Things Get Worse

I arrive home at 10 after a long day, spend some money at the pizza joint on the groundfloor of a neighboring building, and go home. Charlemagne opens the door and lets me in. He’s already got a pot of hot water waiting for me so we can drink coffee together. I don’t want to drink coffee at this hour, and don’t want to talk, either. I’ll be polite, though.

“How was your day?”

“Oh, nothing special. Things are moving along with my girlfriend. I need to find a place to stay with her, though before anything happens. We thought about getting a hotel but…”

He gasps. “A hotel! What a slut! Did she ask you or did you ask her?”

“She asked me.”

“What a whore, how did she do it, by SMS so you could jerk off? Did you make any special requests? You know you can’t bring her back here, that is for SURE. I CANNOT BEAR the smell of VAGINA.”

“Don’t worry, Charlemagne, she’s clean. Anyways, how’s work going?”

“Awesome. My students just love me, they can’t get enough of me. I have a new group of women and they all want me on top of them, but I can’t do that, I love MEN.”

“I was wondering- what did you do in the US before you came here?”

“I never liked the United States.”

“What did you do there?”

“I worked in finance.”

“Where?”

“In [a major US bank].”

“Really? How did you get the job there?”

“I had an inside man, he was SUCH a good lover, those were the best times up in that tower. Afterwards we started taking over the world, I hired my lovers and we started taking over, the sex was so GOOD.” He rolls his eyes. “Then they understood what was happening and they fired us, they just couldn’t bear to have fags taking over, they stopped us but you know it’s just a matter of time before we have EVERYTHING.”

“So they fired you? How long did you work there? I mean, I seem to remember you mentioning that you lived in seven or eight different cities in the US. How long was this career in Citibank?”

“I can tell you that it was not long enough. They couldn’t fire us so they gave me a severance package so I would shut up, I keep their secrets and they keep mine.”

“How much money is it?”

“2000 dollars per month.”

“That’s pretty generous. Why are you working, actually?”

“Because I love Russia, and I love Russian men, and I need to be here forever. I love being GAY and RICH in Russia.”

“I still don’t get what you see in Russian men.”

“The same thing you see in Russian vaginas,” he reasons. “Fair hair, light eyes, clear skin, high cheekbones, beautiful hips.”

He’s pretty predictable, actually. I need to throw a wrench into the conversation. “Charlemagne, what do you think of when you think of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan? Would you have liked to have gone and fought alongside them? It was the 80’s, you know.”

“I think the same thing when I see our baby boys fighting sand niggers and towel heads. It makes me so ANGRY to see Americans who think their country is so great, we go and steal oil and then we complain about how every country in the world acts, I HATE IT when people complain about Russia. They’re such hypocrites! It’s good to know sand niggers are being killed. I got attacked by one today at the train station, he was asking me for money, I showed him my boxcutter, I REALLY put him in his place. Those people need to be stopped…”

“From doing what?”

“Making babies, they’re populating the whole world, they don’t know how to use birth control,” he says, rocking his hips at me.

“But the overall Muslim birthrate is not that high. Iran has a birthrate comparable to that of the US. Iraq has a high birthrate but it’s offset by war losses. Egypt I think is an exception, the Magreb as a whole I am not sure about, but I don’t think it’s five kids per family.” It takes me so long to understand other people aren’t rational.

“You’re just saying that because you’re Catholic! You want to defend anyone who makes babies.”

“I’m not Catholic. And actually, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, they all have at best a flat birthrate. I can’t speak about South America, but the key factor is economics, not religion.”

“And what about Ireland? Haven’t you seen Monty Python? Every sperm is sacred, all Catholics do is fuck, fuck, fuck, ignorant bunnies, they couldn’t figure out what condoms are for.”

“Charlemagne- as my father said- you’re talking like a… man with a paper mache ass.” The original expression is “a fat man with a paper mache ass”, which I censored at the last second.

“Your father is a Catholic who trucks sheet rock around rural counties for other rednecks who pay for it with welfare checks…”

“Don’t talk about my family.”

“You can FUCK your family, and you are my GUEST and will throw you out in the COLD and you will tell me what I WANT to hear and not what you THINK. And don’t you ever talk about my ass. Fags have given the world all its art and culture and money and what has heterosexuality ever given us? I’ll TELL you! An ABORTION DOCTOR and a TAMPON SALESMAN and a VAGINA SALESWOMAN selling herself for the price of a MAN’S HOUSE and BABYCLOTHES and JARS OF BABYFOOD and a TRICYCLE.”

“I’ve thought of it that way, too, but it’s time for me to go to bed.” It’s true- I’ve heard priests conceding with a mournful asterisk that at least homosexuality doesn’t lead to abortion. I get up and get ready for bed. He’s still awake, and I don’t want him to hear the sounds of me packing my bags tonight, so I decide to do it early the next morning, taking everything essential with me. I get in the sleeping bag on the floor and try to sleep, but there is too much to think about- where will I sleep now? There still is a seven-day gap before the apartment at Oktiabrskoe Pole opens up. What is going to happen here? Clearly, he will not give me my money back, and grappling with a 180-kilo gay man is just too much effort for the 2500 rubles he owes me. My eyes ache with exhaustion but sleep doesn’t come until 230. At 4 I wake up to the sound of burps coming from the toilet- after last night’s talk he is vomiting out his ass- and go back to sleep, waking up at 6:15. I understand that I won’t have enough time to gather my things and secretly move out. I brush my teeth, put on my dirty clothes, and try to drink two coffees but only manage to get down part of one before it’s time to go. I don’t even have most of my books with me when we walk out together to the marshrutkas.

When we get in, I smell vodka on the breath of one of the passengers and decide to pique Charlemagne’s sensitivity about Russophobia.

“Charlemagne, man you smell that? This early in the morning. It’s a good thing this is a non-smoking marshrutka, can you imagine what would happen if he smoked after that much spirit? He would ignite and his guts would bust out, it’d look like calamari hanging down over his belt, can you imagine it, they’d be flash-frozen in the wind from the steppe, he could walk around like that for hours before anything bad happened, it would only thaw in time for the business lunch at obenihana, he could flop them up on the steel desk with his dick and fry himself himself. You have to admit, that would be a healthy lunch!”

Charlemagne laughs a little nervously. I wonder if he’s smart enough to know he’s being mocked.