LIFE LINE

Life cannot be described, you can only feel and treasure it. Description can always be evaluated. Life cannot be subjected to evaluation. Life exists. It unfolds and the whole of it is in this moment, no less, no more. So, now I am sitting at the table, wishing to tell about myself without imposing my views and sensations on anyone.

Naturally, I don't remember how I was born, the moment of birth. As a whole it would be silly to bring this issue up if it were not for our eternal amazement concerning the fact that we do not remember this moment and our desire to approach it at least a tiny bit in our memory.

Times were changing, and I was surprised by how I, being suppressed by my own sensitivity, was transforming myself - slowly and persistently - into a girl, whose entire look declared that she did not need anything or anyone.

Since then the hurricane of years has blown away the scraps and rags of everything that was not the very essence of the personality, leaving it rigid and whole.

I have always been fond of women, and so I was never scared by the society's attitude to my likes, and the term "pervert" I have crossed out for myself long ago: it did not stigmatized, much less - defamed me. You cannot prove anything to people - this is equivalent to admonishing a wolf to abstain from eating meat. Life does not require changes, corrections, overcoming, proofs; I should just value the life as I was created by God - be myself! To be oneself yet in a greater degree means to be a person more fully, to accept one's strong and weeks points, for I really have my power and my weakness and my mistakes - which testifies to the fact that I am really capable of making mistakes, that is that I am a human being.

At the age of 19 I embarked on the path of seeking - to come across disenchantment again and again, but the firm decision to never say die has been backing me up as a steel support. At that time I was akin to a gramophone needle that endlessly runs along the same groove.

I have never been attracted to women with boyish or manlike appearance and ways, I refuse to take them for women: they are just freaky germs of a new gender, which will be neither male nor female.

I also cannot conceal the icy contempt and annoyance generated in me by the people living under the weight of scare. People are intimidated. Well, such are our times, that's it. To pretend before others that this is not so means to lull oneself with fairy tales. I am so free of scare, the words are just inadequate to express it!!! So far, however, the dialogue between two guys or girls is restricted by a phrase: "What do you like?" After that the show unfolds intuitively, and all that you visualize in your nighttime fantasies, is left out. And everything is reduced to hare's love. This becomes the cause of volatility. I am familiar with all this. Resourcefulness in sex helps become a gourmand and be ever interesting.

Gays and lesbians come into being by themselves, without instigation or forceful seduction. And having come into being, let them be guided by laws, conscience and morals. Actually, the problems of homosexuals is an utterly curious subject.

A man differs from an animal by the fact that he thinks not only about the present moment, but about the future as well, when life will be going on and hopes will continue to come true. I have lived enough to know what this world is like in reality, in other words, to notice the true animal nature of people, hidden behind an amiable smile, good manners, sham sympathy! There is no limit to human spite. Bring to mind the tiniest brutalities that fill every minute of every day: base betrayals of friends, minor dirty tricks a husband does to his wife, a brother - to a brother; and "our" people are far from being ideal. They are so ordinary that go unnoticed. They are not even aware of that which transforms life. At best these people can have an obscure feeling that they have missed out on something in the life, though they do not even know what its name is - but even if they hear its name, they will not understand just the same.

As to me, I felt like opening the door into the world of feelings, cognition, evaluation and creation - into the world of amazement, excitement, joy, sorrow and bright colors of life.

I met a girl with whom for the first time I tried to live; not by love, but rather by a sudden outburst of surprise and tenderness which are born when closeness tears away all masks, when carefully pressed clothes, calm countenance, mastered intonations, polite phrases - everything that is meant for the outer world, falls away or gets thrown off, revealing honest nakedness, and a feeling of quiet and grateful happiness comes.

But barely two months passed, and our relationship reached a deadlock. Then we rather wanted to create an illusion that we had a legitimate right to be together. As if love was knocking on the door of my life, entreating to be let in. But I could not tell sincerely that I returned this love, and so I did not pronounce the words "I love". I hate falsehood and sham. I had trouble living with a person for whom I had failed to generate love.

Not once had I a feeling that she had penetrated into my soul - she was just standing outside and waiting. She was living in the clear happy world of today, and since I could not bring her into my world, she made me live in hers. Truth was too big and formless to be expressed in words.

In the long run she left me, having intuitively felt that which she had failed to understand.

At first I missed her a lot, wanted her to come back - to gradually come to the understanding that her return would not settle the problem, that I had only been deriving strength from her, the strength that sooner or later I would have to find in myself if I wished to obtain integrity.

