden wall of the shower. It sticks in.

Then I turn towards the old cherry tree, intending to throw it into the trunk as well. But at that moment Grandad comes out into the yard and, seeing me about to throw it at the tree, says, "Ah‑ah." Not allowed. I agree. There"s simply nothing else to do.

In the end I climb onto the garage. Alina isn"t around, and Gavel - even less so. The Petrov sons have gone into the army, which right now I"m not in the mood to think about at all.

I look out into that distance of mine. Everything around has completely faded into autumn already - everything is entirely Skyrim. Grey and windy, but my womenfolk dress me in overalls and sweaters like a baby, so sitting on this dry roof feels quite cosy and dreamy.

My favourite dreams are the ones where I push off from this garage - or even just from the ground - start paddling my arms as if in water, and take off. I fly low above the ground, but no one can reach me. And most important - freedom: I can swim crawl through the air and fly very fast wherever I want - to Saratov, to the dacha, to the mountains.

That"s the most desirable thing. If someone offered me the fulfilment of an impossible dream, I would choose exactly that - the ability to swim through the air. Not even something like having a beloved girl living next door to me in the same flat.

Dinara is forgotten. The sisters on the beach even more so - they"ve already faded into very distant childhood. Throughout September there was a kind of gap with girls, but now it"s already obvious who the next one will be. She already is the next one - we just need the first holidays so that I can miss her for the first time.

Returning from Skyrim into the house for lunch, I stumble across a music video on television that I"ve already known for some time.

Two adult red‑haired twin women in large fairy‑tale dresses, like fairies, are walking through exactly such a Skyrim landscape. Then villains on horseback appear and separate them, taking one of them prisoner. They torment her there. Her sister searches for her, but when she is almost about to find her she collapses from exhaustion - apparently already without life.

But her soul flies out of her, enters some kind of super‑ability, and flies off to defeat all the villains. The two sisters reunite - but not on earth anymore, in the sky. And of course there is nothing joyful about it. Only tears.

In the end they are separated forever anyway. Though for me that part is less tearful than when they are together in the sky.

I don"t know whether it"s the same actress or really twins, but they resemble the mother of my next girl, and partly the girl herself. But the main thing in that clip is the music.

The musical mode of that song becomes forever connected in my mind with this grey Skyrim - autumn, fields, and stories like this. I will for some time in my biography call this whole cluster of associations simply "Skyrim".

I never really played the game Skyrim, but I did sit in it a little, and what stayed with me most were those landscapes of open tundra and endless autumn near the main city.

There is also a winter version of that Skyrim - it"s also in a Mylène Farmer clip, "Fuck Them All". But that winter Skyrim I had only seen in imagination so far - I saw the clip itself only at the very end of childhood.

In the evening it"s no longer Yakubovich with pickled mushrooms and tomatoes, but Who Wants to Be a Millionaire with Dibrov. The first couple of questions I can sometimes guess myself now.

Here on Frunze, next to King Arthur - whom I"m still growing towards - that children"s blue Bible is still standing. Over all these years I periodically opened it - and in recent years not only for the first picture with animals, but also for the others.

They have a special atmosphere. First of all, people wear clothes like in the series about Hercules - all that ancient stuff, somehow connected with museums. But here it"s not Engels museums and not even Hercules - it"s deserts, palm trees, very warm seas. Almost Africa, but not Africa. Not where the mummy films take place. Not Egypt - not that very remote incomprehensible antiquity.

Rather some kind of "middle" antiquity - the one from which all these legends and paintings remain. Everything somewhere in the sunny south - deserts, some sea. Beautiful names, jars of wine.

But it"s not infantile - people kill each other there as well.

And there"s also the story of the Tower of Babel, which people wanted to build up to heaven in order to reach God. But he made everyone speak different languages and they all scattered.

A rather punishing sort of god we have - I"ve noticed that many times already, and I don"t like it at all.

And in that Bible, when you open the cover - before the first page - there"s a pattern, and Mum says it"s called the third eye. I have no idea what she means. She says you have to look at it in a special way and you"ll see something different.

I spent a huge amount of time trying - and the magic never happened.

But when school days began we passed a book stall and bought a whole album of such patterns. I sat on Lev Kassil Street after school in the October afternoon sun, and at some point it finally worked.

Now I sat endlessly examining the figures. And I never really understood how it was done - it genuinely felt like magic.

Though in that Bible, by the way, once I had learned how, I tried looking - and there didn"t seem to be any hidden figure there at all.

.:.

___Part 29.

.:::.

Part 29 text 1. The beginning of Buffy,,, with Mum to the cats,,, to Victory Park and Bald Mountain,,, ferns,,, the rat Piki.

.::::.

Once it was Sunday... The fifteenth of October... Gloomy... Mum and I were doing homework in the kitchen... Classic Lev Kassil Street... Tomorrow we had to get up in a rather harsh autumn morning... It was around half past three, and we were already suffering through some nonsense, because we had been doing homework for a day and a half...

By inertia we just kept grinding through it... But without real hell yet in those days...

Tired, we switched on the television. And something familiar appeared there. It had been advertised before. I shouted:

"So this is Buffy the Vampire Slayer!"

Buffy was on ORT - the First Channel. And everything shown there was "legitimate".

Mum at that moment was already busy with something at the stove, so I ran into the cold Lev‑Kassil living room to turn on the big television there.

It was the episode with the praying‑mantis monster.

From that first moment it became my favourite series. I had long been looking at a cassette called Feast of Vampires in the cassette stalls - I had wanted something about vampires for a long time. Vampires were even more about neurosis than reptiles.

And that music in the opening titles... It quickly soaked into that time. It became the soundtrack of that period.

But of course the main thing wasn"t the vampires. Would I really love something just because of neurosis? Why would I need neurosis?

Reptiles - which were also about neurosis - I never really loved after all. Until writing this autobiography I didn"t even remember them.

But Buffy I never forgot.

The first term passes. The first holidays.

Mum and I have become very Saratov‑like. Uncle Sergey often comes to pick us up and drives us there, into the centre, and we walk through bookshops and other shops.

Now I always watch the streets hoping to see my classmates - but they"re never there.

We went to Victory Park and to the Cranes - that monument there. Uncle Sergey drove us there and dropped us off. Mum and I walked there together. There were tanks and artillery pieces, then we went towards the Volga and there were observation platforms, and after that we descended through steep streets to Sokolovaya.

There was also a cat exhibition in Saratov, in the Officers" House across the road from Lipki. We liked one of them - it was for sale. We talked to the owner, but the price was apparently astronomical.

On another Saratov day Mum and I went to the railway station and decided to climb those mountains.

Through some private‑sector streets and then past garages we reached their foot and then climbed upward for a long time with difficulty. Everywhere there was withered autumn grass. There were almost no trees. The hill was apparently called Bald Mountain.

From there there was a view of Engels and everything around.

Coming down from Bald Mountain we reached some enclosures, and there were real foxes there. They weren"t red like in children"s books - they were more like wolves. And they smelled bad.

Passing the bus station, Mum said that from here buses leave for a place called Bazarny Karabulak. She often mentions it, and I ask her about it, though I have no idea what it actually is. I imagine some kind of gypsies. She went there to a camp in her childhood.

Because of my obsession with iguanas I also had an urge to collect related things - including plants. Ferns interested me especially, because they appeared everywhere in books about the tropics.

They didn"t grow anywhere around us. Only rarely, in some flowerbeds - usually in the yards of wealthy private houses - I saw them and couldn"t tear myself away.

And I suffered from the thought that if I wanted, like Mum once did, to go where ferns grew - that meant I would have to live there without Mum, in a camp. And I would never agree to that.

And on that hill where we were there were also oak trees growing in small groves. That too was rare for Saratov. None of the things from books grew there - not a fucking thing. In this case the books were Pushkin"s.

So that was the first time I saw an oak.

Another time Mum and I went to the Sennoy market in Saratov. I wanted a terrarium. A proper terrarium.

I had seen in books how they should be built: with openings for water inflow and outflow, with a reservoir of water, with a lid, special lamps for warmth. I was obsessed with the idea of a beautiful small green iguana climbing around a large terrarium.

Of course there were no terrariums at that market. There were fish. I remember all the names: barbs, guppies. There were also those very tiny live worms used as feed - sold by weight, millions of them wriggling in a single handful.

There were parrots too, but apart from my classmate"s namesake Ara - the one living in Central and South America - no birds interested me.

In the end we bought a simple aquarium, which we soon knocked with its corner at home - it chipped, and it was no longer suitable for holding water.

But there was one more thing we bought at that market.

A male tame rat.

We called him Piki. I don"t remember at all why that name, but since he was black‑and‑white I suspect it came from the suit of cards - spades - which I had just begun thinking about with fascination at that time. I was drawn to the aesthetics and mysticism associated with them.

I don"t remember where Piki lived at first - perhaps even in that same aquarium.

But very soon he escaped.

He escaped into the kitchen.

Into the kitchen units, into the stove. Even the cutting table alone already had so many things inside it that pulling it out wasn"t possible, not to mention the gas stove which couldn"t be moved. And it didn"t really bother us. Let him live there - at least there wouldn"t be insects.

Of course he ran around inside the cutting table, onto the shelves, stealing grains and cereals. In the cabinet body there were holes cut for the gas pipes - that"s how he moved through.

At first he absolutely wouldn"t let himself be picked up. But later he started coming out onto the kitchen floor, around the washing machine, along the gap between the machine and the outer wall.

We gave him something to eat - and he quickly ran back again.

In general, some kind of life appeared in the kitchen.

.:::.

Part 29 Text 2. Deferred spanking from Mom, "your penis will fall off", viburnum-rowan bloom, torture with cabbage soup and Aunt Lena"s lifesaving calls.

.::::.

It was therefore slightly easier during the viburnum and rowan groves. They came into being once the routine of going to the gymnasium had been established, and the daily rhythm had more or less stabilised. And the school material had become harder. Mom"s level of maths and Russian was just starting. All her life, every sheet of paper and her drawing board had been covered with calculations in columns. That"s exactly what you start learning in second grade.

But it all actually began with something else. Maybe even before the autumn holidays. I don"t remember exactly why or what, but I had done something wrong. There was a nasty, nauseating walk from Frunze to Lva Kassil in the grey filth, during which Mom kept repeating: "Now I"ll sort you out." And she really did. That day, she led me into the middle room, I had to take off my underwear, and she stood there with a belt, recalling my offences one by one and thrashing me. I was in tears, snot, and hell. Among other things, she remembered my solo escapade at the end of summer, which I had only told her in early autumn after testing the waters to make sure I wouldn"t get punished. My own fault. Two months had passed, and it turned out that for her it was still considered a crime, an unfinished business.

Then one day she caught me again with red spots. I had finished just seconds before she came into the kitchen - naturally, I was covered in spots. I was sitting over those damn textbooks. And again she warned that my penis would fall off... I didn"t believe her, but half of me was still scared... Who the hell knew how the body worked? I had seen Ara at school cracking his fingers... You could expect anything from the human body... Mom"s medical book was thicker than a good dictionary.

By now, I had even started to stall in terms of schoolwork; the first Cs appeared. That"s when she started making the viburnum groves... By then there was no time for Buffy, or for the third eye, or even for Piki, sitting snugly in the warm stove, unaware of troubles... All attention was on the notebook, unless you just masturbated and had no lingering desire. Otherwise, I constantly made mistakes. One wrong letter and she, having checked it, would tear out the page, and you had to rewrite everything from scratch, including the previous page. While rewriting, you might make another mistake, and so on endlessly, until ten in the evening, until you knew every letter by heart and finally wrote everything correctly. It was like that lesson in computer class - no saving: if you screwed up, you had to start over. Pure torment, no benefit, just like memorising poems by heart.

Besides the super stress of lessons, there was still food stress. She had long known I couldn"t eat vermicelli, pasta, or barley, only buckwheat and pea porridge. And most importantly, I still couldn"t eat pieces of meat in soup if there was skin on the chicken or fat on the meat. I would immediately get a gag reflex.

One rowan day, we were doing lessons after lunch, and it was already dark. She heated some cabbage soup for me. I was always afraid of the meat in that soup. I liked the meat itself, though it stuck in my teeth and was painful to eat, because my baby teeth kept loosening and falling out. But the fat could be there. And that evening, not only was the fat in the soup, the whole thing had been boiled a hundred times, and I saw fat chunks floating in the broth. I spent an hour in tears, unable to eat. She reheated it a couple of times, but the fat just kept softening more. At some point, I decided to add more salt - maybe that would help. I overdid it - it became completely impossible to eat. Mom had spent time and effort cooking that soup. She had been endlessly peeling dirty potatoes and carrots with a blunt white knife, cutting as thinly as possible to save them. Her thumb - which, like mine, she picked at until it bled, swollen and scarred - was covered in dirt that remained even after washing. She had that damned technique: pressing the thumb into the potato and slicing towards herself.

So the whole evening was spent trying to eat that plate of soup - I wasn"t allowed to get up from the table until I finished - until, finally, Aunt Lena called, and their long chatter session began, and she was released.

Aunt Lena - she worked for Dad in his art supply shop in Engels, I mentioned her in the summer. Mom had met her somehow. Lena seemed like a simple village woman, with a thick-boned blonde daughter, Masha, slightly older than me, and they lived in a dilapidated private house somewhere - I will describe our trips there in the future. Lena"s calls were my salvation from the viburnum-rowan groves, but sometimes, when the lesson stress was high, and Mom knew Lena was calling, she wouldn"t answer.

.:::.

Part 29 Text 3. November greyness, Sasha visiting, me - necrophobic and psychologically weak.

.::::.

It was already the vile greyness of November. Everything was maximally grey. If I had analysed words and known my favourite song was about blue, I would have replaced the colour with grey. Everything was grey, especially closer to Engels. The roads were grey, uncle Seryozha"s BMW was grey with dust. He himself was grey.

It was the time when metal doors with intercoms were being installed in entrances instead of the old wooden ones. We already had one too. Grey, naturally.

Uncle Seryozha sometimes brought me alone. I would leave the gymnasium after lessons, and his car would be on the other side of Michurina. I would run across the road, climb in, say "Hello," - and we would drive forty minutes, sometimes only half an hour, to Lva Kassil, instead of the exhausting hour to hour and a half by bus. I sat silently, the car smelled of leather or petrol, and all of that, combined with hunger and shivering from hunger, forever cemented my hatred for my damn Engels.

Sometimes Mom wasn"t home yet, and I had to wait a while until she arrived. I would go inside with some people and wait by the apartment. I didn"t have keys - I don"t know why. I stood listening to the lift, hoping each time it was her. Once, I waited there for almost two hours. Mom had been delayed, of course, and she was rushing. No phones existed. Uncle Seryozha had a mobile phone, but even for him, it was too fancy, and he rarely took it out of the case on his belt. I didn"t understand why "mobile" - I imagined honeycombs.

Of course, Mom often went out on errands when I was already home. Dad, as I recall, wandered and wasn"t always with us, but mostly I slept separately, in my middle room at the time, behind the wall from Mom. She - on the big bed in the living room. We would signal each other.

I always answered the phone. If Mom was gone, I would say she wasn"t home or that I would call her if she was. It was important to answer, as the phone had a rotary dial, and no incoming numbers were saved to call back.

Once, when she was out, I answered - it was Sasha Emelyanov. He asked if he could come over, and I agreed. We arranged for me to come down because, at that time, the intercom wasn"t fully installed yet, only magnetic keys.

It was super unusual. No one had ever come to visit me - like we were grown-up teens in a movie. And without Mom, I had to go out and let him in. I waited until I saw him approaching the entrance, then went. I left the doors open - I had no keys, it was important to descend quickly and get back before any burglars came. I wore a sweater, trousers, thick woollen socks of Mom"s, and some autumn shoes, which only partly fit because of the socks. I went out to Sasha; he had either stepped away or I called him. At that moment, a man approached the entrance - a neighbour from the far end of our floor, adult, with some scars on his cheek, generally looked like a corrupt, rotten traffic cop. But he didn"t recognise me. And considering that Sasha, running up, was dressed like a little thug, and I - in all my ill-fitting shoes - looked like a homeless person who had just dressed in a dumpster nearby, the man didn"t let us in; he went in and shut the door. Sasha giggled, and I almost shat myself, freezing - who knew when someone else would come and let us in. But soon someone came, and we got in. The apartment was safe.

At home, we goofed around. I lured Piki out to show him. Sasha remembered a children"s counting rhyme: "iki piki dramatsyki." Then we climbed onto the big bed in the living room, and Sasha, a karate kid, showed me some moves. At one point, I said out of nowhere: "Are you fighting to the death?"

I endlessly churned in my nervous brain over how to relate to the phenomenon of fights to the death. Wrestling, Mortal Kombat, Buffy - everywhere. I was in hell with my psychically weak complex. Everyone on TV was so brave, so heroic. And I - was just Nikita, small and weak.

And it wasn"t just on TV. Recently, in those months, there was that thing with the Kursk submarine. Young soldiers drowned there. I already knew the army was a place where young people really went and died. They didn"t need terrariums, nor Timon and Pumbaa, nor Mom. They could have run away, taken something, or done anything with someone - anything to avoid being trapped in that underwater coffin. But no, they all went, damn it, one after another. And I already imagined them there, in their striped shirts, sitting in that submarine - like plump Seryozha on Frunze. Like my cousin, the unpleasant Pasha with white eyebrows, uncle Valera"s son, who had also deliberately gone to the army.

There was a broadcast - a mother spoke about her son who drowned on the Kursk: "I"d at least get him out, no matter what, I"d kiss him all over." I sat imagining what a shitshow it all was. And it affected me directly. Dad often told stories about the army. Only he told funny ones - like how he stuffed himself with mulberry fruit. He told me these on the way to the gymnasium.

.:::.

Part 29, Text 4. A classic early-morning trip to the gymnasium with my father - escapism through infantilism and romantic fantasy along the way - down Gorky Street to the gymnasium - near the classroom.

.::::.

The snow had started, and it was brutal. My father was now always spending the night with us. So let"s go over the classic hellish trip to the gymnasium of that time.

I went to bed around half-past nine. My parents were still sitting quietly in the living room; they"d closed the door to the hall. I lay there for a while, constantly thinking about my muse, but I soon fell asleep. I floated through the air, as I loved to do. Below me, dogs barked, I could see what was happening in the courtyards, but no one could reach me - and I didn"t give anyone reason to try, flying on my own errands. I was already close to my destination, doing somersaults in the air, when... "Nikita, get up."

And there we were. Mom was sitting on the edge of the bed; the room was dark, and outside, the frost-darkness. Six damn December mornings. Out of the blanket - quickly into a sweater and trousers, or else the cold would bite. Washing up and brushing my teeth immediately. Dad used to talk about washing with cold water, but now, screw what he said - I turn on the hot tap and can barely tear myself away. Stepping out of the warm bath into the hallway - unbearable. But necessary. I go to eat.

Some sausage with porridge. Tea. A little black-and-white TV plays behind me to lift the mood, but sitting and watching it - that felt like a different life. Now everything was completely different. Ahead - an hour of travel, and then straight into maths, immediately, the kind of tough crap you get in from the frost. We dress together. Step outside. The neighbours" stench hits. Later, as an adult, Mom told me: they were boiling cannabis.

The stairwell light barely worked, sometimes it was completely dark. Elevator button. It arrives, stinking. Inside - that eternal sour smell of spilled beer, the floor practically dirt. Just don"t drop anything.

Out of the building, into hell. Real hell, full of frost and darkness.

We walk along Khalturina and Teatralnaya. He talks about something: what he did as a child, what he did as a youth. I"m wearing two pairs of trousers, sweaters, scarf. No jacket now, only the checkered vest of our class uniform. Dad carries the backpack and the change of shoes.

The square - empty, as if night. Only a snowplough scrapes the dry ice with some brush. You walk half-asleep... At the music school, a sign: "Happy New Year 2001"... Lights and garlands already hung... We head for the bus, the stop just past the museum... There"s a small crowd already. Everyone silent, motionless. Chin up - don"t let hell slip down your neck. And here comes the bus. We cram in... Sometimes you can sit. Then I look to the side - and my mind starts wandering... Two themes: either the one I"m heading to, or infantilism.

Infantilism now is like this: I imagine a parkour lizard. It moves at the speed of our bus - across houses, over poles. Jumps from roof to roof, runs along narrow fences, clings and slides along wires. When there"s a bridge - it"s usually under the bridge: hanging by its hands over the frozen Volga, using all the concrete ledges and braces like a monkey, moving that way.

While it"s under the bridge, I switch to my chosen girl. She sits beside me instead of my father, and we talk. I tell her about my trip to the south, and she tells me something too. She - in her girly mittens, and I, like my father, without mittens: I"m the man. I keep asking her questions. I almost never actually speak to her in real life. I hardly look at her, except when she turns away. But occasionally, in some lessons - literature, maybe something else - we have some reading from the same textbook at one desk. Then I rejoice, I look at her little finger and even hear her breathing. At that moment, I feel no urge to relieve stress in the groin, because there"s none there. Just like now: we sit next to each other, reading from the same book. We also pause to talk, smile at each other. Seeing her smile - the best thing I"ve ever seen.

On the pre-bridge square, the lizard demands my coordination again, and I keep jumping with it... A few turns of the bus, then - Glebuchy Ravine... Winter darkness all around, now with garlands, cars, and Saratov hustle...

Then - a turn and long Moskovskaya Street... We reach Radishchev at Lyceum No. 4... Two traffic lights - then diagonally across the square... Ahead - the terminus of trolleybus number three. It comes here along Gorky to Moskovskaya, goes around the red building, and stops here by the kiosks to pick up passengers... At this stop, we saw Kolya Guzhvieff get on this trolleybus, probably with his grandmother. And at the kiosks, I still habitually look at Barbie dolls and other toys scaled to Ken... I also look down - and see a rouble. Awesome. I can buy the cheapest bun at break.

Do we get on the trolleybus with Dad? Yeah. Did I pick up that rouble for nothing? Hell no, I"m not buying a bun. I"ll put it in my piggy bank at home - soon I"ll have sixty roubles. Someday I"ll buy an iguana. On the way back, Mom and I always drop by florists and pet shops, waiting: maybe one day they"ll sell reptiles. There are already rats.

