Me: “Dad, NO!”

Dad: “You’re right. I don’t like your aunt much. Maybe the joy of discovering my body should be hers”

***

Me: “Hey dad, what’s up, isn’t it kind of late over there? You OK?”

Dad: “I was just thinking that trying to turn a cow into an intellectual ruins a perfectly good cow”

***

Me: “In terms of my bisexuality—“

Dad: “Oh please, I always knew you liked girls”

Me: “I’m trying to have a serious discussi—“

Dad: “What Cossack doesn’t like them?!”

***

Every once in a while, my dad asks me if Henry Fonda is a woman. Seriously, it’s happened more than once. I keep telling him that he is confusing Henry Fonda with Jane Fonda. The last time I reminded him, he paused, and then pointed out that, “Henry is a much more interesting name for a blonde.”

***

“And this beautiful lady is my daughter. She speaks three languages but no let that scare you! She also know a lot about Putinism, espionage, defenestration… Sorry, disinformation. What catch!”

— My dad, when he was back in the States, and playing matchmaker at my gym. (Remember gyms, guys? Those were the days)

***

Dad, calling me up at the height of the pandemic in Ukraine: “Woke up today and OH MY GOD”

Me: “Oh my God, dad what?! Headache? Fever? Dad?!”

Dad: “My love, I’m telling you, OH MY GOD.”

Me: “Dad what is happening?? What is —”

Dad: “OH MY GOD THE CAT SHAT EVERYWHERE”

***

Me: *trying to enjoy a wonderful day at the DC zoo*

Dad: “So anyway, one of the most interesting Chinese torture methods I’ve ever heard of involves a large bug and some clay”

***

Me, telling my father about taking my child outside to see the flyover over DC: “… And it was so exciting! We loved the planes! The Blue Angels! The Thunderbirds! We had to look up the Thunderbirds because—”

Dad: “Don’t tell me you’re going to start dating pilots.”

Me: “Dad what the—”

Dad: “I AM AN OLD MAN AND YOU HAVE TO SPARE ME THIS NIGHTMARE.”

Me: “What does this have to do with—”

Dad: “You know what? Wait for me to die. WHEN I AM DEAD YOU CAN DATE PILOTS. DUMP ME IN THE GROUND AND RUN OFF WITH THE FIRST AIRMAN YOU SEE. I’LL BE DEAD AND IT WON’T MATTER.”

Me: “Actually, the Navy—”

Dad: “A PILOT IS A PILOT IS A PILOT”

***

Me: “Dad, I can’t”

Dad: “That’s what everyone says”

Me: “But honestly”

Dad: “But honestly? But honestly, you are my daughter.”

We’ve had our differences, but thank you, dad. Thank you always.

***

My father, an old officer, among many other things, been out of a job since the pandemic began. My brother and I have been helping him keep the lights on, but my brother’s work hours have just been cut and I am facing a costly move. Dad’s been trudging to job interviews in his little face mask, but most places won’t hire him because he is just too old. His car’s got issues, so he can’t drive, and his old smartphone just bit the dust. If you appreciate his witticisms, please consider donating a few bucks so we can get his car fixed and his phone replaced. PayPal: nvantonova [at] gmail [dot] com, Venmo: @Natalia-Antonova-1, please mark the donation as “for dad”. Thank you — and stay safe out there.

The clusterfuck of orphaned cables, the streets stamped with ghosts — everywhere is a hostile environment, crackling, kinetic. Asking a device to forget another device, a brief feeling of jealousy at the ease. Then again, maybe there are crumbs of data left in there, shredded stars, lying like dust that waits to be disturbed by a traveler, who an entire age from now will gaze in and ask questions that unspool into more questions.

I wish you well, treasure hunter. May you crack open the bones of this house and greet the marrow. The nights I was painted white, so beautifully I took my own breath away, and the things that were said by the fire. They are not mine now, I give them to you, treat them well.

The love here is thick around my ankles, therefore I won’t stay. Everyone greets the longest night in their own way.

***

The work on this website exists because you are good looking & generous. 

But the dread is mixed with frustration. Me Too is a movement dedicated to eradicating sexual violence, started over a decade ago by Tarana Burke, a black woman from the Bronx — yet in interviewing (white) people about their use of the hashtag, I regularly encounter those who have no idea who Tarana even is, let alone her story, what she says her movement is about,  her work (featuring Terry Crews!), et al.

I also encounter too many well-meaning people in denial about the fact that anything that’s constantly on the news is going to attract grifters and attention-seekers who feel the need to hijack an important cause.

The most obvious example is Jacob Wohl — a conspiracy theorist who attempted to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller by claiming he is a rapist. We were all so focused on the ludicrousness of Wohl’s scheme that we forgot its implications: Any popular movement, let alone popular hashtag, is going to attract its share of people with dubious agendas, and admitting this should not be tantamount to discrediting survivors.

Last year, I was taken in by a social media personality who wrote under the pseudonym Peter Delacroix, and went by Doc Petey on Twitter. As Task & Purpose, a media outlet that focuses on the military and veterans, lays it out here: Doc Petey “claimed to be a Navy corpsman with 25 years in uniform, multiple downrange deployments, a Purple Heart, and a Combat Action Ribbon.” Petey, who said to have transitioned from female to male following retirement, wrote and tweeted passionately about the sexual assaults he endured while serving this country. I wasn’t just sympathetic to Petey, I had come to care for this person.

It turned out that Petey had grossly misrepresented himself (herself? I have doubts about every aspect of this person’s identity now). Twitter user Snakeeater36 in particular should be noted for his work in uncovering Petey’s lies.

