Muzhiki or Men

Alijon hailed a taxi and spoke to the driver in Uzbek. Inside, I kept silent and tried to figure out where were going. It was not far from the Pionerskaya baths, deep into a tree-lined residential area with nice, large homes, one of which I recognized as the embassy’s deputy country manager’s residence.

The sauna was an ordinary Soviet one, a bit nicer than the Pionerskaya one in that whereas it had that decrepit look, it did not look like it would collapse at any moment. At the door, Alijon was greeted by a young lean guy who wore glasses. They embraced and spoke in Uzbek in tones that seemed to me like they were speaking business. Though I didn’t understand them, I recognized Alijon say the word “mekhmon” several times, which means “guest.” Obviously he was referring to me, and in this country, where hospitality was of such importance, he was clearly using my being a guest as leverage for a deal that was in the making.

The guy with the glasses called out another guy, who was called Ilhom; he was also young and short, but dark, with longish curly hair came. The three of them spoke in Uzbek and eyed me between their exchanges. The guy with the glasses and the guy with the longish curly hair disappeared into the building, where bathers, young and old were exiting.

Alijon told me that we’d need to come back in an hour’s time, when the baths close to the public. At that time, the guy with the glasses, Farhod, who was the attendant, would open the building for us privately. “What do you think of them?” Alijon asked me.

“What do you mean? Are those the guys?” I asked trying not to sound too disappointed. They were so young and small.

“Yes.” He said. “I think the dark one is very nice,” Alijon said.

“The one with the glasses is OK.” I said, recalling the saying that beggars can’t be choosers.

“We should go and get some beers.” Alijon and I walked down the street to a kiosk that had beers and next to it a grill with a man making shish-kebabs.

“How much money do you have with you?”

I had about 7000 soums with me. “Is that enough?” I asked.

“Yes, but you should give the 5000 to Farhod.” That was essentially five dollars, not a lot of money, but I suppose I felt a little bit uncomfortable by the fact that I was paying for sex. I wasn’t really ready to accept that I was so desperate that I had to start paying for sex. And for these guys who I didn’t even want that badly. It made me feel like I was old and unattractive.

But, again, I had to remember that in this part of the world, there was always an economic aspect to relationships, an aspect that I suppose back home we never really calculated, though perhaps it existed as well – that everything came at some kind of a price and that principles of economics guided so much of our behaviors, perhaps more than we were wiling to acknowledge.


But with paying for sex, I felt as though I’d crossed a line. The amount of money was so small, I decided I could probably pretend that I never spent it; I barely even spent this little money on my lunch. But I just didn’t want to be a part of this economy. I didn’t even know how it was supposed to work. Was I supposed to have paid Alijon for sucking my dick earlier? He did say thank you to me, so perhaps he was supposed to have paid me for sucking my dick? “Are you always supposed to pay for sex?” I asked.

“There are some guys who you have to pay for sex,” he explained. “I mean, most guys will have sex with a man if you give them something for it. It doesn’t have to be much. Just something symbolic.”

“Even straight guys?”

“Sure,” he said. “What man would turn down the opportunity to have his dick taken care of?”

I gave Alijon all of my money to buy beers and to handle whatever payments that might to be made instead doing it myself and constantly reminding myself of the money. I’m a sugar daddy, I thought, and that is that, I have crossed that line.

We walked in silence eating our shish-kebabs off the skewers. A chill appeared in the air and it seemed that perhaps today would be one of those false starts of spring; tomorrow it would be winter again for a few more days or weeks until the real spring started at the end of March.

We returned to the bathhouse as the last of the bathers were leaving. Alijon and I waited on the street until Farhod came and beckoned us inside, took us into a small, cozy room with worn out divans and a coffee table in the middle. Alijon spread out the beers on the table and opened them.

Alijon and the guys spoke in Uzbek. They didn’t speak much Russian, Alijon explained, as they were from the provinces. Occasionally Alijon would translate something for me into English, but essentially, I wasn’t much of a participant in the conversation. I got bored, perhaps visibly so, at which point Alijon suggested that Farhod and I go to the sauna together. He and the dark guy would stay behind and talk and drink.

I stripped down out of my clothes, which I left in a pile. It seemed so awkward for me to take off my jeans, undo my sneakers and socks as Farhod, a few steps away seemed to slip out of his drawstring pants, his loose shirt, his sandals. Beside him, I felt my body to be big and powerful and hairy next to his small, lean, and tight body; I felt that I could crush him with my body. Nonetheless, I felt awkward, like I wanted to hide it, that even when we got into the hot sauna, I wanted to cover myself up.

We had not said a word to each other the entire evening and sat next to each other on the wooden benches in the sauna. Where the wood was nailed down, the metal of the nails stung where they touched my legs or butt. Farhod barely looked at me and I tried to speak to him in Russian, asking some very basic questions, which he answered. He was 23. He was from Andijan. He was not yet married.

I wondered if he was gay or straight, if he just did this for money, if he found me attractive or repulsive or if when one did these things for money, you didn’t think of it that way, but that a job is a job. Before I could ask, he told me that I looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme. I thought that was funny, I laughed. I wanted to reach over to touch him and initiate sex, but I didn’t know what to do. I felt shy, like a kid about to have sex for the first time and afraid to make the first move.

He then asked me, “what do you like?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“For example, I’m a muzhik,” he said. Muzhik is Russian for a man or a guy. I thought about it for a moment and understood what he meant. It meant that he was a top.

“I’m also a muzhik,” I said.

“Hmmm. We’re both muzhiki,” he said and shrugged his shoulders as if this was an unsolvable situation.

I said, “well, I don’t know if this will work out.” And I thought that maybe this was my way to excuse myself from the situation and salvage what I felt was my innocence.

“What can we do?” I said and didn’t know what else to say and wondered if I could not be a muzhik for once. Or perhaps, I should just start being a muzhik with him, and force my way with him. “It’s a pity,” I said. “Maybe I should go.”

I quickly walked out and went to the changing area, where Alijon and the dark guy sat. I put on my clothes over my sweaty body, reaching into my pocket and realizing that I had absolutely no cash left in my pockets.

Alijon rushed over to me. “That was fast. What’s the matter? He asked.

“It didn’t quite work out. That’s all. But it’s ok.” I tried to sound unemotional, though I resented Alijon for getting me into this situation in the first place. “Everything’s OK.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No,” I said. “I forgot that I have something to do at home.”

Since I had no cash left, I was reduced to walking home. I rarely walked in Tashkent because there was hardly ever anyone on the street and there weren’t really sidewalks. There were, but most of them were dusty pavements. This was the desert after all and they left a film of dust on your shoes, which could never keep a shine. And I walked thinking that in retrospect, I would have liked to have fucked that boy at the sauna and probably I could have had my way with him, if I wanted. But, I had to let the money get in the way.

So, I ran, just to make the walk go faster. Ran from the shadows under the streetlights on the deadly quiet and empty streets, ran from something, though there seemed to be nothing around that could be chasing me, and only when I got home, behind the locked door, I felt safe. It was only 10:30 and I thought that I could not end this Saturday night on such a desperate note. I wanted to write off what had just happened. I stripped down and washed myself off under the shower, feeling clean from the sweat from my run, from the sweat from the sauna. I felt like a new person and I would do this evening over, put on fresh clothes, walk out the door and forget about the day and start it over. I would go to Lucky’s and I’d drink and forget the whole thing and start the evening anew.  ¶ 6:33 AM