Евгений Сергеевич Мешков
Simple Truths of Life
Once we had dinner in the kitchen of the Big House. We were eating there because my father had come for a visit. I think he drank alcohol then, and I made a speech about the harm from such alcohol consumption, and that psychology plays an important role in this addiction. It was a very clever speech for a teenager of my age, and my father jokingly mentioned this, noting that I did not take after him. I never studied psychology. I just as if “always”, or from birth, knew that truth, which I then told my father.
This was not the only time I had knowledge of something that I had never read or heard about in my life. Once in Moscow, while still at school, I watched a television program about the secrets of death, and at the end of that program, the announcer said along a black screen, that after death we simply cease to exist. I immediately knew that this simply could not be true. If this were true, then it would mean that we are simple robots, and robots cannot identify themselves – they cannot say “I am” because they really think so, and not because in the past they were programmed by someone to say that. In the following years, when I was dealing with programming, I found even more confirmation of the correctness of that knowledge, but it is still difficult for me to express that truth with words so that everyone understands what I mean. And considering the fact that many modern serious scientists really believe that robots can gain consciousness, means that not all readers will understand me.
There was also a case in the village when I instructed an older friend against drinking with another, more “adult” company, as it was clear that he was going to make a mistake in his desires to be with people of his age at the expense of his health and moral convictions – he had previously made a promise that would never drink. In the end, my fears were confirmed when he often drank and once, one might say, allowed one guy from another company to trample the mint that he planted earlier near his house – then we often went in the woods to transplant trees from there to the lawns in front of our houses – we were interested in it in our childhood.
Returning to the passage of my life on which we stopped, the time had come for the last eleventh grade.
After a couple of months, I, and several of my friends and acquaintances, started to have the Internet access.
One of the first things I started looking up was “how to cure stuttering”. On one of the forums I read the comment of an adult woman who, if my memory serves me, worked as a teacher and continued to stutter. She wrote that the best thing to do in this situation is to simply come to terms with stuttering. I got defensive then about the idea of putting up with stuttering. I could not put up with such a stammering speech, and I clearly remember that I wanted to be either completely normal and healthy, or no one at all. Then I closed the page and did not search for anything more regarding stuttering, thinking that if the best thing people on the Internet could write about stuttering was to put up with it, it meant that I would not find the answer to my question, otherwise all people would already known about the solution to the stuttering problem, right…?
Sometimes I looked at the pages that told about Russian saints who lived in Russia in the old days. I remember that one was a hermit who built his wooden house in the forest. Then I found that idea about hermitism interesting. I also remember the story of a man who resurrected a child that drowned in a well. Some of those websites talked about Auras.
Then I started looking for articles about UFOs and other little-known things. The reason for this was that distant event with the bright entity, which I, then a five-year-old child, saw at our house in the village. I think I, like Fox Mulder, tried to find the answers to my questions – do extraterrestrials exist? By that time, I already knew about the existence of ghosts and the so called “paranormal” things. And since those things really exist, why extraterrestrials cannot exist, whom many people talk to have had a contact with, which is also often met with skepticism, mistrust, and ridicule from society.
I was generally interested in space. I often read about planets and stars. I remember how I was mesmerized by photographs of Europa, the satellite of Jupiter, and other celestial bodies which are part of our solar system.
Strange, but sometime after, I read a book in which a photo of Moscow, taken from the air, was shown. The camera looked almost exactly down. Then for the first time I felt uneasy. My head seemed to be spinning. Then the same thing happened when I read articles about space, and on the pages photographs of planets, for example Jupiter, were shown. Sometimes I began to panic so much that it would become for me hard to breathe, and I would walk from the computer for a couple of minutes, trying to concentrate on reality, or think about something else. But I love space and the Universe, and therefore I would always come back to read the article, no matter how hard it was for me to do this in the presence of a huge planet on the page. Later I found out that I was not the only one who had “planet phobia”. I also began to be afraid of heights, and this despite the fact that I always liked to look from the window of my grandmother on the seventeenth floor of her house. And when my mother and I visited my aunt Zina, I also looked at the views of Moscow from the thirteenth floor without any problems. It was strange that this phobia came from nowhere and for no apparent reason…
I had developed other fears. For example, at one time I became afraid of the number thirteen. While doing exercises, I sometimes thought what if I had done a certain workout thirteen times? Because of this thought, I began to do that particular exercise again about ten times, so that there was no chance of getting to the number thirteen. I am glad to say that I quickly got rid myself from that ridiculous phobia.
There is one more thing that I went looking for on the Internet – more than candid photos of naked girls and women. I was interested to see what was hidden in the erotic films shown on television. Additionally, I wanted to see how sexual intercourse occurs. At heart I still hoped that I would have a girlfriend, and this knowledge would be useful to me. I think you already understood that I also began to masturbate very often, looking at porn photos.
