Chapter 3. Free Fall

My first serious wrong choice was made when I was thirteen years old. If before I used to have sexual fantasies about my female friends at bedtime – a trace of my childhood sexual experience – then at the beginning of the eighth grade I started having a real sex drive. And if before my fantasies did not interfere with my life in any way, now I just could not help but think about sex and girls. The obvious solution would be to look for a girl, but then another thought appeared in my head – the thought that because of my stumbles in my speech, no girl would want to get involved with me. Perhaps the reason for this conclusion was the memory of how in the village at the bus stop my friend C sang a song that was clearly aimed at making fun of me, and our female friend, whom I sort of liked, had a characteristic expression on her face, saying what she was thinking about me at that moment.

And then I remembered about the existence of masturbation…

This was the first time that I first began to touch myself for sexual pleasure. I enjoyed doing this with myself.

I think it was about that time when many people, including relatives, friends and even guys, had been telling me that I was a handsome boy. At one time, my mother tried to cheer me up about my speech problems, saying that the girls would want to get to know me themselves since I was beautiful. Then at school one of the senior students came up to me to ask if I had an older brother. At another time, my aunt Zina asked where I got my handsome look from; then in the kitchen of the Big House sat my father who was already almost completely bald and full-bodied, and I felt somewhat uncomfortable in front of him. My female cousin noted my beauty a couple of times. Then one of my village female friends said that I was a very handsome boy. I remembered those words, and I too began to think of myself as of a handsome guy. Of course, I liked being beautiful, and I liked that fact that girls were glancing at me.

Meanwhile, it was time for ninth grade. Everything was the old way for me – stutters and self-doubt continued to cloud my life. By then I already began to be afraid of phone calls, fearing that my classmates were calling me, and I would again have to struggle to pronounce the words. Plus, I was always shy to talk on the phone about my personal life in front of my mother who was always nearby in our one-room apartment – this could not but affect the fact that I almost did not learn to talk with people and did not acquire a good understanding about what to say, and how to say it.

In general, I was a very shy child in my childhood, which made the whole situation much more difficult.

So, I remember one summer evening in the village, when we were burning a fire by the spring, and some friends were playing spin-the-bottle. One of my female friends clearly, at least it seemed to me so then, wanted to teach me how to kiss – she was saying that otherwise I would have a girlfriend one day, but I will not know what to do. She insisted for a while. To some extent, I had certain feelings towards that friend, and I think I would have agreed to become her apprentice, so to speak, if it were not for the presence of my male friend who was two years older than me, and who refused to play spin-the-bottle. At that time, he was a decent and the right guy, and the thought of what he would think of me played an important role in my refusal to play the game.

There was a continuation of that story. Once that same friend called me in Moscow and invited me to her birthday. Again, part of me wanted to see her, but the thought that I might need to talk to strangers in the form of her relatives and Moscow friends, and I would start to stutter, outweighed. Even after many minutes of persuasion, my friend did not manage to invite me to her birthday. Of course, at that time she did not know the true reasons for my refusal to come to her… Later, in the village, she jokingly recalled this moment to me. And I felt a little sad at heart…

I was often very worried when I was walking to school, because I was scared by the thought that I might get asked in class, and I often wanted to just be left alone to find peace. Because of this, the days of tests were one of my favorites, since I could be more or less calm that I would not have to speak that day. Then I again began to worry about what people think of me, because a few months earlier one of my village friends finally told me why they gave me the nickname that they had been calling me for many years – it was associated with stuttering. This was the next moment when I again lost confidence in myself and in my speech, after I acquired it with great difficulty.

The speech situation also did not improve after the new teacher asked me to answer in biology class. After my answer, one of my classmates named Olga spoke to the teacher about stuttering and how to fix it. I well remember the teacher's phrase that “nerve cells do not regenerate”. It did not sound very inspiring for me…

I continued to masturbate and soon began to look forward to the time when I would be home alone. Alas, when the spring holidays came, the time when we always went to the village, I decided to stay at home. In the ninth grade, my mother often began to visit her sister for a couple of days and leave me alone so that I could study more calmly in our one-bedroom apartment. But, alas, I also used this time to watch erotic films on one of the television channels at midnight of another Friday. Naturally, I did not just watch them. I masturbated then every day and sometimes several times a day. Of course, then I did not want people to find out about what I was doing with myself – this would have been a disaster for me. After some time, a rather interesting and funny moment happened at the school, when one of my classmates jokingly said that “Zhenya does not smoke, does not drink, only masturbates.” And I had a question in my head – how does he know? I do not think he actually knew, but nevertheless, that simple joke was destined to become something more in the following years…

It is worth noting that I often looked at the icons of saints behind the glass on the shelf, and the thought sometimes visited my head – what if there really is something more to this life, and all the secrets will sooner or later actually become apparent? I was not very comfortable then at the thought, but my favorite habit was overpowering me every time.

