Page5

Thursday, December 11, 2008 Fictional Story Current mood:Dorky Category: Friends I loved him. He didn't have to die. We met in a church last summer (I'm sitting here, on unemployment, in a cold basement. it's 20 below zero, been that way for a month now), back when the bright arctic sun illuminated this post-gulag oil-boom town with a van Eyck clarity. I used to admire the view through the windshield of my '82 Volvo sedan. Now, that's gone too, but I don't mind taking the bus. 1982 was the year I was born-- that was part of my attachment to the car. Never mind...

I'm not religious (Catholic), it just so happened that we met in a church, because he was taking refuge there for the night with half a dozen other college students from Russia on student visas. They had been working at a cannery at Naknek, but were now stranded. The season ended earlier than expected. They all walked into the Workers Association office downtown where I volunteer sometimes.

The association set them up at the church where the pastor was a sympathetic contact.

I got the call at my library job requesting my presence that night, with sleeping bags. Two ladies from the office were at the church to pass off the sleepover to me. I knew a little Russian from school, but not enough to translate. That was fine, though, because they all spoke english. I met Peter in the kitchen. He was cute (I'm gay), so I sort of concentrated my energy on him and related to the others as much as possible in a detached sense. Plus, he wasn't all macho like the others. I hate everything machismo like that... So we got to talking and cooking.

At least one of them, Sergei, had some music skills. He plunked away pop tunes and tetris songs on the piano. After supper was served, I realized Peter was really familiar from somewhere. We went out to walk in the woods and smoke-- I asked him if he was ever on an internet porn site called X. He smiled "So?" I told him I was a fan, back in the day, and asked was he gay, or did he just do it for the money (not letting on that I wanted to have sex with him)? He said yes, he's gay, but he didn't want to have sex with me... and that he hoped I wouldn't come on to him either around the "comrades from the fatherland", because they didn't know (they really didn't).

Of course I swore secrecy and forgot about it for a while. I played some phat American beats on the CD player, and started a little dance party that got out of hand. Fortunately some of my friends showed up with sleeping bags and weed, and got the guys out in the woods so that I could clean in peace, and then lecture everyone on the way back in (backup arrived from the office around 10p.m., and I got a lecture myself), before bedding down on pews.

I was dreaming about Peter even though I have a boyfriend named Mike. Mike's 18 and I'm 26, so in order to keep it real we have (safe) sex with lots of different people-- it makes sense to us.

Anyway Peter woke me up at 3a.m. and we snuck out in the rain and made out in the parking lot (it was cold). That was when I realized that I liked him a lot.

The next day we all marched down to the Department of Labor, office of Wages and Hours.

According to Alaska's Shanghai Laws, workers are owed transportation back to point of hire, and the Russians were all hired in Seattle and flown up to Naknek. Plus $100 a day every day they were stranded in Anchorage, for "maintenance and upkeep". The cannery was gambling on the clueless foreigners not finding our office... Anyhow, all the Russian opted for their flights that day to Seattle-all, that is, except for Peter. I had him put up temporarily at a friend's place (family and friends are invaluable to me), and that was the beginning of everything.

There was no great romantic intrigue with Peter. I guess I'm so solidly lower-middle-class in my background and outlook on life, that to elope to Russia with this dude seemed both impossible and undesirable. I did want to elope, though, to Portland, Oregon.

Peter needed a job. I told him he'd be a knockout hustler, but that there's no johns around here on rentboy... I got two shiners for that one. Somehow we got past that, but it changed our dynamic.

Mike forbade me seeing him further, I suppose out of a sense of honor. We had plans to move to NYC separately within a month's time. He was looking forward to college. I had just finished my degree, and had been networking the art world there for years, and was ready for the leap...

Somehow, Peter got hired as a T.A. at the University Business School (I never asked what kind of lies he told, but I asked one of the students what they thought of him, and received the answer that he "seemed competent".

Three weeks away from my departure date, I cut off communications with a NY sugar daddy who I was contemplating staying with. i mailed him back the pre-pay cell phone he had bought for me... I stopped volunteering my 2 days per week, sold my car, withdrew from my social scene (consisting of punk shows and house parties), and started really learning Russian before and after work.

I also got Mike to lift the ban over facebook chat one evening. Then I went and put up a profile on Russian myspace and added Peter. Then (because it was still light out) I walked the hour it takes to get to where Peter was staying, and convinced him to let me stay the night.

It was the house of one of my good friends' partner. They were one of those inter-generational pairings that works. Outside, next to the back porch, was a sauna. The place is high-ceilinged, with a fireplace and a piano in the living room. the decor made it look like a curiosity shop-- amateur paintings, knickknacks, shag carpeting. He said that the birch woods outside reminded him of home in Kamchatka.

We were the only ones in the house that weekend. In the bedroom we fashioned a tent-like boudoir out of blankets and string. The old man had a library of records that made all of my mix cds superfluous.

The neighbor boys came over and got the wood stove going for the sauna, so we joined in and brought the Monarch. Joke swapping-- then Peter demonstrated how to enjoy getting beaten with birch boughs and doused in ice water. One of them told us he wanted to drop acid with us (the other one didn't do drugs), and we said "sure, another time maybe". They were very green kids. I wanted to say, "Go with god, my sons".

Michael came over in his mother's car around 2 a.m., and he and I and Peter had sex and took photographs all night. When the sun was high in the sky, in our languor and cummy sweatpants and hoods we walked down to the asian supermarket for coffee and shoplifted chocolate. We sidled around the outdoor tables with other good-natured peers in doom, and I thought to myself "I think this is really how it is in Europe". Then I felt self-conscious and uneasy, which translated to the others as paranoia.

In my silence I thought about a man, a family friend, who is politically conservative, a laborer, and deeply versed culturally. Then I snapped out of it and we were all going hiking in the mountains.

We all piled in, but Peter and Mike and I slept in the cars instead of actually hiking. We did get up, go for a nature walk, and talk about "us". I said what I felt: that there should be an "us"-- the three of us, and that we should plan not to separate. Peter was quick to call me clingy. Michael (god bless him) said my- then healed- black eyes were a sign of codependency between me and Peter, and that He'd rather not live with it. Peter smiled, because he understood Hegelian dialectic. I smiled, because I'm evil.

Michael spotted an owl, and we all piled in the car with the others and drove back to normal life.

At my parents' house, later, I got this message on the computer: "Peter is dead. He walked out on the road and got run over. It's on the news." It was true. Nobody came forward and explained why he walked out on the road. I felt so close to him when he died, that I dreamed about holding something dead.

I didn't take my flight to New York. I kept going to work... I wrote Michael every day, but communication between us slackened, and now I don't know how he's doing. I am in the dark. It's a scary place. I thought writing this might help.