With nothing left to do, I headed up to my mother's place. I figured I should take care of this obligation early on in my stay. It would be insulting to put it off until much later. I had called her -- as always, she was at home, for some reason she quit working and was now home all the time. And I told her I would come up and visit. I'm usually happy to see her, as she can be very pleasant, but she's volatile and can go the other way, especially since the divorce with my father, it's like she's angry with the world and everyone in it. Furthermore, her apartment is completely inconveniently located, outside of Manhattan, practically in the suburbs.

I traveled far uptown on the subway, practially until the end of the subway line, then switched to a bus, then walked in the sweltering heat for 15 minutes to her building. It just seemed like such a tremendous journey to get to her, and I hated that I was so far from the center of the city, away from my friends, and stuck alone with her, especially should she decide to be unpleasant, then you were stuck enduring the long commute back into Manhattan, stewing in anger and depression. Somehow, my mother, more than anyone else I knew, had such a talent for making me feel bad about myself, and, she would often put her talents to use.

When I arrived at the door and rang the bell, I could hear the radio playing the NPR news loudly from the kitchen. She opened the door, looking pretty much the same as ever -- I gave her a hug somewhat uncomfortably, and proceeded to take off my shoes, a tradition I'd picked up from overseas.

"You look great," she said. "Even put on a little weight, no?"

I felt irritable from the heat in the apartment, that seemed even worse than the heat outside; there were tiny air-conditioners in the apartment that my parents had bought in the eary 80's, which we were never allowed to use, I don't even know why we had them. "What, was I supposed to look terrible or something?" I added defensively.

"No, I just figured that the conditions where you were living might not be so good."

"The conditions where I live are fine," I said. "It’s not like you’ve ever been there."

"It’s the third world, darling, it’s safe to assume, right?"

“It’s not the third world, first of all. Maybe it’s the second world. And anyway, in third world countries, in the capitals, the conditions are fine. The thing about the third world is that there’s a huge gap between the rich and poor – and the rich have all the good conditions and the poor have none. And I tend to live more like the rich. And we even have air-conditioning there, which some places in the first-world don't even seem to have."

“Oh honey, you’re so smart.” She said, sounding much like the way she might have said to me when I was 10 years old, putting her hand on my cheek. And then she added, “I haven’t really traveled very much. I really don’t know what I’m talking about,” which is the kind of thing she now says, since her children are grown up. And I immediately recognize that feeling I have, the way once I cross the threshold into my mother's pace, I revert back to being the child, back in my childhood home -- the one I spent my whole childhood dreaming of escaping. How far I had gone.

And I suppose it was the jet-lag that was making me so curt with her, I mean, I hadn't even been home for five minutes and I was starting to get short with her in what ordinarily would take a few hours, perhaps, years earlier. I would try to restrain myself, after all, I hadn’t seen my mother in nearly a year. And she was my mother -- and I only had one, which she reminded us often when she was incensed -- "you only have one mother, and I have other children." I walked into the kitchen, turned the radio volume down, which clearly bothered my mother, and looked in the refrigerator.

"Do you want something to eat?"

I surveyed the contents of the refrigerator. "I don't think so," I said.

"When did you get in?"

"Last night. In fact, I’m kind of tired, feeling the jet lag. I almost fell asleep on the subway. I need to sit down." I looked at the clock. "If I were in Tashkent at this time, I would be long asleep."

I walked into the living room and settled onto the sofa comfortably, brought an ottoman closer to put under my feet. I could see her looking disapprovingly – she never wanted family members to sit on the furniture. I closed my eyes. The furniture was only for guests. But, I’d been gone for so long and I was so tired that I decided to take the guest’s privilege.

"Are your pants clean?"

"My pants? What? Clean?" I said, trying, but not succeeding in restraining myself.

"You've probably been sitting on a subway seat on the way here and now you’re sitting on the clean sofa."

"Yes, I took a subway and sat down on a seat for about 30 minutes, then I took a bus, which was too crowded for me to sit down on, which was another 15 minutes, and then I walked for a few minutes. So, I'm tired and I'd like to sit down. Can I not sit down here?" I muttered.

She walked to a closet and produced a towel which she handed to me. "Can you please put this under you."

I was so irritated at that moment, and it crossed my mind that Uzbekistan was not such a bad place to be. Here is my home -- the most inhospitable place ever, more inhospitable than the dry heat of Uzbekistan's deserts. Even an Uzbek, a stranger, would be happier to see you, to receive you, if you came into their house off the street.  ¶ 9:34 PM 0 Comments

  More Boy Talk

Without wasting a beat, Jonathan smiled. “What an experience you are having there.” He continued nibbling at a bagel not even looking at me, not, as they say, batting an eyelash.