Because of wild speech stammering, when, for example, I could not say anything, holding out my tongue, which seemed to not listen to me while jerking in convulsions, I began to think about death, because I perfectly understood that such me would not have a life – at least not the life that I wanted, where I would be the same as everyone else – neither more nor less.

I told my mother that at school I again had problems with speech. I do not think we went to the doctor that day for the next pills, which in any case did not really help, but my mother then told me to think about what to say at school tomorrow. I took this advice too seriously and began to imagine before falling asleep about what could happen tomorrow at school. This did not help, but rather, on the contrary, made the situation worse.

It is noteworthy that before that wrong advice from my mother, I thought that you just need to learn your lesson and live your life. And when a teacher asks me to answer a question in class, I will remember the necessary information if I have learned and understood the essence of the subject being studied.

There was a time when several classmates and I sat on a bench on the ground floor of our school – in front of the main door, which is facing a long corridor leading to the gym and dining room. I think many Russians will recognize this layout of this standard Soviet school, similar to the letter “H” when viewed from above. It was gym class, which we did not go to, and in the school corridors it was empty and quiet. I was sitting on the edge of the bench, next to the corridor. Suddenly two girls appeared from that corridor, quickly sweeping the floor. My eyes were fixed on a blonde girl dressed in a white shirt, emphasizing her small breasts, and a tight-fitting black skirt, and I remember exactly how in my perception time seemed to slow down – I fell in love with her at first sight.

I constantly thought and dreamed about her. I just could not help but think about her.

When they went to the biology class, I was able to establish from the schedule that she was an eleventh grader. I was thinking of approaching her, but that thought immediately overlapped with another – if I started to stutter, and she laughed – that would be the end of my life for I could hardly bear the pain of my fate. In addition, she always walked with her equally pretty red-haired friend, and this created even more problems for me. Plus, she was older than me, which was not a surprise, as I often fell in love with older girls, and I decided that perhaps I would endure and wait for the time when I would be older and the age differences would not be so obvious.

Sometime later, a group of classmates and I were waiting for the start of a lesson. One of the guys expressed his opinion that in our class all the girls were not beautiful, if one was to convey his words in a mild form. Then they drew attention to other “not beautiful” girls, and another guy said: “To fuck such girls – is to disrespect yourself”. Although everything was fine with my appearance at that time, I still combined this statement with my speech problems, believing that all the girls whom I would try to approached would think the same about me. Then I finally dismissed the idea of approaching the girl with whom I was in love, and then I made another the most serious mistake of my life.

I had moments when I started to fantasize about something or someone, but I essentially did it before bedtime. I can only recall the event at the dentist. In childhood, I could not stand the pain when drilling teeth. Then my mother led me to check my teeth at the dental clinic on Prostornaya Street, and again I had tooth decay. Then I saw a flitting bird on a nearby building, which has now been demolished to build two multi-story residential buildings. While my tooth was being drilled, I decided to try to go into fantasies, imagining a story about that bird – and it really helped me. This was the first time that I was able to calmly endure the pain, as I simply “turned it off” – there was pain, but at the same time I did not feel it, being in my mind somewhere else.

But in the ninth grade, I decided that I would deliberately fantasize about someone in all my free time. Otherwise, I would have just taken my own life, because I could not bear all that load; because of speech problems my life was breaking before it had even begun, and I could not do anything about it. Then I listened to foreign music on musical radio stations every day, and also watched MTV, and I began to fantasize about one of the popular, at that time, singers. Of course, in my fantasies everything happened as I wanted it to – there was no stuttering or stiffness. I often fantasized about the same idea again, because I wanted to “relive” it once more, making, from time to time, certain changes in some details. Alas, I fantasized about the blonde girl, as well as about her friend. Then I fantasized about other girls and celebrities. And once I created in my imagination a girl who settled in a new house in our village, where at that time there was a vacant lot. There is no need to mention that we had sex and everything that I just wanted to imagine. Of course, when we went on summer vacation and drove past that lot, there was no house and, respectively, a girl.

I think that I should mention here that even before I started to actively dream, I thought briefly if people could see that I was dreaming. And I had confirmation of my guesses when in the ninth grade our class teacher mentioned to the whole class that I was smiling at something, and one of the students replied that I was constantly smiling. I do not remember that during that period of my life I paid much attention to the significance of that event.

But soon another case happened when I was sitting with my classmate Vova's on a bench near the locker room. Vova's acquaintances from another class were standing next to us.

It was the first floor of the school, and on the opposite bench, but closer to the aisle to the dining room, the same blonde girl sat down, from whom I could hardly take my eyes away. Her red-haired friend was with her too.

At some point, one of Vova's acquaintances looked at me and with a crooked smile told his friend some unflattering words about me. I immediately realized what the reason was, and I almost as quickly stopped daydreaming. When the other guy looked at me, he said that everything was fine with me.

At that time, I had such a character trait that I could not change myself after the vile statements of someone about me, as this would mean that they, people who contemptuously treated me, were right, and I myself would remember my life’s bad episode with them for the rest of my life – which I did not want at all back then and in every possible way tried to forget everything negative, immersing myself in my inner world.