Same with the trolleybus - just another kilometre to walk. Three roubles left with Dad - easier for him to buy me another cassette. Besides, we"re warmed up now, and we have time.

We cross Gorky and walk.

Garlands everywhere, but shops still closed. We walk and walk - familiar streets, past Kirov, now past familiar sports shops. "Freestyle" on our side - big, smells of rubber, loads of balls, sneakers, all expensive. Opposite - small "Sportline", but when it was dry, they had racing bikes, and they were amazing, I wanted them, still do. But too expensive - years of saving.

We keep walking, and where a small street branches off to the right from Gorky, opposite this place, across Gorky, there"s a big apartment building, and once I saw Arik coming out. That"s Ara - what we all call him in class. Cross Sovetskaya - then a Stalin-era building with a tiny pet shop. We hardly ever go in, just peek from the sidewalk: no iguanas there anyway - mostly dogs. But after that Stalin building, I once saw Elia Lainer - as if she lived right there, barely a hundred metres from the gymnasium yard. Here, the sidewalks are frozen. There"s also the trolleybus stop where Guzhvieff gets off. Some blinking place with football betting. Then - traffic light, right turn, and there"s the gymnasium. We part with Dad - and I go in.

Cloakroom, change of shoes... Dirt everywhere... Cleaned, apparently, by the caretaker - some non-Russian heavyset woman with mops, everyone"s afraid of her. Afraid because she"s the main one you can meet in the corridors when class is in session. If she thinks you"re not going to the toilet or for a good reason, she"ll send you to class or even threaten to report you to the principal. The principal sits somewhere on the second floor of the new wing - there"s also the library. She"s large, short-haired, and everyone fears her even more than the caretaker, of course.

I go to the bathroom and then up to our floor...

Most students are already there, standing by the classroom... A few steps before the entrance to the new wing, the boys jump on them, the nerdy girls stand aside, looking at their books. I also look at my book and repeat the multiplication tables. Ozërkov, Kryuchkov run around - always some tag games. Sometimes I join. But now, still no mood. Mood still like when I woke: the hell of tiredness and cold, I"d sleep and sleep more. But now, it"s warm, and occasionally a pleasant warming shiver runs through me. Masha stands with her girly backpack on her back, and I wonder if she resembles Sarah Michelle Gellar. But obviously, that Gellar mainly looks like Alina from Frunze, just prettier. I stand thinking how far I am from Frunze and all those Alinas, in the mud, with no chance to go abroad, nowhere to go except maybe the fair, because there"s no need to go anywhere else. I"m in a different world, with super-ambitions and super-abilities. And then Svetlana Gennadievna comes down the stairs - time to go to class.

By the end of the first lesson, it already starts looking like morning outside.

Mom said that when Dad got home, he would go straight to bed.

.:::.

Part 29 Text 5. A possible belated note about necrophobia,,, about falling in love with Masha Ermakova,,, Gaudeamus Igitur,,, a piano hysteria and about the bad luck of never finding one"s calling,,, in the assembly hall above Ermakova,,, the initiation into gymnasium students and my despair,,, an obsession with New Year decorations.

.::::.

In my description starting from the first grade I relied almost entirely on memory. But after, in the last description above, I had already climbed into December, I decided to look more carefully at the childhood videotape and also check online when this gymnasium holds the "initiation into gymnasium students". I discovered that our "initiation" was at the end of November, not in the spring of the following year, where I had been planning to place it.

I even wondered whether the recently described visit from Yemelyanov might actually have been a year earlier - in November of the first grade. And accordingly the rat Piki would belong there as well. After all, those bombings in apartment entrances were in the autumn of nineteen ninety‑nine - maybe that was when they started installing the iron doors. But then it"s completely fucked that I was already having those necrophobic thoughts about fights to the death so early. I"ll leave it as it is anyway. Kursk and the beginning of my army‑phobia - that happened that year in any case.

And about the initiation into gymnasium students... Well, now it"s clear why by December I was already so seriously in love with that Masha. All the attention around that celebration was on her, and afterwards I kept rewatching the tape endlessly. So I"ll return to the second half of November.

Some kind of ceremonial day for the second grades was coming up - we were supposed to perform in the assembly hall in front of our parents.

First of all, in music lessons we had already been learning a song for some time - or rather the "anthem of the gymnasium students". There were words which I thought were pronounced like: "Gauduamus igitur yuveleste o‑u‑o", then something else, and then: "noskhabeste imiktute, postmaleste juventute", and then more of something. Well, I never learned anything unless it was compulsory, so I simply sang whatever I thought I heard. Like saying "freestailo" instead of "freestyler". (By the way, I"ve been listening to "Freestyler", despite the way I treated that kind of "fashionable" music in childhood, on repeat for two weeks now, from morning to night while writing - only today I somehow managed to switch to Sandra.)

That Gaudeamus - this was already after the celebration - I tried to play at home on the piano. Mum showed me which keys to press and how. It was my first musical performance in my life. It immediately ended in hysteria.

It was morning, sunlight was shining into the living room, probably some weekend. Mum wanted me to learn that melody and play it when the piano in the classroom was open - to surprise the teacher. And I had already been poking at the keys at home for several days, but I had no finger coordination - just like later in adulthood when I could never play a single one of my guitar riffs cleanly even though I played them every day for more than ten years.

And in the end, just like later in life when I smashed guitars, tore strings, threw things in rage - that morning I snapped over that piano in exactly the same way. Mum then gave up and said: "Yes, you can"t do it. It"s not yours."

And it always pissed me off how quickly she wrote me off like that.

Except she was right. Just like two years later I would spend two years trying to perform the simplest gymnastics exercises, and in many other similar situations - the same thing happened with that piano: afterwards I tried a fuckload more times to play that elementary melody, and I never managed it. After that I closed the piano and almost never tried to play anything on it again throughout my childhood.

Fuck - if I had just had the simplest music-making software. My whole life would have been different. Everyone has their own strengths. I never needed to climb into anything except composition. Not performance, not studying and mathematics, not English and languages, fuck, not gymnastics, not reading books, not terrarium‑keeping. I should have simply sat at home and composed music all my childhood. I would still have been a no‑lifer, but at least without complexes. Fucking hell. Just fucking hell. And nothing can be brought back now.

The melody of Gaudeamus, nevertheless, soaked through that whole period. I kept singing it constantly - it became forever linked with the beginning of the gymnasium, with Masha Ermakova, and with the morning streets of Saratov.

They took us to rehearsals in the assembly hall. There we stood on steps one above another and sang. Mum says - apparently the teacher told her - that at first I stood in the front row, but I had an uncontrollable movement with my legs: I kept trying to stand on the outer edges of my soles, and so they moved me to the second row. I do remember that habit.

And on the top row, apparently, you could choose where to stand yourself, and in the end I of course ended up above Masha. I stood there examining the parting of her hair, brushed to the sides and tied with bows. There was an irresistible attraction and a desire for something I couldn"t even understand. It still didn"t occur to me that I wanted to touch her. All I knew about were kisses and hugs, which at that time I perceived only as symbolic expressions of love.

That was when, after I told my parents about her, they said that the proper word was "chestnut‑coloured", not "brown".

And finally the day of that initiation into gymnasium students arrived - the eighteenth of November. My father came then, and it was decided that he would take our video camera and film it. My parents sat down in their seats in the assembly hall. Our Svetlana Gennadievna said something into the microphone.

And everything else is basically on the videotape - I had enough sense not to record gymnastics over it. There are also shots before we walk into the hall: I"m there showing my father whom to film. It was insane - I only looked at her, and searched for my father with my eyes among the rows, and if he wasn"t filming her I would threaten him with my fist. Completely insane - nobody behaves like that. And if you look closely, I"m not even singing there. I didn"t need any of it at all. I valued those precious moments.

I went to kindergartens, schools, gymnasiums for the girls. For Mashas, for Dinara, for Sedneva. Why would I waste attention on anything else there? I would only do the absolute minimum - move my lips as if I were singing, do homework so as not to let Mum down - and everything else could go to hell. I would spend my whole life sitting in loneliness anyway. I always knew it would be like that - because I understood what a neurotic I was, what complexes I had.

And then December came, and those hellish journeys to the gymnasium through the still dark freezing streets began.

In the second half of December another aesthetic fixation formed in me - another obsession like my obsession with the scale of Barbie dolls. I began collecting festive Christmas tree decorations and becoming aesthetically excited by the sight of Santa Claus"s velvet red‑and‑white outfit. The New Year red‑and‑white colour mix. And also Coca‑Cola - that festive truck driving into some decorated city in the darkness.

I imagined it happening on exactly such a frozen deserted morning as when my father and I walked across the Engels square to the bus. Every morning walk to the bus now became associated in my mind with that advertisement, and the advertisement with those early walks - and that felt good.

During the day, at school and on the way home, I looked under decorated Christmas trees and collected fragments of shiny decorations. The ones that attracted me most were the ones called "tinsel rain". I persuaded my parents several times to buy me new ones. They were associated for me with holidays and the best times. They also felt special on the skin, super soft - they were made of weightless foil.

It was the feeling of reaching with your hands into the branches of the New Year tree under the melody of "Silent Night" from our musical garland, where Father Frost had left a note with quest‑coordinates telling where the present was hidden somewhere in the flat.

On the way back from the gymnasium - on Gorky and Bolshaya Kazachya - there was a shop selling interior decorations where medium‑sized Santa Clauses were now on sale. I really wanted one, but they were so expensive that it was hard even to imagine who those prices were meant for. I already had some sense of money.

A few days before the holiday my father and I brought home a Christmas tree in the evening from the tree‑selling point at Volokh and Telman. It was a lively place, and on the other corner of the crossroads there was a little mini‑market - lots of herring, various stalls with cassette tapes - all like at the beginning of The Irony of Fate. Men were still wearing fur hats, though fewer and fewer.

Fewer fur hats - but more and more New Year shows on Channel One. Maksim Galkin appeared.

I don"t remember a damn thing clearly about the New Year celebrations at home or in the gymnasium that year. Masha Ermakova herself sent me several photographs before my incel coming‑out in two thousand eighteen - there are a couple of New Year ones where we are in costumes in the classroom - but I remember absolutely nothing about what happened there. Everything is gone forever. Just like on my childhood videotape, where the valuable early period - with Frunze, Murka, and surely something from the gymnasium - was later overwritten with gymnastics crap. And the same thing happened with the memories themselves: fucking gymnastics, the fucking Engels school, not a single student from which I want to remember the way I remember Ermakova or anyone from the gymnasium.

The gymnasium was ambition and hope. Gymnastics was struggle and despair. And the Engels school was already failure and the end. If I ever get as far as writing about that period - there will be some serious fucked‑up shit.

So, as expected, I decorated the tree with that tinsel and garlands so much that the tree itself could no longer be seen. Even I realised it was too much. And I stopped. But afterwards, after the holiday, I still continued for some time out of inertia collecting fragments of decorations from the branches of discarded Christmas trees in rubbish bins.

I also placed that ridiculous aquarium in the middle room and for a couple of pre‑holiday days sat there building a miniature New Year scene inside it with that Ken doll of mine. I laid cotton wool on the bottom as snow, made him a Christmas tree out of miniature branches, decorated it in miniature. What I really needed was the computer game The Sims, but I didn"t know about it yet. And that toy Ken didn"t move, and I didn"t know what to do with him, so I soon got bored of that too.

Before Putin"s New Year address we went to the square, and everything there looked exactly like the Coca‑Cola advertisement.

.:.

___Part 30.

.::.

...............2001 ---------------------------------------------------

.:::.

Part 30 Text 1. Presents - tapes and books,,, obsession and despair,,, the encyclopaedia on a disc and the idyll of the New Year days,,, to Aunt Larisa,,, Waterworld and fools in fairy‑tale films,,, about death in films and age restrictions,,, to Shurygina.

.::::.

Under the tree there were of course many things, but I remember three presents.

The first was a cassette called Galápagos Dragons from the same National Geographic series as the cassette about alligators. The Galápagos iguanas interested me less than any other iguanas: they aren"t even tame iguanas, they live among volcanoes, constantly swim in the sea, all dark like frozen lava - basically nonsense. But that documentary had good underwater footage, and in general that whole atmosphere of sunny lagoons and beaches had attracted me for a long time - ever since early childhood when I first saw such lagoons in pictures on shampoo bottles and toilet deodorants. When there is a sunny lagoon - I am immediately back in childhood, in Aunt Valya"s bathtub, being washed and then dried with a big dry towel.

The second present was a new book by Uspensky from the Uncle Fyodor and Prostokvashino series. My father the philologist had already been constantly nagging that one should read fiction. I absolutely hated fiction books, but since in Uncle Fyodor there was this theme of independence, I decided I would continue - I had already started the first book earlier but abandoned it.

I forced myself to read those two small books. I read them for a long time, maybe even over the course of a year, but in the end I did finish them. I absolutely hated and still hate reading fiction books, except the ones about unrequited love for girls. I generally hate doing anything that isn"t connected with being in love with girls. I don"t want to be interested in anything else until I have what I want. All the time in my life that I spent on things unrelated to being in love with girls I simply threw away, because none of those things helped me satisfy that dissatisfaction. And I always felt it would be like that - that there was no point in doing anything, because it wouldn"t give me what I wanted. But I still did it, and I do it now, and most likely I will keep doing it even if my dick falls off, even if I become a helpless old man. Probably the only way to end it would be to end life itself.

And the third present was The Great Cyril and Methodius Encyclopaedia on a computer disc. I went and inserted it into the CD‑ROM and immersed myself in it for several days. It was like Wikipedia: some words were links you could click and move between. But I constantly clicked even on non‑linked words - all sorts of narrow terms - hoping they would open, but there were no articles for them. Just a general encyclopaedia, only now on a monitor.

There were also quizzes. I liked those more. I kept looking for interactivity - I wanted something alive. I was fed up with simply perceiving, simply reading and absorbing with my eyes and brain. I wanted to tell someone something, give something - and perceive the reaction to what I was giving.

The Galkin who had appeared on television had a million teeth - that was my father"s joke. In general my father was the main supplier of family jokes and expressions. Like that "six‑armed idiot" about Spider‑Man, like "The Unhurried Ones" about Mum"s acquaintance who came in the summer with her daughter Lidushka, like that joke about the size of Mum"s friend Semyonova"s teeth and gums that he always illustrated with a pencil. The joke about looking at Mum in a Christmas bauble where she looks like a shark - that was probably his as well. And various other nonsense sing‑song words for a good mood had existed since early childhood.

All this created a family idyll: they sat in the living room at the coffee table, and I kept running up, grabbing slices of mandarins and dried fish roe, running back to my room to swing on the rope or make some mess - but mostly I stayed at the computer with Cyril and Methodius reading everything there about reptiles and the Amazon.

At one moment in the evening I was so happy that, lying on the sofa in the living room, I started rolling around on the blanket laughing hysterically, while my parents laughed at me. For them I explained it as joy for some specific reason.

We visited Aunt Larisa again together. There I evaluated the decorations on her artificial Christmas tree. A tree like that is of course ridiculous, but those cloudy plastic baubles looked elite, and I wanted them. But by the end of January my obsession with decorations, as I said, would pass.

There was one‑year‑old Anya there, the lullaby melodies from her musical toy, and in the living room everything was the same: the artificial dwarf tree, the exercise bike which I kept riding, a couple of Ivanovo issues of Men"s Health - and that was about it for interesting things.

I also watched the film Waterworld with Kevin Costner there for the first time from their cassette. Those scenes with funeral bodies, and again those plots with "volunteers for death" - I mean when idiots get cocky and pick a fight with someone who will obviously kill them. But actually, if you think about it, in this film it only looked that way to me as a viewer. I knew from the beginning of the film about Kevin Costner"s super abilities - those idiots didn"t. They thought he was just an ordinary person, so they attacked him without fear. I perceived it as if they already knew what I knew, or were perceptive enough to suspect they couldn"t handle him. But really they should just be seen as genuinely stupid fools - it"s a fairy‑tale film.

By the way, I was already constantly paying attention to the age restrictions on film cassettes. On many of them, even Godzilla, it said that you could only watch them from sixteen years old. Films on television also had age labels. I noticed that things I watched - even, for example, Xena: Warrior Princess - were marked "16+". I constantly wondered: maybe this really harms me, maybe scenes of violence, and especially corpses, will really damage my psyche. But so far, it seemed, nothing had been damaged, I thought. And what about other children? Sasha Yemelyanov"s parents themselves bought him the cassette Mortal Kombat long ago, and he obviously watched it all the time if his mother considered it appropriate to bring it to me. And when I visited Kozlov - I only saw a little of it, but there was clearly extreme violence in all those fatalities in the console game, and a console is supposed to be for children.

And besides, where could you escape real corpses? I saw my first at four years old, with Aunt Valya, and after that a couple of times similar ceremonies happened in distant apartment entrances - I saw crowds from the balcony, and a PAZ bus with a black stripe would arrive. That sort of thing could happen at any moment in my own entrance, where only old people lived, and then I would see everything from above - and that would be far more stressful than fantasy films. In Jurassic Park people were eaten, and the actors there were my age. Did they not watch the film they themselves acted in? In general, none of it made sense.

From Aunt Valya"s place, through the courtyards with those SZhF barracks, Mum and I again visited that friend of hers Shurygina with her little Sasha - the same place where in my early childhood we watched The Lion King. There were a couple of cats there, and apparently one of them was pregnant - I just didn"t remember it. It was from that cat that we would soon get Murka. And that was the last time we visited Shurygina"s barrack.

.:::.

Part 30 Text 2. Winter slides on Frunze,,, winter gopnik‑style bullying of Alina,,, parents off to the sanatorium,,, and I on Frunze.

.::::.

I promised to tell this year what it was like on Frunze, on the adult - as I called it - slide.

Well, it all started with us riding with Alina, Anya and Alyona down the slope in front of the house of the last two. It was a steep slope but short. At the bottom on both sides there were trees, which we never crashed into. After those trees there was a one‑car‑wide driveway, then a ditch where in spring a little stream ran, and after that a slope down to the площадка in front of the wooden green house of Alina"s neighbour - an old woman with the surname Ilyina (the same one who once in the past determined the fate of our private house). If we flew off our sledges, the sledges would slide across all that and in the end bump into that old woman"s fence, and she came out to grumble several times. But mostly we slid as far as that ditch, which was filled with snowdrifts. My favourite riding style was already standing up: I stood on the sledge and tried to ride like on a snowboard. Well, of course I always fell. There was snow everywhere, and the sky was full of clouds, and every now and then fresh snow would start falling or there would be a blizzard, and we all frolicked there.

But when Anya and Alyona went home - Alina and I went to that adult slide at the top of Telegrafnaya Street. There were loads of people there from the surrounding neighbourhoods. The slope there was iced over, and all those boys with that man‑like rattling in their voices when they shouted - something my voice never rattled like in my life - they slid down on whatever they had, or just on their own. Sledges were useless there anyway, because on ice they would just spin round and you"d fall. And the main thing was that of course you could stab someone with the sharp end of their ski‑track. I understood that, but I noticed that others apparently didn"t, because I kept seeing geniuses trying to ride there on sledges - and then those who were simply smarter quickly got out of their path.

My grandfather no longer went there to keep an eye on me - I was already grown‑up. And Alina was eleven.

Other geniuses brought car tyres there - I think I"ve already described that. They could have torn someone"s finger off if they ran over it. Well, delicate children like Anya and Alyona didn"t go there. Each time Alina and I would strike up some new acquaintance with some boy for a single day, and then we never saw him again.

I tried to slide either directly on my feet - though of course I always fell too - or on my backside on a plastic sheet, and then I shot down very fast and very far. All those plastic sheets kept breaking, and in the end I found a solution - flattening a plastic two‑litre bottle and sitting on it with my arse. More than anything I dreamed, when sliding on my feet or on some board under my feet, of jumping off little ramps - that was the absolute fucking dream of every winter, and it was never realised even once.

Alina, from the very top, seemed to be afraid to ride, and she slid from the middle of the hill. She sometimes opened her fur coat to readjust the scarf inside or something. I was also in my childhood fur coat, which was already too small for me, and in my aviator ushanka - the one that always made me itch.

Those two boys were there - the ones we had thrown stones with in the summer. The small boy I had hit in the head was alive. It never escalated into any fights with them, but they were obvious hooligans - they didn"t even seem interested in sliding down the hill, they just stood at the top and tried to do petty harm to whoever they could.

Next to the icy slope there was also another slope where you could slide down on sledges through the snow. Alina and I had come there with sledges, and those two pests had a trick - they pulled the sledges out from under people who were sliding down, so the person would tumble head over heels down the hill. They especially did it to people like Alina. But then the older one of them decided to do it to me as well, I realised. He said: "Now you"re going to fly." But I grabbed the sledge with my hands, and in the end he got dragged along with me and we both flew down.

With breaks for lunch we slid there until evening, and by the end there was nobody left at all and Alina and I remained there alone.

On some snowy day I was acting like a gopnik and bullying Alina somehow. I mean I really scared her somehow, or maybe I pushed her, or something like that. Although she was older and bigger - probably I didn"t push her but rather did something psychologically mocking. Anyway she ran away from me, and I had reason to fear she would run home and complain, and then I"d be fucked again like in the summer. There were snowdrifts everywhere, I was chasing her all wrapped up in my coats and scarves, and to cut the distance I climbed through the inside of our front garden over that little fence, and one of the vertical boards stuck into my coat, I tipped forward - and ended up hanging upside down. Alina, running home, was laughing - which calmed me: it meant she wouldn"t complain. But I hung there for another minute trying to get free. That was the last winter for that childhood fur coat.

Toward the end of the New Year holidays, on the day of the Old New Year, or Orthodox Christmas, or whatever it is that"s celebrated then, both my parents went to Saratov to see BabValya, to celebrate there like adults somehow. As I understood it, they went to the sanatorium where she worked. Later they talked about a swimming pool there. I was staying with my grandparents, and in the evening my grandfather and I went out to walk as far as Persidskaya - to see how the Old‑New‑Year Father Frost flies past. Of course we didn"t see him. The whole sky there was lighting up with fireworks above the city centre and above Saratov. And when we came back home - under the small Christmas tree in the living room there was a box of sweets and some small presents.

That time I was sad for a long time that the holidays were over - I kept decorating the tree for a while longer, it stood there almost a month, and my parents even had to put something under it again for some super‑old Chinese New Year.