For his calm, nonchalant response, I wanted to wrap my arms around him and never let him go, never leave from that spot, to sit there always in the sun, with him close beside me. I probably could have, we were in New York, not Uzbekistan; public displays of affection would not subject me to a damaged reputation, social ostracism, possible arrest. New York was amazing in that way -- I didn't have to be afraid. And while the feeling of safety was comforting, I held back -- realizing that I was changed a bit, I was more restrained and though I would sometimes have those bursts of extreme emotions, they'd subsided somewhat, evened out -- my disposition had become like those quiet Tashkent mornings with the sun beaming brightly but not yet as aggressively as it would in the afternoon. In a very intellectual, perhaps spiritual way, I loved Jonathan and couldn't imagine ever being apart from him, and I even imagined that it would be possible one day that we might want to be together, of course, if we didn't drive one another crazy with our nonsense, with these crazy meaningless relationships that drove us mad and didn't fulfill us and ultimately drove us to one another for consolation, like this chat on a parkbench at lunch.

I felt his consoling hand on my shoulder and imagined that he knew exactly what I would say, without my needing to say a word. I imagined that he could understand that whereas my life overseas was interesting, exciting, and with a fair share of absurdity, much of my days were spent hours on end sitting alone out of place in this strange country, surrounded by people that I felt very unlike.

To break the solemnity, he did his best impression of a non-jewish man trying to sound jewish. "Oy, who is this Natasha?" I wanted to tell him all the jokes I new about Natashas, like the one about the Russian man who is told that he has a terminal disease that can only be cured by sleeping with a virgin. I wanted to tell him how in Turkey, Natasha is synonymous with prostitute.

“She's Yulia,” I said. “I'm not sure I really know why I’m with her. I guess it's something to do.” I suddenly thought about how complete and utter an exile I had put myself into in this respect. On the other hand, the sex was astoundingly good -- and I told this to Jonathan. "It is like she’s got me trapped in some kind of a sex spell.”

“Are you really straight” he said jokingly. "How would you do on the butt test?" I remembered the proverbial, hypothetical butt test -- the way to tell if someone was gay or straight: if confronted with both a man's butt and a woman's butt, which one would they lick, if they had to choose.

“I'm gay, definitely gay. I think it’s good that I’m back for a bit – maybe here I can get a bit of perspective. Facts are that she’s very attractive, I mean, in the way I'd imagine the way a rock-star's girlfriend would look. The sex is great – which, throughly shocked me when it first happened. So, strangely, my interest in her is purely physical, not emotional, intellectual, nor spiritual. I mean, I’m just like an ordinary horny straight man in that respect, all about pussy...of all things."

I told Jonathan about all my doubts, my concerns that being away for so long had made me get too accustomed to compromising, in the same way as I had grown used to living much more simply in terms of material comforts, in the same way I would be happy to get home in Tashkent and to find that the hot water is working, or that the water works at all, that perhaps I was too accommodating, too accepting of my fate, had given up too quickly to wait until I found a good man out there. Yulia was like a convenient and maybe temporary band-aid solution – I could be in public with her, I can be with her, though I find her company less and less pleasant, and I enjoy the sex. But the larger question remained, "Have I gone too far in terms of adapting and accommodating to expatriate life?"

Jonathan looked at his watch. “I have to go back to the office, but I hope that while you’re back you get your dicked sucked," he said as if that was all that it took to bring me back to the fold. I gave him a playful slap. Maybe there was something to that. On the one hand, I didn't care to have my dick sucked, never got much pleasure from it. On the other hand, Yulia's enthusiasm and ability could not compare to the much vaunted abilities of gay men. However, women were coming up with all kinds of innovative new strategies for giving head -- and there was a whole industry of women's magazines devoting reams of copy to teaching women how to give head like a gay man. I read in one some tips recommending women hum a little tune while giving head, to add a little vibration to the effect. I'd never thought of that one myself, but it seemed in theory like a good idea. I wondered, did Russian women have such magazines? I had no idea. And what tune would you hum?

Jonathan and I walked past a newspaper kiosk and I thought to maybe pick up a Cosmopolitan magazine for Yulia, who probably at this time was wondering about my abrupt disappearance. But her English wasn't nearly good enough to read a Cosmopolitan. And besides, there was no future for us anyway.  ¶ 6:48 PM 0 Comments