We drove along the wide boulevard from the hotel, past the Tata hotel, past city hall. There were no cars, no pedestrians on the sidewalks. We drove past the box-shaped art museum, turned right on a dirt side street that left a cloud of dust behind us, and slowed as we pulled up to the swimming pool building, where some young Russian children stood holding their towels. One loutish teenage boy rolled up his towel into a rat’s tail, which he whipped towards a young blonde girl in tight short shorts and a halter top, who let out a little squeal as a lash just missed her.

Jason parked his range rover on the side of the building, and activity seemed to stop as he turned off the ignition, children gawking at this rarely seen and monumental marvel of technology, keeping a respectful distance as Jason and I disembarked and walked into the building.

The pool had a particularly Soviet way of doing things. First you went to the cashier, where you bought your entry ticket, which was a small brown piece of paper of such unsubstantiability that it almost felt like it would zip out of my hand if touched by the slightest breeze, like the fan on the cashier’s desk, which she had greedily pointed only at her.

The cashier, as always, was a matronly Russian woman, with a head of heavily bleached hair piled precisely atop her head in the shape of something like a protective helmet that didn’t move despite the fan blowing. Her face, harsh as though drained of warmth or blood and had a stony cold expression, as though the only thing that could escape it were orders shouted at unruly children or an arbitrary and flat refusal to sell you a ticket, simply because she could, this being the only power in the world that she wielded.

She looked at Jason and me disapprovingly, with a look I imagined that rued the end of the cold war, and the better days Tashkent once saw that preceded it. But she sold us a ticket, which we brought to a desk not even two meters away, where another such Russian matron, sitting behind a fan, took our tickets, examined them and their fine print through her spectacles, and allowed us to pass through a turnstile, looking suspiciously up at us through her spectacles. She said that only the indoor pool was open today. It was a “sanitary” day for the outdoor pool, whatever that meant.

We carried on down a corridor with a soundproof window looking into the indoor pool, which looked mobbed and boisterous, full of splashing, and with children running around and mothers running after them, people jumping into the water and others climbing out. Everyone inside the greenhouse-like swimming pool looked Russian; there didn’t seem to be any Uzbeks. Uzbeks would swim in public fountains or in the shallow Anhor River. In there, it was like another country, or like a little Russian hothouse in Uzbekistan.

Down a hall, we walked into a locker room full of wooden lockers, attended by two more of these Russian matrons. Around them, boys, men, stripped down to their bathing suits, the women unmoved with that look on their faces like they'd seen it all before; much in contrast to Jason, who looked around him with some interest. I no longer worried about taking him here – which was sort of like slumming it in comparison to the Sheraton Hotel swimming pool – he seemed quite content.

"Lady," a twenty-something Russian boy limply called out at one of the attendants, "open my locker." And the woman came with a master key she produced from an apron pocket to open up the locker door. Stowing away your belongings here operated on something of an honor code, and I was slightly concerned about stashing away my passport and documents in lockers that could essentially be unlocked by anyone who wanted.

Jason and I changed next to each other. I turned my back to him, to the attendants, and quickly stripped down, slid up my bathing suit and resisted looking over at Jason, who took his time changing, folding his jeans neatly, and standing for a moment naked and looking down at his toned frame. I sat on the bench and stared at the floor. When I sensed that he finished, I looked up and called for the attendant in the same way the young man had. "Lady," I called, and she seemed to cringe at my accent, which was clearly American; she probably already could detect the American-ness by the bathing suit – I didn’t wear the skin tight Speedos worn by all men here, regardless of age, shape or size. Jason and I wore modest American swim trunks that betrayed little of the shape or contour of the bottom in the front or back.

We next walked to another small room with a line of shower stalls, where we showered next to a hunky guy who quickly doused himself with water before stealing off through the exit to the pool. One of the ladies shouted over at him for not showering long enough. He came back and stood under the water, smiling mischievously at us.

We finished showering and walked through the exit into the pool area, which sounded just as noisy as it had looked when we looked through the window in the hallway at the entrance. The air inside was thick and dense. On the side there was an elevation where Jason and I lay down our towels. He sat down and said he'd sit and watch for a bit, while I said I would go into the water and try to swim laps around the children floating around in inner tubes, teens in water fights, and young men and women doggy paddling in the water and flirting, their bodies close and barely visible under the greenish water.

The water was ice cold. I jumped in and tried to warm myself swimming some laps, but found myself freezing, trying to warm myself up by swimming faster. I swam deep under the water, near the floor where all was silent. The surface of the floor was covered with a film of some kind of sandy sediment. Someone had swum here earlier and drew a happy face in the sand with their finger.