.:::.

Part 30 Text 3. BabValya at Lukoil,,, stalking Masha with BabValya,,, about Masha.

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BabValya finished working at the sanatorium. Apparently that party had been her farewell there. The whole aircraft factory that the sanatorium belonged to collapsed, and all the workers scattered wherever they could, though they continued to stay in contact because they all lived in that same Zavodskoy district, and many of them had dachas in the same dacha settlement - Kumyska.

She got a job at a Lukoil office located in Saratov at Rabochaya Street, twenty‑two. That was basically right behind my gymnasium, just on the other side of the block. As I understand it she worked there as a kind of caretaker - setting lunch tables, changing filters in the aquarium and so on. It was a small building where Lukoil bigwigs came for negotiations or something like that. Sometimes she picked me up from the gymnasium and we went there, and I sat there in a boring but elite way in an expensive hall. The aquariums there had super‑clear water and big fish, there was no noise at all, everywhere there were leather sofas, wooden chairs, pepper shakers and napkins on the tables - it smelled of elitism and polished parquet. I don"t remember anything else from there.

The way we walked there from the gymnasium was: from the courtyard of the gymnasium to the left, along Michurina Street, to Volskaya, and then down. But that was exactly the same route my Masha took home with her grandmother. Usually it was her grandmother who came for her, and I constantly watched their backs while waiting for my parents, and sometimes dared to follow them - and I already knew that they turned left from Michurina.

My parents already knew about my obsession with my desk‑mate, and one time BabValya and I went to follow her and her grandmother. We walked cowardly about thirty metres behind them. They crossed Rabochaya, then immediately crossed Volskaya, and went further down. There were fewer people there, and I told BabValya we needed to delay a bit to stay further away, so we went into some grocery shop. When we came out, I realised they had turned right onto Bakhmetyevskaya. And soon they disappeared somewhere there. We were, of course, very cowardly stalkers. I never understood how in films or pictures stalkers walk just five metres behind the person they"re following. I always walked a kilometre behind - and then ran when the target disappeared round a corner.

Later I sometimes followed Masha myself, more than once, and in the end it seemed to me she lived in the building at Bakhmetyevskaya 26/28. That was the building I associated with her. A classic Saratov large brick ten‑storey building with a technical floor, which later I would start obsessing over just like over New Year tinsel. All of that was cooler, better, more solid than what I had. With my panel block somewhere in Engels, my C grades, my whining about everything - I was a complete disgrace compared with her and all that.

But Masha wasn"t one of those show‑off, bold, daring girls - rather noticeably the opposite. She even cried, I"ll describe that now. She was allowed to, and back then I even liked it. In my fantasies I liked protecting her, comforting her and so on. I still didn"t know that girls had sex - I didn"t know about sex yet. When I do learn about it, everything will change: I"ll become obsessed with bold, sporty "sluts" (that word in quotes) whom I"ll both desire the most and fear the most.

But for now - there was a day when they gave us some vaccination, right in the gymnasium, in the medical room - we went in one by one. I may be mistaken, but I think she cried then. I distinctly remember that I didn"t cry and wasn"t even afraid - and that could only have been possible thanks to the feeling of being a man, which must have arisen from the fantasy of comforting her. If she hadn"t cried and had been brave, I would have been depressed as hell there - and I don"t remember that happening.

The second thing was that she often didn"t attend PE. It was the time when tracksuit tops were starting to appear, or at least it seemed to me they were new, and I remember her in one. I even remember her awkwardly doing some kind of somersault on the mats once, but those were rare occasions - most PE lessons she either sat on the bench with the others who were exempt or stayed in the classroom. And from some class onward, I think, she started wearing glasses.

And the third thing I remember later, definitely. That was a year later, when we got a new teacher who treated everyone equally, and she gave Masha a four or even a four minus - and Masha burst into tears. Then too I wanted to comfort her, even though by that time I was already in love with another girl. I was sitting far from the front desk then.

In any case, in that second grade I was sure she loved Yerokin. I had this idea that everyone was in love with someone, like I was. Berezina - with Boldyrev: both nerds, sitting at the same desk. Ira Yurina - with Korolyov, because both of them did dancing, I think, and even danced together at some school performance. And so on. When I corresponded with Masha in adulthood, she said she couldn"t stand Yerokin, and hadn"t suspected anything about me.

.:::.

Part 30 Text 4. About lessons,,, the pre‑internet poverty of information,,, to the Radishchev Museum and the uselessness of all that cultural "refinement",,, about classmates in adulthood.

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I remember almost nothing about the lessons...

The kids kept sucking their pens, especially the phlegmatic ones like Arik. My back teeth were falling out, sometimes during lessons. There was some moment when we were all supposed to bring and donate children"s books to the school - literally children"s ones, with simple text and mostly pictures, which were already a bit too childish for our age anyway. And there were a couple of lessons, or maybe even a couple of days, when we just passed them from desk to desk and read them all. And it felt super intimate - I brought one with a fairy tale about some roe deer, which I myself hadn"t read, and we read it together, and I watched how Masha touched the pages - as if she were touching a part of me - and then we read the book she had brought, and I was completely under the impression that I was reading and turning the pages of something she had most likely once read in a private, personal setting at home. Those must have been the lessons I meant earlier when I remembered us reading from the same book. And we even asked each other whether the other had finished the page yet - almost the first time we addressed each other directly.

What else... Well, I"ve already told about mythology and computer science...

In music lessons we now sang some sort of little folk‑style songs. There was one quick thing like this: "My elder sister is a master at baking pancakes, oh pancakes pancakes pancakes, oh my little pancakes. Oh pancakes pancakes pancakes, oh my little pancakes." The last repetition was sung in a fast descending chromatic line, as if the pancakes the singer was making were starting to burn - which made it sound funny, and because of that it became a kind of cheerful little song between me and Mum during moments of our idylls. Incidentally, her pancake‑baking really was always a lottery - it was impossible ever to predict whether they would turn out or not, and when they didn"t her mood would be ruined.

In drawing class or English a substitute teacher once said to Ella Liner: "What a beautiful surname." I still didn"t know what the word "liner" meant as a noun. These were pre‑internet times, and even television was very limited. Things that were geographically far away were learned about very slowly. What liners were, what the city where we had them looked like - Saint Petersburg - what Moscow was like (except for Red Square), what the metro was - I had absolutely no idea about any of that yet. Apart from my Amazon and New York - and even those only from maps and a few films. And if a person didn"t specifically want to learn about something, then a thousand years could pass before they maybe learned about it at all. There was simply nowhere to see such things by chance, like now in internet content recommendations. And personally I also had this other trait: until I saw something with my own eyes in real life, I wouldn"t fully believe it, understand it, or accept it. Stories and videos weren"t enough for me. For example, Mum told me about the metro, but until the moment when at sixteen I rode down an escalator for the first time I didn"t even believe her that it was deeper than house basements. It may seem like I"m going mad and piling up some incoherent salad of information right now. But it"s not a salad - these are key features of my development that determined the ending of my life as I think it will be. And that ending won"t concern only me, so I want to explain. In particular, I approached the topic of sex with the same traits, and that is precisely why I received such a shock when at twenty‑five I saw naked girls in real life for the first time. I"m literally saying that only at twenty‑five did I fully believe that girls actually have a pussy and that sex therefore exists in reality.

I remember that we went with the class to the Radishchev Museum. It"s a small house near the square, a couple of floors, and inside there are halls with paintings. I had already been there earlier with my parents, in some vague year, and what I took from it was a memory of all that Hermitage‑like interior and atmosphere, which in my mind became linked with the centre of Saratov and educational trips, as well as with violin classical music and eighteenth‑century wigs. I don"t know why children are taken to all that stuff. Personally it didn"t instil any interest in those things in me. I just formed associative groups in my head. Mylène Farmer and autumn landscapes formed the "Skyrim feeling". Soft chairs, paintings and parquet floors formed the "Hermitage feeling", and things like that. And how did that develop me? I just keep replaying all that in my head all my life - that"s all. I have no interest in going to the Hermitage, no interest in travelling to Scandinavia, and so on. I"m interested in Skyrim and the Hermitage. But I want to experience them in the original impression. I don"t want to develop it, because that would mean moving away from the old. On the contrary, I want to return to the very beginning - to the earliest childhood, to the most primitive state, to the deepest ignorance - and be impressed again. And since that"s impossible, I"ll just freeze in this state and leave everything as it is.

When we went to that museum with the class - I remember nothing except that I stood looking at a huge painting in my favourite style - with lots of people and lots of storylines.

We must have gone somewhere else with the class too. I vaguely remember fragments: we were in that McDonald"s‑like café near the circus, where I had previously gone with Mum. I don"t remember what happened there.

Nothing can be reconstructed anymore. I have to rewatch various films, New Year TV specials, look through archives of TV programmes to reconstruct the chronology. Ask people on the internet to photograph plaques with dates.

There"s nobody to ask. Before I started describing the second grade I wrote to Ella Liner - the only classmate who a couple of years ago, after my incel coming‑out, communicated with me a bit, even wrote first herself. But this time, when I asked whether she remembered the name Kryuchkova, she ignored me. And a week ago I also found Masha"s page from my relatively new VK account - it was a normal closed page, and after I posted the first part about the second grade online, I looked again - I"m blocked. And it"s unlikely, by the way, that Ella wrote to her - Ella studied with us only one year, with C grades, and probably wasn"t in contact with nerdy Masha. So most likely Masha herself keeps an eye on me and, now knowing what I became in adulthood, doesn"t want me to be able to write to her again.

Evstifeev wrote to me in two thousand twelve, but then disappeared. Tanya Petrovskaya blocked me back in two thousand twenty. And I know it wasn"t only because of my requests to pass a message to Dasha from my adult story. Even earlier I realised that she hates people who are sexually obsessed. And the other classmates... writing to them, asking them to remind me of something... Well, in short, I"m not going to make myself angry - I want to finish writing the biography.

And Mum doesn"t tell me a single extra detail or help me at all. As soon as I ask her any question about the past - the phone call immediately ends. She knows that memoirs about people like us bring only harm to those people. And I"m simply insane for writing and publishing this.

.:::.

Part 30 Text 5. Viburnum‑rowan punishments and the flying mayonnaise,,, theatre during hell,,, grandmother also beats,,, Conan on Frunze,,, a super moment with Masha in the school yard.

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The viburnum‑rowan punishments of that time were very harsh. Father wasn"t home until evening, and so Mum and I there in the kitchen really got on each other"s nerves. Because we were both in hell.

One day - it was that classic grey three o"clock in the afternoon, when we had already had lunch and were sitting in the kitchen over homework, and Mum had already given me some sort of dressing‑down, and I was already in tears - my mechanism of pressing on pity switched on again. I started reminding Mum about that episode when Uncle Seryozha had shouted at me in the lift. In reality I didn"t care about that episode at all, but at that moment of psychological manoeuvre I managed to take offence and bring on a new dose of tears and sobbing. Mum said, "Enough." She had a jar of mayonnaise in her hand. But I continued and added some detail about that event. And then she - shouting "Enough!" - threw the jar onto the tiled floor. Everything was covered with mayonnaise and shards. I got frightened and immediately shut up, and I was the first to start cleaning it all up.

When Father wasn"t there, there were classic days of studying until night, with pages being torn out because of the tiniest mistake and everything rewritten from the beginning.

One such evening is well remembered, when she, tearing out a page once again, was humming the melody from some TV programme. But most likely that was already in the fifth grade, that is a year later, because there"s also the memory nearby of how by then I was already sure she wouldn"t understand and I was masturbating right there sitting at the table with her while she talked on the phone in the armchair. Yes - and also because by then I was already sitting at the side of the table. In this second grade she still spent evenings densely drafting drawings, so I sat at the edge, near the stove.

But most likely already that year I invented a special trick for myself. In the moments of the worst horror, like when she went into the room to get the belt, I would suddenly start smiling with my tear‑stained face and even dancing. And when I was eleven, when I would parody rock guitarists, I accordingly did quick little scenes of playing an imaginary guitar in moments of all that fucking hell. It was neurotic, just like at the end of exams, when instead of hurrying and finishing something I would sit there masturbating by squeezing my legs. Instead of being afraid and shaking, I did these things that were the most inappropriate possible for such a situation. Or else I simply masturbated by squeezing if she went into another room and stayed there, or just cried there, and it was terrifying. Well, that was in later years.

There were days when I stayed overnight on Frunze and remained one‑on‑one with BabKlavya, and she also joined in this torture with homework and the belt theme. It happened at the table in the living room. The television off, and that whole tense atmosphere. With her - though there were also beatings with the belt until tears - it was less frightening. She didn"t suffer from punishing me the way Mum did. Mum always suffered herself when she punished me - and that was the most horrifying part. And now that jars had started flying onto the floor - even more so. Her reactions were quick, electric.

Grandfather during my lessons with BabKlavya was in the kitchen or in the yard, or perhaps he had already started going away, I don"t remember, but in the autumn of the described two thousand first year he would still be on Frunze. And when a year and a half later he would no longer be on Frunze, those lessons with BabKlavya would become more frightening, and at some point I would even rebel there - I don"t know whether I"ll remember the details. Or maybe it was still while Grandfather was there, at the beginning of the third grade, that I rebelled, and he even took the belt away from her. In general it"s all mixed together and pushed out of memory, all that shit. Anyway, I was taught lessons with the belt when there were no men around.

But on weekends there was the Frunze idyll - with television, sledging with Alina, lunch with cabbage soup, and television again. Boiled beef tongues were gone already, crayfish too had last appeared about two years earlier, and there were no more stalls with them in the city. And caviar, especially black caviar - that had last been in ninety‑six.

One day on Frunze the television showed Conan the Destroyer, or maybe even the first film before that and then Destroyer. It was something like Xena and Hercules, only incomprehensible and boring. But it fitted into the atmosphere of winter Frunze. Unlike Greece in Hercules, where everyone walked around half‑naked and sweaty, it seemed to be set somewhere in a mossy north. I remember some green scenes in forests, rocks, huge swords, clothes made of fur. I learned the word "barbarians", which became associated with people in furs and with swords. All that would come back to me later, at the end of childhood, when I became interested in that whole group of associations through music. In that Conan back then the soundtrack was nothing special.

And of course - those early‑morning departures to the gymnasium from Frunze. You had to wake up even earlier than Lev Kassil. We left on a bus coming from the direction of Aunt Lucy"s place; the stop was almost opposite the entrance to the Engels stadium. You get on in that backwater - and an hour later you"re in another world.

After lessons, when my parents were late and all my classmates had left, I suffered from boredom in the school yard. The second shift at the gymnasium either hadn"t arrived yet or had already started their first lesson - in any case the place was empty. I wandered everywhere. Balancing along kerbs, walking around, sliding on icy patches of pavement behind the school fence.

And once I was killing time in the smaller inner courtyard behind the new wing. There were pull‑up bars there, and I was doing something there alone. I thought everyone had left, but suddenly Masha and Lena Dubinina came in. There was something like an iron gymnastic beam there, with a sloping side. They needed it for something. They asked me for something - maybe to hold their backpacks while they tried sliding down it, or something like that. It was very brief; soon Masha"s grandmother came in there. Then we all went out together, me too along with them. Her grandmother didn"t hurry to leave with her, they were waiting for something there. And her grandmother - it was as if she knew me, and as if she thought of me as a good boy, because suddenly she sort of pulled me close and affectionately hugged me. And that was it. Then they left.

In our class there was a tradition of congratulating people on their birthdays. At the end of all the lessons the birthday child was brought to the board, and the teacher invited the others to congratulate them and wish them something. Then the birthday child walked along the rows handing out treats to everyone.

I kept waiting for Masha"s birthday. I didn"t even know exactly how old she was. But in the end my birthday came - eight years old.

.::.

________________I am 8 years old.

.:::.

Part 30 text 6. Birthday,,, Shurygina gives Murka,,, the beginning of Murka,,, Jennifer Lopez on MTV and I see no point in studying,,, writing a story about dying to masturbate to,,, Tarzan,,, still no deaths,, but I"m preparing in advance.

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I don"t remember how they congratulated me in class, but I remember going down to the cloakroom.

My mum was standing there, and she was with Shurygina. And when I came up, Shurygina had a children"s green hat in her hands, and inside it there was a dark little living lump. Murka was in there.

I carried her inside my jacket, we were going to Engels by bus, and the whole way we were deciding what to call her. Shurygina also gave us a strawberry "Chudo Milk" cocktail and said to give it to her for the time being.

I think I filmed on a cassette how she was curled up in that hat on my bed in the middle room, where I had put her - that must be the recording with her on the spotted bedspread. We had some guests, but I don"t remember anyone - I spent the whole day sitting next to Murka. Her eyes still seemed to stick together, and she walked clumsily. She would grow up completely black, but at first in the sun she looked dark brown.

We put a little saucer for her - when you entered the kitchen, immediately on the right, on the floor, where the mayonnaise spill had once been. I poured that Chudo Milk into it and brought her to it. Later in the evening we went out to buy another one of those milks, and that same day I also tried the milk myself. I had always thought it was nauseating like ordinary milk, but I managed it, and in the end I liked it.

Mum and I settled on the name Murka, but my father liked strange names, and he privately called her Rima (or maybe he first called her that in the summer, or even a year later - I don"t remember).

Anyway, I now spent endless time with her. We bought her a green litter tray for shitting and put it in the toilet. I don"t remember how she learned to use it and grew up. I filmed a lot, but everything was lost in the gymnastics idiocy.

The rat Piki - unless that had been a year earlier already - was gone by then, I don"t remember where he went.

The next three months until summer will probably take only a few minutes of reading. I couldn"t remember anything else from that time.

Since the end of the previous year, on MTV - in front of which I lay on the carpet for a large part of my non-school days during my Lev Kassil period - they had started showing the video by Jennifer Lopez - "Love Don"t Cost a Thing". It was unexpected to see her as a singer. In the clip there was a lot of bare stomach, underwear, and that whole golden billionaire life. Now I waited only for that video, and my dick was constantly hard to it. That Jennifer Lopez became the first adult woman with whom I imagined an actual adult romantic life, which is why I said she would be the first sexually desired object. Very young Buffy and the girls my own age whom I loved here in reality were primarily objects of the desire for friendship, and that felt less real than a union with a woman like Jennifer Lopez in some distant adult future. With the latter the only doubt was whether it would be possible to reach that level of elitism and billionaire wealth that was shown in the clip.

The more I watched all this, the less I wanted to go outside and even less to think about any studying, any business at all. I couldn"t see how any of this could lead me to such a villa by the sea. If there had been a clear plan - do this, this, this - and then a whole sequence of steps - and you"ll end up in that villa, then I would have jumped up and done it until I had completed the whole path. But not only was there no plan - there were also my parents, a living illustration of the result of education that guarantees nothing and all the ordeals I was going through. They had no villa, no Ferraris. My father carried around banana boxes full of books, my mum was also engaged in some boring crap. To reach a billionaire villa you had to arrive there by some other route, some kind of cunning path. And in that dopamine Lev-Kassil weekend idyll in front of the television it always felt like somehow it would open up in the future.

I watched that clip for many months. The pentatonic notes in the arrangement of the song absolutely enchanted me.

But Jennifer Lopez was already too much of an aunt, and when somewhere that same year MTV started frequently showing Britney Spears videos - who was younger and shook her bare stomach even more, groaning in that sexual voice of hers - I shifted my MTV sexual focus to her.

On some grey day, maybe the eighth of March - because there were some guests like Aunt Klava - I was sitting and supposedly doing homework at the desk that stood in the middle room by the window. That was a time when I was heavily obsessed with masturbating by squeezing my legs together - sometimes I did it on the pull-up bar, sometimes just sitting. I also grabbed the desk with my hands, and it was an old desk, and the bastard shook along with me and rattled. And there I was sitting and, instead of doing homework, writing some story where someone died, maybe even me - something connected with fights to the death. Afterwards I was planning to masturbate to whatever came out of it. But suddenly my mum came in, and I shifted too obviously with that piece of paper, and she asked me to give it to her, and I couldn"t not give it, and I was in a hell of shame. But somehow it passed. She probably didn"t understand anything and just put it down.

Most likely around that time a cassette with the Disney cartoon "Tarzan" appeared. It was from Grandma Valya, not the first cassette with gorillas from her, and in that cartoon even the temperament of the gorilla mother was associated in my mind with Grandma Valya herself. In the cartoon there was a beautifully drawn girl in the Disney style, only her voice was a bit low - you could hear it behind the Russian dubbing - and her behaviour was too straightforward, not girlish enough. Later, maybe in adolescence, for a while I would decide that exactly that type of girl was the most acceptable, because shy girls could turn out to be hidden hysterics.

In "Tarzan", by the way - again the loss of parents. I had already lost count of children"s films with that theme.

Among our relatives there still hadn"t been any deaths yet. But once, around the time when my father was still with us, someone called - probably Grandma Valya - specially to tell that one of my Uncle Vanya"s colleagues had died in an accident. Uncle Vanya was doing business there, and some of his partners had been driving to Moscow at night and crashed into a tractor. The one who died was probably known to my father and even to my mum from before my memory began.

At the time being described - but most likely even earlier - I formed a rule for myself: if I ever really jumped out of the window when my parents died, then while I was falling, in those two seconds I would have to pronounce the names of the things most dear to me: "Iguana" and "Masha". Now I only remember those two, but most likely there was also "mum", of course.

I remember standing in the kitchen and looking down through the blinds, trying to understand what I would land on there. The window didn"t open, and I knew that first I would have to take from the sideboard in the kitchen, from the lower drawer, the iron meat-tenderising hammer - which lay there behind the iron and which my mum never used - and smash the glass with it. Or with the iron itself.

.:::.

Part 30 text 7. "Sadocheism" towards Murka,,, the dangerous Elya Lainer and her "vyeBalsya",,, with mum at the dentist,,, with Uncle Seryozha to the landing site of Gagarin.

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There are a few memories of how my mum pushed Murka"s nose into her piss around the flat in order to teach her to use the toilet. The toilet door now had to be kept slightly open. Mum constantly fussed over her, just like I did.

