Miniver Cheevy (miniver) wrote in utr_logs, @ 2008-08-02 05:29:00 |
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Entry tags: | miniver cheevy |
Who: Miniver Cheevy (age 28), Svetlana the tattoo artist, and Nikki the crackhead guitarist, with narrative mention and a brief cameo from Pickles the Drummer.
What: Backstory - the formation of Blue Muse, part 1
When: 1998
Where: Moscow
Warnings: HERE THERE BE SEX.
Moscow, 1998. Deep winter with no end in sight and a dim hovel inside which poverty and the hardship of the season aged back the surroundings by fifty years—the curtains and furniture crafted of cheap, garish cloth; the walls pimpled with artwork and lighting fixtures that would have seemed antique to Miniver even before he ever left his world in 1967 and timejumped almost 30 years to live with his then-lover, now-fiancée.
Four years ago, Sean put a guitar in his hands and taught him to reapply his knowledge of the cello and play it. Miniver was composing songs on it in just days. Good songs, Sean thought. Good enough to encourage the displaced hippie into a recording studio and pull a few strings to arrange for a few experimental radio spots. Miniver’s association with the former superstar frontman of Snakes n’ Barrels was kept carefully secret. His music was unpolished and raw, but there was a sincerity and artistry to it that made it instantly acceptable by numerous age and culture groups. The simplicity and mellow melody of his “Love Song” earned replays on the soft rock stations. “I Love You ‘Til I’m Sober” and “Black River” were embraced as respectively humorous and surreally nostalgic. “That Girl” climbed the charts slowly with the classic rock crowd. But everyone watched and listened in shock as “Bobby’s Song” climbed into the top hundred… the top fifty… the top twenty… the top ten.
The song’s success earned Miniver numerous invitations to come play, first nationwide then worldwide as more of his songs got recorded. He travelled with a nameless accompaniment of ever-changing generic backup musicians to give a little more musical depth to larger gigs. It had taken him a long time to get used to performing live. The ever-shy Miniver disliked media attention of any kind at first. Even now, three years after his first time onstage in front of an audience, he was still prone to having to occasionally spend some quality time worshipping the porcelain god before a show. Despite that more or less required unpleasantness, Miniver had come to enjoy his newfound profession. He liked travelling, he reveled in the applause, and he LOVED the number of NUMBERS on the checks he got. It was a good life, and it gave him something to do while Sean was busy with his band.
So that’s what he was doing in Russia. He’d been invited to play at some dignitary’s party or something, but a heavy blizzard had forced the event to cancel. Miniver and his musical entourage had had hotel arrangements, but in a haze of stress and alcohol, Miniver had ended up lost in the streets and rescued by a 50-something-year-old babushka who worked as a tattoo artist on the edges of the slums. Her name was Svetlana, and she’d taken him back to her shop that was also her home and planted him on the couch and fed him soup and vodka. In his quiet empathic way, Miniver had quickly figured out how to more or less communicate with the woman. She had showed him to a phone so he could assure his People he was safe, but outside the snow piled up, and Miniver resigned himself to the idea of remaining a resident of Svetlana’s tattoo shack until the storm was over.
The winter was a cruel and hungry force. It was four days before the snow stopped, and another three before going outside was a feasible plan. During that week, a deep bond grew between the gay Irish poet and the Russian ex-whore made hard as any rock by the hand life had dealt her. She seemed to regard him as another son, and he had never had a mother’s love.
On the seventh day, the weather had eased off enough for hardier natives to be out and about, but Svetlana stubbornly insisted that Miniver remain with her for another day or two, as (she said) he looked still very small and weak, and had naturally managed to develop either a slight cold or allergies to the decades of dust in the little shop-house. Miniver could do nothing but agree. They had learned enough of one another’s languages by then for Svetlana to help Miniver design a tattoo to pass the time.
He was lying on her sofa with the needle to his back when the door opened and a tall, scruffy man about Miniver’s age swaggered in drunkenly, singing quietly to himself and cooing greetings and praises to Svetlana in what Miniver presumed was rhyme. The man babbled at the artist for a couple of minutes before seeming to notice Miniver was even there. His eyes shifted over, their gazes met; Miniver blushed and looked away while the man laughed and swaggered into the next room.
Svetlana introduced him as her nephew, Nikki. As she finished the tattoo—a purple tulip on his lower back, somewhat to the left, the stylized petals bearing his sister’s name in artistic scripted letters—she told Miniver that Nikki was a musician with a small drug problem and a bigger job problem. After bandaging the new ink, she turned him around and grasped his shoulders and smiled knowingly, looking him in the eyes. In stilted, heavily-accented English, she told him where Nikki’s room was, and sent him off down the hall, advising him to be gentle with his “cousin.”
Nikki let Miniver fuck him until they both had to bite back screams to keep their secrets from their neighbors on the other side of the thin walls. Miniver let Nikki trace the scars on his arm and fondle his earrings and pull his hair as the poet teasingly lapped at his erection like a kitten, then took him into his mouth and teased and suckled until Nikki almost screamed again. They both collapsed on the bed finally, tangled and panting, casually letting their hands wander, playing with themselves and with each other as they studied each other’s faces. Only then did Miniver learn that Nikki spoke very good English.
Between quiet laughter and obscene jokes, with their hands wandering lazily over one another’s cocks, Miniver asked Nikki to join his musicians and help him start a band. He didn’t need to hear him to know he was good; Svetlana had assured Miniver of that, and she had not lied.
Nikki agreed. He and Miniver spent the next day together, alternately convalescing and pleasuring and awkwardly getting to know one another. The day after that, once Svetlana had seen that they were well-fed and Miniver’s tattoo healing well, they returned together to the hotel where the rest of Miniver’s companions were staying. The last day in Russia they spent auditioning Nikki, who passed with flying colors, and then they were off back to America.
Once Miniver and Sean had indulged in some much-needed time together and discussed things, Miniver went to Nikki at his hotel and got down to real work in what was to become the first steps in the formation of Blue Muse…