Snake and I are ideological opposites in many ways, which brings me to another problem with how #MeToo is being used — as a tool of partisan politics. I’m not right-wing, I’m not conservative, and my views on health care, social safety nets, taxes, incarceration, etc., align with the left — except that I am not just annoyed, I am disgusted with the left’s frequent piety and insistence on ideological purity.

If you cite the work of someone the left may disagree with — let’s use Snake as an example  — you’re tainted. Nothing you say matters. This is pathetic.

To doubt someone’s #MeToo story is to alienate an entire group. To believe someone’s #MeToo story is to alienate another group. Outrage is always going to be more satisfying than nuance — but at what cost? I hope that Republican Senator Joni Ernst’s story may begin to shift our ideas about what tackling rape culture really means — yes, even people you don’t agree with may be secretly suffering from unimaginable pain! — but I have doubts.

At the time of writing this, me and a couple of my friends are observing (and documenting) how yet another apparent social media grifter is attempting to capitalize on a #MeToo story in order to solicit funds. Nothing this person has said adds up. Nothing from anyone else’s research adds up. Not only does this appear to be a grift, but it seems that pathological lying on a dramatic scale is involved.

It’s hard to know how to approach this, because, once again, I’d previously been taken in by this individual. They’re not a rando from the internet, someone close to me was once friends with them, hence I had no reason to doubt them. And yet it’s now obvious that this individual is hijacking #MeToo in order to get cash — and trying to get under my skin because they know that my past makes me sympathetic. Is it, perhaps, understandable, that the dread I feel is not the product of mere paranoia and exhaustion?

This brings me to my main point about how #MeToo is being abused: The purpose of the original movement is bigger and broader than talking about assault. Tarana Burke has done more than talk about it — check out her movement’s healing resources library, check out their toolkits, and check out what she says about race and the role it plays in her work and coverage of her work. What she does is comparatively rarely highlighted by the press, and it’s dismaying.

I want to mention one specific goal that is often overlooked: What about greater access to mental health care? Survivors need it. I’ve come to the conclusion that some of the grifters do too. Because perhaps SOME of these people wouldn’t be hijacking these causes if they could get some help.

It’s uncomfortable to talk about people who attempt to use #MeToo to settle personal grievances, and yet staying silent is worse. Last year, a casual internet acquaintance declared to me that she was “having a #MeToo moment,” because a guy she’d really liked had ditched her. She claimed that “the violation” of him not falling in love with her even though he’d previously said he was falling in love with her was “like an assault.”

I flashed back to a morning in a shabby but sunny east Moscow kitchen, where my husband, the man I loved and whose talent I worshipped, held me down and anally raped me. Many of the details are fuzzy now, but I remember the hand that was placed over my mouth to muffle my screams. I remember believing him when he said I was at fault, because he’d gaslit me so much by that point that believing was the only way to keep from going insane.

I’m sorry, but “he didn’t call me back” is not a criminal act. Rejection is not an assault. Conflating these issues is exploitative and demeaning.

No one owes us the validation of attraction. If you think you’re owed attraction — you’re in incel territory. Incels are of course actively dangerous, because they seek to do violence against women/seek to enslave women. But have I known women who plot to “take down” a guy because he didn’t give them the attention they felt was owed to them? Oh yes. I even know a guy who contemplated suicide as the result of it.

There’s nothing wrong with saying, “He dropped me and was an insensitive jerk about it — be warned.” But “I think he shouldn’t have a job anymore because he dropped me, so let’s tell everyone he’s a dangerous misogynist” is abusive. The funny thing about words is that they mean things. When men get together and call a woman a slut, we know the ways in which that scenario can escalate (for example: sluts are deemed “un-rapeable”). There are escalation scenarios as far as men are concerned too. It’s an issue in queer relationships as surely as it is an issue in straight ones. I would know by now.

I don’t just want to offer criticism of how #MeToo is being hijacked. I already talked about greater access to mental health care being an important aspect of tackling rape culture — and I wish to reiterate that. It can be important for people who commit crimes or, as the case may be, don’t respect boundaries. Not every person who commits an assault or violates a boundary is an irredeemable monster. Please recall that violence and abuse are often cyclical. For example, the cousin who abused me when I was little — it was the first great betrayal of my life — was  himself horrifically abused.

I also want to say this: It’s important to understand that different people occupy different psychological matrices. As the result, we can misunderstand and/or hurt each other.

I thought about this when I re-visited my old essay about why conflating seduction with rape is a stupid idea. Actual seduction, just as an actual relationship, is about making a connection — it’s like being able to look deeply into another person’s eyes, an act that still comes very easily to me (but not at all easily to many others), and forming an intimate bond, creating a space that the two of you share.

But what about people who have trouble forming bonds and are used to feeling lonely and/or misunderstood? The thing is — people who don’t know true connection can view intimacy as inherently steeped in coercion, because they don’t know any better. In that sense, they can sometimes think that an assault is not really an assault.  Alternatively, they may feel like rejection is A GREAT VIOLATION THAT MUST BE AVENGED — only they don’t realize that they’re the ones violating boundaries.

I absolutely don’t mean that you’re some kind of potential rapist or liar if you feel isolated and alone. In the 21st century, feeling isolated and alone is kinda the norm. But what I am saying is that having problems with forming bonds may sometimes result in behavior that’s shitty — trust me, I have been there myself — and that the internet, meanwhile, can reinforce that by reinforcing our isolation. This problem can manifest in different ways. If we’re cognizant of that, we can, perhaps, be more proactive when it comes to building a better culture and being realistic about the people we encounter along the way.

For me, this is what it’s all about. I like the idea that even if I never fully get over the bad things that happened to me, if I never become the writer I want to be, I would’ve at least made a difference in how people relate to each other, particularly during tumultuous moments for society, assuming there’s anything left of society in due time.

Only connect! That was her whole sermon. Because I don’t want to play zero-sum games. They’re rigged.