But despite the way I described everything above, which might make it seem as if I only loved Murka and only stroked her - in reality it was not like that at all. More precisely, of course I loved her very much. But I had that perverse behaviour of mine where I constantly picked fights. Roughly like with Alina, only with Alina it was more often for hooligan amusement, while with Murka it started as that neurotic Lev-Kassil shit. There"s that piece on the children"s videotape where I, like an idiot, hit her with some slipper and toss her into the air. Apparently already in the first months of her growing up I played with her in that provocative way. She would grow up into a nervous cat with ambivalent behaviour, and with me she would simply always run away. In that Lev Kassil period I gave her a hell rather than a life. A contrast shower of attitude towards her - I could be stroking and cuddling her, and then suddenly hit her. It felt very bad to me, and I wanted to make myself feel bad. And the fact that she was female already influenced it. But again, not in the sense that I hated women, but in the sense that it meant she was weaker, and because of that I felt even worse.

I wanted to make myself feel so bad that something would finally happen - something that would end my torment, that everything would simply end - and so that a situation where I could do something bad to her, or to someone else weak like her, and that would make me feel bad - could no longer happen. It was a neurotic vicious circle developing in me, judging by my mum"s stories about my behaviour in infancy, clearly already before my memory, and with Murka"s appearance it fully manifested itself. I had to make things as bad as possible for myself so that I would finally stop doing it. The worst pain for me came precisely through doing harm to the weak, and especially to those I loved. Doing harm to them tormented me both with empathetic pain for the one suffering, and with the fact that it placed an ever heavier cross on me as a man - which I wanted to be, but because of my anxious, neurotic psyche I could not and suffered - and when pushed to the limit it would also end that torment.

There was a day when after school my mum was late again, and I wandered around the courtyard of the gymnasium. All the ice there was already melting, but the sky that day was grey. In the yard with me was also Elya Lainer waiting for her parents, or maybe she simply had the chance to stay longer because she walked home alone and lived just around the corner. She was a mediocre student and the most uninhibited girl in the class. Not in front of teachers, of course, but in informal interactions. And that day I confided in her and, the only one of all, told her about my being in love with Ermakova. She gasped theatrically and asked again: "You"ve vyeBalsya in Ermakova?" That was the first time I heard a word with that obscene root. Her reaction frightened me, and afterwards I was afraid she would tell someone. She seemed to give reason to think she might. But it passed without consequences. And then, after wandering around the yard with her, I dared to leave the school grounds, and we walked to her building, which really was that Stalin-era block. We reached the entrance, and after that - either she went home, or she put down her schoolbag and came back out - I don"t remember.

That"s all about Elya Lainer. By third grade she would already be gone. Because of everything about the way she was, she became the first real, non-television object of my sexophobia. And she also formed in me a taste branch for dangerous dark-haired, brown-eyed girls. On YouTube there is a clip "She Past Away - Ritual", with a cut from a dance scene in some series called "Wednesday" with an actress who resembles her back then. That clip conveys the atmosphere of my sexophobic feelings towards Elya. She also somehow became connected in my mind with the English language and with some Mary Poppins, about whom I know absolutely nothing. Maybe because Elya wore some black-and-white striped stockings. In short, she is strongly connected with why at eighteen I will go mad over that Dasha. Even though that one will not have brown eyes.

After school my mum and I sometimes walked as far as the Covered Market, and then we went to the beginning of Vavilov Street. There, in house twenty-seven slash eight, was the dental clinic "Praktik", where my mum treated her teeth. For some time she had gold crowns, and I think she was having them removed and final ones made - or something like that. It went on there for a couple of years, and a few years later we would again go there after the first school shift at the gymnasium. It is the most elite dentistry in Saratov, but there they will leave fragments of instruments in every tooth of hers, and she will develop a lifelong problem with her jaw. I will describe that at the proper time.

On the twelfth of April - my grandfather"s birthday and Cosmonautics Day - my mum and I went with Uncle Seryozha out of town to the site where Gagarin landed. It was some round anniversary. It was very far on the Engels side of the Volga, to the south. We had never gone that far with Uncle Seryozha before. There were crowds of people there, they had come from all over the country. You could drive only to a certain place by car, and after that you had to walk, and the three of us walked for a long time. I remember almost nothing, and then we stood somewhere in a crowd of people, and in the sky there were demonstrations by pilots doing what seemed like even somersaults in their fighter jets, and one flew very low right above us. Maybe there were parachutists - the first and last time I saw them - or maybe not. And that"s all, I remember nothing else. Oh, and afterwards we drove to Frunze Street, and on the way my mum and I bought my grandfather a glass with the inscription "Happy Cosmonautics Day", and I desired the same kind of adult glass, because until then I drank from little cups.

By then everything was already beginning to melt. My mum and I went somewhere for her work in the southern district of the city, on some street not far from Mayakovskaya with private houses, and everywhere there were streams flowing, and on Frunze there were streams everywhere, and I kept crouching down to the ground and watching how somewhere grass was already beginning to grow.

I got an artificial fern. My father would later say that it was the same kind of rubbish as artificial funeral wreaths. My funeral-phobia was forming, but still slowly. It would accelerate especially quickly a year later, when I would already have seen many wreaths in flower shops, and would also walk a lot through the streets of Engels and notice wreaths on poles and funeral buses.

There was some adult TV series, maybe "Taiga Romance", or something similar. There was a scene where bundles of drugs were stuffed through frogs" mouths and thrown towards the border, or something like that, so they would crawl across and someone there would catch them, cut them open, and take it out. At that time I still didn"t know what drugs were.

.:::.

Part 30 text 8. Cosy episodes at home,,, I stole Masha"s notebook,,, a competition in PE with Erokin.

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One day, on the way from the gymnasium, Mum and I bought a cassette with the animated series The Land Before Time. This was already the actual series. And with it we rode past the centre of Engels to Aunt Klava"s place. On the cover there was Littlefoot - that was the name of the boy diplodocus - and a girl diplodocus, his friend. Mum looked at the cover and sort of explained which one was the girl, though I understood it myself.

I rewatched it only a few times, because by then I had already grown out of it. I wanted that cassette simply out of nostalgia for the times when I used to wish that cartoon would be shown again.

Even though Godzilla stood first on my cassette shelf, I more often rewatched The Lion King, The Mummy, and other musical films. And if there was that sucking, tormenting feeling between my legs and I was home alone, then I would put on Mortal Kombat to masturbate.

But these were very cosy days - days for cartoons, not for masturbation, some kind of weekends. It was still cold, I constantly fussed over Murka, lay around with her on the "electric" blanket - as we called it, because it gave you little shocks - fully dressed in jumpers, warming her.

I zoomed the camera towards the windows of the Khrushchyovka building opposite, and there other people also had their own cosy lives - in one window a man sat playing card games on a computer monitor all day.

For the handicrafts lesson by the end of the year we had to make some kind of object, and I sewed an owl out of grey-green fabric with a piece of foam inside as stuffing - an owl where you could stick and store needles. I remember Svetlana Gennadyevna sitting at her desk, taking our crafts from the edge of the table and writing down grades. She turned mine in her hands, seemed to smile, and gave it a mark. With her facial features, grey eyes and make-up she also resembled Dasha from youth.

Closer to the end of the year there was an unserious lesson when we did whatever we wanted while the teacher sat checking some of our old, already unnecessary notebooks and stacking them on the edge of the desk. Masha and I were sitting then at the first desk, right next to the teacher"s table, facing it. And at some moment, when the teacher left the classroom and everyone was fooling around and Masha wasn"t nearby, I pulled her old notebook out of the pile and hid it in my backpack. It was a super-crime, I had no idea what I would do if I were caught. But I got away with it, took it home, showed it off to my parents, and kept it in the little bedside cabinet on wheels with a door that locked with a simple key. In there I also kept notebooks with my censored attempts at writing. The uncensored ones I didn"t keep - and I hardly wrote them anyway, I didn"t even have enough imagination for that.

On Lev Kassil Street, in the middle room and in the hall, there were old yellow wallpapers. In the middle room they were already expendable, and on the wall I had long ago written with a black marker: "Masha I love you".

I never waited for her birthday. It was in the summer, we somehow briefly congratulated all the summer birthdays together, and I don"t remember how that went.

I thought I would remember at least some moments with the boys from the class, but no. There was a small friendship with Guzhviev, Kryuchkov and Ozerkov - but nothing specific remains in memory. Ozerkov was the one who, on the videotape, walks up in front of me when my mum and Korolyov"s mum are adjusting my vest. Like Elya, Ozerkov was with us only that first and last year.

What remains are only the running competitions.

They took us out to the asphalt square in the yard in front of the gymnasium building. There were dividing lines on the ground. We ran sprints along them, racing each other. For several PE lessons at the end of the school year we did that outside. And on the last one I finally got what I wanted.

Except for the generally incomprehensible Evstifeev, who with his handkerchief in his nose always sat with the girls excused from PE, all the other boys in the class were clearly good-natured and extroverted, so none of them really had a malicious desire to win - except me. Well, maybe also the good student Elchin - the one who was either Azerbaijani or Georgian. But in his case, it seemed to me that the drive not to fall behind physically came from national pride rather than psychological pressure. And Erokin simply won naturally, and I never remember him being sad at all.

Anyway, there was a competition, and either I ended up among the final pair, or we simply ran in pairs chosen by the teacher. In any case I ran against this Erokin - and either we had a tie, or the teacher at the finish even declared me the winner, because I remember Erokin protesting and me rejoicing. But Masha wasn"t there. Only my father was standing behind the school fence watching, because it was already the last lesson.

Konstantin Erokin - that"s the one who appears in search results as: "Highly qualified specialist in architecture, infographics and design." A couple of songs from the radio were associated with him for me: one was Shakira - "Wherever Wherever", which would start playing that October - and another older one, also with a hint of something Latin-Spanish. I thought about him constantly. I wanted to be him, not myself.

Well, that"s probably everything about the second grade.

.:.

___Part 31.

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________________Second grade is over. Summer.

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Part 31 text 1. The children"s playground at the Palace of Pioneers for the first time,,, Dasha Serebryakova,,, a knot in my chest and outsiderhood,,, reptilian nerdiness and two jackals.

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Summer began with the atmosphere of the first of September. It was overcast, drizzling, and I was again taken - Mum took me - to the "children"s playground" at the Palace of Pioneers, where there was a children"s library and where boys practised karate. The children"s playground was like a summer kindergarten, only without the nap time. Around nine in the morning. On the first day and afterwards at first, especially in the mornings, I again had that kindergarten-like stress.

On the very first day all the children were gathered in one hall, and Mum pointed someone out to me - there, she said, that"s Dasha Serebryakova, with whom, she said, I had played in very early childhood somewhere in a park. I didn"t remember her, but the fact that she was connected with my early childhood immediately made being at this playground less stressful. She was wearing some kind of girlish baseball cap and, I think, a denim jacket. Everyone wore jackets and tracksuits that day. Also at this playground there appeared a boy named Mark, who had been in my group in the first kindergarten. An ordinary boy. There will later be one episode with him.

For a while we all sat on chairs, and I, as usual, quietly. I didn"t know anyone there except this Dasha and Mark.

I don"t remember falling in love with Serebryakova already then - I was still obsessed with Masha. I simply began to look at her, and look, and look. She had light-brown hair, grey eyes, and she was proportional to me in size, though, as I discovered, again a year older, but I had already become used to that. She was very quiet, spoke only with the girls - though all children at that age mostly interacted only with their own sex - and that whole month of the playground I never spoke with her even once. Just in case: this is not the Dasha whom I sometimes mention in my biography. Simply "Dasha" is the Dasha from youth. This Dasha from the playground I will mostly call by her surname - Serebryakova.

The playground routine began with us gathering every day at the Palace of Pioneers, there was all sorts of fuss before going out, games of tag in the corridors and long attempts by the supervisors to gather and line us up (they were normal there - they immediately spoke with my mum and thus gained my trust), and then almost immediately we were led to the playground. We went out in a crowd into the street: to the right, then right again - between the Rodina cinema and the Palace of Pioneers, along the building. Then on the right there were the windows of the hall where Mum and I once watched karate classes, and further to the right there was a building attached to the Palace - the labour exchange, the employment office. My mum went there, and once I even met her there when our group was walking from the playground back to the Palace. But before reaching that exchange building we turned left along a slanted asphalt path under the trees, and there was a fence and an entrance into the yard of a boarding school. Through that yard we walked diagonally, and ahead, under the trees in the shade, there was a children"s playground with various old merry-go-rounds, pull-up bars and so on. And between that playground and the Palace of Pioneers there was a football field with goals.

At first I wandered there quietly, with that kindergarten feeling of being without Mum, and maybe sometimes even cried, especially early in the morning. And if on some day Serebryakova wasn"t there, then I definitely cried. But after some time I found an activity - I walked around in the grass there catching grasshoppers. So first a digression from the playground.

From the first trips to the dacha with my grandfathers on weekends, lizards had begun to appear at my home on Lev Kassil Street. I don"t remember in what exactly - a bucket or that aquarium. Along with that I began going outside with a coffee jar with a lid with holes for air and catching flies and grasshoppers in the grass for the lizards. Once I went for this purpose for the first time towards the park. I crossed Khalturina Street and turned onto Teatralnaya. And there, near the children"s cinema Udarnik, two boys were walking towards me. I don"t remember exactly how it happened, but they started picking on me and wouldn"t let me pass. I vaguely remember that some man helped me out.

And in the yard of the Udarnik, behind the fence, there was a lot of greenery, and it was always interesting to go there. There wasn"t that much greenery and lawns in the city. Our region is scorched by the sun.

Back to the playground. So there I was with this jar for insects, a sad Pierrot, spending time away from everyone at first. But later I did socialise and began doing things with someone. Three or four hours had to be endured until lunch. Then came the call: "Kids, lunch!" And we were led back to the Palace of Pioneers to wash our hands, and then we went out again and walked along the outside of the Rodina cinema - where once there had been that fair booth and Baba Yaga - we went around the Rodina, and there stood a round café building. You had to go up the steps, and there was a circular terrace around the café where everyone ran around playing tag. We waited there for a while until the tables were set, and then they let us in. The food there was already proper. I ate and thought: "So they can do it if they want to. Why did kindergartens always dump noodles and milk on us?" Here there was almost never disgusting food. And sometimes they poured us kissel, and before that I had been afraid of it - some kind of slimy stuff - but gradually I managed that here as well. And at the end they even gave something sweet.

Then we went back again to the Palace of Pioneers and from there to the playground. A couple more hours there, and then we were led back to the Palace, where the parents came to pick us up. There was a photocopier in the Palace of Pioneers, and my mum constantly stopped there as well to copy various work papers.

I keep forgetting to add this. All the curious children, hanging around on the first floor of that Palace of Pioneers, would come and look down between the railings of the staircase that led to the basement level. It was flooded, dark down there, and it felt unpleasant to think about what might be there. But some brave ones - naturally not me - went down and approached the water itself.

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Part 31 text 2. Serebryakova and the theme of yard life,,, pog games,,, Pokémon and bastard anime.

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Serebryakova was a "legitimate" interest, in the sense that I could tell my mum that I was interested in her. Besides, it really was just interest, not sexual interest, so I allowed myself to ask my mum about her. And on the way home we followed Dasha and her parent, and I established that she lived at: Svobody Square, twenty-two, in the first entrance - the one at the corner with the other building. It was visible from our flat, from the living-room window. I also found out that her mum worked as a lecturer at a technical college opposite their house - across Svobody Square. There was some sort of technical college there - basically a PTU. And PTU, in our family conversations, and in the whole city, and apparently among everyone in general, was a byword for a loser"s life. "You"ll end up a PTU kid," adults would say when reproaching someone for not studying properly. But still, being a lecturer even there made her mum, in my eyes, part of the intelligentsia - especially since their building was brick, solid, with a technical floor. About technical floors - in a couple of years.

In short, it wasn"t that I loved her - I just went to the playground thinking about her. I simply couldn"t not think about some girl or other; I was obsessed with them.

When my mum and I went through the archway of Serebryakova"s building following them into their courtyard, we went onto the playground there - the same playground where I sometimes saw Sasha Yemelyanov up close on the camcorder footage, because it was closer to his Khrushchyovka - and there we ran into Aunt Vera, Sasha"s mum. The three of us talked about the children"s playground; Vera seemed interested in sending her son there too, but later, when we parted, my mum said: "Well, you know what that Sasha"s like. He"s a wanderer - he"ll just wander off somewhere and that"ll be it."

Sasha really did nothing but roam around the garages with the local street kids. I don"t remember when exactly - probably earlier - but once I somehow ended up in the yard with them in the cold season, and we ran around near the garages where the boiler house was and Sektor Gaza - that was opposite the far entrances of our building, Lvа Kassilya sixteen - and everything seemed normal, meaning I didn"t fight with anyone. And the second time - apparently that same summer, maybe even that very day when we met Vera, and maybe she suggested I go out to play with Sasha - I went to that far playground in Serebryakova"s yard, and there were some other boys there too. There was a huge non-Russian boy on a fast teenage bicycle, and he kept riding into everyone - literally with the wheel - and I had some kind of conflict with him. And Sasha was the sort who, like Kozlov earlier when people pulled his ears, found any kind of bullying funny, and he ran around laughing. I couldn"t understand any of that boyishness, nor could I stand it.

At the playground the boys had an epidemic of playing with pogs. Pogs were little cardboard discs with some printed picture on them. You stacked them into a pile and slammed them against the ground so they flipped over, and someone would win and take the other person"s pogs. I don"t really remember the rules and I don"t want to remember them. The thing is, for me pogs became associated with Pokémon - so I"ll go straight to that.

The cartoon series Pokémon was on TV. It was the first time I ever saw anime, and I hated it for the rest of my life. Before that, the thing I hated most on television had been black-and-white Soviet war films. But Pokémon, for all its bright colours, opened entirely new dimensions of aesthetic hatred for me. Back then I hated anime purely for what it was. Idiotic huge eyes, no nose, the poorest animation of emotions, the poorest animation in general, every face looking the same. Compared with any other animation - not even mentioning Disney - it was just fucking atrocious, and yet it was broadcast on Channel One. It was so bad and so unnecessary in my life that I would switch it on, sit in the armchair, tuck my cock tighter under my balls, and start doing my leg-squeezing masturbation, getting more and more agitated simply by the fact that I was sitting there wasting my life watching this shit with my eyes, letting it record itself into my memory. In those years I hated anime exactly like that, and I assumed everyone hated it. But I could never have imagined that in my adulthood it would appear again - starting around the age of twenty-five - when even in this detailed autobiography of mine I wouldn"t have wanted to remember it anymore. And instead I would begin seeing this shit on my monitor every single day. I"d be posting my damn profiles on dating sites, and in almost every neighbouring profile there would be the word "anime" and the corresponding pictures. And almost all the most blatant degenerates and all the anonymous scum, the internet gopniks who would harm me - or whom I would see harming others - would have exactly an anime picture as their avatar.

Half the pogs had Pokémon on them. But those ones I actually liked then, because Pokémon was some new crap that had appeared only that year, and the pogs the kids had were newly made - they were new and shiny. Whereas some of the others were all battered.

.:::.

Part 31 text 3. Uncle Seryozha gave us Fowles"s The Collector,,, Mortal Kombat,,, boyhood and I am a ghost,,, Engels funeral business,,, the boys from the playground.

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For my mum"s birthday in mid-June Uncle Seryozha - who in choosing films and books always had pretensions to intellectuality - gave her the novel The Collector by John Fowles. It had a black cover with a blue drawing and the publisher"s name "Vagrius" on it. The design was very mysterious, and the words everywhere were strange; immediately, subconsciously - knowing absolutely nothing about any of it at the time - I formed the impression that everything in that book was soaked in symbolism. My father, a philologist, said it was a book about a butterfly collector who kidnaps a girl, collects her like a butterfly, and destroys her. Well, for me - a naturalist, and one obsessed with girls - it naturally became my main work of fiction, even though I only ever managed to read up to the kidnapping and then didn"t understand the rest. Mum never read it. Neither Uncle Seryozha nor my father ever fully understood my mum or what her tastes actually were.

I remember that day - her birthday, that is - already towards evening after the playground. BabKlavа was in the kitchen, there was sunlight in the living room and heat, and I was fiddling with my Pokémon pogs, counting how many I had. The balcony door was open, and out there was a saucepan my mum had once burnt with soup after forgetting it on the stove. I opened it once later, and there were little maggots inside. It was disgusting.

I"ve hardly mentioned our balcony at all. All my life it was piled with all sorts of junk, and there was barely any space to stand there. But still, as I wrote earlier about that period when I was about four, it had been glazed in - not with plastic glazing, of course, in those days, but wooden frames, and those windows were a bitch to open, and because of all the junk you couldn"t even reach the far one. Along the bottom of the main iron railing there was a gap, and we didn"t let Murka out there because we were afraid she might fall from our sixth floor.

There was fuck all to do in the flat, and I was constantly catching flies for the lizards on the balcony and eavesdropping on the neighbours" conversations one floor below.

The neighbours above us had a little girl, and my father joked that she wore iron boots. And the neighbours on our floor, whose flat surrounded our little room - they were lumpen types, and there was always some sort of drunken revelry there.

There were also Mortal Kombat pogs. Specifically from the film Mortal Kombat, as I realised, because the actors on the pogs didn"t resemble the actors from the TV series. I hadn"t seen the film yet. And once I was walking with BabKlavа - maybe after the clinic or the market - and there was always a blue kiosk at the beginning of Teatralnaya Street by the square, and I begged her to buy me a set of Mortal Kombat pogs. One of them had a frame where the character Sonya stands in a dungeon, skeletons in the background, handcuffed with her arms spread. Bare armpits, exactly like in fantasies. How the fuck I wanted to torture her, or see her suffering - I masturbated to it with the leg-squeezing thing. And the main point was that I wouldn"t have wanted to see her suffering with pleasure - I wanted it with suffering myself. I envied her that she was in such a situation and hadn"t shat herself or burst into tears. It was all about dying there, about "to the death", about "to stop living forever". That was exactly what I masturbated to - my own shame. Or rather, I masturbated from it. Other people masturbate to something; I masturbated from something. From shame, from stress.

