My first serious wrong choice was made when I was thirteen years old. If before I used to have sexual fantasies about my female friends at bedtime – a trace of my childhood sexual experience – then at the beginning of the eighth grade I started having a real sex drive. And if before my fantasies did not interfere with my life in any way, now I just could not help but think about sex and girls. The obvious solution would be to look for a girl, but then another thought appeared in my head – the thought that because of my stumbles in my speech, no girl would want to get involved with me. Perhaps the reason for this conclusion was the memory of how in the village at the bus stop my friend C sang a song that was clearly aimed at making fun of me, and our female friend, whom I sort of liked, had a characteristic expression on her face, saying what she was thinking about me at that moment.

And then I remembered about the existence of masturbation…

This was the first time that I first began to touch myself for sexual pleasure. I enjoyed doing this with myself.

I think it was about that time when many people, including relatives, friends and even guys, had been telling me that I was a handsome boy. At one time, my mother tried to cheer me up about my speech problems, saying that the girls would want to get to know me themselves since I was beautiful. Then at school one of the senior students came up to me to ask if I had an older brother. At another time, my aunt Zina asked where I got my handsome look from; then in the kitchen of the Big House sat my father who was already almost completely bald and full-bodied, and I felt somewhat uncomfortable in front of him. My female cousin noted my beauty a couple of times. Then one of my village female friends said that I was a very handsome boy. I remembered those words, and I too began to think of myself as of a handsome guy. Of course, I liked being beautiful, and I liked that fact that girls were glancing at me.

Meanwhile, it was time for ninth grade. Everything was the old way for me – stutters and self-doubt continued to cloud my life. By then I already began to be afraid of phone calls, fearing that my classmates were calling me, and I would again have to struggle to pronounce the words. Plus, I was always shy to talk on the phone about my personal life in front of my mother who was always nearby in our one-room apartment – this could not but affect the fact that I almost did not learn to talk with people and did not acquire a good understanding about what to say, and how to say it.

In general, I was a very shy child in my childhood, which made the whole situation much more difficult.

So, I remember one summer evening in the village, when we were burning a fire by the spring, and some friends were playing spin-the-bottle. One of my female friends clearly, at least it seemed to me so then, wanted to teach me how to kiss – she was saying that otherwise I would have a girlfriend one day, but I will not know what to do. She insisted for a while. To some extent, I had certain feelings towards that friend, and I think I would have agreed to become her apprentice, so to speak, if it were not for the presence of my male friend who was two years older than me, and who refused to play spin-the-bottle. At that time, he was a decent and the right guy, and the thought of what he would think of me played an important role in my refusal to play the game.

There was a continuation of that story. Once that same friend called me in Moscow and invited me to her birthday. Again, part of me wanted to see her, but the thought that I might need to talk to strangers in the form of her relatives and Moscow friends, and I would start to stutter, outweighed. Even after many minutes of persuasion, my friend did not manage to invite me to her birthday. Of course, at that time she did not know the true reasons for my refusal to come to her… Later, in the village, she jokingly recalled this moment to me. And I felt a little sad at heart…