It's Me, Eddie Read online

  I left Alexander; he went off with one of the girls to her place to make love, and I went into the gaping dark of the West Side streets, somewhere around Tenth or Eleventh Avenue. I remember myself walking away, as if I had been staring at my own back through the eyes of a bystander.

  The light flared next when I entered some sort of walled-in area, apparently a playground for children. Dark corners have always attracted me. I remember even in Moscow I loved to go into boarded-up houses, which everyone feared and where bandits supposedly lived. When I was good and drunk I would remember those houses and set out for one. After climbing in through a broken window or door, stepping over piles of petrified shit and puddles of urine, cursing and singing Russian folksongs, I would discover some poor unfortunates in the house, alcoholics or tramps, with whom, after making their acquaintance, I would have a long and incoherent conversation. In one of those places someone conked me with a bottle and appropriated two rubles. But the habit stayed with me.

  So, I entered an area where there were swings and other attractions for children. A light burned in the middle, but all the corners were alluringly dark. I went, of course, to the largest dark spot. Squeezing between some iron girders, on which rested a scaffold of unknown purpose, I let out an oath – my high heels were sinking in sand. To this day I don’t know why the sand was there. Was it a sandbox for the children to play in? But then why all these iron girders? Or was it a parking place for cars, and the second tier raised on the scaffold? I don’t know. This will forever remain a mystery, for not long ago I tried to find the place, but without success. Maybe they’ve built something there, which is improbable in such a short time, or more likely I mixed up the streets. I’ll go look again sometime, if I find it I’ll let you know.

  I climbed a short iron ladder to the wooden scaffold, let down my legs, and sat on the very edge of the scaffold dangling my feet. Not a fucking thing to do. Night. I waited for adventure and glanced around. It was quiet, although somewhere far away I heard cries, footsteps – someone was chasing someone – music, the shuffle of feet. I sat and dangled my legs. A free personality in the free world. I could do anything I wanted. Kill somebody, for instance. Everything was available and easy. The alcoholic fog was beginning to clear. The free personality got sick of sitting on the scaffold. It jumped down. I jumped down, into the sand.

  And then I saw Chris. That is, of course, it was only later I found out his name was Chris. He sat leaning against the brick wall, a young black man. A wide black hat lay beside him on the sand. Later I had time to examine it; it was decorated with a dark green ribbon embroidered with gold thread. As I later saw, he was dressed all in these three colors – black, dark green, and gold. He had these colors in his vest, his slacks, shoes, and shirt. But when I jumped down and saw him directly in front of me, what I saw was a black man dressed in black, his eyes meeting mine with a cold and mysterious glitter.

  “Hi!” I said.

  “Hi,” he replied indifferently.

  “My name is Edward,” I said, taking a couple of steps toward him.

  He let out a meaningless, scornful sound.

  “Got anything to drink?” I asked him.

  “Fuck off!” he said.

  I thought, Wonder why he’s sitting here, he’s not a drunk or a druggie, doesn’t seem out of it; if he meant to sleep here, he doesn’t look like a bum. Maybe hiding from the police? I’m not one to betray anybody. I’d even help him hide. Only he looks real mean. I stared at him, then took several steps toward him and squatted beside him. He watched coldly and didn’t move. I sat on my heels, peering into his face.

  A broad hawklike nose, deeply flaring nostrils, lips unusual for a black – austere, not plump – a strong chest. A big guy: if he stood up he’d probably be a head taller than I. Young, twenty-five or thirty, no more. The wide legs of his black slacks lay on the sand.

  “Say, what’s your name?” I said.

  Then he snapped, he had had it with my staring and questioning. Silently and swiftly he lunged at me. He hurled himself straight from a sitting position and pinned me instantly; a second later I was lying underneath him, and by all indications he meant to choke me to death.

  I gave up the struggle at once, I was at too great a disadvantage. All I had time to do when he hurled himself on me was to tuck my right arm down under my right thigh, and simultaneously curl my right leg up under me. This way, when crushed under him I lay on my right side. It was a good strategy because my hidden hand was free to reach into my boot and grab the knife handle. If he intends to strangle me, I’ll kill him, I thought coldly. He weighed me down all over, but my right hand could move freely. He had not allowed for that.