After a few laps, I was exhausted. I climbed out shivering and on a nearby bench saw a familiar face looking at me. It took me a few minutes to recall the face -- Stas the monk. I hadn't recognized him in this context, so different from the contexts in which I'd seen him before, and it had been quite some time since I saw him last -- Valentine’s Day this year, or a year back bearing the gift of a portrait of Jesus. He hadn’t called; I had changed my phone number several times since. And he had long stopped turning up at my doorstep. He sat sheepishly with his arms huddled around his knees, in just a bathing suit and gold cross, about as naked as I would ever see him, I thought, since he was such a helplessly complicated case.

I said hello and he spoke to me in his abysmal English, a little standoffish. "You here with friend?" he asked, and I had no idea what meaning he attached to the term friend. For a grown man of my age, he was like a child with his linguistic skills.

"Yes," I answered. He had probably seen me come in earlier with Jason.

"Everything OK?" I asked shallowly preparing to take my leave, and he nodded and seemed awkward and uncomfortable, as though he had just been caught doing something wrong -- perhaps looking at men's bodies, just as Jason was probably doing at this moment on the other side of the pool, but shamelessly.

Perhaps this scene brought back memories of the beach in Poland when he had oral sex that one time – the incident that he had told me about over and over, which had marked his fall from grace, and which so tormented him. The pool had this summer romance feel about it, like a beach in a 1950’s movie.

"I'll see you around," I said and walked away to the other side where Jason sat. He was watching a well built young man playing with a pretty bikini clad girl, threatening to push her into the icy water.

"Who was that you were talking to," he asked, surprising me, as he barely seemed to notice that I approached.

"Ah, nobody, just a neighbor," I said, taking my towel and drying myself off.  ¶ 1:37 PM 1 Comments

  I tried to say something, but my mouth had gone completely dry.

"Come in," he said and I climbed up into the car, which was nice and cool in stark contrast with the chilla heat. Once inside, I felt the sweat drip from my face, down my back, and turning cold, giving me a shudder. In the mirror, I could see my flushed face. Jason looked over at me and laughed. "It's 45 degrees out there. What are you doing out on the street?"

"Trying to get a taxi." I croaked. He handed me a bottle of water.

"Not very successfully." He chuckled and started driving. I opened the water which I chugged, water spilling down the side of my face. He decelerated. "Where can I take you?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Any hotel. With a swimming pool."

"I was on my way to the Sheraton," he said. "Get some breakfast, read the newspaper, maybe take a dip. Go together?"

"Sure," I said, and he sped off, definitely breaking some speed limit, but that didn't really matter, I suppose, when you had red diplomatic license plates.

He had just asked me to go out with him, I thought. I had completely forgot how just moments earlier I was feeling lonely with no idea what to do with myself, fearing leaving the apartment, desperate for some human contact, feeling like the last person alive in this city.

But we were silent throughout the short ride. I looked out the window at the empty streets, past the central department store, with no signs of life in front of it. Not even the outdoor booksellers were set up. No one in front of the opera house -- its fountains in the plaza in front of it shut off. Not even a uniformed officer in front of the KGB headquarters.

I tried to steal a glance at Jason, whose eyes were focused on the road. I thought about the previous night, how we hadn't really been properly introduced; that probably Alyssa had wanted to fix us up.

We got to the hotel parking lot which had no cars, and got out of the car in silence. The heat was oppressive. Even in the few steps to the door of lobby, which seemed deserted quiet. No one had seen us enter. Not even the doorman, who sat on the sofa with other uniformed hotel staff enjoying a laugh, but quickly stiffening and stopping all laughter as they saw us enter, swiftly assuming their places, at the door, by the elevator, at the concierge desk, as we walked to the dining hall.

The dining hall seemed to anticipate our presence. Though the tables were all empty of people, a huge buffet with elegant trays piled on with food was laid out, fresh-faced waiters appeared from the corners. A chef, recognizable by a typical chef's hat lit up heaters under the serving trays. We walked over to take seats by the window, which looked out to an empty swimming pool, followed by what seemed to be an army of waiters, who buzzed aruond us, offerring us coffee, tea, removing the cloth napkins from our plates and handing them to us to put in our laps, offerring to push in our seats, then hovering above us as we sat opposite each other, for the first time looking at each other face to face, smiling, since all we wanted to do was to get food from the buffet tables. I quickly registered that he had lovely slightly tanned skin, grey eyes, and lots of gray in his dark hair before we quickly stood up.

