It seemed interesting to me that the center is relatively close to 2nd Vladimirskaya Street, where we often went to visit the clinic, in which doctors tried to cure stuttering with some little spherical medicines. Still very often I underwent an EEG analysis (Electroencephalogram). They put a cap with electrodes on my head and did different measurements of brain activity. Sometimes I needed to sit relaxed, and sometimes I needed to breathe heavily, which sometimes made my head spin. I walked down that street on my way back, thinking how the doctors tried to treat with drugs for 13 years that which was dispelled in three seconds that I read the words “Stuttering is not a disease! Stuttering is just a habit…”
Even though it was the end of January, there was no snow on the street, and it was quite warm for the winter.
In the building of the employment center, they gave me a list of vacancies that I had to call in search of work. Surprisingly, I was hired for the first courier job. I called them because their office was a twenty minute walk from my house, next to the Moscow City Court.
But I did not start working right away. I think that there was a slight misunderstanding on my part, and I told one of the bosses that I could work in a couple of days, as my uncle Vitya had died.
I never went to my uncle’s funeral. I do not think that one case that slightly offended me in the village had anything to do with it. Then I was still a boy, and Uncle Vitya, as if for no reason, told me: “I do not understand, are you a fool or something?” There was another moment when he and my friend were discussing me in a clearly negative tone in the attic of our Big House. Unfortunately, this is not the only case when my relatives were not averse to amusing themselves and the company, expressing something negative about me. I remember how we met my cousin when we rode scooters around the countryside near our village. I then drove a bit forward, and looking in the rearview mirror I saw how they mocked me, looking and nodding their heads in my direction. In some families family ties do not mean much…
Becoming to pay more attention to what was happening in real life, I immediately noticed the presence of something that I had not noticed before due to the almost constant stay in my head – it was a pretty loud noise from the air conditioners of a branch of one of the Russian banks which in those years was right under our apartment. Mom had already written complaints about them because of the loud noise, and once the bank really rearranged its air conditioners in order to lower them, but their annoying noise still continued to go to the apartment.
The first of February 2007 I went to work for the first time. My first day at work was training. I just walked with another young employee to various offices in Moscow. As I understand it, without a foot courier, the bosses often ordered him to deliver parcels and correspondence. Everything seemed normal. But when I came to the office the next day, the first thing I heard when I opened the door was: “What do you think of our courier?” – coming from that guy’s lips while he was leaving the front door. One of the young female employees quickly appreciated me and said that I was a very normal guy, albeit a little balding. Most likely, she changed her mind after a couple of weeks later when I looked at her awkwardly, still being shy, about which she immediately told the secretaries.
I have no purpose to shame someone in this book, but for subsequent events in my life, it will be important to mention that it soon became clear that some employees of the small company had sex with each other, but two still formed normal a couple. Then one new girl calmly told the secretary that she slept with the guy with whom I was during my training day.
I never liked the theme of one-night-stands, or when people who barely knew each other had sexual intercourse. There was a case in, if I remember correctly, the eleventh grade, when a guy who deprived of virginity the same girl who asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend, boasted to two of my friends that he had sex with a “drop dead brunette” to whom he came to help with a computer, and then he asked them how things were in their “personal life”. Personal… It is funny and sad at the same time that that guy subsequently called the previously mentioned girl with a word starting with the letter “W”, since she slept with many guys during two years of study, and he did not want to be with her because of this… Of course, there is a chance that I was hurt that someone really has sex, because I envied them deep inside. But I think that an innate sense of morality also played a role in my sorrows.
Once I decided to end the habit of masturbating because I no longer needed it – after all, I initially started masturbating due to the inability to speak normally and get acquainted with girls, but now I did not have that problem with speech, and I thought about finding a girlfriend. Then I constantly thought about sex, which led me to porn sites and masturbation. It happened every day. Having a job, I was busy most of the time. Surprisingly, I managed to live five days without masturbation, and I felt good. But everything changed when I was in the metro. I just got into the subway car on Preobrazhenskaya Ploshchad and felt that I started experiencing coronary symptoms. I had to get out of the car on Sokolniki to catch my breath and calm down. The terrifying symptoms did not go away, but I again got into another subway car and went to work. Returning to the office after a couple of hours, I still had a bad sensation in my heart. Then I for the first time poured myself cold water from a cooler in the office. Perhaps the water helped me a little. In the evening, when I was already at home, my health was good… So good that I could not feel my heart, the beating of which had already become so familiar for the long months that I continued to masturbate despite the fact that every new orgasm again forced my heart to beat harder than usual. Now, having at the disposal the knowledge that I have, it looks stupid, but that evening I decided to start masturbating in order to feel my heart again, because I believed that it could stop at all, and I would die if I continued refrain from masturbation…
Regarding death, I remember how during my work I walked to the subway, thinking about my life and my problems. Having stepped inside, I had a clear realization that if there is nothing after death, then there is no reason not to try to live this life, regardless of what you have to experience in it. After all, something is better than nothing.
In the courier office itself, one of the directors began giving me tasks to take out their garbage in the trash on the street. At first, I did not think anything about it, but as new such requests continued to be given to me, I began to think about how this becomes a kind of job that I do not have to do. It was not even my garbage, since I hardly spent time in the office and did not use office supplies. Soon, I decided to defend my rights and told the director about my unwillingness to take out the garbage. He understood everything, but I was a little embarrassed when they made another courier take out the garbage.
Working as a courier, I was able to visit different parts of Moscow. The salary was small, only 9000 rubles, but I had time to think about what I want in life, and at the same time I was doing something. I thought about going to University, but I did not know which one. I darted between computer science and economics, which I once told the CEO when he drove me to a street near the office after I did a personal job for him. He told me then that he would give me the job of assistant for their economist or programmer – depending on my choice. It was a great chance for a future career…
Once I had no tasks, and I sat on the couch, which stood near the secretaries. I was reading a self-teacher book then to teach myself English, which I decided to learn right after I learned about the real nature of stuttering. There was still an hour until the end of the working day, and I remember exactly how the red-haired secretary Natasha looked at the second hand of the clock hanging above the front door, as if trying to rush it. Our office had very few windows and natural light. Basically, all sections of the office were lit only with lamps, and system administrators even huddled in a tiny room with no windows, the door of which was constantly closed from the eyes of other employees. At that moment with the clock, I realized that I did not want to spend my whole life inside of four walls, I wanted something else, something bigger and more interesting. But I did not know what exactly I wanted…
I quit on May 7, having worked as a courier for several months.
If I remember correctly, it was in May that I wanted to try myself in the modeling business, still having the memories that I used to be considered a handsome guy. I think I wanted to find confirmation that I still was.
I sent my photos to several