***

I’m indebted to the work of George Lakoff in helping me better understand how my ideological opponents think — and why.

I self-published this essay because the person who commissioned it ultimately thought it too much. There are no hard feelings! But please consider a donation, if you found it helpful and/or interesting, as I am now facing a significant shortfall.

Venmo: Natalia-Antonova-1

Or,

There were boxes for the upstairs, boxes for the downstairs, and boxes that were meant to go straight into the basement. It was her mother’s things, mostly, that went into exile down there — vintage lace dresses, crystal earrings, leather-bound collections of Shakespeare and Ibsen, things Matilda couldn’t bear to interact with, but didn’t have the heart to cast out. Matilda’s mother had been a stage actress with a considerable following and had died young. At the time, it struck Matilda as just the kind of thing her mother would do — slip away early, with no warning, just as she used to do at theater parties, heels pounding sidewalk before anyone had the chance to say a real goodbye. Over the years, the loss had done the opposite of what it was supposed to do; the wound grew deeper, echoing with old stories, jokes, her mother’s garrulous, self-assured laugh. How could someone who had been so alive be so very dead?

Matilda had a practical job and what she liked to think of as an uncomplicated life. Not for her were tumultuous affairs with directors, children by different, loutishly handsome fathers, champagne in the morning, tussles with the press. Matilda didn’t think of herself as boring. She’d had plenty of men, and women, for that matter, she just “wasn’t interested in drama,” as she put it in her online dating profiles. Was she betraying her mother’s legacy? Maybe.

After the moving men had gone, an inky twilight settled over the new house with its granite countertops and gleaming, virginal floors. Matilda opened up a bottle of wine. The pinot grigio tasted tingly, like she felt. A glass and a half in, there was a knock on the door.

“Welcome to the neighborhood!” The woman holding a store-bought pie on the doorstep was her mother’s type. Peacock eyeshadow and aggressive cleavage. Matilda didn’t know they made them like this out in the suburbs. Out of politeness and curiosity, she invited the woman in.

“Gorgeous.” The woman’s verdict on Matilda’s new place was succinct and satisfying. “So glad someone finally knocked the old ruin down and built something presentable in its place.”

“Old ruin? I thought it was just a little cottage that was here before,” Matilda said, temporarily invigorated by seeing her new place through another person’s eyes. Yes, it was very well done — she was glad to have hired a proper architect after all. All of the friends who had encouraged her to cut corners were wrong, she could see it clearly now — in the airy open spaces, in the way the second fireplace hemmed in the kitchen and made it cozy as opposed to just practical.

“Oh, it was little, but intimidating enough,” the neighbor woman shivered theatrically as she cut into the pie. “Say, are you planning on living alone here?”

“Well.” In the absence of anything concrete to say, Matilda shrugged. She hadn’t planned for solitude, it just happened to her. She had never been one of those women who were obsessed about getting married by a certain age, she hadn’t been desperate for children, but she hadn’t discounted these domestic possibilities either. They just never presented themselves, and she wasn’t about to aggressively chase them.

“Oh, I did’t mean to pry.” The neighbor woman said hurriedly. “It’s just… well. I’m sure you know the story of the old cottage?”

“I don’t, actually.”

The woman gave her an odd look.

“Go on,” Matilda said.

It turned out that the hideous place that had to be knocked down to pave the way for Matilda’s new house had somewhat of a reputation. “It all goes back to the 19th century, if you can believe it,” the neighbor said, and Matilda wasn’t sure if she could, but manners dictated that she shouldn’t say otherwise.

The old man who had built the original cottage had many sons and daughters. The sons grew up and moved away, but the girls “had been guarded fiercely,” whatever that meant. The jealous old man wasn’t interested in seeing his little darlings be married off, convinced that they had to remain in order to take care of him after his wife passed away. One by one, when they reached a marriageable age, the girls had died, “under mysterious circumstances.” Well, the “mystery” sounded more like the flu, with an unfortunate accident thrown in for good measure, but it had all been “very suspicious.”

“Their brothers left them in that house to die,” the neighbor woman said accusingly. After the last sister perished at sixteen, one of the brothers made his way home and had words with the old man, apparently, and shortly thereafter the old man himself had died, albeit it had been no mystery. His neck had snapped clean when he hanged himself from a ceiling beam in the kitchen.

“Yikes,” Matilda said.

“Various families owned that house later — and you know what?”

Matilda didn’t know what.

“It all went OK until their kids moved out to go to college, or went into the military, or whatever. The empty nesters could never stay on. They either died or sold up, complaining about being uncomfortable here. The local legend goes that the ghost of the old man gets pretty aggressive if no kids are present.”

“Well, not here, not exactly. The creepy old house is gone.” Matilda wasn’t sure why she felt the need to argue that point. She didn’t believe in ghost stories. She wasn’t fucking five years old.

“Of course,” the neighbor woman seemed almost too eager to agree with her. “Still, you’re not at all worried about living in this house by yourself?”

“I have a security system,” Matilda said, affronted.

“Of course. Of course.”

The visit turned awkward after that. The neighbor woman begged off eventually. Matilda felt vaguely irritated, and she wasn’t even sure why. A superstitious housewife had gotten to her. How ridiculous. How stupid to suggest that a woman couldn’t live alone in this day and age! It was sexism masquerading as concern. Just an hour from the city, and it was like living in a different century altogether. “Ugh,” Matilda said to her empty kitchen, toasting her new surroundings with her wine.

She was already feeling the first inklings of a hangover when she made her way to bed. Thank God she worked remotely now, no need for a bleary-eyed commute first thing in the morning. Life was grand. Maybe not grand in a way that annoying people could appreciate, but she didn’t have to care what anyone thought. Caring was a choice.