There were also plastic pogs called "slammers". I hated that word, just like everything connected with games - all those slammers... points... suits... It was all boyish, rough, competitive... completely not mine. I would sit down and start reading The Collector, whose hero was like me - a nerd, a quiet one, secretly hating everyone of his own sex for their stupid boyishness. Loving only women, for whom he would have been a knight. But his Miranda didn"t give a shit about him, didn"t even know he existed. He was a ghost - just as I was a ghost for everyone I had ever fallen in love with.

Because of the playground, constantly hanging around Svobody Square where the Palace of Pioneers stood, I began to notice funeral buses that kept driving there towards Kommunisticheskaya Street and further along it towards the cemetery. I also figured out where that whole business was based - on Mayakovskaya Street, number fourteen, on the way from the dental clinic towards Telmana. There was a little wooden building like a shop, and in the window there were crosses and funeral trinkets, and on the door there was a sign: "Ritual". Next to the building there were gates, and in the yard behind them stood all those buses, and inside the building - or somewhere in the yard, I thought - there were coffins, and they made them there. The word "Ritual" was printed in all the TV-guide newspapers and other papers. There were also "Liturgy", "Charon", and others. I"ve just remembered that for a while I had a fixation and cut out all those adverts with scissors and collected them. They were pretty - there were little roses and probably pictures of coffins too - and it all fit the theme of vampires, which I was into then because of Buffy. It was the same attraction as my attraction to poisonous snakes and other dangers.

The boys at the playground were always doing some idiotic pranks, and once, on the ground floor of the Palace of Pioneers while we were waiting for our parents, that familiar boy Mark came up to me and told me to interlace the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. I did it. He took my hands in his and asked some question like: "Are you a loser?" I said, "No." Then he squeezed my fingers painfully and kept asking his question again and again until I admitted that I was a loser.

The last thing I can remember about the playground is a deaf-mute boy who came from the boarding school whose grounds our playground was part of. He was also non-Russian - Armenian. In our region non-Russians were either Armenians or Kazakhs. And he was aggressive, like that boy who the year before in Anapa had chased Yemelyanov and then hit me with that illogical phrase. This one also tried to slap someone and take revenge for something. Everyone entertained themselves with him: they would call him names - and he didn"t understand. But sometimes he read lips, especially the word "loser". Then he would jump off the swing and run after you to deliver his revenge-blow. I think I almost got hit once too. I was more afraid not of the blow but that I would burst into tears and Serebryakova would see.

By the end of that playground month I even had some sort of companionship with the boys, and once it went so far that I - already allowed to be outside alone - walked together with someone from there all the way to the home of some younger boy. Maybe it was one of them who said that phrase: "Who doesn"t know Anna Viktorovna." The flat was in a nine-storey panel building at Gorkogo forty-five, on the top floor with a view over Saratov. We sat there for about half an hour in front of a games console.

And that"s probably everything about the playground.


.:::.

Part 31, text 4. The summer clinic and the theme "I"m not Mom"s - I belong to the system", the winter garden at the Palace of Pioneers, and the beginning of my botany obsession.

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After that, that summer there were some endless trips to the clinic. Sometimes from Grandma"s place, sometimes from home, sometimes with the bicycle, which we left in the clinic vestibule without being afraid it would be stolen, sometimes without it. Sometimes Baba Klava came too, in her puritan summer dress with thin stripes, and the three of us would sit endlessly in lines for different offices all over the clinic.

In autumn and winter it was worse, of course, but even in summer it was still stressful. At any moment they could send you for some new test. There were also many offices in the clinic that we had never been to. On the third floor, at the end of the corridor closer to Frunze - where we often waited our turn for a harmless procedure - there was one office, and all the walls around it were covered with posters about pregnancy, about some "probe," some gynecology. And also about some "AIDS," about blood, about some "HIV," and about enuresis.

My mind was going crazy from all of that. The sounds of screaming babies and those big children"s drawings on the walls - that was just super brutal. When I heard and saw it all, something dropped in my solar plexus - that neurological feeling. In general, the pride I had won against Yerokin didn"t last long. Pride and healthy self-esteem aren"t something you win or deliberately construct. They form by themselves. But deliberate victories and successes - that"s all artificial bullshit; the pride from them gets washed away by the first humiliating fear, the first embarrassing failure.

The "harmless procedure" was breathing in some kind of vapor. It was something for allergies. And in the neighboring office, right at the very edge of the third floor closer to Baba Klava"s side, there was a room where I would lie down on a couch, lift up my T-shirt, and they would do something to me. Not exactly massage - or maybe it was. But it was humiliating: endless undressing in front of middle-aged women while they did things to your body.

Even back then there were already phrases between Mom and the doctors like: "The thicker the medical file, the better for the army." Meaning: more chances to be exempted. That was the first time I heard ideas like that. But precisely that - that Mom had this goal, thickening the medical file with extra papers for such a purpose, the fact that exemption from the army even existed, the realization that basically all parents try to get their children out of the army - all of that kept increasing my fear of the state system. It created in me a stress of anticipating a future forced separation from home and my parents, and an understanding that my parents were powerless - that I didn"t belong to them, but to the system.

Another procedure - I think it was called "physiotherapy" - was somewhere in the middle of the second or third floor. There was a big hall with couches, and again you had to lie down, and they stuck some suction cups to you that either itched or made your muscles contract. Something similar was even advertised on TV - in those ads where you could order products by phone. It supposedly used electrical impulses to contract and pump up muscles.

In all my childhood I never saw a single kid I knew at the clinic. Not from kindergarten, not from first grade, not from the playground or the lyceum. It felt surreal. And I never saw a single pretty girl there either - never once fell in love with anyone in any line. It seemed like everyone there was younger than me. And when you"re a kid, if someone interests you romantically, it"s usually someone older.

I was already able to drink miracle milk, and accordingly I tried the milkshake at the "Skazka" store near the clinic, which Mom had long said was delicious - and it turned out to be fucking amazing and became the best part of those clinic trips. That particular milkshake at Skazka was made by mixing vanilla ice cream and adding some kind of syrup.

On the way to the clinic or to Grandma"s we always passed the Palace of Pioneers, and we kept going there to the library to get books for summer reading from the school program. Mom also asked what other clubs and sections existed there. And during that conversation with the librarian we found out that in an annex there was apparently a "winter garden."

You had to walk along a narrow path on the south side of the building, and there was an entrance to the annex, and inside there was a man sitting among all kinds of pots with exotic plants. I was obsessed with ferns, as I"ve already said, and he had them there - but there was also a whole lot of other stuff... All those monsteras, ficuses, dieffenbachia, agave, ivy, and another ivy-like plant with very thin leaves - I can"t find the name now.

I suddenly needed them all. It became a new powerful obsession, a new aesthetic. We bought me a reference book about them. Now wherever we went, I looked at what kinds of pots and plants people had - I needed cuttings. But it all developed gradually; this obsession would stretch out over an entire year, and I would keep returning to it.

The first plant we got was a monstera. The main - and back then the only - shop in the city that sold plants like that was at the transport terminal near the museum, across from the entrance to the hotel there. I think that"s where Mom and I carried that monstera home in a pot.

Ah - asparagus, I remember now. I loved those asparagus plants. I needed climbing plants. I was obsessed with making a "living corner" at home where all those plants would grow, and where an iguana would sit among them. On Frunze there was a forked branch from a cut-down old cherry tree, about a meter and a half wide, and we took it home. I put it in the corner of my room, and underneath it the monstera, and later the new plants as they appeared. In autumn I would come up with the idea to wrap that forked branch in green wool thread so it would look like moss, to make it feel even more jungle-like.

Mom and I started going into the forest near Mostootryad looking for elements for my living corner. From the dam closer to the bridge you could see the yard of a private house at the beginning of Second Ponomaryovskaya Street; some artist lived there, Mom said, and he had dried driftwood in his yard. I even developed an aesthetic for that kind of driftwood. Later, in autumn, in that store on Gorky Street in Saratov - the one where rich people bought Santa Claus figures in winter - I saw similar driftwood pieces, lacquered brown, and I really wanted one. But of course spending an entire salary on a piece of wood would have been ridiculous.

There was also this thing where, on the way to Baba Klava"s place along the embankment, I started carrying one cobblestone at a time from the dam. In my living corner I needed to build some rocks as well. I carried them to Frunze, and later on Grandpa"s car we brought them home - though only a couple of them.

In general, Mom constantly went around with me and took part in all these interests of mine.

.:::.

Part 31, text 5. The relationship between Mom and Baba Klava, dividing up Lev Kassil Street, Grandma"s hyper-crying, Mom"s attempts not to lose me, Mom in driving school, the beginning of my freedom to leave the house, small episodes.

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I had long postponed telling the story about Baba Klava"s crying. It seems to have started sometime during second grade. I"ve already forgotten whether I understood what the arguments between her and Mom were about. Most likely I understood everything even then - I"ve just forgotten now.

In the bigger picture, the issue beginning there was that Mom wanted to sell the apartment on Lev Kassil Street and, for my sake and my gymnasium, move to Saratov. She understood what kind of future I - such a sensitive hysterical type - would have if I kept going to Engels schools and was basically left to drift. I wouldn"t study, there would be problems with me, and then at eighteen either a psychiatric hospital or the army and maybe some shooting or suicide, like her cousin Yura. The only way to save me was through education, which is why she supervised my homework so strictly.

And for that she first needed to fully own the three-room apartment on Lev Kassil Street, which originally belonged to Baba Klava. Most likely it was exactly around that time that Mom finally grabbed the apartment for herself - that is, privatized it in her own name. During the process, as Mom later told it, Baba Klava followed her around to various offices calling her a swindler, but in the end she gave in and transferred the apartment to Mom with a curse.

Of course a lot of it was semi-theatrical: Baba Klava had been hysterical since Mom"s childhood, throwing emotional scenes, crying and collapsing on the floor so everyone would pity her. She always had this attitude of "Earn it yourself," "Deserve it." And above all Baba Klava didn"t want any changes in life - no selling apartments, no losing "memory." By "memory" she meant the apartments themselves, the property. For her that apartment - and especially the house on Frunze - was memory. In her life she would never have exchanged that house for anything. There were constant phrases like "only over my dead body."

I described this psychology of extreme Frunze-style rigidity in the backstory - it came originally from Baba Shura, my great-grandmother. In the end it even passed on to Mom, who when I was nineteen wasn"t against moving - but after everything in Engels had already been sold and we moved to Saint Petersburg, she fell into depression, and an endless hell began because of her homesickness for that fucking Engels and her hatred for absolutely everything non-Engels.

Anyway, it started happening that some evenings Baba Klava would sit in the kitchen on Frunze and whine while Mom was nearby. Sometimes she had full attacks where she sobbed uncontrollably. I understood that this was something normal between them, that it had existed long before me.

Grandpa couldn"t stand any of it and never interfered.

But selling the apartment and exchanging it for something in Saratov was simply too huge an undertaking - there wouldn"t have been enough money anyway. And most importantly - probably the main thing - Mom had no support. Baba Klava was against it, Grandpa just stayed silent, Uncle Sergey at best helped with rides and connections. And my father - well, he didn"t really care about any of that. He was simply there so I would have a father, and to drive me to the gymnasium.

And Mom herself, even though she was already thirty-four, couldn"t function without support. Her self-esteem had been destroyed since childhood by Baba Klava"s tyranny; she panicked about everything; she couldn"t even learn how to use the washing machine. So how could she manage a major apartment relocation? That was completely not her thing - she always said so. Her thing was simply watching TV and cracking sunflower seeds. In the future, when Uncle Sergey - who helped her in life in countless ways, from giving her leniency when he was her university teacher to helping with work - would disappear from her life, she would immediately sink down to being a cleaning lady and spending all her free time eating seeds in front of the TV. It"s completely fucked... But back then she was trying to fight.

One time Grandpa drove us to the Lev Kassil apartment in the evening - probably with sacks of potatoes, as was common, or jars of jam. Before getting out of the car Mom talked with him about something. That was extremely rare, maybe even the only time in my life when she spoke to him seriously like that. As I remember, the topic was asking Grandpa to give them the car so Mom or Dad could drive me to the gymnasium themselves, because standing on the bus for an hour and a half was unbearable. Grandpa listened silently but in the end just said briefly: "Don"t interfere." Mom later recalled that phrase often.

Eventually Mom started going to driving school with plans to buy her own car. As far as I remember, the driving school was in some courtyard at the corner of Telman and Pushkin, or where there are now big brick houses at the corner of Volokh and Stepnaya. I went there with Mom once or twice and sat in the back passenger seat. The instructor had his own pedal and steering wheel, and Mom drove around the yard doing exercises.

Also - this was around the same time - once Grandpa and I were just driving around the city together. From Volokh Street we turned into the block between Telman and Stepnaya and ended up in a dead end among private houses. Later one winter Mom and I would walk through that dead end and there would be a passage to Mayakovsky Street.

At some point Mom started allowing me to ride my bicycle from Lev Kassil to the square alone during the daytime. The main place for riding was the spot by the arch of the city park - that circular structure with columns, the rotunda. There were two ramps from it down into the park that I loved riding down. I also rode all over the square, especially along the tribune where there was new smooth asphalt.

One sunny day I was riding there alone, feeling grown-up, and from the square I decided to ride to the clinic, and then even farther along Persidskaya Street. In the end I got so bold that I rode all the way to Grandma"s place. I knocked - she didn"t expect me. She was there alone. I ate there and called Mom on the phone.

Finally I was starting to feel what I had wanted for so long - freedom of movement. More possibilities... But it didn"t change anything. I didn"t know what to do. It was like the thing with toys: you can buy the whole toy store, but what are you supposed to do with the toys? What stories are you supposed to invent? It was completely unclear what to do.

I had so much dopamine, so much energy. But there was absolutely nowhere to pour it. I lived waiting for some other life - a life where there would be real things to do, where I would ride around on business like Uncle Sergey and be a busy person, only I"d be young and athletic, not old. I didn"t even need a car - I wanted to move around on a bicycle, on errands, wearing a baseball cap backwards. I liked the pose: one foot on the ground, the other on the pedal, elbow resting on the knee of the leg on the pedal. Looking all cool and tired from work somewhere at a picturesque point in the city landscape.

By the way, my baseball caps pissed me off. I wanted one with a properly curved brim - those were worn by all the bold, daring boys. But all mine had those fucking flat brims. And I wore baseball caps all the time. "Nikita, put your cap on," "Or you"ll get sunstroke." So annoying. But my father loved caps and hats even more - he said himself that he never felt comfortable without something on his head. Even in freezing weather he didn"t cover his ears - he just needed something on his head.

That summer he came home drunk once, and Mom didn"t approve. By that time I already understood what drunkenness was, and they had even let me take a sip of beer a couple of times.

Another time he came home with his shirt torn. Some lumpen guys, he said, had bothered him on Teatralnaya Street. He gave them the small change they asked for, but they wanted more, and then things escalated. Apparently they even managed to take something from him, and there was talk about going to the police to complain. And I watched him and thought: How is it that he didn"t burst into tears? I would have cried a hundred times already.

Also that summer Mom had her wallet stolen.

.:::.

Part 31, text 6. Tree climbing and wilderness survival, attempts at "torture games" with Alina, small episodes.

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There were some days when I became obsessed with one tree that I had first noticed when we were taken along the asphalt path from the Palace of Pioneers to the playground. It stood about fifteen meters from the round café - an elm, I think - and it was climbable. Mom and I started going there, I would climb it, and I wanted to build a house in the branches. I wanted to live there and be a professional tree-climber. Out of all animals I always wanted to be an arboreal one - and now I wanted to be Tarzan. It was the same thing as my father"s need to wear baseball caps. It"s all about the need to hide somewhere, climb somewhere where no one can reach you, and so on.

So basically I spent a lot of time in that tree while Mom stood below waiting.

At some holiday earlier I had received a magnifying glass as a gift. And since I had this desire to become a professional wilderness survivalist, I discovered that with a magnifying glass you could ignite paper under the sun. Now I kept setting things on fire on Frunze all the time. And there I got stung by a wasp again.

I also had a bad fall from my bicycle; there were wounds on my knees and then scabs. That was a distinctive feature of childhood: as an adult you never have wounds anymore and no more scabs either.

With Alina there were attempts at torture games. I started that theme, of course. Since the previous year, after Mortal Kombat, I kept talking to her about tickling and torture. She apparently already knew the concept of "torture" from television too. I explained that the victim had to lie down, and it would be even better if they were tied up, and the torturer would tickle their stomach. I wanted to torture her.

For these purposes she took me into their unfinished house - it was cool inside, all brick and cement, with no windows in the openings, construction debris everywhere, and there were two rooms overlooking their yard where her mother was working in the garden beds. The yard was even lower than the street because of the slope, so we were high above it. And in that room there was a construction sawhorse. I told Alina she needed to lie down on the sawhorse, and then I would torture her.

God knows how I hid the fact that I had an erection. I still thought erections were something unique to me and probably unhealthy, and I constantly forced it downward - and that deforming habit would continue for quite a while. But Alina never really let it happen; she was clearly afraid, though she giggled and said she wanted to play the game. Maybe I tickled her for half a minute in total over several days of trying that summer. The rest of the time she endlessly fussed around, getting into position or grabbing my hands and pushing them away. It was the most desirable game for me - I thought about it constantly.

I kept looking toward Saratov and thinking about Masha. Did she have a similar private house at some grandmother"s place or a dacha - and where? By evening my whole face, as always, was swollen from allergies and I kept sneezing. For about five seconds after each sneeze the itching stopped, and then it came back with full force.

After the main entrance door into the entryway there was a light door with a fly screen - I probably mentioned it before. It had a spring and always shut by itself. One time I forgot and left my fingers on the doorframe - it slammed onto the nail of my middle finger. The pain was intense; I screamed, blood pooled underneath it, and the nail started to come off.

Marsik - the white-gray cat from my earlier childhood - was no longer on Frunze. Some Barsik had appeared instead - a gray cat with dark stripes, an ordinary cat. I wasn"t particularly interested in the Frunze cats - they were always half-street cats, even though they sat on Grandpa"s and Grandma"s laps in the evenings.

Murka was a completely different matter. She was a proper house baby - a little black "Tatar girl" who had to be cuddled and loved. Around that time her adult ears had grown in, but she herself was still small. She constantly lay on a blanket, and I couldn"t tear myself away from her - I kept petting her and filming her on camera. On the children"s cassette where she"s already grown and lying on the mustard-colored armchair with another cat - the date there is wrong: it"s not the first year but 2002.

.:::.

Part 31, text 7. Lots of dacha, the ravine, grass snakes, Murka ate the lizards, fishing with Grandpa and Grandma.

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The main thing that summer was the dacha. We went there in Grandpa"s car - the four of us, or sometimes the three of us without Mom - and I would immediately go off to the ravine.

Gradually the romantic aspect of wandering into that ravine became stronger than my direct interest in reptiles. The ravine was like a kind of valley with open space. It was always quietly "dacha-like" there, with some cuckoo calling, and when the wind rose the reeds rustled. I hummed melodies from radio hits of that time, thought about Masha, about trips to the sea, thought about how far away I was from all of that now. And the lizards and grass snakes living there in the reeds below felt like my summer companions.

Far down in the ravine beyond the reeds, almost like in a swamp, there were also little garden plots where people were bent over working.

I went farther along the slope of the ravine, and below there was a twisting little river about as deep as a person. It flowed into the ravine and filled it. Along that river Mom and I had walked in the dacha area when I was very little - I mentioned it before. Farther along, some brave boys swam there. Here there was a small bridge across the stream. In the sunlight you could see through the water - huge toads, a sunken fishing net, and other disgusting things, because I was afraid of everything underwater and everything freshwater.

I found shed snake skins - and of course the grass snakes themselves on the shore, quickly slipping into the water when I approached.

I walked far into the ravine - there were dry patches of land with trees, secluded spots, though from there you could still see where I had come from, so there was no feeling of unease. I could even see Baba Klava sometimes carrying branches from the yard to the communal pile of branches at the edge of the ravine, where they were occasionally burned. In general these were rather childish excursions into nature. You were in nature, and everything was there - snakes, leaning willows, bridges, swamps where you could die, toads - but at the same time your house and your guardians were never out of sight.

A couple of times I crossed the ravine itself down below, past those distant garden plots, and came out to the pumping station beneath the place where the branch dump stood above. From that pumping station water was pumped for irrigation. Down there there was a small pond and some kind of platform or bridge for diving. When I was very little I had seen people swimming there too.

But now that I had grown a bit, I was afraid of everything. I would never have dived there - there were those damned grass snakes, and besides, the pumping station might somehow suck me in.

Down there I caught a very small grass snake once, about the size of a finger. I held it and with disgust imagined how many of them must be in the reeds. I also thought: what if it crawled into someone"s nostril?

From there a steep path with steps led up - and you came out at the edge of our plot. I kept remembering how in early childhood I used to throw stones from there into the ravine as far as possible.

If you walked along that twisting stream, like I had done with Mom when I was little, the river widened and there were gates leading to the dacha plots from that side. I started going there regularly.

I"ve forgotten most of it, but there were some boys there, and naturally there was some kind of conflict right away, though not to the point of tears. Maybe I even won.

On the other side of that river there was a steep ravine slope, dry and scorched, and there were snake tracks in the dirt. I assumed they were viper tracks, because why would grass snakes climb so high into that dry place? At the very top of that slope you could hear that somewhere farther away there was clearly a highway with cars and KamAZ trucks - a connection with civilization, with Saratov, with my classmates.

A couple of times in childhood they let me "drive" the car - I sat between Grandpa"s legs and turned the steering wheel. It felt strange, and I couldn"t reach the pedals. The second time was on the way back from the dacha. Behind us was the "Chaika" camp, and to the left was the Engels military airfield and the seven-o"clock evening sun. That was the last time I ever drove a car in my life.

On Lev Kassil Street none of the room doors closed tightly. There were no latches anywhere except sliding bolts in the toilet and bathroom. There was a moment when I had lizards in a bucket but I had to go to Frunze - maybe after the clinic they decided I would spend the night there. The bucket stood in my middle room, and when leaving I blocked the door with a rag - we stuffed rags between the door and the frame so it would stay shut more tightly. That was because of Murka: she was getting bigger and very playful.

Well, when I came back to Lev Kassil the next day I already understood from Mom"s hints - she had been there without me during the day - that something bad had happened. When we entered, the door to the room was open, the lizards in the bucket were gone, and Murka ran away. I cried hysterically. I suspected that Mom had gone into the room and then pushed the rag back badly - or maybe a draft had forced the door open.