  I was not terrified. Word of honor, absolutely not. As I say, I had some unconscious instinct at the time, a craving for death. The world had become empty without love. That is merely a pat formula, but behind it lie tears, humiliated ambition, the squalid hotel, lust unsatisfied to the point of giddiness, a grudge against Elena and the whole world (a world that only now, laughing openly and mockingly, had shown me how unneeded I was and always had been), hours not empty but filled with despair and horror, terrible dreams and terrible dawns.

  The man was strangling me; this was fair because two months ago I had strangled Elena, nothing should go unpunished. He was strangling me, but I did not hurry with my knife. Maybe I didn’t even pull it, or maybe I did, I don’t know, but suddenly he relaxed his grip, perhaps his anger had passed. We lay gasping for breath, he was gasping too, from his exertions. It’s not easy to strangle someone; I know from experience, it’s not so easy as it looks.

  There was a smell of damp sand, a shuffle of feet on the other side of the wall, lonely night people were passing by in the street. Suddenly I wrenched my arms free and put them around his back. “I want you,” I said to him, “let’s make love.”

  I did not thrust myself on him, it all happened of itself. It wasn’t my fault, I got a hard-on from the scuffle and the weight of his body. This was not the dead weight of a Raymond, this man’s weight was of a different nature. I did say “Let’s make love,” but he himself could probably tell that I wanted him – my cock must have poked into his belly, he couldn’t help but feel it. He smiled.

  “Baby,” he said.

  “Darling,” I said.

  I rolled over and sat up. We began to kiss. I think he was about my age or even younger, but the simple fact that he was considerably bigger and more virile somehow determined our roles. His kisses were not the senile slobbering of a Raymond; now I knew the difference. The firm kisses of a strong man, probably a criminal. There was a scar across his upper lip. Cautiously I stroked his scar with my fingers. He caught my hand in his lips and kissed it finger by finger, as I had done with Elena. I unbuttoned his shirt and began kissing his chest, his neck. I especially like to hug as children do, flinging my arms way round the neck, hugging the neck, not the shoulders. I hugged him, he smelled of a strong cologne and some kind of acrid alcohol, or maybe that was the smell of his young body. He was giving me pleasure. After all, I loved the beautiful and the healthy in this world. He was beautiful, tall, strong, and well-built, and a criminal for sure. That added to my enjoyment. Unceasingly kissing his chest, I worked my way down to where the unbuttoned shirt went into his slacks and disappeared under the belt. My lips came up against the buckle. My chin felt his engorged member under the thin fabric of the slacks. I undid his zipper, turned back the edge of his panties, and drew out his member.

  In Russia people had often talked about the sexual advantages blacks had over whites. Legend told of the size of their member. And here before me was this legendary tool. Despite my very sincere desire for love with him, curiosity too sprang from somewhere within me and gawked. “Look at that, black all over, or with a tinge of…” But it was rather hard to see, even though my eyes were used to the dark. His member was big. But hardly bigger than mine. Thicker, maybe. Hard to tell, though. Curiosity hid within me. Desire emerged.


  Psychologically I was very pleased by what was happening to me. For the first time in several months I was in a situation that I liked, utterly and completely. I wanted his cock in my mouth. I sensed that this would give me enjoyment, I was drawn to take his cock in my mouth, and most of all I wanted to taste his semen, to see him twitch, to feel this as I embraced his body. And I took his cock and for the first time ran my tongue around its engorged head. Chris shuddered.

  This is something I do well, I think, very well, because by nature I am a subtle person and not lazy, and moreover I am not a hedonist, that is, I’m not someone who seeks enjoyment only for himself, seeks to come no matter what, achieve his own orgasm and that’s all. I am a good partner – I derive enjoyment from the moans, cries, and pleasure of the other man or woman. That is why I devoted myself to his member without a second thought, completely giving myself over to sensation and obeying desire. With my left hand, gathering them from below, I fondled his balls. He kept moaning, he leaned back on his hands and moaned softly, with a sob. He may have said, “Oh, my God!”