Suddenly I found myself overflowed with a black wave of loneliness. Will she really forget the times when we were together, or even throw away from her mind the recollections of the brief moments she shared with me? Despair turned my heart to ice. I seemed to become looking like tormented Christ… painted by a certain Sweden. It was so hard. But it was done with. And I am happy I had that experience. It would be better if we thank each other for everything good that we had.

I started to live in the constant expectation of unselfish miracle and regarded my life and creative activity just as a rehearsal of this miracle, modeling it with the help of my extravagancies. The situation was dragging on, my patience came to a point, pricked up its ears, but nothing happened.

The lack of passion was the worst factor - worse than the emptiness in the heart - the numbness itself turned into pain. It was weird to think that this cold would stay with me till the end of my life. And I was waging a ferocious war against suffocating indifference, for regaining the primary splendor of feelings.

I was waging the war without any pity, for I could not lose a minute: this frozenness was devouring me, and I was afraid not just of it, I did not want it to be a prelude to complete darkness, to the time when even the most banal ideas would not be born in my mind.

Older female friends assured me that I was too young to understand mature women seeking young girlfriends. And I answered that I was old enough to succumb to romantic urges, but too young to snatch at anything just to relieve my loneliness. Give some thought to the following, dear reader: only a fool lives, having no an emergency exit.

For three months I corresponded with a girl and we arranged to meet on the Women's Day. Then my entire consciousness, all my nerves were set on coming to her, to a person whom I had never seen, whose voice I had never heard, whose life, tastes and character had been unfamiliar to me. I was marching to her through a thicket with confidence.

Yet, however different were the worlds in which the two different persons lived, there was something common between us that allowed us to discuss without any preface and in any place that which was of the biggest importance for both of us. Truth to be told, I did not imagine how that first meeting would be able to bring about the miracle I so much needed, but all this time the winds of intuition were whistling in my ears, shouting that everything will be just this way.

The most painful thing is parting after a meeting. At the railway station I took her hand and suddenly, to my surprise, she kissed me. A wave of fiery gratitude rushed into my heart, having flooded compassion; but right off the compassion, gratitude, amazement - everything was scorched out of me by her voice whispering the words I could not understand; and this heated whisper that was sounding for me for the first time in my life - as a quintessence of love, penetrated - like an arrow - into the depth of the years gone by, beyond consciousness, through the walls of bones and muscles - to the place, where a clot of unshed tears had been lying from the first years of my life.

With fear I felt some inner threads and fibers were slackening and tearing, and I mustered all my power to hold back that which was breaking away threatening to destroy me. It was hard to let her go, and so I pressed myself to her most firmly - to keep tormenting, scaring fascination of this indistinct whisper.

At last the train started off and headed to the place where my entire former life was. For the whole journey I kept thinking of her and my heart was wrung with the grief that never left me. Whence this sorrow? It must be in my soul - if everything wound up with such unbearable anguish that could not be expressed with words.

We kept meeting and our relationship became very intimate, but the true closeness was lacking. We rushed to each other like the blind, seeing nothing, believing that intuition and life itself would help us achieve closeness. If one of us had a sudden desire to catch a firmer hold and cling to something, she always ended up with emptiness in the hands.

So anguish and confusion again. I persuaded myself that the reason of this was that everything was being done stealthily and that our meetings were always hasty.

My constant despair embittered her soul, and it was she who displayed condescension, rather than I. She became the closest and dearest person for me. And I was delighted to know that the same feeling illumined her heart at the same time, at a distance.

From the moment of our acquaintance I started to feel the quiet joy of the resurrection. Colors seemed brighter, scents - stronger, days - sunnier, sounds - more melodious, and even meals acquired a new taste. Never before had I experienced such a powerful feeling - neither toward work, nor toward an idea, nor toward any woman; and to experience the uplift, to feel excitement, to sense life - was like taking a full breath, having escaped a strangler's hands. And the only thing I could not get enough of was air - as much as my lungs could hold, for the bliss of the feeling itself.

We've been together for two years now. We have an apartment, where each room and each thing became a part of our joint life. If we happen to fall out, either of us looks at another one with surprise: how is it possible to misunderstand that which is so clear and evident? At times I behave hopelessly silly, and when I realize what I've done, I cannot stop rating myself. But my previous mistakes do not prevent me from making a lot of new ones.

I've never wanted her to be better or worse. I feel that she also accepts me as I am. She never tried to change me or render different in this or that. I was free of the necessity to pretend. I discovered that I could just be…

A person, dumped by a woman or a man, can curse inconstancy and find a substitute. A person, abandoned by a friend, can curse treacherousness and seek another friend. But he who has lost himself, can only harbor hopes, silently compress his lips and pray for being given an infinite joy - to reunite with oneself again.