"Okay, let's go," Alyoshka said. "Only don't fuck me afterward."
"We won't," I said. "You don't turn me on at all. I have little interest in fucking Russian poets."
"Or maybe he's not a pederast at all?" Alyoshka said, glancing doubtfully at Johnny.
"We'll check it out right now," I said. Hitching myself up from Johnny's shoulder, I put my arms around him, whispered in his ear, "I vont you, Johnny!" and kissed him on the lips. His lips were big, and he responded to me, not the least bit embarrassed. He knew how to kiss, he did it much better than I did. True, that meant nothing, but if he'd gone this far, to the kiss, he was agreeable to going all the way.
"He'll do," I said to Alyoshka. "Let's go."
I told Johnny that he would come with us. He expressed not the slightest unwillingness, and I put my arm around him and walked on ahead with him. I was drawn into more and more kisses, especially since I was feeling the effects of what I had smoked and drunk more and more clearly. The incubation period was over and the disease had begun a rapid development. We walked and kissed, and Alyoshka limped behind. I got drunk and silly, switched from game-playing and humor into a state of genuine drugged relaxation. I just wanted somebody, not specifically Johnny, but he was nearby. From time to time Alyoshka commented on the pair of us, Johnny and me, with remarks like, "What a pederast you are, Limonov!"
Or, "If the guys in Moscow could only see you!"
"But Gubanov's a pederast himself!" I said exultantly. "I once spent a whole evening smooching with him."
Finally we arrived. It must have been one in the morning. We walked into those clouds of steam, and the first thing I saw was two pairs of eyes, frightened and puzzled as hell. The performing artists were lying on their beds, facing the door, and were stunned by the arrival of Limonov and his black lover. I decided to finish them off. I put my arms around Johnny and entered into a long, agonizing kiss. The performing artists were petrified. They were both over forty, they were not prepared for this, neither the clown nor the musician.
I told Alyoshka, "This is a bummer, the sleep-in will not take place. If you'll just give us some beer, Johnny and I will go." Johnny and I sat down on a chair, or rather he did, and I settled on his lap within sight of the astonished spectators. Alyoshka gave us some beer.
The beer belonged to the musician, he always had a couple dozen beers in reserve, and Alyoshka asked him for the loan of a beer. He gave it, he would have given the world not to see Limonov endlessly kiss a black man. A terrible spectacle for a Russian musician or clown.
Then Johnny and I left. Alyoshka stayed, went to bed. I invited him to come with us, but he said, "You'll be fucking, and what will I do?" He was right, and we left alone.
Then began my long night of walking with Johnny along Broadway, Eighth Avenue, and neighboring streets, from the Thirties to the Fifties. I do not know, it remains a mystery to me even now, why he didn't get around to fucking me right away. Nor do I know what he was doing, sometimes stopping with people, talking with them, approaching prostitutes and people who worked in all sorts of night establishments. He was doing some sort of petty business of his own, he was busy with it right up to daybreak, people handed him something, maybe it was coins, I don't know. I could see that the faces of the people he talked to were scornful and squeamish. One time a young and handsome black man, brightly dressed, evidently a pimp, even pushed him. He was the lowest man in this world, my Johnny, and I was his buddy.
I understood at once that he was the lowest of the low. Another man in my place would have left, wouldn't have given a damn, especially since the excitement was gone, the sex drive had vanished, there was only a drugged, alcoholic state; but that was what another would have done. Not I. I felt I must walk with him everywhere in his strange dealings, wait for him, and be a friend to him, to this lowest man, this punk dressed in dirty rags. Once he even deserted me, and a huge, fat black guy, from a whorehouse on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-third Street I think, tried to beat me up for something. I don't remember – and besides I didn't understand – what the problem was or how I had irritated him. But I patiently heard out his seething speech, indistinct and vicious, and when he came after me with his fists I realized there was no point fighting, and simply tried to push the big guy away without running afoul of his fists. I succeeded in this, but not quite. Repulsed by his bulk, I bounced back against the wall. I wasn't hurt, didn't fall; a shout went up around me. Only then did Johnny come over to me and furtively tell me I'd better leave. I don't give a shit about these amusements. I left calmly, but as I say, I didn't have a fucking thing to lose; as I say, why should I fear tight spots – I was even seeking death. Not very consciously, but I was.
Johnny deserted me for long periods that night, and more than once I developed a suspicion that he wanted to shake me off. Somewhere around four in the morning he squeezed himself into a group of black youths on Forty-second Street, between Broadway and Eighth, and tried to get something out of them. Someone chased him away.
I sat on my heels by the wall and observed the young people and Johnny. I felt sad. Even they did not accept me into their game. I would have given the world, at that moment, to have black skin and stand among them as one of their own.
I recalled my own provincial Kharkov, my hoodlum friends, our flashy dolled-up girls – not this dolled-up, of course; they didn't have the resources – but also provocative, young, and vulgar, like these nice little black girls. There in my own city I was in my right place. Everyone knew Ed. They knew what he could do. They knew I hawked stolen countermarks, which was what we called the free passes to the outdoor dance pavilion where the orchestra played. I sold them cheap and divided the profits with the cashier, a middle-aged German woman. It was a pretty good business. In one evening I would earn a third to a half of a good worker's monthly pay – it was a big dance pavilion. Everyone knew that I wasn't averse to stealing anything left lying around loose, and it was I who robbed the store near the entrance to the Hammer and Sickle Factory.
The people knew my girl Svetka; they would inform me at once, that very night, if they saw her at another dance pavilion with another guy. Then I would leave someone to hawk countermarks in my place, and go to the grocery store; a friend and I would each buy a bottle of strong red, drink it right on the street. On occasion we carried out this operation two or three times, and afterward, when I had sold all the countermarks, I would go to Svetka's apartment house and wait for her. I would sit in the courtyard, talk with some Tatar boxers, the brothers Epkin, and wait for Svetka. When she appeared I would beat her and beat the guy who was with her. The brothers Epkin, who loved both Svetka and me, would butt in, and a hue and cry would go up. Then we would make peace and go to Svetka's. Her mother was a prostitute and a lover of literature. She valued highly the diary I kept as a seventeen-year-old, which at Svetka's request I had given her to read. She encouraged our romance and predicted for me a future as a man of letters. Unfortunately, she proved right.
Svetka was a very sweet girl, beautiful but sneaky. She loved the starched petticoats and fluffy dresses stylish at the time. She lived in apartment 14 and was fourteen years old. She had lived with men since the age of twelve; a friend of her late alcoholic father's had once raped her. Strange as it may seem, Svetka was proud of this circumstance; she was a romantic soul. In addition to her tallness, little doll face, long legs, and almost complete absence of breasts, Svetka possessed an amazing ability to drive me mad. My romance with her was rife with incidents – she ran to drown herself in the pond, I slashed her with a knife, fled from her to the Caucasus, wept in the entrance to her house, and so on… It was like a rehearsal of Elena.