Separately, it should be noted that there was a time when I questioned whether masturbation was harmful to health. But all that I found on the Internet was the articles of doctors who claimed that masturbation is not only not harmful, but also beneficial. With this information, I continued to lead my usual way of life – in the end, I liked the feelings that I experienced while masturbating, and I liked to look at beautiful female bodies, available “absolutely free” in a couple of mouse clicks.
As for school, I continued to skip it. The problems were not only with school. I stopped going to college for preparatory lectures, because during the first lecture, the teacher asked everyone to read aloud the text in turns, and I had great difficulties with that. The awkward looks and whispers of my young peers also could not in any way help me not stammer. In the eleventh grade my speech hesitations reached climax – I began to repeat one syllable and could not utter a single word, which once amused so much the girl who asked me to become her boyfriend a year ago. I do not know if she was ashamed for once wishing to be my girlfriend, or she was just the only one from the whole class who found it funny to hear my speech cramps and the twitching of my speech apparatus. What I can say is that for the first time I had to write the answer on a piece of paper in a room adjacent to the biology class. And it was the eleventh grade – the time when all other people actively fell in love and had fun spending their days with friends and loved ones with whom they calmly talked on various topics. As you probably know from what I wrote earlier, deep down I also wanted to experience all these joys of life.
I was not at all happy with who I was in my life. There was a moment in the ninth grade when, while walking with three classmates down the street after school, the new strong guy in our class started jokingly twisting my hand, as he usually did with all students, showing off his strength. My long-time classmate immediately exclaimed that the guy should stop doing this, as I stuttered. At that moment, I felt that I did not want people to think so of me as of a disabled person to whom they make concessions. My friend wanted to do what’s best, since he did not see what was happening in my inner world, but in fact my self-esteem and confidence shook once again at that hour.
Another similar incident also happened in the ninth grade. Then I had fun and laughed with other classmates in anticipation of the next lesson. Apparently, our teacher did not like our laughter, and of all the people she made a remark to me, saying that I too became noisy, like the others. The fact is that I would not mind being like others, and at times I considered myself the same as others. But, nevertheless, the fun came to an end… for a while.
Returning to the eleventh grade, perhaps this was the time when I overcame my fears and, using ICQ, managed to tell the village friend I was in love with about my feelings for her. To which she replied that she was very pleased, but she already had a boyfriend. He was my old friend from the village. If only I could have told her what I wanted, a couple of months ago, when she was still without a boyfriend…
I was disappointed. I also felt terrible because my fantasies about her were broken. This moment, along with several others, made me again start inventing fictional girls in my fantasies, so that I would not feel again the terrible pain in the depths of my soul that I felt when it turned out that the real girl I liked and was dreaming of had a boyfriend.
It was time for the last school exams. Despite the fact that I almost did not attend classes in the eleventh grade, I still managed not to be expelled. As I said, studying was not a big problem for me, and I was able to finish school, albeit with a bunch of 3s.
Speaking of 3s – there was a moment when after school I came to take a test in physics which I had never written at all since I was not at school. With me were those who wrote it, but got 2s. Of all my answers only one was incorrect, and the physics teacher, whom I consider one of the best teachers, gave me 3 even though I wrote that test for the first time. Yes, I skipped classes, but grades should measure knowledge, not attendance.
It is worth noting that my “ex-girlfriend” invited me to go for festivities with others, but I refused. At that time, I wanted almost nothing in my life.
So, the school period, which was often like a nightmare for me for nine years (I skipped fourth grade, and in the first grade everything was almost excellent from my point of view), was over.
But next it was time for the University. I passed the exams, enrolling in a paid faculty of mathematics at MGUPI. Do not ask why. I can only say that if at school instead of German, which I studied due to the fact that my mother did not enroll me in the English class when there was a chance to do this, I was studying English, as I wanted from early childhood, when my mother and I began to learn simple English words, and if my life had turned out differently in terms of speech, then perhaps I would have gone to college to study foreign languages. That would make more sense to me, given my vast interests in many areas of life and nature. Due to different interests, I never knew what I wanted more and could not choose a profession.
The exams ended at the end of July, and I went for a month to the village.
Of the significant events, I can only recall that, contrary to my promises, I first drank vodka mixed with orange juice. A friend mixed two drinks in a huge beer glass, and I completely drank the mixture, as part of me wanted to get drunk. I remember someone saying that I was so drunk then because of a girl – who knows, maybe this was not that far from the truth. Then we went to the fire after drinking in the “domushka” – as we called a friend’s little summer house in his backyard, where we often spent time watching movies and playing games on his laptop.