In her bedroom, pictures of her relatives were already grinning at her from her dresser — her good-looking, irresponsible musician brother, her model sister, coasting her way through life and marrying rich for having inherited a softer, more readily commercial version of their mother’s dramatic looks, no climbing the corporate ladder for that princess, oh no, her other brother, a drunk who, appropriately, owned a fashionable bar, the film producer father she barely knew on account of his “real” family. It struck her, standing in the dim light of her crystal floor lamp — just one of the subtly expensive items she began to collect when she hit her stride as a professional — that she didn’t really know any of these people anymore, and didn’t much care to know them. Who was she to them? Just boring, dependable Matilda, not the black sheep in their rarefied circle, more like the beige sheep, a creature that blended with the surroundings. Well, fuck it. She had nothing left to prove to any of them.

She awoke in her nest of fine sheets with her head pounding. Dawn seemed to be a long way off. She groped for a bottle of painkillers on her nightstand before realizing that they were probably downstairs with all of the other stuff she planned to move to the bedroom before she got so drunk. Ah, shit. The night was disturbingly silent outside, as if a smothering blanket had been laid across the land. No sirens, no laughter. Well, she wasn’t in the city anymore. Was this what people referred to as “peace and quiet”? She was certain she’d grow to like it eventually.

She told the lights to turn on, but of course, the smart home system wasn’t set up yet. Great. Groping her way downstairs, irritated at herself for forgetting where the light switches are, she checked the security system. All was well. All was well, until she became aware of a rhythmic creaking noise.

The sound of something heavy (a body) swinging from a rope (Matilda, stop it) in the kitchen that, she was certain, the architect said was built in the exact same spot as the old house’s kitchen (so what), the same kitchen where a bitter old man once hung himself after being called out for his evil crimes (ridiculous).

The creaking stopped. She was certain now that she was seeing something. A shape lowering itself from the ceiling onto her nice new granite countertop. No, just a shadow from a tree outside.  No, a shape. Was she still drunk? The door to the basement stood wide open. Was it supposed to? Matilda spied a bottle of painkillers within reach of her hand, grabbed it, and bounded back up the stairs. Something occurred to her. “I’m not alone in here!” She yelled down the stairs. Because she wasn’t, not really. She believed it in that moment, believed it fiercely.

She was going to get a dog, that much was certain.

She was going to get a dog, and she would tell everyone, and everyone would offer their suggestions, and the right dog would be found. A German shepherd with watchful eyes, loyal to the very last bone in his graceful body. Yes, that would happen, but before it did, something else would occur, something she would not talk about. Because as the dawn began to bleach the skies after the first night in her nice new house, she would get up again and look out from her bedroom window onto the great expanse of her lawn, and she would see them.

A woman in a lace dress, as beautiful as the day she saw her last. Standing with her back to the house, waving off another figure, a stooped and defeated-looking thing. The woman’s elegant hand slowly raising a middle finger as the other figure retreated. A hint of rich laughter on the lawn where the dew already lay scattered like crystals. A new, gorgeous morning.

“And is the house treating you well?” Matilda blinked up in surprise. At first, she couldn’t place the woman accosting her by the meat counter. The peacock makeup was absent that day. But she remembered, eventually.

“Oh yes,” Matilda said as she accepted a wrapped steak. A gift to herself, for later. She would light the kitchen fireplace and leave an empty wine glass on the table. It was going to be a delicious dinner.

“Oh yes. I love the place. I have this feeling that it loves me back.”

This blog exists because you’re good-looking and generous.

He leads a reverent life by day
His mother’s bills are always paid
His lawn and pubic hair are trim
His children’s college funds undrained.

His ex-wife can’t remember why
She left him, and sometimes she sighs
Into the silent compliance of a whiskey glass
As crickets kick off in the grass.

The girls on Tinder like his jaw
Good breasts spill out for him from bras;
His friends are jealous, he just shrugs —
“Get what you can,” he says to them.

The wind chime on his back porch tolls
For moths who die because the light
Has told a tale of angel skin
So warm — and almost didn’t lie.

His hands are grooved and good and calm
His legs sap soil like Tolstoy’s oaks
His dogs are glassy with content
His dreams are kind to his dawns…

In the museum of our bones
The keeper hugs a tibia
Stares down the skulls up on their shelf
And maybe wishes he was someone else.

****************

For Mikhail Yuryevich Ugarov, 1956-2018
Artistic director of Teatr.doc
My friend

Photograph by filmmaker Denis Klebleev.

This blog exists because you’re good-looking and generous:

Vulnerability is a useful tool of connecting to one’s audience. This isn’t just true of confessional writing. When I began to open up about leaving Russia/an abusive relationship, I did so with an explicit goal in mind: Draw attention to the problem, and show people how abuse *really* works.

It was also obviously important for me to emotionally connect with my audience and friends in general. Pain becomes more manageable when you feel less alone. All of this is normal — mundane, even.

I wasn’t surprised by the amount of odd, insensitive, prying and condescending messages I received. A lot of them came from men who have trouble processing vulnerability — in all of its forms — and prefer to think of it as mildly distasteful/not respectable.

When a certain type of man thinks of you as not worthy of respect, he may write you off, or he may also attempt to hit on you/crowd you in a demeaning way. Because a man like this reads “vulnerability” as “she has no boundaries.”

Certain women also mistake vulnerability for a lack of boundaries, but they more frequently attempt to aggressively mentor the person they deem as having a lack of boundaries. Heaps of unsolicited advice, carefully worded to remind the individual of their lower/more ignorant status in relation to the self-appointed mentor, are the norm in this situation.

