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Chapter 1
Nikolai
One day I woke up and I was a man.
It’s funny how life happens that way; the way time changes how we are defined—who we are.
I got out of bed and observed my body in the mirror. I didn’t feel a year older, yet my birth certificate was evidence to the contrary. I still looked young—the tousled blond hair thick and curly as ever, my lightly tanned skin stretched tightly over high cheekbones, my jaw sharp enough to cut a diamond—but I was technically amannow. It was January 10th, and I was 18.
Not that 18-years-old isold, of course. But as I heard the snow plow pushing through the Brooklyn streets outside my window, I thought of how strange it was to be an adult without my own two favorite adults, my parents, to see me grow up. I walked my cold, naked body back to the IKEA bed my Russian grandfather had built for me and retreated under the dark black covers. After releasing an audible sigh, I remembered the last time I saw my mom and dad, two years prior, when on New Year’s Day, my tall, dark, and muscular father—always in a suit—decided to go out for some firewood, and my mother—deeply in love with her husband—tagged along.
A cab driver lost control of his car and skidded quickly over ice, t-boning my parents so violently that they were both reportedly dead in an instant.
If I could have them back for just one day, it would be today.
But that wasn’t reality. Reality was that they were gone, and that I’d vowed to grow up to be the kind of man they’d want me to be: honorable, a hard worker, well studied, kind to others. Becoming an excellent person and contributing member to society, as both of my parents were, was more or less the only thing I really cared about in my life.
I looked at the photo on my nightstand of the two of them on their wedding day. My father was in his suit like always, with pitch black hair that was so the opposite of mine that one would joke about my mother and “the milkman,” even though I shared his freckles, his jaw, and his nose. He was all smiles, holding my mother in her wedding dress, carrying her out of the church where they wed, her wavy blond hair falling from her head like a river of gold.
I heard Tchaikovsky begin playing from downstairs. My grandfather was awake and surely cooking me a birthday breakfast, something he’d done for me each year since I had moved in with him. The unmistakable smell of pan-fried bacon wafted through the thin floor boards and, despite the cold shiver that ran from my head down to my little toes, I decided I needed to get up and put on a smile. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful and rush through the homecooked meal before catching the bus to Midwood High, where I was finishing up my senior year before hopefully attending NYU as a Political Science Major.
You’re a man now, I told myself.Get on with it.
I threw the covers off of my body and grabbed a pair of jeans out of the top drawer of the bureau. I put on a white t-shirt under a black sweater and grabbed the leather jacket that had once been my father’s out of the closet. It still smelled like his cigars, which I loved despite never smoking. The wooden door to the closet creaked loudly as I shut it before remaking the bed and heading downstairs.
The staircase, old and in desperate need of repair, followed a trail of family photos in ancient frames on the wall. There was a black and white photo of Dad at his high school graduation, my parents standing together at their used car lot in Queens on the business’s grand opening, Mom holding me in a little bunny costume on our first Easter all those years ago. The moss green paint on the wall was chipping around the photos. I would fix this whole shitty house once I became a successful politician.
One day.
As expected, my grandfather was standing by the old, often-broken stove in his black velvet robe, his thin gray hair a total mess, like a bird’s nest atop his head. He was stirring some eggs in a frying pan and humming along to the Russian symphonies he played from an old stereo on the small kitchen table for two. My heart warmed in that tiny, love-filled kitchen—I saw past my grandfather’s head out the window and noticed the charming snow falling swiftly out of the sky.
“Good morning,” I said, but my Grandpa continued on. “Good morning,” I repeated, kindly but louder. He jumped a bit, turned, and immediately lightened his wise face, wrinkled with lines from a life of smiling. He loved me so much, and it showed in those crystalline blue eyes that so matched those of his son, my father, as well as my own.
“S dnem rozhdeniya!” Grandpa said in Russian, meaning “happy birthday.” He dropped the large wooden spoon he was using on the pan and approached me for a hug. Grandpa almost never spoke in Russian besides on rare occasions, such as his grandson’s day of becoming a man. As he hugged me, he held on for just a few seconds too long—the words he couldn’t say he expressed with the hug:I love you, and I’m sorry your parents aren’t here to see you today.
Grandpa pulled his face away and placed his arms on my shoulders. He studied me and observed the hardly-there freckles that so reminded him of his own son, before grasping me and pulling me in closer for another hug.
“I’m making you breakfast,” Grandpa said.
“I can see!” I replied with a smile, hoping to avoid any further melancholia. I’d felt so taken care of by my grandfather for years now, yet we had trouble talking about any difficult matters; that was the Russian way, especially since Grandpa had left in the 1950s back when it was still the Soviet Union. They drank vodka like water and kept their emotions tightly sealed back then. I could never tell my grandfather, for example, that I liked to date boys, even though my parents had known and didn’t mind.
Of course, I hadn’t dated anyone seriously since my parents passed away—nor before, really, since I was so young. Maybe the rare fuck with a Grindr stranger on occasion, but nothing more. I did not want to become close with anyone on an emotional level. Attachment always leads to pain—the last lesson I ever learned from my parents.
So, I did not get attached to anyone.
I did not let anyone get attached to me.
Only my grandfather, and that was because he was my only living family.
“Here, have a seat,” Grandpa said, pulling out a chair. The little kitchen table only had two seats because no else ever joined us for meals. My grandmother passed away before I was even born, and I didn’t have any aunts or uncles. Grandpa wasn’t particularly social and mostly kept to himself; no one had even visited our little shared home in Midwood since months after the funeral, besides the odd mechanic or mailman. Even my parents seemed to have few friends, the funeral service’s attendance having been quite sparse.
I sat down as Grandpa began spooning me some bacon and eggs straight from the pan. I poured myself a cup of ice water and some coffee. Today, I felt, was going to be a long day.
Of course, I had no idea just how long it would be.
Grandpa served himself and sat down at the table with me. “So, how does it feel to be a man?” he asked in his slight Russian accent, most of which he’d lost by watching and mimicking so much American TV.
“It feels the same, really,” I replied, biting into a thick and juicy piece of bacon. “I mean, I guess I feel a bit bigger now. Like I can crush stuff.” I smiled, teasingly, and Grandpa let out a little chuckle before taking a sip of his pure black coffee.
