Episode one.

I have always felt a special trepidation towards taxi drivers: as we all know, only a woman desperate in love is capable of expressing affection for a taxi driver. I know a huge number of stories when, being at some kind of erotic crossroads, being overly captured by libido, a woman decided to have sexual intimacy with the one who drove her home for money. Despite the crude pathos around this category of men, I have always felt a tremble with them, and always tried to be as polite, gentle, courteous as possible — not so much for the sake of a good rating, but out of a desire to partake in the erotic field around taxi drivers, to confirm once again the status of a desperate woman, which I am, just not always from an obvious angle.

I had a friend S., with whom we studied together in philosophy and together endlessly drank outside of the university. One day he asked me: "Polina, how do you live with the fact that you are an alcoholic?  “Do you like the alcoholic identity in general?” I will first protest, then agree and confirm that yes, I do. I felt a specific sexual attraction to S., but I never dared to realize it in any other way than in fucked-up conceptual battles, and then in frustrating depression, because of which the conversation did not go well. We got drunk at his place, and every time we got drunk, my attraction grew and sought to spread to everyone except S., since he seemed to me a radically forbidden zone — this is what depresses me to this day: in matters of sex, I clearly divide people into those with whom sex is possible and those with whom it is impossible. Impossibility seems to me a great stupidity and, moreover, it is a huge claim to the lack of fluidity in friendship, to the lack of flirting and flickering, because before my eyes there are always those who are forbidden and those with whom I will never and under no circumstances be able to sleep.

Every time I was about to leave S., being fucking drunk (and I was never any other way with him), I expressively insisted that right now I was ready to suck off literally any man I met on my way (except S.), that I would fuck myself to bits, but I would sleep with someone, because the itch in my lower abdomen was unbearable, because my desires when drunk were going over the edge, because I madly, madly wanted intimacy and sex. And once, after another drinking binge, I called a car that was supposed to drive across Moscow to my home. I firmly decided, even before I saw the taxi driver, that I would ask him to sleep with me, because my damned libido insistently demanded fulfillment, and the tremble with the category of “drivers”, this image of despair in love fueled my ardor to the point of proposing.

Having got into the car, I discovered that my taxi driver was a nice young guy. There was nothing extraordinary about him, he was not overly sexy or intrusively handsome, he had a neutral driving style and no specific expression that could trip you up. A standard, basic, ordinary and normal person. There was neither excessive tenderness nor excessive rudeness. 

I was very nervous, driving with him through Moscow, and reasoned with myself in my head how I would propose an act of intimacy. I did not know and still do not know how easy it is for people who are not burdened with such a ban and at the same time a frantic desire like mine to enter into intimacy; for me, this stage of transition and switching always happens either through violence against me (when they just take me), or through long preparation, emotional foreplay and a risky step towards each other, which is always accompanied by the breakdown of something important. And so, making my way to my house in a taxi, I prepared myself to make a decision. 

When we got there, I sat in the car for an unacceptably long time and tried to formulate my statement correctly: to be tender, to show vulnerability, to show a willingness to defend my boundaries. I asked: “Tell me, would you like to kiss me?” I made a request specifically for a kiss, because, like an experienced prostitute, I always put it much higher than any other kind of intimacy and penetration. I wanted to offer something in which I would show sensual desperation. The taxi driver smiled broadly and said: “You know, you are very beautiful… But I am engaged and in a few months my fiancée will become my wife… And anyway, you know, before kissing you, I should take you to a cafe, feed you, give you warmth and care, and only after that a kiss is possible”.

How many times have my kisses been given to those for whom it was only a prelude to something more; how many times have I not received kisses when I gave all of myself; how many times have I trembled at the thought that I could be kissed. 

Episode Two.

Once, leaving S., I was still in the same excited state and swore to myself that I would definitely have sex with a taxi driver. I left S.'s house with a manifestation of the upcoming intimacy in the car. Having got into it, I discovered that the driver was a man of the Klaus Kinski type. This type is an indecently provocative charismatic appearance bordering on ugliness. The taxi driver seemed very tall, he was a slender and very strong man, powerful veins were visible on his arms; on his thin face, covered with scars, there were deep cheekbones and eyes.  He looked at me with a smirk when I sat in the front seat, and I was lost. I was riding in the car and I understood that I couldn’t offer him anything, I couldn’t even peek at him, although I always do that when I ride in a taxi. Having reached home, I gathered the rest of my will, but I couldn’t decide… I couldn’t decide. I said goodbye with the standard “Thank you very much, have a nice evening” and the taxi driver replied “Thank you, sweetheart, and have a nice evening too.”  Hearing the affectionate "sweetheart" I realized that in all my undertaking, in all my awkwardness and in all my passion for this person, there was an incredible potential to realize intimacy… But I did not dare, and this potential remained unrealized, it was stuck in this impossibility of intimacy and through this impossibility I continue to learn love: at a huge distance, without contact with matter, without direct experience, in dreams and goals, in the field of the ideal — and this field of the ideal gives me all the luxury of an ideal experience that can only turn into text, a text through which I love. 

Episode three.

Karelia is rich in unbearably handsome men. Northern people (now I observe the same thing in Lithuania) — tall, stately, strong, very cold and detached, thoughtful, not vulgarized by delicacy and small talk, collected and hardworking.  As my ex-husband used to say, the North forces you to work and be careful in everything, there is no southern laziness, laziness and craving for carnival, only peace, depth and measured work. While in Karelia with my husband, we went to a neighboring small town to meet our friends from the train and all together go to the forest. In this small town there was only one grocery store, next to which there was a bench. The store did not open right away (we arrived quite early), so we sat down on a bench to wait for the seller to arrive.