While it’s not surprising, this process has nevertheless been fascinating for me to observe, due to the fact that the Anti-Nihilist Institute is an organization that promotes emotional intelligence, not only because feelings get hurt and relationships are damaged when people refuse to be smart about emotion, but because real life issues get obscured in the process.

People who misread my tweets and posts about abuse missed important points, such as: Abuse is literally everywhere. It frequently doesn’t look like abuse from the outside. A victim can and will take cute Instagram photos with her abuser, for example (in fact, the abuser will insist on them —making sure that things look “normal” is important). Cues can be subtle. Trauma bonding is real. Bonding is real in general — nobody is abusive 100% of the time. Abusers can be charming, caring, and supportive when they’re not busy abusing someone. Making excuses for what’s happening is common. Bluntly telling someone, “Just leave him, girl,” will often have the opposite effect. Leaving can be so very dangerous. Patience and understanding are key to helping someone leave.

When we talk about abuse, we don’t just risk public ridicule. We risk breaking down the wall we have built between ourselves and the people who abused us. We risk revenge. We don’t want medals, but we do want the risks we take to be worth it.

I am better, much better now, than I used to be. These last few months didn’t just teach about survival, they taught me about what great friends I have. How lucky I am to have my country to go back to — the States is still beautiful, even under a cloud of Trumpism, even with all of the crap we have to deal with back here, and we have much left to lose. And I know know much more about my own resilience and, above all else, capacity to love. No matter what.

That’s the other part about vulnerability that people frequently fail to understand. Being vulnerable is not just about opening up to other people — it’s about opening up to yourself. Knowing yourself. Knowing what you are actually capable of.

So now that abuse is on the agenda again thanks to the likes of Rob Porter, please consider it not just as a subject you cluck your tongue at before turning away. Consider it as part of a narrative that many, many people — including your friends and neighbors — are living through. Consider the reality of it and the horror of it and how that horror can, with lots of patience and hard work, be slowly overcome.

Reality is, in many ways, a story we tell ourselves. True stories go beyond respectability politics, and keeping up appearances, and even beyond bravery. True stories take their roots in the fabric of life, in the universal latticework. They reach deep inside you and yes, they can cause discomfort and hurt, especially when they are about a topic such as abuse. But there is more than wisdom on the other side of the discomfort — there is also greater peace and understanding. If you let yourself be led there, if you trust the narrative. It can be daunting — but please do try it sometime.

***

The existence of this blog is made possible by the fact that you are good-looking and generous.

***

A holy union, bread and zataar. Liquor turned to cataract in water. The night smiled down lopsidedly, and you said I would surprise myself. I should have told you – I liked who I was under your roof. Your kindness was like excess butter I licked from knives, even as the foundation, something older in the ground, said “out.” I should say now: If the war ever rolls over the border. It will be the fault of millions, but please don’t forget me among them.

The walls wait for the future, incubating air. Great beasts carved out behind them in mother-of-pearl disguise their feelings now beneath a layer of dust. Portraits look for reassurance and find only other portraits. Also looking for reassurance. Mirrors eat remaining light.

***

I won’t say “if” – everything is made of patterns, as you know. The veins on leaves draw trees, the history of tides curdles into pearls.

When we meet again, it will be in altered states. Maybe in the black embrace, the prodigal Apocalypse making it to town at last – and turning liberator, smirking at borders, feeding Revelations to starved passport readers. Maybe whittling down to a new denouement, strange bodies growing on top of us like bark.

You won’t recognize me, but I will flinch and ask a mute question of your hands, filled with groceries and children. Something inside me, something fleshless, forming a gap. Reaching in for the mollusk at the bottom. Pandora’s Box gone slick in my hands. All of the evils of the world are things she didn’t have the power to forget.

For Ali Khasawneh

Making love was what people in “The English Patient” did. It was very serious and probably set to violins.

Sex was what people did when they had to hurry up and go to work but still felt like getting bent over the breakfast table/bending someone over a breakfast table. Or else sex was for when you’d been up all night drinking cheap beer and having the same pointless “Terminator” vs. “Terminator 2” argument (don’t doubt me, the answer is always “Terminator 2”) and needed to achieve an orgasm just so the evening wasn’t entirely a waste. It was utilitarian, though satisfying.

Fucking was pure joy. Fucking was – “We just came back from a party and I have now removed my dress in the elevator and discarded it on the landing and who gives a shit what the neighbors will think when they find it in the morning, because you need to hurry up and fuck me now.” Fucking was something to brag to friends about when they decided to give you a hard time – “Please go ahead and continue laughing at me now that I’ve managed to spill a second mimosa on my dress in the middle of what was supposed to be a classy brunch – at least I’m hungover after a wild night with someone who’s, like, seven years younger.” But it had nothing to do with love – even if it happened in the course of a committed relationship. It couldn’t really be meaningful, because meaning would weigh down the experience and hence make it impure.

Some years later, as an allegedly grown  woman, I was sitting in a park and reading about how sexual reproduction may have evolved in order for living organisms to deal with mitochondrial mutation. Oh the brutality of evolution and of being alive, I thought, as I read these lines from author Jill Neimark:

Around 2 billion years ago, two prokaryotes—two bacteria bobbing along in the primordial soup—engaged in what might be likened to the original sex act. One invaded the other. One ate, the other was eaten, and both lived to tell the tale.

Is it any wonder why sex is so fraught?

I turned to my husband – I love him, and my relationship with him is the definition of “fraught” –  and told him that the human need for physical intimacy disturbs me. The desire to merge with each other is convenient for nature and evolution, for the mechanisms that propel us forward, but not for us. They’re too taxing on us, even as our bodies crave this experience, even as our souls (I believe in the soul) seek it on some other, more mysterious level.

My husband thought about it and told me that, “It’s not hard when intimacy is just the natural extension of wanting to be with someone. It’s not hard when intimacy is ordinary.”