Leaving behind the waiters, we went to the buffet, where I piled onto my plate fresh fruits, scrambled eggs, small broccoli rabe, spinach, challots, tomatoes, wedges of three different cheeses -- brie, havarti, cheddar . I took a second plate for rolls, muffins, little cakes, cookies. It wasn't until I saw his small portions of fried eggs and bacon with a side of several slices of pineapple, that I grew self conscious of how big my portions were. I didn't need to watch my weight, I was in great shape, had a nervous energy that seemed to burn off the calories and besides, it wasn't every day that I had such nice foods spread out in front of me. He was older, seemed to have that propensity towards getting fat, had to watch his diet.

We met back at the table and he cast a bemused glance at my plates full of food. We chatted a bit.

He'd lived overseas only for one year before this. He lived in Minsk, in Belarus on his previous assignment before being transferred to Tashkent. "Shitty countries," he referred to these posts. I wondered what had prompted him to leave the US. Had he left a bad job, a bad career path? Left a bad relationship. These were the things our families and friends back home assume about us to explain our exoduses. Why did they never think that perhaps we were following someone or something, a spirit of adventure, seeking our fortunes on the road, seeking knowledge, seeking something inside ourselves. They were never particularly creative with their explanations -- which were always about escape, perhaps reflecting more about their own entrapping situations. Often when I met expatriates here, they told me what drew them here. But Jason didn't. And I found my journalistic faculties escape me and some unfamiliar politeness take over. I justdidn't feel right about asking.

Instead, he told me about his law practice in DC. And before that, he had done graduate work in New York lived in the, East Village, remembered the Boy Bar on St. Marks. This bit of information would have probably placed him at least at 10 years my senior, since I remembered that place as already having been closed by the time I was a college student; it also answered any questions that might have remained, as to whether or not he was gay. But I hadn't such a question, though we had not explicitly spoken about it. Of course Alyssa had been trying to fix us up. Though I got a sense that he was likely after something younger, exotic, local, as part of his overseas adventure.

He had something of a wandering eye, which he cast on the tall, young waiter who came to refill our coffee. Jason beamed at him focussing hard on pouring the coffee, I thought it made him feel self-conscious, awkward. He was lovely, with swarthy skin, thick lips, olive colored, almond shaped eyes, and jet black hair; he looked up and smiled back. I wondered if Jason's newness here had him mistake the good service or the facination by young Uzbeks with foreigners to mean something more than just that. Or, perhaps he was just predatory. He could probably get away with it here. He was tall. He was good looking. He was foreign.

The waiter stepped away, standing behind the buffet tables. Jason would look back at him. His interest allayed any sense I might have had that there were any sparks between him and me. At best, I figured, we'd be like buddies. I needed a good buddy around here.I turned at looked at the waiter, then turned back to Jason. "He's really cute," I said, wondering if he sensed that I might have liked him, and hoping that he didn't.

"Yeah, he keeps looking over this way. I wonder what that's all about," he mused. The waiter had an innocent boyish look about him. That, of course, could be deceptive, though.And Jason clearly had less innocent things on his mind. The waiter then disappeared.

Jason quickly drank his coffee. He raised his mug indicating to the waiters standing in all corners of the hall, watching us, that he wanted a refill. From the kitchen, a young woman emerged with a coffeepot. She refilled our mugs and asked in stilted English if we were happy with our meal.

We talked about going swimming. "Should we swim here?" he asked.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, there's no one here. It's kind of boring. I kind of miss the summer in Minsk, where all the young guys would gather outside the city at this makeshift beach. There was always lots of interesting things to look at," he said somewhat lasciviously.

"Not likely you're going to have anything as exciting as that here in Tashkent. These hotel pools are too expensive for most local guys. It will only be expatriates. And have you seen our expatriate men?" I said. "They're a nice bunch, but not a whole lot to look at."

I offered to take him to one of the local swimming pools. The Mitrofanova pool was not far away. It wasn't the cleanest swimming pool, but had an interesting mix of local people. We agreed we'd go to Mitrofanova. He finished his coffee and raised his mug again. The young woman started walking back with the coffee pot, and Jason whispered with disappointment, "her again."  ¶ 10:22 PM 1 Comments

  So I went out in the street looking for an escape from the heat in my apartment and looking for someone to talk to. But the streets were hot, and dead. There was not a soul lurking outside my building: no Yulia, no golden teeth, no passers by; no uniformed men, no street sweepers.