  Gradually he began rocking hard and playing up to me with his hips, sending his cock deeper into my throat. He lay slightly sideways in the sand, on his right elbow, with his left hand just barely stroking my neck and hair. I slid my tongue and lips over his member, deftly tracing out intricate designs, alternating between touching his member lightly and swallowing it deep. Once I almost gagged. But I was even glad of that.

  What was happening to my member? I was lying with my belly and my member in the sand, and at every move I rubbed it against the sand through my thin jeans. My cock responded to what was happening with a delightful itching, I scarcely wanted anything more at that moment. I was utterly happy. I had a relationship. Another man had condescended to me, and I had a relationship. How humiliated and unhappy I had been for two whole months. At last. I was terribly grateful to him, I wanted it to be very good for him, and I think it was. I did not merely accommodate his strong thick cock in my mouth, no, this love we were engaged in, these actions, symbolized much more – to me they symbolized life, the triumph of life, a return to life. I was receiving communion from his cock, the strong cock of a lad from Eighth Avenue and Forty-second Street, doubtless a criminal. To me it was life’s tool, life itself. And when I brought off his orgasm, when that fountain hurtled into me, into my mouth, I was utterly happy. Do you know the taste of semen? It is the taste of the alive. I know nothing more alive to the taste than semen.

  In ecstasy I licked all the semen off his cock and balls, I gathered up what had spilled, licked it up and swallowed it. I found the droplets of semen among his hairs, tracked down the last little drops.

  Chris was astounded, I think. He hardly understood, of course he did not, could not, understand what he meant to me, and he was astounded by the enthusiasm with which I did all this. He was grateful to me, stroked my neck and hair with all the tenderness he was capable of, I buried my face in his groin and lay without moving, and he stroked me with his hands and murmured, “My baby, my baby!”

  Listen here, there are morals, there are decent people in the world, there are offices and banks, there are beds; sleeping in them are men and women, also very decent. It was all happening at once, and still is. And there were Chris and I, who had accidentally met there in the dirty sand, in a vacant lot in the vast Great City, a Babylon, God help me, a Babylon. There we lay, and he stroked my hair. Homeless children of the world.

  No one needed me, no one had even touched a hand to me in over two months, and there he was, stroking me and saying, “My baby, my baby!” I nearly cried. Despite my everlasting honor and ironic mockery I was a hunted creature, cornered and exhausted, and this was precisely what I needed – another man’s hand stroking my head, caressing me. The tears welled up in me, welled up and started to flow. His groin gave off a characteristic musky smell; I cried, my face burrowing deeper into the warm jumble of his balls, hair, and prick. I don’t think he was a sentimental creature, but he felt that I was crying and asked me why, forcibly lifted my face and began to wipe it with his hands. Chris had big strong hands.

  Fucking life, it makes us into beasts. We had come together here in the dirt, and there was nothing for us to share. He hugged me and began to soothe me. He did it all the way I wanted, I had not expected that. When I’m excited, all the hairs on my body lift, as if tiny jabs, hundreds and thousands of very tiny jabs, were lifting my hairs; I get cold, and I shiver. It was the first time in a long time that I had not viewed myself with pity. I put my arms around his neck, he put his around me, and I said to him, “I… am… Eddie. I have no one. You will love me? Yes? And we always will be together? Yes?”

  He said, “Yes, baby, yes… take it easy.”

  Then I broke away from him, my right hand dove into my boot and pulled out my knife. “If you betray me,” I told him, the tears in my eyes not yet dry, “I will kill you!” My English being very poor, this all sounded like gibberish, but he understood. He said he would not betray me.

  I said to him, “Darling!”

  He said, “My baby!”

  “You and I always will go together and never part, yes?” I said.

  “Yes, baby, always together,” he said seriously.