Thanks, Captain Obvious! I thought at the time. But weeks later, I came back to his statement and wondered – is it really that obvious? Least of all to someone like me?

I have a fragmented psyche as the result of past trauma, and I used to think it made me tragic and unique. In reality, it just makes me kind of annoying sometimes, not to mention a poor decision-maker.

For example, the reason why I was so devoted to the idea that love/sex/fucking are three separate categories was because I’d always viewed my own sexual desire as something separate from who I was. There was Real Natalia, well-read, teacher’s pet, cries at Bob Dylan concerts, and then there was Natalia’s Shadow, who really needed to get laid, but only with dudes who had zero interest in Real Natalia (because Real Natalia wouldn’t go for that shit! She was noble/tormented/a budding intellectual! She needed dudes to keep their dicks out of her! When you think “intellectual” do you also think “with a dick in her”? No!)

(I should’ve had a simpler attitude. Like Rodney Dangerfield)

If you guessed that this arrangement, which, I realize, sounds like the plot for a esoteric porn film from the 1970s, has resulted in me sleeping with people who are bad for me, you win a prize (well, you would win a prize – if I wasn’t broke).

It’s a common phenomenon. So common, that we’re used to automatically derive validation from it when it happens to someone else. “That dude said he likes Ayn Rand so of course Janie’s now making out with him. At least I’m not like that. I draw the line at Ayn Rand.”

We think that love can somehow “cure” this problem. “All Janie needs is someone who’s not Paul Ryan! Someone who loves her! And then she’ll be fine!”

Love and commitment don’t work like that, however. You can’t get into a relationship hoping the other person will save you from yourself. Think of it as trying to make an alcoholic get help. Unless said alcoholic *wants* to change their situation and takes the *necessary steps*, all efforts by others will be fruitless.

The even sadder truth is that we tend to attract the very people who push our buttons in the first place. Have serious, unexamined issues? You’re going to end up with someone who will bring out those issues in you.

If they don’t want to bring them out, you will do your damnedest to manipulate them into it. Trust me. Having seen some shit in this world, I know what I’m talking about.

So what do you do? Killing yourself is messy, and far too satisfying for your enemies (who will celebrate with a coke-and-champagne-fueled orgy the minute you do it). You can engage in emotional separatism and be utilitarian when it comes to all relationships, but this is also how people wind up marrying into the Trump family. Swear off relationships altogether? It’s a strategy, even though it sounds really sad.

What I realized recently, as I sat there contemplating the possibility of yet another relationship ending, feeling sad and wanting to drown myself in my wine glass, is that heartbreak and loneliness are themselves a paradox. The universe has a design to it, and we’re part of the design whether we care to be or not. Is a tiny part of something much greater ever really alone? And do we *feel* alone precisely because of the overwhelming greatness of what it is we are part of? I’m thinking the answers are no and yes, respectively.

“Ugh, Natalia,” you’re thinking. “You lured me here with ‘fucking’ this and ‘getting bent over breakfast tables’ that, and now you’re talking about the universe, you stupid bitch.”

Bear with me for a moment, though. Here’s a gif:

When you consider yourself as a part of something (be it the universe, or, say, a group of people who reads long blog posts on the internet,) you get closer to seeing yourself as whole. When you feel whole, you’re not desperate to be with anyone. The less desperate you feel, the more capable you are of love – but not just any kind of love.

Seeing yourself as whole is the first step toward achieving the state I like to refer to as “seamless love.”

I’m sorry that I make my ideal of love sound like the kind of underwear you’d wear under a too-tight dress (OR AM I?), but it’s unavoidable. Because so many of our problems with love, with intimacy, and with ourselves lie in the seams – i.e. in the compartmentalization of our feelings for ourselves and each other, which in itself is the direct result of us forgetting that we are part of something bigger.

Compartmentalization affects us fairly straightforwardly. Consider the hero of Adelle Waldman’s “The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.” and his sex life:

“He had always had a hard time talking about sex… Typically, the only way he could do it, state aloud what he wanted, was to go all out, sort of become a different person – the kind who could tell, not ask, a woman to take him all the way in her mouth or to suck his balls or to get on her back and spread her legs. His voice, when he said these things, sounded different, hard and flat, stripped of its usual amiability. To get to this state, he had to drum up a certain contempt for the woman (because he didn’t speak to any human beings this way, in any other context)…

… It wasn’t really a place he liked to go… After he came, he inevitably felt a bit disgusted, with himself and the situation, by which he meant, in large part, the woman he was with.”

Leaving aside the obvious considerations – such as Nathaniel P. being a douchebag – please do notice the obvious psychological compartmentalization. It comes in different forms, but it almost always has the same effect – you’re never really present, with yourself or with others.

Seamless love, on the other hand, is my idea of love – both toward yourself and toward the people in your life – as continuous, unbroken narrative. “I like rain on a strange roof, I like gratuitously quoting Faulkner, paperwork makes me sob, men who open their eyes midway through a kiss make me smile, I like the number 8.”

Or, “I like sleeping on your chest in the early hours of the dawn, I like the stupid tattoo you got when you were eighteen, it hurts to consider a future without you, it hurts when you hurt me, it tickles when you kiss my neck, you are always a part of me, you are in the sky over America as sunlight peels away from the East Coast and I’m watching it from a plane with no one beside me, you’re caramel that sticks to my teeth, you’re everything I’ve ever feared and everyone I’ve ever coolly betrayed.”

The unbroken narrative lends equal weight to how we process the positive and the negative, the private and public. It re-casts desire as organic, as much a part of you as your liver or that place in your mind where you keep your most bittersweet childhood memories.

Loving “seamlessly” is not a magic trick that will help you avert heartbreak and disaster. But I do think that it can help someone deal with pain more holistically.