I was not feeling well. For the first time I vomited because of alcohol. I lay on the ground under a tree, some distance from the bonfire, and I threw up. Then I choked and began to suffocate. I was so drunk that I could neither get up nor give a sign to my friends. I just lay breathless on the ground, and everything was getting dim before me. I realized at that moment that I was going to die. I do not know how, from my point of view there simply wasn’t any reason for this, but Dmitry, our recent friend from the other end of the village, at that very moment asked someone if I was alright… They managed to knock me on the back to free my airways. I owe him that I am writing these lines now…
After that I was sick for a couple of days and this became one of my worst poisonings. I remembered that moment forever and decided that on this note my brief affair with alcohol would be over. And so it was.
Also that summer, I became distant with the friend who was with a girl with whom I once loved. Naturally, he was not to blame for anything, but given that at that moment my life had almost reached the bottom, and I had no idea how to fix this, I was then not up to the logic and simplicity of life… which was an error, as we will learn later.
I also got distant with my old friends because of the growing difference in interests. So, in the village I did not want to spend time repairing old motorbikes all day long, and in Moscow my friends were fond of rap music. I like some foreign rappers, but by and large I was not very interested, and I was a bit bored with my friends.
I started to sleep badly and would often go home early, when everyone else stayed up until dawn. I think that fantasizing and masturbation were slowly taking over my health. But I did not see it yet back then.
Everything that has a beginning has an end, and that summer was no exception.
I did not stay at the University for long, because the old problems and fears returned, even though I did not need to talk to anyone there.
One of the key points was that one of the beautiful girls of our faculty, whom I liked, began to have sex with another guy. I do not think that they were going out for a long time and actually got to know each other – at that time it was already considered old-fashioned in certain circles.
Another point was that we needed to go to a museum, and when I arrived by metro to the right place, I realized that I did not know where to go. To ask complete strangers on the street how to get to the museum was not an option at that time because of my fear of speaking. I rode back home.
Soon they expelled me for not attending the University, and the money that my father could collect for my “studies” was not returned, although the girl in charge wanted to help with this.
Having no more visible purpose in my life, I was completely absorbed in my fantasies. The themes of my fantasies could be related to friends, the video games I played, and just different things that I read about on the Internet.
Regarding the video games, I always preferred to play games with a good, in my opinion, story, or just with a very good gameplay. One of such games was Half-Life. Recently, Half – Life: Episode 1 was released and, having downloaded that episode from the Internet, I started playing it. The only negative thing that happened while playing it was that at the level where you need to wait for the elevator, fighting off crowds of zombies, I began to be very tense. I had already developed a bad habit of biting my lips. We also had old wooden windows, from which cold air was seeping through in cold seasons, and because of this, my lips were chapped. While playing in that game level, I bit my upper lip too hard on the right side. I got blood flowing. I washed my lip and put a cotton swab on the wound. The blood stopped, and I went to go about my business. The consequences of that incident remind me of the event every time I look in the mirror – the bite has cured so that I have a somewhat noticeable lip asymmetry.
There was a time when I had the following dream. I was on a tram which was riding from a stop next to my former school. In the car in the solitary seat sat the same girl who asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend in the tenth grade. I thought to approach her, but suddenly the guy, who deprived her of virginity in reality, came up to her. Suddenly, I no longer had any desire to talk with her, I gave up and allowed that guy to talk to her while I stood silently on the sidelines. And then, as if from nowhere, my village friend with black hair, Olga, sitting on the other seat, said to me: “Zhenya, you were going down for your whole life. Isn’t it time to go up?” – I immediately woke up. My mind was absolutely pure at that moment. I realized then that I no longer had friends in the real world, I saw the real price of that distant decision to start actively fantasizing, which I made in the ninth grade. It lasted a second, maybe two. Then I clearly remember how the haze, which has become such an everyday thing for me in the three years that I constantly dreamed about something, began very quickly covering my mind, until I was again completely immersed in myself, in my inner world.
It was a scary period of my life. I understood what the constant use of my imagination had led me to, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not do anything about it – the habit was very strong and refused to leave. And in cases when I was able to momentarily remove the imagination from everyday life, I immediately remembered stuttering and my lip, began to worry and think about it, and then thoughts again smoothly merged into the imagination. I could not leave from withing myself…
Since I did not study, I went to the village early. I think that I was helping my mother with the housework and almost did not go anywhere outside.
That summer, my aunt Liza died in the village. All my life that I knew her, she was very kind and responsive. She had never been rude to anyone and seemed to have had no negative thoughts.
