A chapter in my autobiography https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatbiography I was living at the time in a house straight across the street from Arlington Cemetery. My first roommate was a construction worker from West Virginia. He would come into my room uninvited and aggressively give his views on all sorts of issues, including how wussy the French culture was and how, if he were to find his wife in bed with another man, he would shoot them both. One day he blew his top when the heating cut out in the house and started going around shouting and breaking things. He apparently went to jail after that, and I don't know what happened to him. Another roommate was a man about my age named Patrick, who lived downstairs. He had just finished the university and was looking for work as an editor. I ran into him and his friend Matt – also about the same age – and he said that they were slackers. Matt ended up moving into the room that had housed the former roommate. Then came the most intense and most beautiful experience of my life. Matt had a girlfriend, a lady named Michelle. Michelle had finished Harvard in three years and was very much into poetry and philosophy. One night I saw her walking around, acting quite unhappy, so I told her that she could talk to me if she'd like. She came in a number of times. On one occasion I told her that I had a nuclear bomb inside myself – speaking of course metaphorically. On another occasion I told her about when I went to a sunglasses shop and asked, “What are you selling?” The salesperson said, “Sunglasses.” I said, “OK, sunglasses, good for you.” Michelle laughed and said that that was such an absurd exchange. Michelle had a lot of things to say. She excelled at helping people resolve their emotional issues. She would speak with compassion, with wisdom, with genuine caring. Her mother had some kind of a mental illness, and Michelle had to do a lot by way of helping her family grow. She was a wise and generous soul, and there are few people like her. I would go outside and do pull-ups on a tree. She would laugh and say, “You're so crazy,” and then she would hug me. She took me for a walk, telling her that she does not want to end up using me. I said that she could use me, to which she responded that that was silly. One night she came in and read an essay that she had written, that she read at her grandfather's funeral. I was overwhelmed with its wisdom and compassion. I came up to her and started to caress her. Caresses went from her fingers to her arms to her breasts. She told me that she had a boyfriend and went back to her room. Some time later, she was in my room again. She said, “You know I will always be there for you Ilya.” But she continued with her relationship with Matt. Michelle made me a tape of several songs by Elvis Costello. In return, I made her a tape of several songs by Vladimir Vysotsky, Soviet Union's most acclaimed singer and songwriter. She had some knowledge of the Russian language, and she was able to understand the songs. I entertained her by singing her rap songs such as Snoop Doggy Dogg. She found it hilarious that such a thing was coming from me. Fancy a nerdy Russian person singing “Bow wow wow yuppie-yo yippie-yeah Doggy Dogg yappin in the house.” As the situation began to escalate, Patrick held a meeting for all of us in his room. Matt accused me of not honoring Michelle's wishes, at which point I said that there was nothing to his relationship with Michelle. I then walked out of the room. Michelle came to my room to talk to me. Michelle started saying at that point that Matt's rages were getting more and more aggressive, and that they took her a lot of work to calm down. At one point he confronted her about her situation with me. After this happened, she told me that she could no longer trust Matt. She invited me to come to her house. I came with passion and beautiful words. We spent the night caressing each other on a waterbed. She was talking to me about her time in France and about the people in her past. We held each other for hours, and she had the best sleep she'd had in years. In the morning, we drove to a beautiful park in Great Falls called Scott Nature Preserve. We ran to the river outcropping, and we held each other topless while watching the sun rise over the river. We felt the beauty and ephemerality of life even as we saw us as part of it. We had a beautiful interaction. We came there several times. Michelle's father was a wonderful man. His wife however was not quite as wonderful, and she told Michelle that I was using her, which was completely untrue. I was in love with Michelle. I do not know if this was the woman's honest opinion or a manipulation, but in either case it was completely wrong. I wanted to learn French, and Michelle agreed by teaching me from St. Exupery. She would teach me while I was touching her breasts – the world's most enjoyable French lesson. She found it hilarious when I translated “pendant” as “hanging.” She helped me to get my driver's license. She found it hard to understand why people at the motor vehicles office were nice to me when they had been horrible to her. Maybe it was the fact that they were bureaucrats, and I had the influence of bureaucrats in Russia. We went to a hike in Burke Lake Park in Virginia. We walked around the whole lake, then we got into a sleeping bag and fondled one another. She laughed while we did that a few steps away from a trail on which people were walking. Matt of course had other ideas on the subject. He hanged a noose from a tree outside of Michelle's window. He left a large knife in the kitchen. He was spending a lot of time with Patrick discussing the situation. Then he wrote a letter to Michelle asking her to come back. Michelle was torn between different influences. She cared both about me and about Matt. This created a huge tug also on me. One day we quarreled while in a car, and I went to DC and walked all night through the city, running into all sorts of people. When I came home in the morning I said that I hoped she did not want to break up with me. She told me, “Only if you want me to.” Patrick had interesting things to say. When I asked him if I was a yuppie, he said, “A strange one, but yes.” He talked about how he would be able to know who was calling him when they called. He had in his room a lot of books, and he was quite accomplished at self-expression. One day he made Michelle laugh by talking about the existential meaning of broccoli. Michelle excelled at a lot of things. She was a very good swimmer and marathon runner. She danced ballet professionally. But her greatest gift was ability to help people emotionally. She was amazingly compassionate and amazingly wise; and she could handle the most difficult problems and solve them in a brilliant and masterful manner. For one time in my life I actually wanted to live. Not only that, but I wanted to excel and to be my best. I wanted to make myself worthy of being with Michelle. The situation however was becoming more and more intense and more and more explosive. Michelle was torn in any number of directions. And I, being passionately in love with her, was torn by this as well. And being 19 at the time I was not handling it very well. At one point she was in the room with Matt and Patrick in Patrick's room. I blew the top and got in through the window. Michelle held me for a long time. Then she took me into her room and told her that our relationship was over. I moved to an apartment nearby. I decorated it in the way that she would have wanted. I started listening to classical music and did lots of exercise. I kept going to the Scots Run Nature Preserve and to other places we had gone to. I kept listening to Elvis Costello and feeling all the pain and the passion of what we had had. Only she never showed up. I got into a huge accident while listening to Pearl Jam's “Black.” I arranged my life to be what she would have wanted it to be. Only she was never to be a part of it. At work the muzak would play Patrick Swayze's “She's Like The Wind.” I would go into the stairwell and cry. I wrote, Swivel and Sparkle and Splinter passion will bear Aghast over serrated STARSCAPES blistering past the past AGONY Scalds and Stumbles Destiny flings AJAR seething delirious rumble of a dismembered S T A R - Flushed in a Ream of Fire - Redolent and Untrue - scorching the sky ENTIRE over remains of YOU - over charades of splendor - over cascades of pain - over a long-lost Laughter desolate and insane - over volition SHATTERED into a silent scream - over intention SCATTERED into a field of seem - over a lifeforce blended with a malignant lie over a soul upended in an obverse reply - Over my clutching wristbones - over your lips of dew - over two Haunted Heartforms Blended and Torn Anew - - Vanishing passion Clambered Shriveled like drops of doom and Essence remained Dismembered In the Blistering light of the moon. I caught up with Michelle several years later. She became a yoga teacher, then she married. I explained to her that I was not using her, and that I loved her instead. Shortly afterwards, she died of medical malpractice. After that happened, I regained contact with her father and made two friends who had been her friends before. Matt has since then become a psychologist, and Patrick appears to have gone on with his editorial career.