  I don’t think he was lying. He had things to do, but I was so fucking crazy with loneliness, I suited him. This did not mean our relationship was forever. It was simply that he needed me just now, I could meet with him, he would wait for me in bars or simply on the street; I could, and surely would, have some part in the things he did, possibly criminal things. I didn’t care what he did, this was what I wanted – it was life, life needed me, that kind of life or any kind at all, but I was needed. He accepted me, I was utterly happy, he accepted me. We talked. It was then I learned his name was Chris. He said that in the morning we would go home to where he lived, but we had to sit here for the night. I didn’t ask why; to me it was enough that he had invited me to live with him. I was like a dog that had found its master again; I would have bitten the throat of a policeman or anyone else for him.

  We were conversing under our breath, in that same pidgin English. Sometimes I forgot and began speaking Russian. He laughed softly, and then and there I taught him a few words of Russian. They were not nice words from the standpoint of a respectable person, no, they were bad words – prick, love, and others in the same spirit.

  In the middle of this conversation I wanted him. I completely let go, God only knows what I did. I pulled off my jeans, I wanted him to fuck me, I pulled off my jeans, pulled off my boots. I ordered him to tear my underpants off me, I wanted him to tear them up, and he obediently tore my red panties off me. I hurled them far away.

  At that moment I was really a woman, capricious, demanding, and probably seductive, because I remember myself playfully wiggling my poopka as I leaned on my hands in the sand. My neat round poopka, whose neatness even Elena had envied – it did something unbeknownst to me, it arched sweetly, and I remember that its nakedness, whiteness, and defenselessness gave me the greatest of pleasure. These were purely feminine feelings, I think. I whispered to him, “Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!”

  Chris was breathing heavily. I think I had aroused him in the extreme. I don’t know what he did, maybe he wetted his cock with his own spit, but gradually it entered me, his cock did. I shall never forget that feeling of fullness. Pain? Since childhood I had been a lover of every possible savage sensation. Even before women, as a masturbating teenager, a pale onanist, I had invented a certain homemade method: I had put all kinds of objects into my anal orifice, from a pencil to a candle, sometimes rather thick objects. This double onanism – of the cock and through the anal orifice – was very bestial, I remember, very strong and deep. So his cock in my poopka did not frighten me, and it didn’t hurt much, even in the first moment; I had obviously stretched my little hole long ago. But the ravishing feeling of fullness – that was new.

  He fucked me, and I began to moan. He fucked me, and with one hand
caressed my member, I whimpered, moaned, arched, and moaned louder and sweeter. Finally he said to me, “Take it easy, baby, somebody will hear!” I replied that I was not afraid of anything, but nevertheless, out of consideration for him, I made my moans and cries softer.

  I was behaving now exactly as my wife had when I fucked her. I caught myself feeling this, and I thought, So this is how she is, this is how they are! Exultation surged through my body. In a last convulsive movement we dug into the sand and I downed my orgasm in the sand, simultaneously feeling inside me a hot burning. He came inside me. We sprawled exhausted in the sand. My cock dug into the sand, the sand grains pricked it pleasantly, it stood up again almost immediately.

  Then we got dressed and settled ourselves comfortably to go to sleep. He took his old place by the wall, and I settled myself beside him, with my head on his chest and my arms around his neck – I’m very fond of that position. He hugged me and we fell asleep…

  I don’t know how long I slept, but I woke up. Maybe an hour had passed, maybe a few minutes. It was as dark as ever. He was asleep, breathing evenly. I woke up and could not get back to sleep. I sniffed him, scrutinized him, and thought.

  No doubt about it, I’m incorrigible, I thought. If my first woman was a drunken Yalta prostitute, then my first man, of course, had to be someone I found in a vacant lot. I remember that girl distinctly. She picked me up one summer night at the bus station in Yalta. She liked the pretty kid dozing on the bench with his friend. She walked over, woke me up, and brazenly led me away to a little public garden behind the bus station. There she calmly lay down on a bench, she was completely naked under her dress. I remember the salty taste of her skin, and her still-wet hair – she had just been for a swim in the sea. I remember her very big, mature cunt with its many folds; I was stunned, it was all streaming with mucus, she wanted this kid, she fucked me not for money but out of desire. Southern scents, the rich southern night accompanied my first love. Next morning my friend and I left Yalta.