Besides the dacha there was also fishing, of course - we went by car together to different places. Grandpa inflated the boat and I floated with him through little inlets while Grandma and Mom fished from the shore. Baba Klava was also quite skillful with the fishing rod and pulled out her rudd. There were different lake landscapes with willows leaning over the water, violets, and the evening sun shining through the trees. All of it resembled those kinds of paintings my father used to criticize - and later it would come back to mind when I read King Arthur, where there was something about lakes.

In general I don"t remember any coherent storylines from that summer. The next summer I"ll remember much more... but that one is just routines and fragments.

I still rarely moved around the city alone. All those bicycle trips to the square were only half-real independence, because they usually ended with Mom coming there - that"s why I rode only around the square, so she could find me - and then we would go somewhere together on errands or home.

Once I was allowed to ride from Baba Klava"s place toward the center alone, but only halfway, because my father was walking toward me along Persidskaya near the clinic to meet me. As I approached him I remember showing off my riding - making turns, riding without hands. Then we headed home together.

.:::.

Part 31 Text 8. Evenings on the embankment,,, the Nespeshny family,,, staring at people kissing and the start of bottle-collecting,,, bits and pieces about various things,,, the film Alien.

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And so, back home, in the second half of the summer, that was when the evening-dam routine began. The three of us kept going to the dam all the time. The beach itself mattered less and less, because we"d discovered a new spot. When, a year earlier, they built that Stela with the eternal flame, they also concreted over the cobblestones on the slope down to the water there. Now the whole dam in Engels is concrete, but originally there had been cobblestones along the slope everywhere. A few times earlier in my childhood my father and I had sort of managed to swim there among the stones in shallow water, but mostly you had to go to the beach.

But now the place by the Stela had stopped being wild - it became a swimming spot. People sat on mats on the concrete slope, and off to the side there was a staircase down to a square concrete platform. Drunk men would run and dive off it. The height there was less than a metre, but that was enough for them. As for us, we went into the water the normal way from the side. The bottom there was sand mixed with small stones.

The Nespeshnys came again - Lidushka and her mum, who looked like Andrey Malakhov, who had just appeared on Channel One. They started joining our evening trips to the Volga, to that concrete spot. I"m not sure whether this was the year I began scaring Lidushka. I mean things like running ahead along the embankment while we walked with our mums, hiding in the bushes, and jumping out at her. She had a plaintive voice and a real slight developmental delay. Naïve and easily frightened. But probably it only really got going the following summer - I"ll describe it there.

I also don"t remember whether it was this year or only the next that Uncle Seryozha first took us to the Blue Lake. It"s not far from the entrance to the new bridge on the Engels side of the Volga. But the next year it definitely happened - I"ll describe it.

On the embankment in the evenings I began staring at people kissing. I"d really get my fill of it the following summer, when I"d walk around later with my parents or even alone - I"d be blown away by it. But even in these earlier years I was already seeing it everywhere.

I also started picking up empty bottles people had left behind. It began with the fact that my parents were constantly buying beer. They stacked the empty bottles in the "ante-hall" - that was the small area between our flat"s front door and the metal door my mum had put up to block off the shared hallway from the marginal neighbours. Eventually a whole bag of bottles accumulated there, and my dad and I took it to the bottle-return point on Lev Kassil Street. Standard beer bottles were worth about twenty kopecks. I set them out of the bag myself, and the man at the counter gave the money to me. And now it was my money. That was when I really got fired up about it.

You could drink alcohol openly on the street - along the embankment, bottles were left on kerbs everywhere. People didn"t even bother throwing them in bins - someone would collect them anyway. Homeless men walked around with bags gathering them up. So basically, if I could and if it was on the way to return them right away, I didn"t miss the chance to grab one. But the serious phase would begin the next year, when I"d be able to walk around alone.

With Grandma Valya I barely remember anything either. The same routine: Zavodskoy district, Larisa, the dacha. We no longer went to Larisa"s neighbours - that boy with the game console - that had ended long ago. At Grandma Valya"s dacha there was a girl named Alina, but that year nothing happened with her; the next year - there would be something.

At Grandma Valya"s place the messed-up nail on my middle finger finally came off, and underneath there was super-sensitive skin. The sensation was like touching the head of a penis - unbearable, disgusting. I"d call it twisting, because that sensation always made my whole body twist and wrench.

We didn"t go anywhere else with Grandma Valya anymore either. None of those educational trips like in early childhood. Though I think that summer we went together to the station square in Saratov where there were clothing stalls, and we picked out some things for me there.

The circus had long since stayed in childhood, of course, as had all those travelling menageries. I"d have been interested in terrariums, but those were very rare. We also no longer went with my parents into the main toy department in "Children"s World". In that store we went to the upper floors instead - I think there were two of them. There were stalls with clothes, costume jewellery and so on, and there was also a department with plants and flowerpots, which I suddenly needed a lot of. Oh - I remembered: dracaena. One of my first plants. We grabbed one somewhere already in a pot.

And there was also the whole thing with black soil. Mum said that in that place called Bazarny Karabulak, where the ferns grew, there was black soil everywhere. But in Saratov - and especially in Engels - as usual it was rubbish: almost everywhere there was clay, and you couldn"t plant anything in it. That"s why everything at Grandma Klava"s dacha kept drying out - it was a terrible place for a garden. But at the dachas in Shumeyka there was black soil everywhere, Mum said. Uncle Seryozha had a dacha there, even though he was from Saratov. He lived somewhere closer to Chernyshevskaya Street, between Moskovskaya and the Glebuchy Ravine - a "cool" place.

Because of the soil issue we bought bags of black earth for plants from flower shops. When I opened them, I wanted to eat the soil - that was how much I loved it. There was also some kind of peat - even better, needed for the most tropical plants.

In a shop on Kirov Avenue, opposite Children"s World, my dad and I bought the cassette Alien Resurrection. Like Star Wars, it was some kind of classic. A very strange film, full of slime and perversions. Despite my hatred of space, I kept wanting to rewatch it. I memorised it by heart. It left its mark on me not so much because of plot moments for genital "squeezes" - like that scene where the alien drags the depressed woman underwater, like in Anaconda, or when at the end that grotesque creature gets sucked out into space through a hole - but because of a kind of "anatomical" atmosphere, together with that music. Everywhere there were embryos, ideas like "womb", "belly", and so on. I suddenly began to understand that life begins in something like that - filthy, half-sick.

I also think that around that time I briefly caught part of some film where the story is narrated in the voice-over of the main character, and it"s supposedly the thoughts of a baby being born into the world - that"s how the film begins. He immediately starts understanding everything and forming impressions. And there the father is present at the birth and faints.

.:::.

Part 31 Text 9. Rental cassettes,,, Sarah Michelle Gellar,,, obsession with travel bags,,, the image of a nerd with a book,,, the south,, hysteria,, cancellation,,, Mum bought a Niva.

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That summer something else entered an intense phase - we started mostly renting video cassettes. You had to leave a deposit for the tape and pay the rental fee, then return it the next day. Rental points were everywhere cassette shops existed - basically anywhere that had even a small store. But we usually rented from the shop on the other side of Sasha Yemelyanov"s Khrushchyovka building, and also from the big grocery store on Lev Kassil Street, house number one. That was our main place for buying food.

When you entered there were those blue weighing scales right away, the sweets counter, and next to it the cassettes, and then other food sections with the same scales. There were also books there - that should be remembered.

From that shop we rented the cassette Jurassic Park III. I already had a cassette of the second film. I"d been postponing writing about it, thinking maybe we bought it in third grade. But now I realise that no - during second grade, in spring, Mum and I bought it near Children"s World after gymnasium classes. It had already been opened after an exchange, but that didn"t matter to me. It was one of the best films on that theme. The rather boring first film I didn"t watch anymore, though I kept remembering all my life that landscape of the dinosaur valley at the start of the film.

But the third film was dark and lousy. I watched it once and we returned it the very next morning.

Then one evening we rented some strange film. It was supposed to be about dinosaurs. We sat down to watch it together over dinner, and right away there was a scene with a girl with huge breasts, fully clothed. My parents started joking about it. My dad said, "Look at the size of those balls." Then soon he said, "Maybe we should switch this off." I didn"t understand what the problem was, but smiling, I went and took the cassette out, and we didn"t watch it. Maybe the breasts alone were enough for my dad, or maybe the heroine said something suggestive, but of course I didn"t get it.

By the way, I forgot to mention something. It was sometime after the main event, maybe still toward the end of second grade. I told my parents what Elya Lainer had said - that word vyebalsya*. And then my dad, in the same tone as with the cassette, said: "You"d better stay away from that Elya."

I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. New episodes were airing on REN TV starting in August. It remained my favourite series, and I wanted more vampire stuff - but even more I wanted Buffy herself. She was my favourite woman at the time, while the holidays kept me separated from Masha. I watched it more often at Frunze Street, through hellish allergic misery where REN TV came in better. I kept sneezing non-stop. Nothing helped my allergy. They were constantly dripping something into my nose or my eyes.

At our place on Frunze the granddaughter of Fatjushkina began coming over often - apparently she was staying with her that summer. She would sit in the living room and start talking with my parents about something. She was close to eighteen, and she constantly talked about Moscow and about a fiancé - either someone already specific or about finding someone there.

That was when I first became aware of the idea that some people move to other cities at the start of adulthood. And for some reason in my mind this especially connected with girls. From her example and the conversations I got the impression that girls were in demand - that they didn"t even need to do anything. It was enough simply to exist and someone would pick them up.

For some reason she also left her bag in our small room, and it stayed there for more than a month. I kept looking at that bag, and soon I began to desire it. I became obsessed with the aesthetics of that bag. It was large and long, horizontal. I"d seen men carry bags like that on a shoulder strap. And hers was all black with yellow stitching.

I became fixated on that bag and on that bee-like colour scheme. I imagined putting all my favourite things into such a bag, slinging it over my shoulder, putting on army boots with my trousers tucked into them, full of pockets - and setting off on an expedition to the Amazon. I needed that bag. I would keep talking to my parents about getting one like it all the way until New Year.

At the ceremony where we were initiated as gymnasium students, every pupil in the class was given a Phraseological Dictionary, a small booklet. It was my memory of the gymnasium, of Masha. But I also simply liked holding it in my hands, just as I liked holding The Collector. The dictionary had a smooth cover, small and neat. For a couple of days I carried it everywhere, partly to give the impression of being a clever boy.

Once my mum and I were walking to the fair through the blazing heat of Engels. She was wearing a blue dress and a straw hat with wide brims, as I recall. We walked along the side of the Palace of Pioneers, and further on - where there had once been that booth with Baba Yaga - someone called out to her. I didn"t understand, but she said it was Gosha, the bus driver from our first trip south.

Closer to the fair I started asking about him, and she cheerfully said: "Not a word about the dragon." Like she didn"t want to remember him. While she was buying food I stood there looking through that dictionary, thinking her phrase must be some kind of idiom.

We were standing inside the building of the Engels "Covered Market" - a long row of stalls selling the same things, and at the end there was meat and fish. It was the best place to find small coins on the floor.

By mid-August - far too close to the start of the school year - my mum suddenly had the idea that we should go to the south. That would mean sacrificing the first days of school. That would be the end: someone else would take my place next to Masha. I threw a hysterical fit on Lev Kassil Street and, in dramatic fashion, tore wallpaper off the wall with the inscription "Masha I love you". That was possible because earlier we had already started soaking and tearing off the old wallpaper in my room to put up new ones.

Mum realised I wouldn"t survive it and that it was better not to go. So we cancelled the southern trip that summer. I drew in the torn parts of the inscription again with a marker.

Closer to the end of the summer Mum, Uncle Seryozha and I went to Saratov, somewhere on Chernyshevskaya Street, not far from that tall building where we once bought the cassette about alligator hunters. There was a car dealership there. Mum was buying a car to drive me to the gymnasium.

And there she bought a red Lada Niva. She liked that you sat high up and could see everything.

I don"t remember the first trips to school in it, though they probably happened. There were no rear doors for the back seat, and to climb in you had to tilt the front seat forward.

Where the Lazurny shopping centre stands now there used to be a car park, with the entrance on the corner of Kommunisticheskaya and Lenin Streets. Actually, maybe I do remember one moment connected with the car before school - at that car park. It was me, Mum and Uncle Seryozha. It was difficult to park, so he got behind the wheel. A security guard came out to comment on the whole fuss, and the nervous Uncle Seryozha told him: "Go back to your kennel." As if the guard were a dog.

Later Mum and I kept remembering it and laughing.

.::.

___Part 32.

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________________Autumn 2001 - third grade.

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Part 32 Text 1. The first trips to the gymnasium in the Niva,,, my division of the kids into echelons,,, Yevstifeyev,,, sliding down the railings.

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In the Lada Niva you really did sit high up, and you could see everything. After her usual domestic image - sitting in an armchair in front of the TV with her legs tucked under her in a feminine way, cracking sunflower seeds - it was very strange to see Mum turning the steering wheel, moving that crutch-like gear stick, taking the fuel hose at petrol stations and doing other masculine things. But, I should say, I don"t remember feeling much fear for her. At that point in my life, aside from the moments when she beat me - when her despair could only be sensed - I still hadn"t actually seen her in open despair. Her later trips down to the river to drown herself were still far in the future. So she still seemed like a woman capable of pushing through anything, and surely she could manage a car.

Besides, there were men everywhere: someone would help her at the petrol station, the traffic police at the bridge entrances also looked friendly, and generally men were always well disposed toward her because she was beautiful. I was already used to that.

Unlike the bus, which turned onto Moskovskaya Street, we drove along Michurin Street straight to the gymnasium - that was the usual route there by car. On the way back we drove around the whole block with the gymnasium, past the building where Grandma Valya worked, and after that I don"t remember the route. Basically the same as when Uncle Seryozha drove, though at first Mum seemed to get lost or else deliberately tried longer but simpler routes. All somewhere below Lipki Park, along those steep streets.

That year our lessons were in the second shift. Either at one or at two in the afternoon. I don"t want to lie, but I think it was already that year that we had lessons on Saturdays as well, and sometimes one more lesson was added. In any case, on days without the car it was a real exhaustion - worse than the first year - though the worst of it was the evening bus jams, sometimes two hours long. I"ll get to that later.

What I remember about the first school day is that we were returning home together - Mum, Dad and I - and in Engels we stopped by the dam at the Stela, at the concrete spot, and "dived", as we called it. It was already dark and unpleasant, and there were almost no people on the embankment - unusual. We didn"t swim again that year. The very next day the weather turned sharply cold.

In class I continued sitting with Masha at the front desk. I can"t recall sentimental feelings of reunion, though they certainly existed. I"ll jump ahead and say that during that third grade year I would cool off toward her. Those solitary times when I followed her almost to her street happened either toward the end of second grade, when I was already getting bold and could wander away from the gymnasium if my parents were late, or else at the beginning of third grade.

Ozerkov, Elya were no longer there.

Apparently the epidemic of collecting bottle caps hadn"t only happened in my Engels that summer, because for a while I saw boys in the gymnasium playing with them too. Arik even pulled his out of his pocket sometimes. But soon that ended - and forever.

Among the boys, groups were already beginning to form. There were Korolyov, Elchin, Boldyrev, Tyapkin, Yerokin - good students, the first echelon. And then there was the group of everyone else - the second echelon.

But Yevstifeyev stood out separately to me. If you want to imagine what he was like then, take Alexander Nevzorov - the older version - and imagine him as a child. Or even better: the actor Trond Fausa Aurvåg from the film The Bothersome Man. Almost the same facial features. And swollen red eyelids - maybe from lack of sleep, maybe from something else. I"ve already mentioned the handkerchief he always had.

But the main thing was his movements. There was something neurological about him - he couldn"t stand still, he kept twitching or bending strangely. Later in life - I mean when he was about twenty and wrote to me - he told me about some stepfather who got on his nerves. Maybe that stressor was already present in his childhood.

But he wasn"t a neurotic in the same way I was. I was extremely vulnerable, and at least twice in the gymnasium I cried. I never remember him crying. And most importantly, he wasn"t spiteful like I was - which is another form of vulnerability. He seemed more like someone intelligent. If people laughed at him like that, he would simply walk away, maybe twitching his head or face a little, and you could imagine him thinking to himself: What idiots.

If people laughed at me, I would smile and provoke them to tease me more, so that I could accumulate reasons for revenge. Though situations like that would be very rare throughout the whole time at the gymnasium. We were lucky with our class - nobody bullied anyone or made fun of others.

Except for two people who would oppose each other - me and Guzhviy. But it would be a kind of opposition mixed with friendship. That was still far ahead; I"m just mentioning it here in the context of conflict within the class. If there were any tensions between anyone, they were like that - like mine with Guzhviy - and otherwise nobody had problems with anyone.

For the moment we simply played tag and ran like maniacs through the corridors. At the beginning I was just as much a companion of Guzhviy as of Makarov, Kryuchkov and Arik. Only by the middle of the year would Guzhviy and I gravitate more toward each other. Arik tended toward us as a third companion. He still sat at the front desk, though he was already a solid C-student. He was slow - in speech and movement - a bit overweight and always smiling, though that was probably just his natural facial expression, like many heavier people have.

From the very first days some of the fastest boys from the second echelon - like me, Makarov, Kryuchkov and Guzhviy when he got going - discovered sliding down the stair railings. The second and third staircases, as I mentioned before, were old; the flights were long and had old wooden railings. We leaned on the railings with our armpits and slid all the way down them. Because I was obsessed with Tarzan at the time, I loved it. I would run up speed in the corridor, jump onto the railing and almost fly down the entire staircase, barely touching the steps.

Back then I didn"t care at all about picking up bacteria from the railing or about wearing a hole in my new shirt. I didn"t think about anything like that. We played tag and chased each other down those staircases.

Another staircase was used often - the one in the new section. Because that building had more floors, the flights were shorter, but the railings were white and smooth. There you could definitely glide the whole way without touching the steps. And there were four floors at our disposal. At the very bottom the staircase came out into the first vestibule after the gymnasium entrance doors - where at the end of lessons parents would wait so as not to crowd the cloakroom.

Another amusement was running along the main corridor on the first floor and sliding across the slippery tiles. I loved the strict black leather shoes I had in first grade, but I"d grown out of them, and now I had some shoes with stitching along the top edges. I thought they were ugly and hated them - but they slid well on that tile.

There was that hall with columns in front of the entrance to the big choreography hall - the floor there was all tile - and we ran and slid around there.

And I was constantly looking at the floor, especially near the cafeteria, picking up coins. I loved the sight of one-rouble and two-rouble coins - and if it was five roubles, which happened maybe once a year, that was an orgasm. The five-rouble coin was pinkish; it reminded me of pigs, but more importantly it symbolised the future - a future where I"d have everything I wanted and there would be no more schools.

I genuinely loved going to school, because the faster I went through it - the sooner it would be over.

.:::.

Part 32 Text 2. Lettuce seeds,,, September 11,,, about Father, his life philosophy, and why I saw no point in studying.

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I wasn"t interested in the news. At home I was constantly fiddling with plants and flowerpots. Besides the car park where our Niva stood, there was also still a market on the site where the Lazurny shopping centre stands now. That was the last year before it and the whole area were closed down.

There I bought lettuce seeds with Mum. I carried that little packet everywhere and kept looking at it and reading the text on it. When I eventually had an iguana, I planned to grow lettuce and feed it to her.

On the eleventh of September my father had spent the night in Saratov at Grandma Valya"s place. The next day, when Mum and I were walking to the car park, we met him on his way to work - to his shop - and he asked: "Did you see what happened?" He meant the September 11 attacks.

I think I had seen something, but I wasn"t interested. There was constantly some Bush on the screen, and he reminded me of the man living below us on Lev Kassil Street - on the first floor - called Grigan, as my parents called him. He watched over the building entrance, watered the trees in the little front garden and climbed around in the basement.

Even though my father had an entire shop of paintings and art supplies, he had absolutely no money. Mum said he sometimes put fifty roubles on the refrigerator - sometimes - and that was it. The fare to travel to Saratov cost three, maybe already four roubles.

My father had a whole system of life values and style values. A man must make something with his hands - have a craft. There must be a workshop. One should have both a flat and a private house (he would start talking about that a couple of years later). One should wear leather shoes, carry a briefcase, read books, create things. One should do good for everyone around - and the less you charge for it, the better a person you are.

He hated people doing crossword puzzles, fishermen, traders at fairs, criminal mannerisms, men in flip-flops, tattoos. People who couldn"t work with their hands he called "kulugurs". He knew how to make canvas stretchers and plywood furniture. He admired Soviet masculine values, retro cars, stubble, eating mayonnaise with a spoon.

He had a briefcase and worn leather shoes. Half the night he would sit in the mustard-coloured armchair reading books - Viktor Pelevin, Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco. On weekends he spent hours playing guitar and piano and singing. And at Grandma Valya"s place, as I said earlier, he painted pictures in the kitchen.

There was an enormous amount of all this - but never any money.

Ivan - Aunt Larisa"s husband - he hated him, even though he spoke to him politely. At first Ivan traded in all sorts of things - outright soulless profiteering for money - had no sense of humour, and now he was starting a business producing plastic bags. Mum said that back then Ivan even offered my father some position in his workshop. Father went there, but soon turned into the local philosopher with ideas - like in the song that appeared that same year, Lyudi khotyat poezii - "People want poetry, damn it" - and left. From that moment he hated plastic bags for the rest of his life.

My father was my main example in life and my teacher. His moral values aligned with the values taught in school, children"s books, films and fairy tales. And inside me a split formed. I was both inspired by those values and rebelling against them.

I wanted to appreciate all those things - but I wanted money. And more than anything, for my values, for what I did and what I was, I expected respect from everyone and desire from some human female I wanted.

At that moment - September 2001 - I still didn"t know how girls would treat me. I hadn"t revealed my feelings to anyone yet. The girls on Frunze treated me normally. Adult women everywhere praised me and fussed over me.

So up to that point my rebellion was based only on the question of money and respect. I saw that reading, education and everything else had given neither my father nor the other adults around me any money or respect. I saw money among traders - like the father of Sasha Yemelyanov, who walked around in flip-flops and openly resold things. I don"t think he could even string two words together, but he was building a cottage and they had everything.