Pain, after all, is also not alien to our being – it’s part of who we are, if only because we’re all fragile. It’s true of the pain we inflict on others and the pain that they inflict upon us – which isn’t to say that I want to cast it in a positive light. Pain just becomes easier to handle when you claim it.

For example, I’ve written on this blog before about the guy who raped me – he’s a predator and a sadist, there is nothing positive that can be said about that. But I’ve begun to take the immense hurt he inflicted on me and to kind hold it close to my chest in my mind, instead of trying to run from it (I tried that for years, it follows everywhere). I came to see that there were damaged parts of me, flooded with darkness – by him, by others, by myself – that have begun to change, grow more inhabitable, or at least more knowable.

And if you consider yourself as whole, the following fact also becomes unavoidable –  your fuck-ups are also part of who you are, and not some unfortunate byproduct of not having met the right blandly handsome billionaire/the right underwear model named Portia Hootyboob yet.

Ultimately, the theory of seamless love centers on reconciling the different parts of who you are and, as the result, seeing yourself clearly. There’s a reason why in all of our mythologies, for example, ghosts are mysterious beings that haunt you/sneak up on you/are glimpsed from the corner of your eye. That which cannot be seen clearly is scary and confusing. And when you’re no longer scared and confused, you’re halfway to figuring out what to do with yourself, really.

I’m saying this as someone who believes that nobody really knows what they’re doing. I certainly don’t (and if I ever tell you that I do, it means I’ve probably been replaced by an alien pod person and you should alert the appropriate authorities immediately).

I offer this theory of seamless love to you not because I’m hot shit and I have it all figured out. It just feels like it fits. It feels right and good and I hope you can use it.

I’m 33 today and I felt like giving you guys who read here a gift and this is it.

______________________________________________________

This blog exists because of how good-looking and generous you are.

***

“Are Marines allowed to ride in elevators by themselves?”
“Yes.”
“Do they have guns?”
“Yes.”
“And unicorns?”
“What?”
“They wear unicorns?”
“Uniforms!”
“Mommy, you’re laughing too hard. You’ll pee yourself if you don’t stop.”
“Says the kid who accuses Marines of wearing unicorns.”
“Do Marines have to eat dinner?”
“Yes.”
“What if they don’t like their dinner?”
“I’m pretty sure they just buck up and eat it anyway?”
“So they don’t cry?”
“Not over stupid stuff like dinner.”
“What do Marines cry about?”
“Serious stuff. Probably.”
“Like when people die?”
“Like when people die.”
“Does everyone die?”
“Eventually, yes.”
“Do Marines like cake?”
“Of course they do.” 

***

“Mommy, you said ‘fucking’ on the phone!”
“I know, I’m sorry. It was a bad word I said.”
“Why?”
“I was upset. Adults say these things when they’re upset. It’s an adult word. But it’s not nice.”
“It’s an adult world?”
“It’s an adult word.”
“… Is the Earth the world?”
“It’s part of the world. It’s one planet. The actual world is very big.”
“The world is a planet?”
“The world is many planets. And stars. And galaxies.”
“Galaxies?”
“Yes. They’re big , big, huge collections of stars.”
“Galaxies. Samsung Galaxies?”
“No, those are different.”
“They’re phones?”
“They’re phones.”
“Mommy, you said ‘fucking’ on the phone!”
“We’ve been over this. I’m sorry. Can you stop saying the bad word, please?”
“I can’t say the bad word?”
“You can’t say the bad word. You know it.”
“Because I’m a child?! Because you’re better than me?!”
“No, because you’re better than me.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Well, nobody said that being good is easy, Lev.”
“But is it easy-peasy?”
“Not really, Lev.”

***

“Why do I wear Batman socks?”
“Because they’re cool.”
“Do Marines wear Batman socks?”
“I think some do. Sometimes. Maybe not on active duty?”
“Marines are sometimes cool?”
“I think that a lot of them would say they’re always cool.”
“Because they have haircuts?”
“Not just because of that, but yeah.”
“I don’t like haircuts.”
“Well, in your present position, you can afford not to.”
“Mommy, are you cool?”
“I mean… Probably not.”
“Why?”
“I think cool people are reserved and knowing. I’m not either of these things.”
“What’s reserved and knowing?”
“Let’s look up somebody cool on the internet. Um, who the hell is even cool anymore… Well, Solange for example. Solange is cool. I don’t know if she’s reserved and knowing, however. This is a tough conversation. Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Ummm…… When a baby’s in the tummy, how does it come out?”
“For God’s sake.”
“It comes out for God’s sake?”
“It… Well, it’s a long story, Lev. It involves a lot of anatomy. We’ll buy a book about it, OK? I clearly need to order one.”
“What’s anatomy?”
“It’s the study of how the body is made.”
“Do Marines like anatomy?”
“In certain situations.”
“Can I watch Peppa Pig now?”
“Yes, please. Please watch Peppa Pig now.”

***

“Mommy, are you beautiful?”
“I don’t know, Lev. Maybe when I’ve gotten enough sleep?”
“Mommy, you are very beautiful.”
“Thanks, kid. That’s why I had you – for the validation.”
“Mommy, you’re beautiful like a door.”
“Like a what.”
“You’re beautiful like a door. You’re rectangular. And your head is round. You have a beautiful pom-pom on your head.”
“It’s called a bun.”
“A fun?”
“A bun.”
“A fun bun?”
“Lev, are you, perchance, trying and failing to make a joke?”
“Don’t worry, mommy. I’m an expert at doing things.”

