The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)

Standing on the bridge he shouted loudly, "Cast off!" And he ran from the bridge to the wharf and removed the lines from the bitts.

Then he jumped back to command "Slow Astern!" and execute it…

“Good fellow, Kuba! Let them know the ours! Down the hatch!”

…and in foreign ports, there are special houses for seamen recreation. Equipped like a luxury hotel, with a restaurant, rooms, a swimming pool. Now, whenever Soviet seamen dive into the pool, the water around their bodies gets spotted with crimson. Abroad, they’ve become way too advanced and add some chemicals to the water which turns crimson when in contact with urine.

Well, and you know how it goes by us, the first thing after you plunged is to take a leak in the water… So, they have to drain the pool and fill it up again, and the Germans have to sit for another hour over their beer on the tables and wait: "Rusishe Schweinen!"

“They themselves are pigs. Half-whacked fascists! Down the hatch-y!”

…in Hong Kong, it was, or maybe Thailand. The ours got moored, visited the city, and were coming back to the pier.

There was a team of dockers, so skinny them all because they live on just rice and seafood. Our boatswain was a hero, two meters tall, he grabbed one of the dockers by his overalls collar and lifted up in the air, like a kitten.

"Yea, bro. Slaving all your life, eh? Bad luck." He put him back and went on.

So that yellow did not understand the brotherly solidarity, and he did not appreciate the Slavonic generous breadth of soul. He runs ahead, jumps up—ya!—and kicks the boatswain into the nose.

Then the ours had a whole hour to water the giant on the pier to bring him back to life.

“And dat's rightee! Here's to Bruce Lee! Down the!”

…Nah! Kuba ain't gonna get married at all. They all are but fucking sluts… A boat in the roadstead ready for sailing off. The captain's wife comes up by a towboat to kiss him goodbye. Happy voyage, dear!. Coming back to the harbor, she's fucking the helmsman and two mechanics, in turn or not quite, in the wheelhouse.

“For freedom! For whores! D’n th’tch!”

…and it's real difficult to smuggle goods from abroad. Any boat zampolit has at least 2 rats among the crew.

"You mean, there are zampolits on boats?!"

"That's the rule."

"I'd better stay a land rat then!"

“T's rightee! For rats! D’nnnnn!”

But I still remembered clearly enough that I was going to the drugstore because my mother asked to fetch her some medication before I went to Nezhyn. Therefore, I most warmly said goodbye to Kuba the Sea Dog, although the lemon peels were not yet scraping the glass of the bottom in the three-liter jar, and in the frying pan there still were glittering, here and there, spots of sunflower oil not fully wiped up with bread.

"No! No! I know! All's gonna be nyshtyak."

After the Under-Overpass, I boarded a streetcar to City. I neatly got off it by the Department Store and went round its corner to the drugstore where, by my mother's lead, they sold the needed medicine. Entering the glazed door, I reached the glass partition and, to the question of the woman in white, inhaled a lungful of the air preparing to answer but suddenly realized that even if I could recollect the medication’s name then pronouncing it, or anything else for that matter, was simply unfeasible. Ruefully, I turned around, exhaled and staggered out.

Nonetheless, I somehow managed to cross Peace Square before getting aware that I was done in beyond all bounds and switched over to the guidance of my guardian angel. He steered me into the yard of a five-story apartment block, chose the proper staircase-entrance and took care that I did not spill down the dark stairs to an unfamiliar basement. Then he led me along an endless cemented corridor to the place, where the scattered light from the opening to the outside pit outlined a mesh bed frame, leaned against the wall. It remained only to lower it onto the floor, crash down upon it and conk off. The sheepskin coat and the hat substituted for a sleeping bag.

I woke up in a thoroughly stiff state, but still managed to be in time for the last local train to Nezhyn.