Ivan had not a single book at home, but they had everything expensive. Uncle Seryozha could hardly be imagined doing anything creative, handicraft-like, or noble for half-strangers - yet look how successful he was. Though in his case it seemed to come from education.

But Mum and Grandma Klava had the same education and the same morally correct values - and none of it had given them any material wealth. The fact that Grandma Klava had been given a flat by the factory - well, in the USSR everyone who worked got flats, I already knew that. Grandma Valya had received two flats without any education at all.

I felt the issue wasn"t education or values, but personality type. That"s why I was depressed: I was psychologically far weaker than my father. If even he had fifty roubles a week and such a fucked-up life, then my own future looked to me like complete shit.

And I still hadn"t even experienced how girls would treat me.

.:::.

Part 32, Text 3. Praying Mantis - about my torment of Murka - deep sadism - a separate morning with Murka.

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Somehow, during the school year, a praying mantis appeared - I think my mother brought it in from the street. It was the first time I"d seen one in real life. It was the most exotic insect for our region. Murka had to be confined in the hallway. I caught a fly for it, and it grabbed and ate it. We fed it water. But it could fly, and at one point - I was standing in the doorway to the small room - it flew from my hand toward my face. I instinctively threw it off, and it hit the far wall of the small room. It was heavy, with a heavy abdomen, and it smashed against the wall, splitting it. It was still alive, so I tried to put its insides back. I had to go to school, so I put it in an aquarium. But it died by evening or the next day. This was becoming a stupid tradition: rabbit, lizards, praying mantis.

I learned that Murka needed to eat green grass, so in the already shitty weather - I mean, there were puddles and mud, I remember - I bought a small bag of lawn seeds at that little market by the parking lot and grew them in some pot. But Murka vomited it later, and I thought it had all been in vain. My mother, for some reason, didn"t tell me that this was necessary - the grass was supposed to help hair pass through the stomach.

I started remembering Murka a lot, looked at the surviving footage with her, and cried through all the holidays - meaning New Year 2025. Of my whole story, she is the one I feel the most sorry for. From my diary: "I constantly think about meeting her in the afterlife. When I think of her, I don"t need any girls. Maybe I don"t even need my mother as much as I need Murka. Because my mother and I were like Murka"s parents." She would live only eleven years.

I remembered that in the first two years, I didn"t really hit her. The way I hit her on videotape - you could almost call it playful compared to how I hit her later, when I had a clear understanding of my sexual prospects, when I was in despair, and also when I had bacillophobia. Then I hit her until it hurt. In the early years, it was mostly not hitting, but intimidation. And these intimidations had the same psychology as, for example, the intimidation of Alyona at Frunze, and later, mostly, the intimidation of Lidushka, my sister Anya, and maybe others. I now recall and feel all this clearly - and I"m ready to make some explanations about these different psychologies that I had postponed.

Until that point, the main episodes of my violence toward others were: pushing the punching bag into a girl named Polina, throwing a ball of worms at Alina, chasing her last winter - which made her afraid of me - and the springtime beginnings of violence toward Murka. Notably, in the two cases with Alina, especially with the ball of worms, the driver of my actions was what I call "gopnichestvo" - in my own understanding of the term. I was about to label Murka"s intimidations as gopnichestvo, like the other girls", but I paused: what does gopnichestvo mean to me? I realised my "gopnik feeling" was the desire to be part of a company, to form a comradeship with another ruffian. This includes the first-grade incident with Anna Viktorovna - when I called her crazy just for socialisation, joining the group that thought she was crazy. The moment I threw worms at Alina - there was another boy with me - clearly associated in my mind with this feeling, which is why I mentioned the gopnik feeling and wrote about bad company. And chasing Alina in winter - I remember - was related to that hill: probably someone started teasing her there, and I picked it up, continuing alone.

But when I scared Murka, the girls, and when I hit Murka - there was no one to join, no socialisation element. There was just varying levels of desperation-driven "sadism" (strongest with Murka, weakest with my sister Anya, the least-loved of all intimidated with a sadistic psychology). I don"t use the term "sadomasochism," because in all definitions I"ve read, it"s linked to pleasure and sex. That"s not at all my case. What I described in the paragraph about Murka that spring isn"t in any sadomasochism texts. So in my diary I long ago coined my own term - "sadism" (садохизм). I have texts with more detailed analyses of this using adult life examples.

My intimidations differ psychologically.

With Murka, I seem to have had two types of violence. First - in 99% of cases - sadism, meaning all tormenting her for the pain of myself, from intimidation to nearly killing her once. Second - in the later years (the "Lev Kassil" period) - just plain aggression-punishment for her jumping on my sterile chairs and surfaces. Almost always, the second type turned into sadism - as soon as I realised my dumb aggression. I"ll describe this in detail later. I"ve matured enough to know you can never fully study the causes, so I don"t rule out that this so-called dumb aggression-punishment may itself be a form of sadism. I don"t rule out that sadism is the root of all my aggression types not involving socialisation or other clearly defining non-sadistic elements.

I intimidated her in simple childlike ways: making faces, hissing, running at her. I just remembered - and it brings tears - the usual scene: she presses her ears back and crouches because I swung at her. But this is from the later, bad years at Lev Kassil, when I had given her reason to fear my swings, and then mostly continued swinging - just to scare. In the first two years, I used childlike methods.

Fuck, I can"t stop recalling the later times. She would hide under the bed where I couldn"t reach her, but even there she cried - so scared. Feeling her fear, I went further: I moved the huge bed to show her I could reach her. She would leap out and run elsewhere, nowhere to hide, crying, in hell. It was a total nightmare. This isn"t "Crime and Punishment"... there the victim doesn"t suffer, nor does he bite. Here, it"s not just her suffering - he suffers too, and she was, in essence, his favourite daughter.

This all happened when I was alone with her in the apartment.

Sometimes my mother played with her too - with elements resembling intimidation. She"d raise her hands like a ghost and step toward her. But Murka wasn"t afraid, just excited to play.

One such play I remember because I filmed it. We watched it often, but then I recorded something else over most of it.

It was a morning, before going to school. Like on Gaudeamus day, sunlight shone from the east into the hall window, hitting the big bed with a light cover. It was one of the first days when Murka got excited and went wild like a teenager. She was still small, jumped on the bed, did cat antics with an arched back, clawing the cover, falling, kicking it with her back legs. We teased her, found the gesture that triggered her - splaying her fingers and raising a hand in a threatening way. She went wild - sometimes backing off, sometimes advancing - all with arched back, tail like a brush, ballerina-like legs and walk. Then she"d leap and attack our hand. She was light, we didn"t care about scratches. She"d run along the bed edge like Spider-Man, jump, somersault in the air - all that...

Then she found her favourite "pedalling" spot with both back legs - the chair"s back. She"d jump on it, grab with her hands, pedal with her legs. Or hang upside down from the lower part, pedalling there. A year later, the chair was torn. She"d also scratch the balcony door"s foam panel, but mom would shoo her. Her tail tip was broken; she hated anyone touching it.

Murka also reminded me of my classmate Tanya Petrovskaya, weird like Evstifeev, yet wild and social. She wore a headband to keep hair out of her face, and her wild behaviour with hair tied back resembled Murka"s playful frenzy with ears back.

Mom always had her own slang while playing with cats: words like "glazyuki tormozyuki," "uh, what a hound." Distinct intonations - they appear in Murka footage on the childhood tapes.

That morning, Murka went to the small room with the computer. A new office desk was there, where mom also worked. We were heading to the gymnasium later.

.:::.

Part 32, Text 4. Trips to the gymnasium - chlorophytum - Mr. Horror - the movie Slugs - psychology of the little guy character - continuation of Buffy.

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I don"t remember at all how we did homework that year. If we got home at seven p.m... at noon we had to get ready again.

I"m upset I remember nothing. I thought writing a biography would let me relive those days, recover everything... but nothing. I can"t even remember which street we walked from the parking lot, though we must have walked some street...

I remember hot days, often walking with mom, sometimes by bus. Through midday Engels - busy everywhere, at the intersection of Teatralnaya and Kommunisticheskaya - some college, youth everywhere... Then benches, chestnut trees, kicking a football, once it hit someone... Near the square - a sign showing the dollar exchange rate, twenty-nine something rubles... I first thought of buying dollars now, selling later - my own idea. I didn"t know that"s how people actually did it.

Before the square - the blue kiosk on the left. Money always spotted on the ground beneath. In the kiosk, I looked at items, and, by habit, noticed strange packages labeled "Hussars" with silhouettes of naked women...

Then left along the square edge, past the administration... Mom often went in for errands. I went with her a few times, waited inside by the heavy wooden doors. Other times I stood outside, bored...

Then several SZhF buildings. Mom went into one often while I waited outside. There was a social institution called "Family"... Mom said she needed to go there... Nearby, a jewellery store, some bookstore... Now it"s all like a half-forgotten dream... I haven"t passed by these places in twenty years...

Then crossing toward the hotel, where all the end points are; we always stop at the flower shop so I can check palms and monstera. I wanted a palm. I even planted a date in summer, now waiting. We visited all florists on the route; I loved all the lacquered roots, waterfalls, as I said. We also went to Saratov city park; I took an acorn, planted it in a jar to sprout.

At the gymnasium, before descending the new staircase on the fourth floor, grew a large chlorophytum - with hanging offshoots you could plant to grow new plants. I eyed it, planned to snatch some, waited a few times when alone, and did. Not mine, after all.

In IT class, many pots too; I waited for the teacher not to see and snatched some. Some close classmates already knew about my plant obsession. That"s when I began realising I was different. In all groups I"d been in, no one shared strange hobbies. I hadn"t seen kids obsessed with anything.

I could be wrong - I didn"t know what they did at home or thought about. Only a few classmates knew about my plant obsession. But the lack of known nerds, people obsessed with anything like me, was enough to make me feel different. And more importantly, it wasn"t just that I was different - others weren"t like me. I expected them to share hobbies, to be like me. I was the standard of normality - everyone praised and loved me.

I had a tape of Home Alone 2. It had everything I wanted: New Year, New York, independence, the world revolving around you. I liked both the Santa Claus New Year and the Russian New Year with Morozko and The Irony of Fate.

I no longer watched Godzilla.

Our channel STS showed well at Lev Kassil. Saturdays: Mr. Horror - Western horror films, starting near midnight. I endlessly complained I couldn"t watch - had to sleep. These bans made every birthday exciting.

Once I arranged with my parents, watched Slugs in the dark, on the big bed at their feet. They slept. Slugs - slugs overrunning city sewers, coming out of taps, jumping on people. In these youth horrors - Slugs, Friday the 13th with Freddy Krueger, Halloween, Snake Island - I began seeing sex scenes obsessively. In Slugs, it was crazy, but I probably skipped those scenes to avoid parents seeing.

My psychology hiding this from them was like in 1996 - in the wardrobe episode. Since childhood, arousal and erection were linked, via tickling, with fear and strangers, the theme of being taken from parents. This didn"t fit my childhood idyll - our super-happy life as a trio. Father at the piano, mother dressing me in three sweaters, our upcoming forest walks... I felt if TV content - naked girls, moans, grimaces, strange actions - entered our life, it would ruin the idyll, my infantilism. Like hell on my first kindergarten day.

And that"s just it... My erection, which I considered an anomaly, didn"t even make me realise that sex scenes weren"t just scary anti-infantile events, but involved physical acts with penises. When I realised that, my sexophobia fully manifested, penis-phobia front and centre. I didn"t yet understand whether it was separate from fear of losing infantile idyll and trusting others beyond parents, or if the fear came from penis-phobia - circumstances where it formed, pain inflicted by others. In my 2023 diaries, strangers and penis-phobia were always linked.

I didn"t connect sex scenes with love. That"s better to explain after learning masturbation, nearly two years later.

Halloween or a film with a maniac killing youth, I watched at grandma Klava"s. Also, a couple of years prior, we watched Tremors with grandparents and mom.

Mostly, I watched Buffy at Frunze. I had a small red notebook with facts and speculations about Buffy actress Sarah Michelle Gellar - her age, living in America, English... I wanted to know everything about her. I loved her; I wanted to inhabit her character. In one episode, she was in pajamas in her dorm, dealing with apocalyptic problems with vampires; she said something important, then: "Probably would sound more serious if I weren"t in pajamas." I wanted the opposite - for her to be in pajamas, sleepy, with me awake beside her. I also realised it"s correct to spell "pajamas" in Russian пижама, not пиджама, but I never had pajamas.

.:::.

Part 32, Text 5. Fishing with Grandpa... TV on Frunze... Mom"s not a natural driver... Visiting Shurygina in Uleshi for the last time... Mateo.

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One weekend, sometime in October, Grandpa and I went fishing, just the two of us, as usual - up north of Engels, where there were a bunch of little rivers. Skyrim had already started creeping in. Everything was grey, there were no people at all, everything felt utterly bleak, clouds hung low, and there was no sun. I didn"t yet know any better, more fitting music, so my mind wandered to these melancholy Russian pop tunes - Lubeh, Gazmanov, some "We"ll ride across the field with a horse" kind of thing - because around us were these faded, endless steppes. We cast our lines from the shore, then Grandpa pumped up the boat, and we fished from the water. But there wasn"t much fish, so Grandpa said, "Let"s try another spot." We landed on another bank, and he suggested we haul the boat across land to another river. We dragged it along, and I worried about it getting punctured on a rock or stick. There were no trees there, it was wild - nothing could just pop up in the middle of the grass. Grasshoppers and insects still sprang from the undergrowth. All in all, we caught a fair amount there.

On the highway back, trucks rumbled past - like in that long-haul truckers" series with Vladislav Galkin, which was airing at the time, and I watched it for the cozy vibe of their cabins, combined with the freedom to roam, like in Knight Rider, a show from my early childhood. I loved that sort of thing - making little pillow forts as a kid, imagining flights in a cosy pram during nap time at kindergarten, imagining life inside a car from Knight Rider. I also loved Kalambr Magazine on TV, the "Village of Fools" segment set in a snug little hut, and the segment with the falling plane. I loved the idea of carving out a tiny hideaway on a village stove. Everything was about creating the coziest, most hidden, safest little nook, away from the harsh real world, from icy mornings and the walk to school, with the wind biting under your chin like frozen hell.

Back home after fishing, Grandpa sat on the porch cleaning fish, the smell of it filling the air, and the new striped cat, Barsik, prowled around. By evening - fish soup, long Sunday news with Matryoshka Andreeva, and the baffling adult show Puppets, with politician puppets. And in the ad breaks - endlessly, Red Line soap: "This soap isn"t for hands, this soap isn"t for feet... this soap is for intimate areas." Although when that red strip slid between your toes, I didn"t really see why not. Feet are just as ticklish as the lower belly, which that flying strip was meant for. I didn"t yet think that intimate areas weren"t the belly but penises. Everything, everywhere, was about fucking penises.

There was also What? Where? When? - a game show with abstruse questions, but with the atmosphere of that early childhood magazine, The Big Game, on Lev Kassil"s shelf. Now I understood it was about casinos. I had cut it up for collages, snipping out pictures of money, which I needed for something. I"d also read an interview with some casino regular who said they wouldn"t let him in anymore - he was too lucky.

Once, Mom and I were driving from the gymnasium. We went down some streets near Lipki. The slopes there were steep, particularly on Grigoryev Street, just before the Michurin intersection. Mom miscalculated and almost shot onto Michurin at full speed, right as the light turned red, with cars coming. Later, she stopped somewhere and mentioned something about her heart. Once in her life, she"d worn a device for a couple of days that recorded an EKG on a long strip of paper. She said she had arrhythmia - chronic, and a heart defect.

Another day, on the way to the gymnasium, after the bridge and a turn around that long block of private houses, at the right turn toward the bridge over the Glebuchy Ravine, there"s a traffic light - Mom misjudged again and swerved into a man crossing the street. He hit the hood: "Where do you think you"re going?"

And once, returning with Mom by car - I might be mistaken, but I think - traffic police stopped us at the square before the bridge in Saratov. They didn"t like something, there was some arguing, and in the end, we went home by bus; the car stayed. Later, she had other errands, somewhere in G.B.D.D., with Uncle Seryozha helping - through him passed all the cottage projects for the city officials. So Dad also went to driving school at that time to get his license.

Mom and I visited Shurygina and her little Sasha, from whom we"d got Murka. They now lived in a Saratov district called Uleshi - at the start of Zavodskoy District, on the way to BabVal, where the cannon stood that I"d stared at in early childhood. For the first time, Mom and I got off at the stop near the cannon and walked down to the Volga. In the last pre-Volga panel building, number seven, was their flat, and there was that Shurygina atmosphere again - her taciturn self and quiet Sasha in front of the TV with cassettes. We may or may not have seen Murka"s mom. I sat with Sasha in the room, silently watching the kids" movie Toy Story. I thought it would be childish nonsense, but it turned out a decent film, thoroughly in the infantile register.

After this, we wouldn"t see the Shuryginas again until St Petersburg in 2013. But they weren"t fatherless - they had a blonde Mordvin father, like Sasha, who just always worked. He and Shurygina knew Mom from Polytech, and Mom said she was the only acquaintance she genuinely wanted to be friends with. Everyone else was either nuts or sheer poverty.

One day, during a washing day, when Mom was struggling with heavy, waterlogged bed linen in the bathroom - already thick enough - I, apparently having done my homework, sat in the living room and rewatched the film Anaconda. I"d usually start watching it from the middle, when the action kicked in, but lately - partly inspired by watching Kommissar Rex, whose lead I admired and wanted to emulate - I"d become obsessed with the aesthetic of dark, long-haired men. At the start of Anaconda, there was Mateo - an immature, treacherous man, with such hair. Rewatching scenes with him, I got hooked on the part where he"s being strangled and about to be swallowed by the anaconda. I got aroused in my neurotic way, empathically sinking into Mateo with his dying agony - and began, as usual, my genital squeezing masturbation with leg compression. I sat in the chair, Mom was just there, to the right, across the hall in the bathroom with the door open, and I rewound that scene many times. During that scene, other characters were searching for and calling Mateo, so his name kept echoing from the TV - I hadn"t thought to turn it down. At one point, Mom mimicked his shout from the bath, and we laughed. We"d later often recall and laugh at that "Mateo!" - though she didn"t know why it had been said so many times that day.

By the way, I didn"t mention - we also rented another Anaconda film at the end of second grade, on our way from the gymnasium in Saratov. It was idiotic - the giant anaconda whipped its tail and decapitated a woman. The head just flew off and rolled like a ball, as if it could only be severed by a sword. That was the first time I realised how many shitty films and shitty creative works exist. Not everything is high-quality or perfect, like what I"d been used to from the start.

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___Part 33.

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Part 33, Text 1. The down jacket and cap obsession... Going to school with Dad and stories about writers.

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We often went to the gymnasium by bus rather than car, and I"d outgrown my beet-red sheepskin coat, so it was finally time to get a down jacket. The evolution had been: fur coat - until five, then the sheepskin coat up to now. So we started visiting the Engels "collective farm" market - or the "pig market," as I called it. I always loved these trips: everything revolved around me, the cold and approaching winter reminded me of New Year, and under the stalls you could find some money, and sometimes we probably even found paper money - ten rubles - which was huge.

During these down jacket hunts, I developed two down-jacket fixations. First - I realised the warmest, hence coolest, jackets were those with real down. I became obsessed. We walked the rows, and I, like an adult, felt different jackets. If I sensed feathers - orgasm. On buses, in the crush, I"d also feel jackets on people. Mom"s old soaking wet down jacket, which she"d worn once in my childhood, also had real down. I kept opening the cupboard where it lay and feeling it.

The second fixation (I might be off by a year) was aesthetic - I got aroused by the sight of short men"s down jackets. The aesthetic of some kind of gangster. Again, jealousy of males I wanted to be like, like I wanted to be Yerokin. The jacket had to be short, with a wide waistband, the belly slightly hanging. Ideally, hood trimmed with fur. But such models existed only for adults, and Mom needed a long jacket to cover my penis.

In the end, a long down jacket with plenty of pockets was bought: two large square pockets at the bottom, two on the chest, etc. This would matter later when I had OCD - pocketed items would go according to "bacillarity." It was real down, but cheap, from outdated water-resistant material, grey-green, for the harshest freezes.

Another - possibly bought a year later - closer to my ideal: short, with not a wide elastic waistband, just a round elastic cord at the bottom, gently pulling the jacket in at the waist, letting the upper belly part drop slightly, as I wanted. It had synthetic padding and no fur-trimmed hood. I loved it anyway, wore it around the house, stood sideways in the mirror, watching the belly hang, and while it was clean, even slept in it.

At the same time, I pestered my parents for a long sports bag. We went to every bag store along the way. In the time spent just scouting a bag, I could have learned guitar and composition.

And that"s all? Hell no. Uncle Seryozha had a black leather cap. I don"t know the proper slang name, but it"s the "gopnik cap" you see, also associated with taxi drivers. My fetish for that cap became even stronger than everything else. When he visited and went to the bathroom, Mom and I would grab it from the coat rack, and I"d touch it all over. In spring he"d give it to us, but it"d be too big for me, and the fetish would fade.

Guzhviev had the same cap. I can"t remember if his was just cloth, checkered, or also leather. No schoolboy in the gymnasium, especially at that age, wore such a cap. My friendship with Guzhviev basically started with that cap. I desired it so much that I started thinking about Guzhviev more than Yerokin.

In short, during those months, I got so worked up over all this stuff that maybe that"s why I gradually cooled off toward Ermakova. There would be many such fixations. They weren"t sexual fetishes, just classic childhood obsessions with stuff - not only material. This trend would carry into adult life. That"s why I pay so much attention to it here.

In those months, in the wake of the terrorist attacks, the gymnasium posted a male security guard by the entrance, and parents stopped going inside - everyone was met in the yard. There was a crowd of adults, and you had to find your own. All children were quickly sorted, but mine often lagged behind - on the bridge, or from Engels, there was a traffic jam. So that guard soon knew me.