Gradually, people began to trickle into the grocery store, all waiting for the grand opening. My husband and I drank beer and waited for either the store doors to open and we could buy food and alcohol for life-in-the-forest, or for a chance to meet someone to start the party before the train with friends arrived. 

At some point, a group of working-class friends formed around us: three men and one dog. The first man, let’s call him K., was a tall, slender man; he had a sly, intellectual squint and a calm, measured speech. K. occasionally played roughly with the dog (it turned out he was its owner), periodically scolding it and harshly slapping it on the thigh. The second man, let’s call him T., was very short and frail; he was missing several teeth, he greedily licked his lips from time to time, and had a scattering of prison tattoos on his arms.  If K. seemed to me a beautiful northern knight, then T. was more of an inappropriate and rude asshole, in whom I could feel both lust and greed — despite all the nobility and decency of K., which I intuitively recognized. The third man, N., was something in between his two friends, he was tall, well-built and peaceful like K., but nevertheless possessed some kind of vicious irrepressibility that immediately attracted me.

These three friends quickly entered into communication with me and my husband. To be honest, with my husband I never felt like a “woman behind a stone wall”, but due to the specifics of our relationship, I always felt that I could stand up for myself. This is not always the case and not with all people, and I, frankly speaking, prefer to feel vulnerable as often as possible, because vulnerability is the guarantor of my lightness and fragility, which I value very much due to the specific settings to the world that they provoke. Three men, K., T. and N., wanted us to buy them some vodka. My husband led the conversation and, having agreed that it was a good idea (to drink together), went to the store. All three friends surrounded me on the ill-fated bench and began asking about my native land, my activities in life and all that sort of thing. It’s funny, but I was ashamed to admit that I was from Moscow, because I had been taught since childhood that Muscovites are oh-so-much disliked, especially in small towns. I learned this in my hometown of Shakhty, but since I had lived in the capital since I was five, I considered it inappropriate to overly exploit my “small homeland” and usually always emphasized that I lived in Moscow. So, I lied to the three men about living in the Rostov region and studying for a degree in the humanities.

N., the third pacified and irrepressible man, smiled broadly as he looked at me, and when my husband came with vodka, he very politely poured me my portion into a glass. T., a lustful shorty, looked at me greedily, but did not dare to pester me actively: he only casually took my hands in his and asked about tattoos. The first man, K., I liked the most, but he was busy playing with the dog and, apparently, had long been burdened with marriage and children. 

N. drank, joked, and periodically revealed himself in tender remarks, which he uttered in a velvety low voice: “Polina, you are a very beautiful woman.” He said this, and then looked off into the distance, then turned his head back to me, poured me more vodka, grinned and waited for the opportunity to ask another precise question… about me. 

I was floating in N.'s grin, fantasizing about him, despite the fact that he was very close. I would never have allowed myself to be carried away by him physically, in actuality, in matter, but everything that I grasped in him, I greedily ground up in the text growing in my head. N. periodically sighed and talked about how beautiful I was — everything was drowned in this statement, both his and mine. 

Towards the end of the conversation, when the vodka was almost finished, and it was obvious that everyone would go their separate ways, N. sighed once again, looked at me with a grin, then said: "You know, I got out of prison two months ago, I spent fifteen years in Vladimir Central". I thought then that there was probably a much greater lack of love in this man than there was in me. Or rather, it is of completely different quality and of different order: I cannot stand matter, and he craves matter, which is always lacking. One of the most vivid sexual experiences of my life is an episode when, during intimacy, I was so submissive that I internally agreed that a man could kill me. I agreed to this kind of domination over myself, where a partner, a man, owns my body so much that he can take my life. Thinking through this prism about N., I languished in the fantasy of wanting to give him all of myself, that I wanted to give him that feminine tenderness that was impossible in his last 15 years. And I would be lying if I did not say that N., despite the absolutely wild experience of coercion and isolation, despite his radical northern masculinity, was one of the most sensitive and sensual men I have ever met.

Episode Four.

First time in Karelia, I was riding on a commuter train to my husband’s tiny village, where only two other families live. The train stopped at the right station either by great chance or because someone had called ahead and asked the driver to stop at the right place — so insignificant was my husband’s territory on the map of Karelian roads. The train was flooded with workers, northern men in bright orange vests. One of them, a particularly large one, caught my attention. He was a tall, powerful Karelian with a shock of red hair on his head and fists the size of my head. I watched him modestly, not daring to offer anything more than a humble look while I was bumming cigarettes in the vestibule. Once my classmate said that a glance is one of the few things that really interests him in interpersonal relationships.  When the train stopped at the right station at my husband’s request, I went to the door and, getting ready to jump onto the rubble between the rails, saw that the red-haired Karelian was also getting off at this station. I trembled, but knowing that things would not move forward, because the boundaries of the erotically impossible were tight for me, I calmed down. Having jumped onto the rubble, I began to look around in search of my husband, and then I heard a voice coming from the train that had not yet left: "Hey, you’re lucky!" The red-haired Karelian’s friend was sticking out of the window, turning to him, pointing at me and repeating with laugh, "You’re so lucky!" The red-haired Karelian smiled reservedly, turned around and walked away in the opposite direction. What fascinates me in this story is the stupidity of my sensuality and, most importantly, the degree of irony.  I don’t know whether the red-haired Karelian was really lucky (he ended up with a woman in the middle of the forest), I don’t know whether I was even a little bit as curious to him as he was to me, I don’t know whether there was any point in breaking down the wall of unfamiliarity and delicate detachment, but I know for sure that I will forever remain in love with him, in love with him and with all those fantasies that the damned impossibility of love inevitably provokes.