The next weekend, I again volunteered to go to the drugstore after the medicine if my mother reminded me of its name, but she said, no, it was not necessary any longer…

~ ~ ~

There was a New Year dancing party held in the foyer of the New Building. Eera and I were dancing there, and some teacher from the Biology Department could not keep back her delight, she gleefully announced to us that we were created for each other. It's nice to be complimented that way, moreover, by a specialist versed in species. But soon after, the zipper in my jeans blasted, and my sweater was not long enough to hide the hole. So I tried to fasten the sweater hem to the jean's fly with the safety pin lent me by Slavic. However, it did not help to resolve the situation, because the pinched down sweater began to look like a leotard on sub-deb gymnastics girls, besides, I did not care to be pricked into one or another of my private parts if the pin burst too. There remained no other option but go to the Hosty and change my jeans. Normally, I didn't keep spare clothes in my room but changed in Konotop at weekends. Yet, that was a special occasion and I had brought my dapper jeans for dancing at the party. The incident made me change back into shabbier, but sturdier ones.

Upon returning to the foyer, I found Eera in eager conversation with some young buster. I did not like him right away, despite the fact that he was introduced as some of her old acquaintances.

Probably, I couldn't hide my dislike towards him and the feeling became reciprocal. The confrontation did not go over to active hostilities, but the voice timbers acquired menacing pitch. At some point, I looked away from the jackass and caught a glimpse of Eera which deeply amazed me. She blossomed, she was happy! Never before I had ever seen so much joy in her eyes…

On the way to her home, Eera kept picking holes in my reaction to an absolutely normal situation, and I half-heartedly defended myself, busy with storing in my head the new discovery.

(…the highest bliss and most eagerly craved for moment in a female life arrives when two stag-males are going to clash their horns for her, the prize bitch.

That's it. You vigorously toil like f-f..er..I mean, flustered Pygmalion absorbed so deeply in turning your piece of art into living flesh, panting, drowning in the perspiration of relentless efforts and to what end all that, eh?!.

O, fool! You’re slavering for an idle jerk popping up down the road to lap up the goodies of creation that cost you so many pains! No, it’s anything but a fair play. Where's the f-f..er..fundamental justice, eh?..)

The New Year Eera met at the Hosty… Before her arrival, I served a romantic table for 2, a bottle of red wine next to an unlit candle and an open can of sprats in oily liquid. There still remained some time and I suddenly decided to prepare a surprise for her, or rather a New Year present…

Since my getting interested in the topic, it was insistently driven in to me that the longer, the better. To wit, the duration of having it indicates the quality of action. The human race invented quite a few tricks for gaining upswing in quality. The simplest one is to kill a glass or 2, I mean the standard Russian glass of 250 ml. However, stepping on that path you need the right snack. Prosper Merimе, for example, was advocating for soup of cock combs for this particular purpose. I did not have even lard.

The austere circumstances called for finding other means or workarounds. My personal experience in the brute facts of life prompted that of two go-rounds the second having a sex was always longer. Thus, I had no other choice but having a proactive sex.

Very conveniently, Spotty was frisking about the hostel corridor, hither and thither, as if so too busy with her New Year Eve cares. Good timing. I skipped discussing the reasons of my unexpected interest in her or clarifying that I needed nothing but mere technical assistance. Not that such frankness would hurt her in any way. The floozy had seen much more than I could imagine in the wildest dreams before she had to transfer to the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute to avoid being sent down from the University of Kiev for grossly unleashed fucking and sucking. Possibly, there were other reasons too, because she casually mentioned that her husband did not wear anything under his jeans at all. Well, I dunno, but for me, an innocent lad from the Settlement, the like extravagances seemed way too deep…

The technical assistance was applied in a neutral, of course, room and in a distanced, orogenital way. With the business-like warning not to crumple her breasts, where there were no erogenous zones, she flung my jeans open, zapped my cock out and went down on it. The pecker met the attacking force with brave unyielding hardon which attitude was retained thru all of the procedure. Regrettably so…

Time went on, she obviously ran out of her store of tricks in giving head but I still couldn’t cum. The situation more and more acquired the air of monotony and even considering the ringlets of her hair the color of raven's wing, and the glasses which she never took off, was of no help. And when there started to surface superfluous analogies and uncalled-for reminiscences of a dark alley in the park of Stavropol, I beat a retreat which is not an easy maneuver with a stubborn stalwart at presenting arms in the leg of your jeans.