Later, during some muddy period, I went places with Dad. With him, we usually walked not where the trolleybus No. 3 ended - where Guzhviev started - but via the evening route, past the conservatory. Once, passing by, he told me about some huge book describing a single day. Obviously, it was Ulysses, which he owned. Also - another book about the last three seconds of a fighter pilot"s life in a plane hit by a missile - his whole life flashing before his eyes. And about Dostoevsky"s Crime and Punishment - that"s when the storytelling began. Dad told it such that I thought the hero"s conscience gnawed him the whole book through. When I read it at 24, it turned out that was barely true - most of it is punishment in the fear of punishment.

Those were also classic times when, on the way from school, we always passed various food stalls on Radishchev after the conservatory, and I shivered from cold, hunger, and fatigue. Darkness had fallen. Sometimes we bought a hot dog or food for the road, I gathered coins, and then, stuck in evening traffic over the bridge for an hour or more, crushed among Engels workers. That was both with Dad and with Mom.

Once, walking on the other side of those Radishchev stalls (mostly windowed kiosks handing out food into the freezing street), Mom and I saw someone lying on the ground, surrounded by people. She said, "Let"s get out of here quick, probably someone died."

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Part 33, Text 2. Arutyunov"s Overreaction, Best of the Best 2 and My Neuroses, Prison Escape Obsession

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Around that time there was an episode with my classmate Arutyunov. It was break time, the teacher was out, and everyone in class was going wild. I was trying to figure out how to join the chaos. Then someone"s eraser flew onto my desk. I aimed and tossed it at Arik, who was fiddling at the blackboard. The eraser bounced off his head. He looked around, spotted me giggling, and calmly walked over to punch me in the chest.

It was like the vibe of clueless kids on the big hill at Frunze, riding huge tyres or sleds, who could kill you if they wanted. A total disregard for everything but themselves, a lack of balance, reckless moves. I remembered that eraser incident years later in 2017, maybe even wrote about it in a journal. That"s how it went. I didn"t cry, and we didn"t become enemies. Arik lacked imagination; you couldn"t expect any more creative retaliation from him. But I kept recalling his punch whenever my father said, "I think Arik is a good kid." Dad always said that and joked that a spot was already reserved for Arik at the market with apricots and mandarins. For my father, Armenians were always tied to market trading. He was full of stereotypes and imagined everyone as inherently good, like Yeshua from The Master and Margarita.

Then there was Best of the Best 2 - on TV. I"d seen bits before, but now I watched it in full. I remember noticing the soundtrack that time. It was evening on Lev Kassil Street, sitting on the bed in the living room. Like in Mortal Kombat, it was my kind of thing - deathmatches. But this film was perfect: no magic, tight plot, charismatic actors, unforgettable characters... It started with a guy being kidnapped and thrown into an underground ring. He resists, gets beaten, but turns out he"s the son of a cop. The cop recruits fighters to infiltrate the matches and shut them down. But nothing goes as planned.

In the main part, the fights begin, with minor characters eagerly stepping onto the ring and losing miserably, often fatally. I couldn"t process it - I identified with that cowardly loser from the start. This was like a prototype army, and in under ten years I"d get a taste of real life like this. By then, I already knew who terrorists were, and the news about Chechnya and the war my mum whispered about at the clinic - that was the Russian version of cage death matches with barbed wire. Only not in Miami, not against Asians or Black people, but against some kind of savages in the mud of Chechnya, all volunteers for death. That seemed to be their purpose in life. No romance, no justice, just barracks, rags, idiot commanders, meaningless sacrifice. Then wreaths, ribbons, memorials, and old women in headscarves. I"d only ever seen Russian pink coffins and ribbons on TV. Childhood encounters with funerals I"d mostly forgotten; a few nearby funerals, visible from our windows, were blocked by trees. I"d still peer out when a big vehicle made noise in the yard, expecting a bus and a procession - but it was always a garbage truck.

In Best of the Best 2, there was also a bed scene, but mainly the minor-key melody in the beginning, shifting through keys. I hummed it through my childhood; it became linked in my mind to all this chaos.

These kinds of stressors and experiences triggered another obsession - escapes. From all those damn total institutions. I started to consider that I might not kill myself, that I could end up in such a place, and then I"d have to run. I saw some movie where men escaped from prison in coffins, pretending to be corpses. Since early childhood, I"d also heard about Count of Monte Cristo - escaping from prison disguised as a body. It all fascinated me. I even romanticised being in a total institution. Kindergarten was long behind me, and I"d forgotten what it felt like to be trapped. The fear of insanity was still there, but escape became thrilling.

My father, suddenly, became a fellow romantic about escapes. At that time, my mother no longer drove me, and my father hadn"t gotten his license yet, so we commuted on grueling buses. I started listening closely to his stories and learned where he"d served in the army - guarding a women"s prison in some miserable USSR-adjacent country. The interesting parts were the mulberry trees and scorpions; the rest of the two years was hell. But at that point, I hadn"t gone fully off the rails yet. There would be harshness later. For now - just romance.

One cold, miserable ride home, he told me about a film where the protagonist carved a tunnel into a thick Bible, hid a chisel, and over twenty years dug an escape under a wall poster. He then crawled through the sewers for the length of three football fields, as my father put it. He told this story as we walked into the apartment.

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Part 33, Text 3. Father in the "Niva" and Trip to the Village of Uzmorye, Rural Life vs. Our Sophistication, Pillow Obsession, Buffy and Her Macho Boyfriend, End of Watching

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On Sunday, 28 October, behind the wheel of my mother"s Niva, having finally finished driving school and got his license, my father took the wheel. It was as if this occasion demanded a celebration: the four of us - father, mother, BabValya, and me - drove to some village called Uzmorye, thirty kilometres down the Volga on the Engels side.

BabValya had come from Saratov and organised the trip. I never figured out if the people we visited were her distant relatives or just acquaintances.

We drove for about an hour, alternating between cloudy and sunny skies. We passed the turn for Gagarin"s landing site, where we"d gone with Uncle Seryozha. Soon we turned right, and suddenly everything became fully rural. Haystacks, horses, goats everywhere. If Frunze felt like a village to me, this was the Wild West. No asphalt, probably no power poles. Houses stood dozens of metres apart; the only paths were tracks pressed into the grass by hooves. No vehicles ever went there.

We stopped at one house. Someone came out, and there was the BabValya-style greeting with hugs. No fences. Next to the house, pens with chickens, barns, endless plot. Further out was apparently the Volga riverbank.

My mother and I immediately went for a walk - not to the Volga, but the other way. There were bald hills, which we climbed. I don"t remember seeing the Volga. The hills were like two camel humps, and I ran down the autumn grass from one to the other, imagining how fun sledding would be in winter. Later, we came down and met a fifteen-year-old boy who rode horses bareback. For experience, I was placed on a horse and led a little. Due to the shoulder movements, it was impossible to sit properly, so I got off quickly. Back then, near the Saratov conservatory, where horses were kept for photos, I"d seen one horse kick another. My mother always laughed; later online, I saw horses could crush skulls that way.

Then we went inside for a meal. Many strangers and adult boredom exhausted me; I wanted to go home. The women asked the boy about his life in the city - dorms and such. I was embarrassed by my Engels second-rate status; he was basically nobody. I imagined him arriving on a stinky bus with village grannies to the Engels fair, then heading to his pitiful dorm... Everywhere - Lenin, Motherland, Communist Street, wreaths on poles. No intellectual Saratov autumn with chestnuts, linden trees, and the conservatory. No Marquise, no gymnasium, no Uncle Seryozha"s BMV. Only horses, old ladies, dorm, work in a factory for forty years. Then again, horses, old ladies, and that was it.

Marquise, I never mentioned, was an intellectual literary show on Saratov TV. I didn"t understand it, but it represented all the cultural input my mother tried to push me into via education.

I sat there, worried the boy or the people we visited hated us for quietly judging their lives. But my fears were unfounded; BabValya smoothed everything over. At the end, the hostess even gave us something to take home - a large feather-filled pillow. Almost my entire body fit on it. I became obsessed with that pillow until the night. It was a childish fantasy, like a flying carpet, mixed with my down-jacket obsession. I decided I"d sleep on it, stroked it, thought only of it.

Before leaving, we all - except the boy who rode the horse - got back in the car. We drove past a hilltop cemetery. BabValya, obsessed with holy water and Orthodox rituals, sprinkled one grave, saying, "Here, let"s bless ours..." and named someone. Then we drove home; I was still clutching my pillow.

Back on Lev Kassil Street, I carried the pillow into the apartment. My parents drove BabValya to the bus and parked the car. I returned to the TV just as a new episode of Buffy began.

By then, there were many characters. Attention went not only to Buffy, but also to her redheaded friend, who was now dating a guy and so seemed grown-up. There was also a Buffy antagonist - a bold, liberated woman like Ella Liner. I thought about her too before sleeping. But Buffy remained the main character; she had a romance with a macho guy who was sometimes a vampire - a huge guy, like American football players, all over two metres tall. Little Buffy liked him. It depressed me. In this episode, there was romanticised chaos: he needed to bite her and drink, risking becoming a vampire himself. She insisted he survive. Eventually, she struck him three times, turning him into a vampire. When vampires transformed, a swelling appeared on their nose and their eyes grew crueler. I often mimicked this in the mirror, moving my forehead skin down. He went wild, transformed, threw her to the floor, and sank his teeth into her - she surrendered. I sat on my pillow, mired in depressive crap.

This was the last episode of that season. Later seasons aired at different times; I don"t remember watching or anticipating them. That was the end of my Buffy saga.

I was ready to sleep on the pillow as planned, but my mother came in and said, "Don"t lie on that; who knows who"s been on it?" I imagined several greasy necks after haymaking and reluctantly let the pillow go.

On 31 October, the whole class dressed in scary costumes - we had Halloween, celebrated in that advanced gymnasium. I didn"t like it; holidays never scared me. Then, apparently, the school holidays began.

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Part 33, Text 4. From the Car Park - Classic Rides, an Obsession with the Aesthetic of the Chemistry Lab, The Last Hero, Visiting Granny Valya, and the Sadness of Class Journal.

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Apparently, after the first term, when it had become increasingly obvious that I was a C student with no A"s, there was a reshuffling in our class, and I was moved away from Masha to the second or third desk in the row by the window.

My father now drove me to the gymnasium in the "Niva."

He told me about driving school: he had only gone a couple of times with the instructor, who showed him where to press and what to turn, then asked, "Got it?" After that, it was just exams. You had to read and learn certain things, but my father, like me, never studied, and somehow managed to get a pass.

We would leave the car park together, and all the way there he"d start instilling his values in me. Monologues about the worth of pursuing hobbies, about seeing your personal line through to the end, about his dream of a workshop and making everything by hand... About how classic literature wasn"t as important as some other books... In short, all sorts of things that had little to do with the academic ethos of the gymnasium we were heading to.

At the back seat lay a first-aid kit; I would sometimes inspect its contents - bandages, a tourniquet, some little bottles. There was also a car lighter that got really hot, and out of curiosity I pressed it against the seat and slightly burned it. By the way, my father had long since stopped smoking after my earliest childhood.

In the evenings, he would start taking "hawthorn" - that"s what he called a hawthorn tincture in a small bottle. He picked it up at the pharmacy on the way and drank it at dinner, sitting in the mustard-coloured armchair. Evenings were pleasant, idyllic. After a one-and-a-half-hour trip, and indeed after a whole day at school, I had a perfectly good excuse not to do homework in the evening.

I don"t remember if I mentioned it, but I cannot recall a single day in that class when we did homework, except at Granny Klava"s on weekends and holidays. During those autumn holidays, she kept a close watch on me with a strap while we did holiday assignments. But that was only a few days; the rest were spent watching TV shows and cartoons. At that time, the cartoon Scooby-Doo was on - the character I was told in my youth I resembled - though by then I had grown out of cartoons and didn"t watch it. Mostly, I watched Kommissar Rex. At the start of that school year, new shows appeared on Channel One - Bolshaya Stirka with Malakhov, and The Weakest Link with that strict host.

I spent a long time fixing the year of this next theme, and I have already described autumn 2002, but I"ll return to it here. Everything points to this period, clearly in the second year of the shift. One day, one of the first of my school experience in this spirit, I was alone with my mother; we were getting ready to go somewhere, then lingered around Engels Square - and in the end, didn"t go to school. That day I also noticed that by three in the afternoon, it was already dark outside. Previously, I hadn"t registered that. We wandered into pharmacies for some reason, and there I saw hourglasses - which we bought. Gradually, I became absorbed in the aesthetic of a chemical, or medical, laboratory. Endless visits to the polyclinic, the first-aid kit in our car, the hawthorn tincture and trips to the pharmacy - all influenced this. It was a dopamine-driven theme - I wanted to mix things, conduct experiments - anything engaging. Lacking knowledge of what to do, all I could do was indulge in the aesthetic of medical vessels and equipment. Everything in this theme was as precise as in floristry. White medical gloves - just like ordinary grass. Bandages, syringes - the same. Enemas, droppers, tourniquets - like asparagus. Test tubes - like ferns. Hourglasses - at the same level as ferns or dracaenas. Flasks - like monsteras. And a flask with a spout - a palm, a real tropical vine. I wanted a lab table, and for coloured liquids to bubble in the flasks.

I was obsessed with this right up until New Year. I won"t keep adding these memories to what I"ve already written, but just know that I truly went a little mad in my own way. We went into every pharmacy, I assessed every item for how it fit into this laboratory theme. Flask-level elements weren"t sold in pharmacies; most of what I could scavenge came from Aunt Lucy, who worked as a nurse at Engels hospital. By the New Year, my arsenal included a set of test tubes and a couple of flasks, one of which was perfectly shaped, from Aunt Lucy.

And there would be a New Year"s gift on this theme, which I will describe in the first days of the New Year.

On November 17, Channel One premiered the reality show The Last Hero, with two teams of volunteers living on uninhabited islands. It was perfect for my interests. "Panama," "Costa Rica" - I was thrilled by all these words - exactly where green iguanas live. They were shown during breaks. There was always the risk of being bitten by some exotic creature. Among the people, the most beautiful was Inna Gomez, the host of Kuzya, which I once watched on Frunze with buckwheat and jam. And Bodrov was there - my first sighting of him. I wouldn"t see the film Brat for some time. He was clearly a favourite with women, even then I noticed. Dark hair, calm, no nervousness. I retreated further into botanical escapism - I needed a decorative furry stick for ivy to climb, special pots with holes on stands, and the like. A coconut became necessary. It was the first time they appeared on the shelves. I almost wanted to sprout it and grow a palm at home.

I remember that at the time, there was no bed in the hall, only a carpet. My childhood memories are full of moving furniture from room to room; the house was always bustling, and I would rush into the temporarily empty room and play.

The Niva guzzled fuel, and it wasn"t economical for my father to drive back and forth. He picked me up, too. So, he often just sat there for five hours. Much more worthwhile than any work he could do. He read, slept; where he went to the toilet - I don"t know. He was parked across Michurin from the gymnasium.

Sometimes Granny Valya picked me up. Always on the last school day of the week. Being with her was a celebration; she always brought something for me to eat on the way - Milky Way chocolates, which we never had on Lvov Kassil Street or Frunze. She also started buying me the children"s Class Journal. We would walk to Chapaev Street and take bus 90 or 6 to her place in Zavodskoy. There was Hans, noise from Enthusiasts Avenue, and various butter-and-herring sandwiches - as usual. In the hallway, on the wall - Bibigon and my painting of an "iguano-saur" in oil...

Mainly, when I visited Granny Valya, I would sit in the armchair in the hall in the evening and savour the calm and freedom from homework and vices. I read that Class Journal. It smelled of printing ink. I"ve reconstructed it - at that time, I had issues 40 and 42. There was an amphibian salamander, lessons on drawing animals, a detective column, and I figured out the mansion fire quest. There were also tests, which sparked my fascination and became my favourite section because I always sought interactivity.

Even then, I felt a kind of sadness when looking at children"s comics, illustrations, educational articles, and such. I already felt too grown-up for such a magazine. Looking at fun illustrations, like Garfield, I thought not of them but of the editors, of Granny Valya, of the playground supervisors. They all tried to do good, cheer us up. It seemed to me they wanted to preserve our childhood as long as possible. I felt sorry for these adults; they were doomed: we would grow up, and their happiness would end. I knew nothing about sex; I thought adults had children intentionally, for their own happiness - empathising with the happiness of the children.

Granny Valya never mentioned homework; I opened my textbooks only because I knew that if I didn"t learn and brought home a bad grade, my mother would likely forbid me from visiting her. I only visited her for a day and a half; I didn"t go to the gymnasium from her place.

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Part 33, Text 5. Cards to the Gymnasium and Punishment, Mayakovskaya Garage and Hawthorn, Friendships at School, Coconut and Wishes to Santa, Celebration with the Class.

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I"ve only mentioned this once, I think, but all my childhood evenings on Frunze, on the main sofa opposite the TV, were spent with card games between Granny Klava and Grandpa. I didn"t know how to play; I just watched. The cards were beautiful, mysterious, and had a courtly atmosphere. It felt like a whole courtly life came alive in that moment, and I kept recalling the musketeer cartoon, audiotape fairy tales from my childhood with harpsichord music, trips to the Radishchev Museum, and museums in general. Granny Valya also had a book, Card Games and Tricks. I was drawn to the idea of mastering tabletop dexterity, since I wasn"t physically nimble like Yerokin.

Eventually, Grandpa and Granny taught me to play Durak. This happened on days I spent at Frunze with my parents - probably only with my mother - and went to school from there. Soon, I secretly brought cards to the gymnasium. At that time, we were preparing for a New Year performance in the assembly hall; instead of classes, we spent time there. At one point, someone was rehearsing, others sat in the auditorium. I teamed up with Evstifeev - one of the few times I actually interacted with him - and we played Durak in the middle rows. We lost only briefly when someone"s hands dropped on our cards - they were confiscated. Svetlana Gennadyevna. She looked at us silently and left with them. How to retrieve them? Frunze would notice. She didn"t return them that day. In the following days, when she gave them to my mother, I was punished at home.

At some point, the car park ended, and the garage began. I had been to our garage twice. I remember entering it the first time, but it was summer - so it must have been the following summer; otherwise, why was there a car park in 2001?

Thus, as I"ll now describe, we returned from the gymnasium over two or three cold months.

Naturally, it was evening darkness, and during these garage-return trips, we always travelled in three - mother in the car too. Logically, this was probably because, by rules of car ownership and driving, the owner had to be in the car when another person drove. But then how did my father drive me alone in the morning? I clearly remember we used to leave the car park just the two of us. Strange - but whatever.

The three of us arrived in Engels at the intersection of Telman and Mayakovskaya. I got out with my mother and we went into a store in the nine-storey building at Mayakovskaya 37, while my father drove and parked the car in the underground garage behind it. The first Pyaterochkas in our area wouldn"t appear for another two years, so this shop was a typical pre-chain collection of small stores selling everything from groceries to electronics. While my mother shopped for groceries, I lingered near the flowers, checking out little ficus plants, wandered around, and picked up coins under the counters. My father joined us, bought hawthorn at the pharmacy, and we walked along Mayakovskaya toward home. Across the street was the main funeral agency "Ritual" - glimpsing it and thinking about life was my ritual.

One evening at dinner, the three of us remembered the time jackals - that"s what my mother called them - had approached me on the embankment. Two boys were about to take my bike. My father only learned of this then and began instructing me on how I should have responded - boldly. I recounted the story, slipping into a state of grievance, crying at the table, calling those boys "fucking" - my father whispered to my mother, "I didn"t even understand that word at first." A small but shameful memory. If I can"t help crying even while recounting fights, imagine during the fights themselves.

At the gymnasium, toward the end of the first half of third grade, it became very sociable. For me, these trips were no longer about studying but about running around. I, Guzhik, Kryuchkov, and someone else - we only ran up and down stairs and corridors. It was the first time I wanted to be at school more than at home. For the first time, if you don"t count Buffy on TV, I didn"t love anyone.

I remember one evening, when my parents were late, a snowstorm and darkness. All the gymnasium children had left, except my classmate - Tyapkin. He was a slow, big-boned boy, and almost the only time I interacted with him. We stood in the hallway by the first staircase, near the concierge. Teachers left, someone picked him up, but no one came for me. I spoke with the concierge, who said there was a student who also commuted from Engels, probably older. Then someone came for me.

And soon - New Year. Likely we went to the TYuZ theatre or similar. Probably, we rented cassettes from my parents. One day, after school, we bought a coconut for the first time. It sloshed inside. I stared at it like a puzzle until we figured out to pierce it with a screwdriver through its points and then break it with a hammer. My teeth didn"t hurt then, though now they would if I ate it. Just like ice cream in childhood was fine, now it makes my teeth ache, though they"re healthy. Back then, it constantly made me nauseous - for example, the buttery coconut. My head hurt all my life. Because of these nausea episodes, the next year, a gastro theme would begin in the polyclinic - brief, a couple of years, but with a serious blow to self-esteem and formation of oral-sex perversion.

Letter to Santa (all words, including unclear ones, preserved):

-------begin insert-------

Dear Father Frost!

Please give me: a mat, seeds, jacar., flippers, fishing rod (plastic), fish net, bug net, magnifying glass, compass, test-tube stand, flasks, a clock like this: drawing, just not electronic, a cauldron, a camping knife (for chopping bushes) and artificial ....

Bye!

-------end insert-------

There was a festive New Year"s day with the class. First, a performance in the assembly hall for parents. There"s a photo - Masha Ermakova sent it to me - I"m standing, arms crossed, with her, Katya Ilyina, and Berezina behind me. This was likely that New Year. Then there was an informal class gathering and a meal. Some prepared personal performances; Guzhviev - by then my main companion - played the balalaika. I found it partly funny - a balalaika, not a piano - but also envied him: he could do something, whereas I could only catch flies for lizards and finish by pressing my legs. In 2015, I saw an online comment from him on an academic concert - he revealed himself as a musical aesthete. Full dossier on Guzhviev to come.

It was a super day: no school lessons, hardly anyone around, I didn"t care for anyone, our mothers and teacher chatted in class, and we boys only ran through the corridors, dashed into classrooms, ate from the table, and ran again.

At home, there was also a Christmas tree, though I don"t recall from where. On the evening of the 31st, we went for a walk to the square. I stepped out first, mother after me; she immediately slipped and fell on her back near the entrance. Father lifted her; she sat on a bench to recover. He then said he needed to go upstairs - he forgot something. I laughed and tried to stop him, but he insisted and went. Everyone understood why he returned.