Dmitri’s surprised, when he gets down to it, how manly it is to suck a guy’s dick. He can’t see himself, but he’s sure that he looks a hundred times better than the girls in videos, much more natural. He understands now why people get so excited when they do this to him. Actually, now that he’s in their position, he’s surprised they were able to control themselves as much as they did. Dmitri can smell Robert under his soap, and Robert says “easy, easy” because Dmitri is not being gentle, but no, he can’t do it any easier, he wants to cram himself full of Robert and Robert is making the best sounds ever. He finds he totally knows what to do, even though he’s having a hard time doing anything other than more, more, more.
“Oh there, oh there,” says Robert. And Dmitri is here. He’s right here.
After, for a few minutes, they lie naked almost on top of each other because of how small the bed is. Dmitri’s hand is sticky with Robert’s semen, which smells and tastes like blin batter. “The first blin is always lumpy,” Dmitri says, out loud, in Russian. It is a proverb. Dmitri doesn’t know the equivalent in English. “What was that?” Robert asks. Robert’s mouth is on Dmitri’s neck and one hand is on Dmitri’s ass and Dmitri feels like his entire body is yawning in a happy way, but he needs to get up.
“I have to meet my cousin,” he says.
“Right,” Robert says. “The cousin.”
Dmitri’s shirt is underneath Robert’s legs; his pants and sweater are on the floor. He does not see his socks. He needs to wash himself. It’s always like this, the ending, but what is he supposed to do? Robert’s skin is very white, except for a vertical flush of red on his chest and two horizontal marks on his thighs that may configure to the shape of Dmitri’s hands.
“I can use bathroom?” Dmitri asks. Robert nods. Dmitri would like to gather his clothes together and dress in the bathroom, but he doesn’t want to drag his shirt out from under Robert. He does take his satchel with him to the bathroom, as he always does, it’s a safety thing.
The bathroom is not as clean as Dmitri would like. In hotel rooms, the bathrooms are very fancy and perfectly clean. The towel on the rack in this one is still wet, as is the bathmat. The trash bin is so full the lid cannot close; the area around the tiny sink is gummed with the spilt contents of bottles. Dmitri’s father told him once that Americans become very distressed if everything is not perfectly clean, but perhaps this only applied to American astronauts. Dmitri uses a corner of the damp towel and some of the soap still in the plastic dispenser to scrub at his stomach, his dick, in between his legs. When he comes out of the bathroom, Robert has put on pants and is sitting cross-legged on his bed, playing with what looks like a cross between a rain stick and an abacus. Dmitri dresses. Robert tilts the thing in his hands and silver disks slide down the rails, producing an atonal tinkling. Dmitri looks out the window. A row of paper books are lined up on the ledge and he reads a few titles. They all have something to do with music.
“You are music student?” Dmitri asks. In his encounters, he exaggerates his accent and makes no effort for grammatical English because everyone likes it when he speaks poorly.
“That’s the first question you’ve asked me,” Robert says. “Yeah. I’m a composer.”
Dmitri zips up his pants and points with his chin to the thing Robert is playing.
“You make this?”
“I designed it,” Robert says. “My roommate, Harald, made it for me. He’s a 3-D imagist. We’re supposed to be doing this project involving found instruments and nature. My problem is I love, like, super-old-fashioned music, so there’s no chance of my having a career in the United States. I should have been born in the nineteen fifties so I could have played in an orchestra. Harald says it’s pretentious to be naive, but I’m really not trying.”
Dmitri swallows this speech without chewing; swallows also the vertical line that appears between Robert’s eyebrows when he speaks, the green sheets on Robert’s bed, his thin hands, the fact that the red vertical flush on his chest has disappeared, the expensive-looking lamp clamped to the headboard of the bed that must be the lamp from the furniture store, the handles of suitcases and what looks like the handle of a tennis racket that can be seen underneath Robert’s bed, the pieces of paper taped to the wall above the bed, covered in spidery writing.
He feels sad. Robert is interesting. Dmitri is not. So far, he’s been able to get away with this, but it can’t last forever. Mostly it has been enough to be obedient, and lately it has been sufficient to have a hard dick.
Robert tilts the construction of rods, makes the metal disks drip rapidly onto one another.
“It is like rain.” Dmitri points at the instrument. “But more angry. Like acid rain.”
Robert shakes his head like he is an amazed person.
“That’s what I call it,” he says. “It’s an acid rain stick.”
Robert looks at Dmitri with a face animated with liking, which makes Dmitri realize that 1. Robert hasn’t maybe liked him until now and 2. He likes Robert and 3. He should go before he messes anything up.
? ? ?
DMITRI HAS MORE time to kill before Ilya is done, so he walks to where people take their dogs in Union Square Park. It has snowed a little more; the trees and ground and benches and old-fashioned street lamps are all dusted with it. He tries to think of an interesting observation about it all, but it’s just snow.
Two men are walking hand in hand toward Dmitri, one of them holding the leash of a large black poodle. It is nothing for two men to hold hands in America. It’s supposed to mean nothing to him too.
The poodle catches Dmitri’s eye and makes unequivocally for him, tugging along the man holding his leash, who lurches forward, tugging the man holding his hand.
“He’s friendly,” the man says. The poodle sits in front of Dmitri, absurdly dignified, like an old man who has been forced to wear a poodle costume but refuses to let it diminish him. Dmitri does not think that the dog wants to be petted, exactly, so he just looks at it. The poodle tosses its ludicrous head and marches off, causing another chain reaction in the men, who laugh.
If this were a movie, Dmitri thinks, a bomb would explode now, giving poignancy to the men, and the dog, and the moment they all just shared, and the thing that happened with Robert, and the sound of acid rain bells. But no bomb goes off and no meaning appears. Dmitri finds it hard to take a deep breath, his lungs are constricted with all the potential meaningless moments of life.
LUKE