***

“Mommy, the police will take me!”
“No, they won’t.”
“They’re coming! The girl on the playground called them!”
“The girl on the playground is an idiot and a bully and she doesn’t even own a phone.”
“They’ll take me!”
“I won’t let them.”
“They’ll take me, because they’re bad!”
“Not all of them are bad. But some of them are.”
“But why?”
“Because they’re human. And because the government… OK, you know what, you’re too young for this conversation. Why don’t we go buy you fries.”
“They’ll take me! They’ll take my fries!”
“I will protect you and the fries.”
“Because you’re a girl?”
“Exactly. Because I’m a girl. Girls have to be tough to protect people and things…”
“…And fries.”
“Yes – and fries. Extremely tough. And strong. And ferocious. Like animals.”
“Like a goose?”
“Sure, Lev. Like a goose.”
“You’re a silly goose, mommy.”
“I walked right into that one, didn’t I.”

***

“Was that a lady Marine?”
“Yes it was.”
“Was she beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“She had a beautiful smile.”
“Careful, Lev. You might be too young for her.”
“Mommy, what do you mean, too young for her?”
“You don’t even have a bank account. How are you even going to buy her dinner?”
“She likes dinner?”
“Everybody likes dinner. But dinner costs money.”
“Mommy, you’re a writer, you make money.”
“Lev, that’s the funniest thing you’ve ever said.”
“It’s not funny! It’s not a joke! You make money. I play. You’re a writer, I’m a player.”
“You sound like a rap song, Lev.”
“I want to buy the lady Marine pizza.”
“I’m sure she’ll love that.”
“Pizza with cheese.”
“You’ll need more toppings than that. What kind will you have?”
“Pizza with… Pizza with love. And with beautiful… sheep.”
“Um. Those are perfect, Lev.”

***

“Oh. My. Gosh. Look at her butt… Mommy, why are they looking at the butt?”
“Because it’s big and beautiful.”
“Big butts are beautiful?”
“Very beautiful.”
“And small butts are beautiful?”
“Very much so.”
“Everyone has a butt?”
“Everyone.”
“Does God have a butt?”
“I have no idea.”
“Why do you have no idea?”
“Well, it’s hard to tell with God. Because God is mysterious. God is hard to figure out.”
“Does God have a butt?”
“I literally just told you – I don’t know.”
“Oh. My. Gosh. Look at… God’s butt… Why are you laughing, mommy?”
“No reason, Lev.”

***

“Mommy’s sad, Lev.”
“Sad, mad, glad?”
“Just sad.”
“Because of the police?”
“No.”
“Because Grandpa Kolya died?”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about him just this minute. But yes, that’s also very sad.”
“He went away? Very far away? And he won’t come back?”
“Well, it’s a mystery. His body is gone. But I think a part of him is still around. With us. With you.”
“But I can’t see him.”
“Well, do you remember the Little Prince? He said that you can’t see some things. But it doesn’t mean they’re not there. They’re there, but your eyes don’t see them. You see them with your heart, I guess.”
“The heart is in here, how can it see?”
“Well, it’s euphemism. The heart is an organ. But when we talk about it seeing things, we’re talking about a different kind of seeing.”
“Different kind…”
“Do you love me, Lev?”
“I love you, mommy.”
“And does mommy love you too?”
“Yes.”
“But can you see my love?”
“I can see you. I can see the book. And the washing machine.”
“Can you see my love?”
“… No.”
“But is the love there? Do you feel it?”
“… Yes.”
“So something can be there, but your eyes can’t see it. But you know it’s there. And when somebody dies, you can’t see them, but they can also be there. It’s hard to explain. It’s a mystery. Like I said.”
“It’s not a mystery. It’s a history!”
“Are you making a joke again, Lev?”
“Yes.”

___________________
These conversations with Lev – who turns six today! Hooray, Lev! – are mostly conducted in a mixture of English and Russian (with the occasional Ukrainian or Greek word thrown in for kicks), and therefore have been edited for your reading pleasure. This blog exists because you’re good-looking and generous.

For example, I recently looked at the legacy of Twin Peaks in the post-Soviet world (did you know? The original show had a cult following there in the 1990s) and discussed it with Marco Werman on PRI’s The World.

I have to add that I feel like we’re really lucky that David Lynch was not interested in pandering to nostalgia when he set out to make Twin Peaks: The Return. Will hopefully be able to devote more writing to that this summer – particularly since for years I’ve been able to observe how turning nostalgia into yet another natural resource has made much of mainstream Russian culture into something sadly provincial.

Speaking of non-provincial Russian culture, however, I have also written about Andrei Zvyagintsev’s new film, Loveless, which recently premiered in Cannes. Loveless is fantastic and, I think, ultimately a much angrier movie than Zvyagintsev’s Oscar-nominated Leviathan. It’s the anger that appeals to me greatly.

Of course, my REAL big news is that The Fox Head Barks Facing Seaward, my newest short story, was published in Strange Horizons last month. I’ve had a love affair with Strange Horizons since college, and I’m really glad that it was this story in particular that has found a home there. Fox Head works as a kind of protracted echo of this earlier story, but it’s also its own thing.

Over at the Anti-Nihilist Institute, I’ve had some strong words for fake Russia experts. And the Woke Vets series has continued, with me interviewing Tim Hardin, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan (where he served as a USASOC soldier), on everything from civilian casualties to the importance of free public education.

In Politico, I discussed the recent French election in light of Russian meddling (would not have personally gone with that headline either, but I guess winning is in the eye of the beholder). I think this piece of mine on BNE actually nicely balances out the Politico one – by pointing out that Putin is not some superhuman Bond villain (though he’d like you to believe that).

Finally, I was recently on the Power Vertical with Brian Whitmore and Mark Galeotti. We started out discussing the dueling messages of the Kremlin and the Russian opposition, and wound up discussing Pornhub and the importance of political sex appeal, which is what happens when you have me on your podcast.