The Birthday

The following day at work, I found myself a bit nervous about Yulia’s birthday. Who would be there, I wondered. Her dark-haired friend Lena was there. Lena was harsh and I had a distinct sense that she did not like me. Most likely, there would be people who I’d seen before at Lucky strikes. During my lunch break, I went over to the flower market and bought a dozen long-stemmed roses, which, of course, my entire staff looked at not without curiosity.

I worked a little later than usual that evening, and arrived a little after the time Yulia had said to be at the restaurant where she was celebrating. In the center of the restaurant, there was a long banquet table filled with plates and salads and breads and fruits and bottles of vodka and wine. Yulia sat at the center of the table among her friends – some of whom were familiar faces, like her friend Lena. When I arrived, I handed her the flowers, which she smelled and then kissed me on the cheek thanking me. The entire party shuffled around, in an almost conspiratorial way to accommodate me so that I would sit at the chair right next to her. I was a little mystified by that, as I believed that of all the people in the room, I probably knew her the shortest amount of time. But I sensed that this conspiracy was determined that by the end of the night I would fuck her.

The company consisted of several Serbians. Lena’s boyfriend was a silent and glum, but very handsome Serb. And with him, some of his Serbian compatriots, including an elder and very jolly bearded one, who led the toasts of vodka. And according to the Serbian tradition, we were to look deeply into each others eyes before we downed our shot glasses. He explained, that we weren’t simply to look into each others’ eyes, but into the souls, that amongst the group of friends around this table there were to be no secrets. Of course, everyone laughed at this, I myself felt even more self conscious, and in parody, we would open our eyes very wide, looking around at everyone at the table, before we drank, saying, “eyes, don’t forget, the eyes.”

And despite the laughter, the lively conversation in the language which suddenly seemed so alien to me, the eye contact and the festive table, I felt like an outsider, imagining that I felt how an astronaut in his space suit must feel like when he’s floating around in space. Voices sounded muted, as though outside my glass encased helmet, sealing inside a silence that makes you feel close with your own thoughts and looking out at a strange universe around you. It was a feeling of alienation of disjointedness of dissociation. And I decided not to sip my vodka from my shot glass, but to aggressively down them, which always impressed locals, when a foreigner was able to drink like a Russian. And I felt much more comfortable and even touchy, putting my arm around Yulia in the seat beside me, and even talkative, proposing a toast to Yulia’s beauty on her 23rd birthday.

Yulia, beside me and much less drunk than I was looked over at me, and I could look deeply her beautiful eyes, they had a harsh edge to them, though they had a melancholy aspect too. It was hard to look back at her, but her gaze did not allow me to look elsewhere.

More guests arrived. A group of actors from the theater joined, including the actor who played the lead in the play that I liked so much and had seen so many times. He greeted me as though he knew me, though we had never spoken before, though he must have seen me so many times in the audience of the play. I had fallen in love with him so many times, had hoped so many times to meet him, but next to Yulia, I didn’t really notice him; it felt almost like Yulia and I were alone in the room.

She asked me in her edgy way, “what is it that you want?”
“What do you mean?” I asked fearing what she meant.
“Do you want a boy?” She asked and then continued almost neurotically ,reminding me of so many women I had known in New York. “Because if you want a boy, we’ll find you a boy, there are hundreds of boys in Tashkent for you, they’re all over the Internet.”
“Shhhh,” I murmured to her. “I’m not interested in boys on the internet. I want you.” And at that moment, it was the truth. The room had grown foggy with heavy cigarette smoke and my head was beginning to spin. I told Yulia that I would go outside for a moment for some air. Once outside, I thought I could disappear, run away, catch a cab, and vanish. But Yulia followed behind me and once we were out in the empty parking lot, I turned around to her and she pressed me against the wall and we began to kiss and hungrily, curiously our hands reached under each others’ clothes, passionately, a bit drunkenly, and suddenly any fears or doubts I may have had, disappeared. The female body was not something that I feared, but something I wanted to explore, running my hands up her sweater, stroking her breasts, her arms. She reached under my shirt and into my pants, even murmuring, “it’s big.”

For a moment, I was in some shock, unable to believe how good it felt. I thought, had I realized this earlier, my life could have been so much simpler. I amazed myself. I was overcome by a desire that had astounded me. I felt a feeling of dissociation astounded by the situation – I was making out with a beautiful woman in a parking lot, an image I had never imagined – as though I was living someone else’s life, not mine. Often I’d find myself either drunk or even sober in the exotic Tashkent surroundings, wondering if this was really my life. But this time, it was more intense than ever before, as though I had done the craziest, most subversive thing ever.

She pulled away. “Stop,” she said. “I have guests inside.” The pause gave me the moment to worry about where this was going and what were the consequences of this kiss. I followed Yulia, who held my hand as I stumbled back into the restaurant. And the time seemed to fly past and before I knew it we were leaving the restaurant again, and Yulia and I were piling into a taxi alone to an apartment – Lena’s apartment, and Lena was there as well as some of the other people from the banquet table and Yulia and I went right to the bedroom, not turning out the lights, undressing each other and pulling one another down onto the bed, with her lying on top of me, kissing me, my lips moving between her mouth and her breasts and she moaned loudly in Russian and bringing herself close to me, so that I entered her.

It felt like some other person had possessed my body and was making me do what I was doing. It felt so good, but I knew that I had to pull out before I came. I was inside her without a condom. And I barely noticed that occasionally people would walk through the room, saying excuse me, to pass through to use the bathroom, the only bathroom in the apartment. Yulia came loudly on top of me, and I pulled out of her and ejaculated all over myself. We got up and quickly dressed and agreed to go to my house. I had forgotten about the time, and knew that tomorrow was a work day, but I didn't care. We forgot about the party guests in the other room and in the bathroom, and ran down to the street, barely saying goodbye to Lena and the others, catching a taxi beside the man selling bananas on the street late at night. It took only minutes to get to my house, we hadn’t even finished sucking up the cigarettes that we’d lit up in the taxi and went straight to the bedroom to fuck some more, always, her on top of me, her head thrown back, her breasts beckoning my mouth, me pulling out before I could come inside of her, her body so soft to my touch, her loud moans and me wondering how I was so happy to have this amazing woman next to me. And we fucked and fucked until we fell asleep.  ¶ 1:46 AM