Also, I could not live in reality back then, since I could not be the person I could be if I did not stutter. And I often began to think about justice in life. How is it that I not only never harmed anyone in my life, moreover, I was a friendly and cheerful person who loved nature and life in general, but in spite of all this I had to suffer so much from the age of five? Why do those people who commit the wildest crimes live happily ever after if they are never caught by the police? Where is justice in this life?

Soon my grandmother died. I was so immersed in myself that I could not feel any emotions. I understood what had happened, but everything was as if in a haze, and as if it did not directly concern me, it was something distant. I wanted to get rid of constant stress – and I managed to do it, but at what cost…

The school year was drawing to a close, and it was time for exams. Without hesitation, I decided to continue to study in school for the tenth and eleventh grade. I had good grades, except for the second quarter where I had two 3s because I first started skipping school, but since studying was not a big problem for me, I was able to catch up with the curriculum and close almost all bad grades I got during that period. There were two strict teachers who decided to put 3s in the annual standings, but this was not a problem, and I was taken to the tenth grade.

Speaking of truancy, my mother and I started quarreling in the ninth grade due to the fact that I started not wanting to go to school, because my life was crumbling, and so studying wasn’t the top priority for me. Once we quarreled so much that at midnight I went to my father's apartment with a full rucksack of textbooks on my back, but at a quarter of the way I realized how far I had to go and decided to return to my mother's apartment. I remember how then the police car made a circle around me at the turn to the Lokomotiv stadium, but then it drove further along the highway, where it was driving originally. Our quarrels began to decline, when after a couple of years we quarreled again, I looked at her and I was amazed to realize that she had clearly aged. She was missing some teeth. I do not know how, but I did not notice this before. Then my eyes began to open up slightly, and I tried to avoid quarrels with my mother so that she would not be nervous.

Alas, from time to time I also tried to get sick so as not to go to school. And sometimes I really managed to do it. So much the fear of speech dulled then my thinking…

Everything was almost the same in the village. Longtime friends created a comfortable zone.

Perhaps it was in that year that I decided to try drinking alcohol. Many of my friends started drinking beer and wine some time ago. I put up a fight for a long time, but in the end I could not resist. I do not remember how exactly this happened, and it does not really matter, the important fact here is that I drank alcohol with the rest, but I never touched vodka. It is worth saying that I never got drunk and knew the limits. Also, I always remembered everything that happened to me during alcoholic intoxication.

Many of us also had motorcycles and motor scooters that replaced quiet and clean bicycles. We often fiddled with our iron horses, repairing them almost every day. I had Voskhod 2M, which was given to me by my first cousin once-removed. I remember that I soiled my clothes with that motorcycle so much that it was no longer washable.

Summer was not without problems. A couple of months ago, when I was still in ninth grade, my nail scissors stopped being serviceable. The two points did not fit snugly against each other and were spread wide in different directions. The obvious decision would be to go and buy new scissors downstairs in the store, but I could not do it because of the fear that I would have to speak with the seller. Because of that I continued to cut my nails with old scissors which led to terrible bleeding sores on my big toes that simply could not heal before the nails grew into them. It all ended up that we had to go to a Moscow hospital where they cut out a third of my toenail. Riding home on the tram, I grabbed the seat handle in front of me – so much it hurt; but apparently I wasn’t hurt enough not to masturbate again when I was already at home…

It is worth noting that it was on that day of the operation that I saw near the hospital my old classmate, with whom we sat at the same desk in the first grade, and with whom we studied until the ninth, when our friendship had cooled down. Perhaps my withdrawal into myself influenced this, as well as the fact that for some reason he hit me in the face during exams – I did not provoke such an act, I just stood at the door and waited for my time to enter the biology class.

My father bought me new normal nail scissors, and I no longer had such problems, although the nail still reminds me of itself, since part of it was not removed properly.

After the second operation on the toe of the other foot, I returned to the village where I soon began to walk normally again.

Eventually, another time had come when my father arrived to the village to take me and my mother back to Moscow for the new school year.

On the first call, a new girl in our class and school caught my eye. She was not the only new person in the class; moreover, most of the people were new, as people from several classes merged into one.

I remember how in the dining room one of the classmates asked her friend to talk to me about sex. There was no conversation, but I took it as another sign that girls like me. But this did not help my fear of speech and terrible insecurity because of the fact that there were new faces everywhere who, so far, did not know that I stuttered.

Mom used to take me to the doctor all those years, but the pills that he prescribed did not help me with the speech. I was even once brought to the “healer” who recited some mantra, conducting almost dances with tambourines. It is funny, but after her session I really started talking completely normally and regained my confidence in myself, the confidence that was destined to leave me again when my mother in the village had a quarrel with her sister, Tatyana. They almost got into a fight, and I began to worry that something irreparable, or maybe fatal, could happen.

Once we were sitting on a bench on the ground floor of the school – not far from the biology class. It was a break, and of the many people passing by, my gaze fell again on the new girl in our class, and her eyes looked at me, while she quickly flew past us with