Евгений Мешков - Simple Truths of Life

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 her friend.

Once in the literature class, when the lesson had not yet begun, her friend asked my buddy if he wanted to be her boyfriend. The girl who liked me asked me the same question, and I answered in the affirmative.

On that day, when I came home, I finally put a fat cross on myself when I began to masturbate, rejoicing that I have a girlfriend and “will” have sex. Obviously, I had no sex, since I was so afraid of starting to stutter during a conversation that I stopped going to school.

On one rare day, when I did come to school, that girl came up to me and asked if I had not forgotten that I was her boyfriend. We talked a little about our institute plans, and then she slowly walked off.

The next day, in algebra, the teacher heard the conversation of that girl with her female table partner, and for the whole class said that she had become an adult. One of the guys with whom we studied since elementary school proudly shouted “me!” to someone's question regarding who was responsible for taking the girl’s virginity.

Going away into fantasy once again helped me avoid stress and mental suffering when I imagined that that girl was of easy virtue and then consciously made that fantasy into the “truth” in my head. But is it correct to use the word “helped” here? What if I needed that suffering at that time?

Speaking of imagination’s help. I remember exactly the moment that happened in the village when several people from our company drank alcohol and, I think, someone said that they drink to make them feel more fun, to color the gray everyday life. I realized then that I did not need alcohol, since I can make my gray days brighter and amuse myself with my imagination, which, unlike alcohol, is always at hand, so to speak. Here it can also be noted that I have never smoked at all.

Then I had a very strange period of life, when I started to lock myself in the bathroom with the lights off. I took along my boom box with radio and headphones to just listen to music in the dark. Almost nothing distracted me from my imaginary, ideal, and just world – at least just towards me. Sometimes my dreams led me to masturbation in the darkness. This madness continued for some time. Mom could not do anything. I think that both of us no longer had the strength and desire to quarrel. Once she even brought Anton, my best friend at the time, but I did not go out.

Also, computer games helped me get away from reality. In the tenth grade, I often played in WarCraft 3. I did not have internet yet, and I just spent time playing against the computer. When I was skipping school in the ninth grade, I decided that I would just play all my life in video games so that I would not feel pain from the reality that I was in, as I then thought for nothing, because of the injustice of life.

Speaking of injustice, there was one year when I came in the village for the summer holidays. At that time, not all friends and acquaintances came to vacation. I remember how A was bugging a girl who was several years younger than us. I regret to say that I then joined him. She did not have any shortcomings, or illnesses. I think my older friend simply decided that she looked like a character in a well-known literary work, and he began to call her the same name. Fortunately, this “fun” did not last long, and even if it was not something very terribly bad, as that girl was all right, but this moment showed that I myself was not averse to being on the other side of ridicule, which was a mistake.

I can recall another negative incident that occurred in Moscow. Then for some reason I started to twist and roll in the snow a guy who was younger than me. I determine that the reason for this shameful action was that I subconsciously wanted to be on the other side of the “unjust” life again, wanted to throw out all the accumulated resentment onto someone, even if I hardly knew that person. Again, I note that that episode was not too cruel, but it showed once again that although I was usually a kind and cheerful person, I was not a saint.

Summer holidays have come. I think it was the year when the village ceased to be a place of comfort for me, as our company and company from the other end of the village began to spend time together. I again began to be silent constantly, because the thought that I could start talking with stutter and people would start laughing at me, looking at me weirdly, or they would just start thinking something not very good chilled my whole body.

Another nuisance was that some time ago my father sold his mother’s apartment for very cheap, about a quarter of its market value. As I understand it, his acquaintances deceived him when he was drunk. Before selling the apartment, father rented it out, but then there was a small fire in it, and someone talked him into selling a Moscow two-room apartment of 52 square meters for just a million rubles. Simply put, someone had bought their apartment at a huge discount. Father then bought a new car and a TV for the money received. Then he began to drink the rest of the money away.

It so happened that in the summer, my father decided to buy me a motor scooter, since my motorcycle was constantly breaking down, and almost all my friends were riding on these new (for our village) vehicles. He arrived with cash already withdrawn. Having traveled to the nearest cities, we were able to find only one store where only one Chinese scooter was sold. I tried it by having driven it on a local road. Everything seemed quite normal, including the power of a 50-liter moped. I then had a choice: to take that one scooter or risk that my father would drink the already withdrawn money away, which, alas, could happen, given his previous decisions. We bought that scooter. After some time, it became clear that the Chinese scooter had a chain instead of a variator and a drive belt, which is why it tangibly lost in power to its brothers from Japan. This led to the fact that very soon I could not have anyone ride on my scooter except for myself.

Unfortunately, the problems did not end there. It soon became clear that some strangers began to live in father’s apartment. Father himself was almost always drunk. It became clear to my adult relatives that those people wanted to get their hands on my father’s apartment. Then my cousin helped us make the deed of gift for that apartment to me so that my father could not become homeless. A few months later, dad told how those people were shocked to find out that the apartment no longer belonged to him and disappeared very quickly from his life, possibly in search of other people with alcohol addiction… There were also some people who tried to redirect my father to think that his son, that is me, will kick him out from the apartment. Unfortunately, my father actually asked us one day if we wanted to do something like that – certainly not! He then sighed with relief and in fact lived in his apartment until the end of his life, even despite all the difficulties that we had to overcome…

In the village, I fell in love with one girl who was new in our company and was older than me. I then often thought about telling her about my feelings, but each time, when I was outside with her, I could not force myself to do this during our conversations. The fear of speech overpowered every time. It is interesting that I spoke normally when we talked about other topics, but as soon as I thought about telling the truth, I was immediately constrained by my insecurities. Many years of life had taught me that when I start talking in this state of consciousness, speech stutters are guaranteed. And I did not want her to know.