Not a car passing, no gypsy taxis to take me wherever it was I was going, which would be some hotel with a swimming pool. I carried a bag with my bathing suit, a book to read, my passport, documents, and a brick of Uzbek money; a stripe of sweat grew on my shirt where the bag's strap pressed against my body. I waited by the side of the road, but decided to walk, when I saw or heard nothing in the distance, no cars, just dead silence, save for an airplane taking off in the distance or the sound of dirt turning over under my sandal.

I walked in the silence and thought of the Song of Solomon, of Solomon wandering the city singing, "I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek whom my soul loves. I sought him, but found him not."

He searches the streets, the markets, the town square, looking for his love. He asks the sentinels about "whom his heart loves." But, in this city, there is no one; no one milling about the entrance to the massive, austere Ministry of Internal Affairs building. No music coming from the direction of the markets. Not even the ladies selling berries -- it was the berry season, and earlier in the week, the ladies from the villages could be seen everywhere selling their sweet fruit from troughs and buckets. Every day it would be a different berry, a strawberry, a raspberry, a cherry, a blackberry, something that gave this grey city some color. But today it was so hot, so incredibly hot, that they didn't venture out.

On this street, which had been renamed so many times over, I didn't even know what it was called anymore, the tracks for the trolley had been taken out and the street was paved over. How did I not notice the disappearance of those hundred year old trolleybus tracks, tracks that when a bus rolled past made the streets rumble like a low-grade earthquake; tracks from a trolley I had once read about in Solzhenitsyn's "Cancer Ward," on which the protagonist rode upon his discharge from the hospital. Now history was buried under fresh asphalt.

Crumbling concrete benches from the park had been pulled out of the ground, leaving empty square holes in the asphalt. This was where the gays used to sit, or lovers seeking privacy in the dark at night would sit. There was no place here for them anymore. No place for them on the streets. No place inside -- was there even anyone inside? The windows of the massive concrete apartment blocks all seemed closed and curtained. From them, there was not even the sounds of air conditioners whirring.

I thought: what if everyone disappeared? Everyone except me.

I'd wander the streets something like the last man on earth. The day after a nuclear holocaust. The image was not so far off. Tashkent had that post-apocalyptic feel to it. Many buildings were constructed with those concrete bearings in front of the windows -- a design I had been told was inspired by keeping the residents safe in the case of an American bomb hitting the USSR. That probably wasn't true. But the buildings had concrete falling out from their sides, needed paint jobs, had steel girding popping out. The lawns were unmanicured and overgrown. The relic Russian cars parked on the street were nicked and dented and looked as though barely able to run. Trash spilled out into the gutter like the day after a party. I looked down at the dirt on the ground under my feet, and couldn't even find other footsteps there, save my own.

I was so thirsty. The kiosk on the street was closed. I rapped on the window, hoping that perhaps there was someone inside. There was no one.

I saw officers coming out of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building. They are everywhere, I am told. Supposedly, even when I don't see them, I should assume they are there. They would be here after a nuclear holocaust. Them, cockroaches, and Cher.

I heard a car coming from the distance. I walked to the sidewalk edge and put my hand out. Coming into view was a big white Land Rover, and I put down my hand and continued to walk. They never stopped for passengers. They were either diplomatic cars or the cars of extremely prosperous Uzbeks who didn't need my carfare. This one had red diplomatic plates. As I walked, I could hear it behind me pulling to a slow, riding right beside me to a stop.

A tinted window slid down and a cold breeze escaped, brushing against my face. Leaning to me from inside, in sunglasses, barely recognizable, like a desert mirage, it was the guy from the evening before. Jason. "Need a ride anywhere?" Jason asked.  ¶ 4:58 PM 1 Comments

  Early Saturday mornings in the summer, the sun would aggressively light up my bedroom, refusing any attempts I might have made to sleep in, leaving me cursing the useless lacy tulle curtains my old landlady, Tyotya Leeza had dressed the windows with, and that I never bought the thick dark curtains I’d always told myself I was going to buy. Sloppily draped over the curtain rod was a swath of traditional colorful Uzbek atlas material I had lying around the apartment and that I had thrown over the previous summer on a similar morning when trying to fight a losing battle with the sun. Its effect blocking the sun was minimal and over the past year, the traditionally stark stripes of primary colors were now faded from the sun.

Like it or not, feeling sleep deprived, I would have an early start to a long day ahead, of no plans, nothing to do, with no one to talk to. It was too hot and uncomfortable to take a nap or to try and read in the house, the small rattling soviet-era air conditioner in the living room couldn’t cut through this heat. The fake velvet from the divan would prickle against my sweaty flesh, the thin wall to wall carpet on the floor scratching my hams. Even in the home there was nowhere to escape this heat. I would probably have to leave the house, dress up for the street appropriately, meaning no shorts, no sleeveless shirts, to sweat in and go to a swimming pool at one of the hotels, where I might be able to cool off, fall asleep, read my book, if not get sucked into the company of some of the other members of the expatriate community.

