At seven pm the sun still sits uppermost in the sky, lumbering shade at a pace even the slowest of creatures wouldn't notice. These shadows move so slowly, become so permanent in the summer months that they seem built themselves - summer annexes to the gloried buildings. Even the sweating traffic and flush of heated people can't crack the stillness that the incessant sun slaps on St. Petersburg.
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You can pick any angle to stand in the centre of Nevsky Prospekt and the view opens up to a building with deathly importance scarred into it. Kazansky Cathedral holds out its governing pillars - now a quiet place of worship. Thirty years before now it had defiant images of nuns being screwed by blood hounds - it was the communist museum of atheism. Turn your body half-circle and the multi-coloured onion heads of the Church of the Spilled Blood are there - inside it cobblestones which got a tsar's blood and innards dropped on them from a bomb attack - the church was constructed on his spilled blood.
All this history - stacked on blood, hate, insane dogma. It's no wonder I love the way this Russian boy fucks my ass.
'So, where is he? He said about six thirty I'm sure.'
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A taxi chokes to a stop and Pyotr gets out.
'Derek - I'm here. So sorry to be late for you. Are you alright? The traffic is a killer today!'
'That's fine Pyotr. We should get going though. Your mother is waiting for us still, no?'
'She is. She is, and she's cooking up some wonderful Russian food for us. I can't wait for you to meet her.'
The next taxi, the same taxi - it doesn't matter - edges down Nevsky stopping for clicking trams to pass, people to cross the wide avenue in a boiling mass - you can even see the air shimmer above them as they shuffle. Mostly it stops because the other taxi in front did also. The driver makes the universal grunt of drivers worldwide. Even in Russia the human grunting for impatience is the same - just like a smile I guess.
'These buildings are amazing Pyotr. I want to know so much about them. Even the peeling paint on them fascinates me.'
'There's only one thing to know about these buildings - they're dead. Completely dead. Nothing in them but a faint piece of history - like a fucking winter moth flapping its pathetic wings for the last few times. Fuck 'em! Fucking useless things - except to satisfy a passing tourist that they've enriched themselves by staring at them for all of twenty seconds, these brick carcasses are useless.'
'Whoa! That's what I like about you Pyotr - you've an unexpected passion - I like that. You know I do.'
'I know. It just bothers me because it's not Russia. I'm taking you to the real Russia now - I'll show the buildings that killed these dusty palaces and mansions. They are real - not these shits standing either side of us.'
'I'm looking forward to it. I really am. It's about time, isn't it?'
'Yeah. Oh Christ! Fuck me! Fuck me! Stop the car - it's coming! The fucking - fucking filth - is - coming - again. Stoooaaaap!'
Pyotr slaps his whole body onto the tarmac. A retch squeals out of him - a long one.
'Pyotr! Pyotr! Get up! Get up! Get up Pyotr!'
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