the most final
concluding work

Probably, the girl was disappointed by my not-soldierly lack of determination and too easy surrender to the plain minimalism of the conditions in the bakery plant yard. Anyway, the following evening she did not show up for the date in the park as we'd arranged.

I went a couple of circles along the dark alleys, stood for a while close to the brightly lit dance-floor inside which coral the youth of Stavropol were enjoying their recreation, although it was dangerous – a soldier in a casual wear outfit could be an easy mark for the military patrol. She was nowhere and the chances for her to pop up grew real slim.

"Got matches, soldier?" A dainty long-haired dude with a shoulder bag on a wide strap was addressing me.

I took the matchbox from my pants pocket. He picked it and unzipped his bag where, on top anything else, lay a cigarette pack next to a box of matches.

"Oh! I'm so forgetful. Will you?" He seized the pack and opened its lid over the densely lined filters. I pulled one out.

"Ah, it's so noisy here, gives me a headache. Will we walk a little?" With his right hand, he shook up the wide curls in his dark bob-cut hair.

…hell, what's up?. is he gluing me or what?. a short neat guy, long hair, a bag under his elbow… "Why not?"

We walked away, followed by the glances of those standing by the dance-floor, that part of the public who always keep outside. Strolling slowly, we headed nowhere in particular. He talked and talked with velvety feminine intonations. Then he told me a joke about gay life.

Some queen was arrested in Moscow and while they were beating him up at a militia station he squeaked, "Oh, Captain, I only wanted it in my mouth, not in the teeth!" A play on words, though not very funny, yet clear enough, as clear as what he was, it’s only that I just wondered what's next.

"Would you like some wine?

"Why not?"

We went to a nearby deli, there was almost no line there. Bubbling with joy, he asked for my advice on a wine over there, on the shelf behind the counter: would that do? As if I knew seeing the first time ever that "Mountain Flower". The shop was full of crude light and leering goggles of scanty buyers. He happily punched the check by the cashier, took it to the shop-assistant, exchanged the slip for the bottle and inserted it into his dangling bag.

We returned to the park, to its upper, dark, part, where there were no benches under the trees screening the rare lights from a nearby street. Standing in the darkness by the line of trimmed bushes, we drank some wine, not finishing it off, then he dropped right in front of me on his knees and unbuttoned the fly in my pants…

Well, at first, it was arousing, yet soon there remained just the feel of humid moistness down there. His head, barely visible in the dark, kept pumping back-and-forth. I slid the plate of my loosened gird-belt behind, to the back of my jacket, so that he did not hit his forehead against it accidentally. He changed the rhythm, diversified the tempo, took a breath for a moment then started again.

…somehow it's…monotonous…and for how long should I stick around like this?.

Chmo-ook.

…what?..another time-out?.

"You scoundrel! You've been with a slut! So you cannot come! A nasty scoundrel!"

"No, I haven’t." I buttoned up under his plaintive complaints that I had such a matching member—exactly thirteen!—but to no avail. The discrepancy between his expert estimation and the measurements, once taken at a midday break at the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant, did not hurt me, taking into account his disappointment – lots of labor lost in vain, besides, it was he to pay for the wine.

"There’s still left some – will you?"

"Ah, no."

I finished the sorrowful mountain flower off under his story that he was on transit from the Nalchik city, where some very important director of some very important enterprise made him such as he was when he still had been just a boy.

Then he gave me a farewell hug, but no kiss for such a nasty scoundrel who had been with a slut so let him now face the music… And he left making by his sentimentally luring gait for the street lamps beyond the park.

From that tear-jerking joke by the sad boy from Nalchik you couldn't but see that gay life's not a bed of roses – keep low and hide out until they catch you in the end. Poor critters… So what? Time to march home, ain't it?.

The postman handed me a letter from Olga about the letter she'd got from a fellow-serviceman of mine, who anonymously informed her of my amorous unauthorized marches in different directions from the location of Military Detachment 41769, aka VSO-11…

The insolence of filthy insinuations just made me furious, the more so that neither in the village, no at the bakery plant there was no booty whatsoever! And the gay guy could safely be counted out because I hadn't even cum. Therefore, in the letter of reply, I rightfully emphasized that there was nothing to speak of, and she should send me that anonymous piece of crap for carrying out graphological scrutiny and taking appropriate measures against that lying dirty bitch of my fellow-serviceman.

In her respective reply, she stated that the lies about my allegedly unstable behavior made her see red in which affected state she tore the letter into irrecoverable shreds.

~ ~ ~

Vanya left for the evening roll-call because it was my shift at the stoker-house. Gray came bringing along a young, a driver from the Simferopol draft. They both were tight, the young obviously had money, no wonder Gray’d palled up with him.

And then Gray kicked up some shitty dust crap, like, the buddies had some gripes about me. I couldn't understand. Which buddies? What beefs?

Now you'd see, says he, and latched the front door. The 3 of us went over to the workshop room, and Gray at once sneaked out of there. I did not get it.

And then the young, keeping his eyes away, asked, "Why finking on guys?" And he shot a fist into my face. I parried with my shoulder and jumped past him out of the door, the yokel followed. In the nook behind the furnace, there was a breaker, I grabbed it and shouted, "Gray! Who the fuck did I fink on?"

Gray stood nearby in the dark passage. Seeing me armed, he pelted body blows and I dropped the breaker. After all, it was grabbed out of pure instinct, kinda warning.

At that point, the iron-sheet shutter under the window in the hall with the reserved boilers moved, and Sasha Khvorostyuk from our draft crawled in on all fours, in only high boots and underpants, and with a towel hanging from his neck. Clear enough, he was going to take a shower in the pump-station room but the entrance door was latched from inside.

Seeing him enter, Gray barked out, "Get the fuck out of here!"

So, Sasha Khvorostyuk revved back, legs-first, without ever taking a U-turn, and Gray again turned to me. And now he saw my chest was bleeding because of my jacket was unbuttoned all the while, and one of his blows had torn the birthmark off.

Gray saw there was fucking lots of blood and he didn't know what was there in the room between me and the young, and he wasn’t gone too blind not to see the chance of getting fucked up into the penal battalion. So he just croaked a couple of times, "Look out!. The buddies!.." And they left.

Yet, I couldn’t get it what the fuck all that was about. Later, I saw him and asked, he did not say anything clearly, just repeated the same bullshit, "Look out! If there something.." In short, he’d been just selling himself for a fucking master-thief before the well-off young…