I didn’t really feel like leaving the house though, and I sat around at home squirming uncomfortably. I took a cold shower, only to have the effects quickly pass, as the water air dried off me quickly and transformed into a thin film of sweat.

I wished I could call someone; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to be so uncomfortable and alone. I wished I could call Henny, but I felt that I couldn’t. It was too early in the morning – she was probably sleeping in since she had dark curtains and good air-conditioning in her bedroom. Besides, she probably had her own problems to deal with. Every time we spoke we only spoke about her souring relationship with her husband, and I couldn’t help but think that I was just another element contributing to the problems.

Clearly something had happened to her the previous night with the incomprehensible phone calls that woke me in the middle of the night, but I had no idea, and surely this morning there would be fallout. Besides her, I didn’t really want to talk with anyone, except for maybe family and friends at home. I surprised myself by how painful it felt, when I had been assuming that I’d grown quite good at solitude, embraced it, even, found it liberating. Today it just felt like a burden.

Today it felt like a trap. There was a part of me that feared going to a hotel swimming pool that I might run into Yulia there. Of course, there were lots of hotels with pools and the chances of us running into each other were slim. I should have taken her calls or should probably call her myself before it becomes too awkward, I thought -- before too much time passes and requiring an extraordinarily elaborate excuse. I hadn’t even thought of a basic excuse for not taking her calls and I had already been back in town for five days.

When it came to Yulia, I couldn’t think clearly on how to deal with her to resolve the one thing I knew: that I didn’t want her in my life any longer – that there was no place further for this relationship to go before leading to something frighteningly official or permanent beyond the hanging out and the sex which in my head seemed to continue to be no-strings attached, but perhaps in her head might be something more, and I was afraid to find out. I wanted her to magically disappear or fall off the end of the earth, rather than deal with this.

I didn’t know her well enough to know how she would respond if I told her that I wanted it to end. She was a tough one, and if she had strong emotions, she certainly didn’t show them, but I had never crossed her, didn’t know what she was capable of, how crazy she might be, even. For all I knew, she could be waiting right outside my home in ambush for me, but I looked out the window to the street below, and as always, the streets were empty, not a sign of life below, not even a car passing by, not even the stray dogs keeping sentinel.

I suppose my biggest fear was that she could be like the president’s daughter, the vengeful princess, who several years back, after her breakup with her estranged American husband, seized his business assets including the country’s Coca Cola distributer, which she had the tax police raid, running her ex-husband’s staff and family out of the country. Yulia wasn’t a powerful princess like that, didn’t command such authority here, even with the KGB uncle she spoke of, who, for all I knew, was likely pretty low on the totem pole. A British guy who she told me she used to go out with continued to run the representation of a large cotton export company. She spoke bitterly about him – that the prostitutes at the Papillion nightclub spoke to her about his insatiable appetites. I wondered how one day she would speak of me. Would she deal me some kind of a social blow? Expose me as gay? That was something of an open secret here, though people like Henny warned me that this was likely not the wisest and safest thing. It would be somewhat ridiculous for Yulia to say since our relationship seemed to be primarily based on sex. At best, Yulia could just say that I’m a bastard, or a big child. Then again, that didn’t really make me much different from most of the men here. Or anywhere, I suppose.

I didn’t want her to hate me, I wished there was a way to end things cordially. But I wasn’t particularly good with exes. I remembered an American who lived here and left a few years back. He had dated several local women and at his farewell party, all of his ex-girlfriends were in attendance. Not only were they all there, but they all seemed to have worked together to organize his farewell party, inviting the guests, cooking the dishes, setting the tables; the party was sort of strange to me, as though he had been the leader of some polygamous love cult. That’s how it seemed to me, not being particularly good at staying friend with the exes. On the other hand, he was a genuinely nice guy.

I suppose you had to be friends with the exes in small Tashkent. In the big city, in New York, exes often enough disappeared and you didn’t have to deal with them that much. Here it was different…like a village. You kept running into them, especially if you ran in the same social circles, that is. And you had to remain cordial in this incestuous little village. Sadly, I never ran into golden teeth; we didn’t run in similar social circles, he didn’t have a phone and he didn’t know my new phone number. Perhaps he’d come looking for me at my apartment, I wondered, even hoped. Maybe we’d just run into each other sometime in the city.  ¶ 12:06 PM 0 Comments