The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

did not hold in his fatty hands anything heavier than his personal bunch of keys. Which is not about Stepan though, who once was a good carpenter they said, it's about the Director of Club, who stood by and tinkled his keys hallooing Stepan to our trophy. Don't rub the soap to your cheeks, Pavel Mitrofanovich, it's not your shaving day, as ran a winged Settlement byword rather popular at those days…

~ ~ ~

The winter broke out somehow straightaway, the snowdrifts piled high up as if they always were there… Before the dances, I went to pick up Olga. She introduced me to the khutta's elders and betters who turned so glad and full of invitations to take my coat off, get seated and have a drink, but, no, thank you, I still had to work that night and it was time for us to leave. So Olga got dressed and we left.

Yet, it was a bit early for Club because we weren't moving the equipment from the stage and only locked the Mirror Hall after the dances. To pass the spare time, we visited the bench by the oil storage Base. Olga had a bottle of wine in her bag and we drank it, not too much though just to tone up in general as well as to get warm. And then we went to Club treading the crunchy snow crust tightened by the traffic's tires and treds in the passers’-by footwear…

Already at night, moonless and dark, yet with the myriads of bright star-specks pricking the sky everywhere, we came to revise the unfinished bottle of red wine stashed away in the snowdrifts… The wine felt too cold for making you warm, and as tasteless as ice. We scarcely drank half of what was still there and had a smoke.

Then I unbuttoned my coat, she unbuttoned hers and got seated in my lap. We had already used to treat each other as personal property. I might freely run my hand deep into her pantyhose to reach the convex concavity item which I missed on the crazy cuckoo's night. She, in her turn, casually undid my belt and unbuttoned the fly for a comfortable grip at my boner.

Everything went on in the usual groove with long, like a protracted dive into another dimension, kisses blended in. But, all of a sudden, there happened something of which I couldn’t understand what or how but only that it was somewhere else… where I got into… out of myself… and mingling with… the fusion grew firmer with each push… no I remained anymore just we… we… we… and nothing else… unmakeoutable… doesn't matter… and all's swimming… blurred with blindfolding mist… what's that?. What?!. Oh, no!. More!.

The connection was lost. The night slowly emerged back from nowhere… the snowdrifts… the bench… there again… A couple of thrusts after the elusive new world showed there was nothing to sustain, to return, to keep on with.

We broke apart becoming her and me again. Stunned, I stood up.

That same bulb from up its post. Winks of sparks from the snowdrifts around. The black sky in pin-pricks of stars…

When no one would think of thinking…

Where's my hat? Dammit, wherever be it can wait…

November 17… 17-year-old locksmith apprentice… lost his virginity…

And she?

(…I do not know until now.

It does not matter.

Who cares?.)

Saying goodbye to her, so quaintly quiet, by the khutta of her aunt, I realized that now it was my duty to be stronger than she and I did not have to give much thought to anything else, from now and forever and ever.

(…Here! Here! Wow!

I can present ideas in a pretty form, can I?

Subsequently though… Decades after…)

The following evening I came to the Evening School of Working Youth where Olga at times attended classes because Aunt Nina pressed for the paper about her finishing eighth grade.

After the break bell, she went out into the corridor and left with me skipping the rest of the classes. I saw Olga to her aunt's khutta following her heated report about the record-making bleeding she had the previous night.

(…as if it means anything.

What's the point in all the maidenheads, circumcisions, adulteries and faithfulness forever and a day?

“What was – is no more, for good.What is – flows away thru clenched fingers.What is to come – can't be avoided…)

It was not possible, of course, for our love affair to melt the ice and snow of the winter all around us, yet all the winter snow and ice could not suppress our flaming ardor. Moreover, we fanned the passion's flame at the least opportunity.

The snow-clad bench by the oil storage Base was soon rejected because of its unwanted backrest… The sheet-iron trailer by the tiny ice rink in the Plant Park was more convenient, but it took an unbearably long stretch of time waiting until the bros would finish their wine, then go thru their atomic reports to each other about what kind and which dosage of alcohol they consumed earlier on that day and which circumstances led to having it in their current composition, concluding the brag session with argumentative punches at each other's mug (without drawing the knife though), before they, at last, dispersed.

Drawing the knife when Kolyan was around, a bro could just as well kiss it goodbye before the inexorably pending confiscation… Kolyan O’ Settlement was a specimen of the increasingly scanty breed of heroes. Not too large an exemplar though, he was only 1 meter and 80, and utterly laconic. On the other hand, he didn't really need to flash eloquence because a fleeting glance at those fists about 20 kilos each was enough to dry up any wish for odd discussions. Even for a dumbo repeatedly surprised with a sandbag on his conk from around the corner, it was immediately clear that Kolyan would make a toast of him in less than 6 secs flat. Among the bros, of course, he could say a thing or 2, only you had to sit on a sufficient stock of patience