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

being lighter than the air. Now, if we had a balloon filled with it then the balloon should soar up! It only remained to solve the purely technical problem of stuffing the smoke inside a balloon.

The solution was prompted by my life experience. More than once I watched a couple of stoners assisting brotherly each other to get a swift lift, high as a kite, by the trick code-named "locomotive". One of the bros would put a sparked joint into his mouth reversely, the burning end first, observing, sure thing, precautions to avoid inner burns, and then the benefactor blew. As a result, a squirt of thick smoke was pouring from the tube-mouthpiece of the Belomor-Canal cigarette to be immediately consumed by the relief target.

Yet, for the outsider of a balloon, a straight cigarette would also do, right? So, I lit it, inserted the mouthpiece into the balloon's neck, and blew from the opposite end a lungful of air. But it should be kept in mind that the "locomotive" smoke is eagerly sucked and kept in by the consumer, whereas the air, when forced into a balloon, tries to escape the rubber body thru its neck. In short, the amount of the smoke-mixed air, which I had blown in, burst back thru the cigarette mouthpiece and knocked the smoldering tobacco out, straight into my throat.

(…"When a dog has nothing to do, he licks his balls." my father used to say.

Sometimes it's better to lick than bungle about the aeronautics…)

Sure enough, I coughed the tobacco out after its smoldering fibers scorched my larynx somewhere behind the glands. That's what happens when a philologist meddles with Physics matters. Firstly, it hurts, and then go to pharmacies in search of Furacilin for treating burns.

(…but what hurts even more, hurts to tears, that no lessons may prevent my future follies. Certain morons are not able to learn from their own experience because it is not possible to foresee which other locomotives with balls, or vice verse, will inspire my inquisitive mind tomorrow…)

I was matriculated at the English Department, but the triumphant departure to Konotop was somewhat clouded by having words with the commandant of the hostel who found a shortage of one pane in the window of my room. The glass had not been in place when I moved in there, but the jackass did not listen to my explanations, demanding retribution in ready money, or finding a workman who would insert the pane. Beside not having the specified amount, I also resented the unjust rip-off. When left alone in the room, I went up to the upper floor and pulled a glass from the window in the toilet. The pane size fitted perfectly, I do love the standardization! The commandant still croaked that the glass had obviously been in use and I proclaimed that it was bought at a chance seller in Bazaar, at which transaction I missed to notice those paint smudges along the edges.

(…our old good world is very repetitive, at any rate, my arguments when dealing with commandants are all alike…)

~ ~ ~

Olga resisted the very idea of my striving for higher education, moreover in the field of pedagogy. As for English, she did not consider it a specialty at all because everyone should know the language nowadays, so she was told by a baby doctor who visited to treat Lenochka's cold. I responded by calling the doctor smart dumb-ass and swore to come to Konotop on every Saturday. Yet, Olga stopped pecking at me only after I agreed that she would dye my hair with hydrogen peroxide. That's why in the all-out picture of the 1975 first-year students at the English Department of the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute, aka the NGPI, I had the looks of that fancy ass-hole of a protagonist in The Hero of Our Times by Lermontov—a blond with the dark mustache…

Our course was split into four groups of twelve students each, with only one male per group. The exactly same male-female ratio was maintained at all the other courses of the English Department.

Because of my obviously dyed hair, some local young fairy started trailing and coveting me with signs of care and close attention along with insistent proposals to make friends which solicitations were full of wooing intonations like those by the boy from Nalchik. After a shock sample of construction battalion parlance, he bleated that his life was ruined for he had missed his chance of going to Moscow because of me, and pissed off.

Olga immediately informed me that in Nezhyn I was hanging out with fags. To my demand of specifying the source of the fabrication, a certain Shoorik was indicated as the horse mouth, whose sister studied at the Physics and Mathematics Department of the NGPI.

At my request, Lyalka called Shoorik out of the Loony dance-floor into a dark alley where I allegedly wanted to have a talk with him. I hit the summoned Shoorik on the jaw and he did a runner with all deliberate speed. I didn't pursue though and only roared after him in the best traditions of construction battalion, "Come here, fucker!" Rather an odd if not counterproductive way to lure back an escapee running for their dear life, if you come to think of it….

The classes in the Old Building lasted from nine to almost three and then I went along the wide asphalt walk towards the sandstone-tiled New Building in front of which there stretched a row of thick sprawling Willows screening beneath their canopies straight benches without backrest… In 30 meters from the New Building's left corner, there loomed the red-brick five-story block of the student hostel, aka the Hosty and alongside if, after another 30 meters, there stood the canteen, a tall two-story Mausoleum-like structure styled as a couple of glazed cubes.

The large hall on the second floor contained a crowd of four-sitter square tables wrapped in the hum and babel of students' voices, of water whooshing in the dishwasher’s, snaps of kitchen utensils,