Unfortunately, my father then got very drunk with my two uncles, and they could not attend the funeral.
Having problems with imagination, I understood that Liza was no longer alive, but I could not feel any feelings about this, everything that was happening was in a “haze” and seemed to be far away. I understood that such a state of consciousness is not normal, remembering very well my dream, and the full focus and pure clarity of consciousness after it. But I could not free myself from these shackles – with the exception of one moment when I was able to concentrate on reality for a sufficiently long time. Then it was evening, and I went for a walk. My friend Natasha asked me why I was so sad? I did not know what to answer – and then I still could not tell the whole truth. I did not want to be sad and live in boredom, and the imagination again consumed me.
One day our company was drinking. As far as I remember, I did not touch any alcohol then. At that time, many guys were crowding around one of my old female friends. They were hugging with her and so on. I do not remember if I was a bit drunk after all, or I just wanted to get a little closer to her, but to my flirtations she told me the following: “Listen, you moron, stop touching me!” It hurt me, and for a long time I remembered that incident, wondering why she said it to me and in such a harsh form? After all, I did not want to do anything bad to her and I was her old friend. She did not treat new strangers like that. Moreover, it was she who had previously told me that I was a “very handsome boy”. So what had changed since then?
There were other cases when some long-time friends said something negative about me to others and looked somewhat weirdly in my direction. I could only guess about the reasons for their actions, since none of my old friends told me anything at all. In addition, I did not ask them for an answer.
In the fall, when I returned to Moscow, I received call-up papers to the recruitment office. While I was driving there, I saw a very pretty girl in the tram. She was different from other people in that she cheerfully looked at the sunny street from the window of the tram. She got out of the car, and for a while I was following her with my gaze. I recalled her from time to time. In the process of writing this book, I understand that perhaps her cheerfulness was the reason for my craving for her. We already had something in common.
At the military registration and enlistment office, one of the doctors asked me questions about my health and whether I had any complaints. I answered him, to which he unexpectedly told me to behave with dignity. I did not understand what caused his statement, since from my point of view I behaved just like that, despite the nervousness from being in the military enlistment office.
I really had health complaints then. Even though I had the Internet, I continued to watch erotic films on TV when I was alone at home. I often began to stretch the act of masturbation, in anticipation of seeing the actress I liked in action. And so, when on one such night I brought myself to orgasm, my heart started to pound for the first time. This was not normal, and I was uncomfortable. Then I continued to masturbate every day, because I could not get rid of this bad habit, having a very strong sex drive every day. Every time after an orgasm, I was not feeling well. I began to feel my heart and no longer felt light and calm in my chest. But these alarming symptoms time after time disappeared in the morning, and I felt good.
I talked about my heart complaints to another doctor as well when I took the treadmill test. I do not think she was listening to me, since I was not sent anywhere else regarding that.
Then they sent me to the doctor who spoke to me about my stuttering. She sent me for an examination to another medical center, but I remember the following bit. When she went out to speak with her colleague in the corridor, I remember exactly how that man, at the mention of me, spoke of me as of a “little boy”. He said this in the tone that they say about effeminate or gay men. I know for sure that it was about me, because then he looked at me and said something of an apology about the fact that it is clear that it is hard to live like this for the whole life. It really hurt me a lot, and I could not understand where such an attitude towards me comes from…
It was a cloudy rainy day when I was going for a medical examination of my speech. I think that I was then relaxed, because I decided that in any case I would not go to the army. I have always treasured freedom…
Having arrived to the building, I went into the doctor’s office and something terrible happened. I just could no stutter!
After finishing my “examination”, the woman gave me a closed envelope which had to be handed over to the doctors at the military registration and enlistment office. Then I went out of her office into the corridor to my mother and father with tears in my eyes.
The so-called “stuttering” ruined my whole life. I had neither love, nor friends, and at one time I could not even utter a single word, and now, when such an important moment came up in my life, I could speak almost better than any anchor on television…
When the envelope was opened at the military registration and enlistment office, it became clear that my pathetic attempts to show the woman on medical examination that I had really stuttered were unsuccessful. Fortunately for me, a woman in the military enlistment office could still use her brains, although she did not very flatteringly introduce me to her colleague the other day. The additional checks she sent me to give me a military ID and relieved me of my military duty due to stuttering. I was told that in three years they could invite me for new speech checks.
Despite the fact that I did not need to join the army, the moment with the inability to stammer in the speech influenced me very much. I could no longer live with such mockery in this life. I simply no longer had anything that I could live for, and that night I firmly decided that that day would be the last for me. This was the second time that I really wanted to commit suicide, but for some reason I did not go to the ninth floor of my house right away… instead, I decided to sleep and say goodbye to everything the next morning…
