Simple Truths of Life - страница 13

On that day, when I came home, I finally put a fat cross on myself when I began to masturbate, rejoicing that I have a girlfriend and “will” have sex. Obviously, I had no sex, since I was so afraid of starting to stutter during a conversation that I stopped going to school.

On one rare day, when I did come to school, that girl came up to me and asked if I had not forgotten that I was her boyfriend. We talked a little about our institute plans, and then she slowly walked off.

The next day, in algebra, the teacher heard the conversation of that girl with her female table partner, and for the whole class said that she had become an adult. One of the guys with whom we studied since elementary school proudly shouted “me!” to someone's question regarding who was responsible for taking the girl’s virginity.

Going away into fantasy once again helped me avoid stress and mental suffering when I imagined that that girl was of easy virtue and then consciously made that fantasy into the “truth” in my head. But is it correct to use the word “helped” here? What if I needed that suffering at that time?

Speaking of imagination’s help. I remember exactly the moment that happened in the village when several people from our company drank alcohol and, I think, someone said that they drink to make them feel more fun, to color the gray everyday life. I realized then that I did not need alcohol, since I can make my gray days brighter and amuse myself with my imagination, which, unlike alcohol, is always at hand, so to speak. Here it can also be noted that I have never smoked at all.

Then I had a very strange period of life, when I started to lock myself in the bathroom with the lights off. I took along my boom box with radio and headphones to just listen to music in the dark. Almost nothing distracted me from my imaginary, ideal, and just world – at least just towards me. Sometimes my dreams led me to masturbation in the darkness. This madness continued for some time. Mom could not do anything. I think that both of us no longer had the strength and desire to quarrel. Once she even brought Anton, my best friend at the time, but I did not go out.

Also, computer games helped me get away from reality. In the tenth grade, I often played in WarCraft 3. I did not have internet yet, and I just spent time playing against the computer. When I was skipping school in the ninth grade, I decided that I would just play all my life in video games so that I would not feel pain from the reality that I was in, as I then thought for nothing, because of the injustice of life.

Speaking of injustice, there was one year when I came in the village for the summer holidays. At that time, not all friends and acquaintances came to vacation. I remember how A was bugging a girl who was several years younger than us. I regret to say that I then joined him. She did not have any shortcomings, or illnesses. I think my older friend simply decided that she looked like a character in a well-known literary work, and he began to call her the same name. Fortunately, this “fun” did not last long, and even if it was not something very terribly bad, as that girl was all right, but this moment showed that I myself was not averse to being on the other side of ridicule, which was a mistake.

I can recall another negative incident that occurred in Moscow. Then for some reason I started to twist and roll in the snow a guy who was younger than me. I determine that the reason for this shameful action was that I subconsciously wanted to be on the other side of the “unjust” life again, wanted to throw out all the accumulated resentment onto someone, even if I hardly knew that person. Again, I note that that episode was not too cruel, but it showed once again that although I was usually a kind and cheerful person, I was not a saint.