Still and all, what a smart hell of a subtle plan it was! The second to none willingness for genuine self-sacrifice! A knightly deed, if you find a second to consider it with sufficient introspection… Catering a blow job to Spotty, who had no idea of whereabouts of those f-f…er…frigging erogenous zones of hers. A selflessly chivalrous readiness for anything just to please your beloved! If it was not an irrefutable example of devoted love and tender care, I know of nothing else that could be…

Nevertheless, I did not disclose to Eera what namely I had to get thru just to make her feel good. Because I never was keen on flashing my positive aspects and advertising my noble deeds overmuchly… Later on, that New Year night, when Eera and I sat up at the table again, wrapped in bedsheets like Romans in their togas, Spotty walked by the door opened to the corridor. Out there, with gleeful vehemence, those who met the New Year in the hostel congratulated each other.

Spotty politely knocked on the door jamb, was invited to the table, treated to wine and allowed to ask Eera about her life circumstances. Eera started to drive a fool to her, like, she was a married woman but her husband being a geologist seldom came home. Having just recently moved from Kiev to Nezhyn, Spotty believed anything driven to her which made us laugh immoderately.

The haughty, naive Romans in those loose togas, we were making fun of gullible Spotty without realizing that any jest was the truth which just needed some time to mature…

After the winter examination session, Eera and I went to Borzna for the wedding of her course-mate Vera to her solid groom in the rank of Major. Unlike the wedding of my course-mate two years before in the same Borzna town, the celebration was not a khutta affair but took place in the large cafе-canteen on the main square of that district center, and lasted for two days.

After the first day, Eera and I spent the night in a small khutta among the snow-filled vegetable gardens on the outskirts. The khutta owner, a distant relative of Vera, was told that Eera and I were a married couple, newlywed, and she, after having her fill at the wedding table, went to sleep over at some other relative's, because her place was a single room with a whitewashed oven, a table, a chair, and a bed. The bed stood by the wide windowsill with the sharply outlined black shadow of the lattice, lightened from outside by the full moon, whose beams set a-gleaming the glass walls in the empty three-liter jar left on the same shadow-crossed sill.

I liked everything there, and the crusty earth floor made of firm, washed-down, clay, and the bed with boards in place of the mesh, and the hay-stuffed mattress… It's highly unlikely that the mistress believed in our being a husband and wife because during the wedding feast I a couple of times caught her gaze, both encouraging and gruffly sneering, from behind the table where she sat among the elderly women in their Sunday best black padded jackets, or in black plush coats with thick plaid kerchiefs spread loosely over their shoulders…

We threw our clothes off on the chair and ascended to the matrimonial bed as it was a century and centuries before in those same khuttas lost among those same snowdrifts. The moon reluctantly rose up above the window frame and could no longer follow the merrymaking couple of newlyweds, pressing hay at the alternate ends of the bed rooted in the earth floor of the unchanging khutta…

On the second day, Eera grew silly jealous when I was called out from the wedding hall by a local beauty. I did not really get it what's what as in the din of celebration Vera's brother, Mozart by his handle, shouted into my ear the unintelligible message.

Leaving the cafе-canteen, I went to the half-dark backyard where a beautiful, in general, girl was staging a pathetic hysteria on the trampled snow, pinioned by two girlfriends, all the trinity in light festive dresses. A group of young spectators, who came out to air themselves, crowded by with exhortations to her and pieces of advice to the girls gripping her arms. Without the slightest participation in the amateur show, I turned to leave and met the unforgiving stare of Eera. Back at the table, I had a hard time convincing her that I had nothing to do with the vagaries of the tipsy mantrap. I was supported by Valentina, a female of the most remarkable physique, who sat next to Eera. Farther on, there was seated an insignificant, on the background of her mighty forms, Armenian.

His Armenian identity was revealed when he was giving the 3 of us a ride thru the early night… On the street leading to the Moscow highway, the big Valentina told him to slow down, and left the Zhiguli to yell at Tolik, her fifth-grader son. The boy was replying to his mother in pure Ukrainian, and I felt somehow knocked out of rut by the winter snow all around so sharply discordant to the boy's Negro face.