The Writer to Her Lawyer in Siberia

The Poet to His Representative in the United States



Maxim Zuzin

I learned from an alternative-family lawyer in Manhattan, the boca de caballo abogado propio, that I have emotions, not rights. Then I contacted Maxim Zuzin, my lawyer friend in Siberia (I am his poetry representative in the United States), and this is what we wrote (with his permission):

Dear Maxim, my fiancé has taken up with a Russian escort—is that a courtesan? a wife in waiting? from Moscow.  She has a teenage son back in Moscow.  He has narrowly avoided her because she is so beautiful!  Help!

Dear Ann, the life is in a way that we ourselves present to the world a personal value. This personal value we exchange for the personal value of our fiancés, lovers and sometimes husbands or wives ... You say she is beautiful? What is beauty?  It's charm, it's fire and light. This light and fire is ignited by the interest of our counter mates that this find in us ... Simple symmetry of face and body does often not bring the Greek gods from Olympus to our streets but do cause a dull impression ... So, who should be beautiful if not you once somebody loved you ... And, what is love? ... Often, meeting attractive people we pay very little emotion toward them ... Why?  It's because we have no common (often the economic in its sense) project of living to bring us together ... When such project exist ... Then, well ... we find people sexy and splendid ... In such a case, we see no vices in their looks ... We find satisfaction ... You said you had a fiancé?  Very well then ... He wanted to try his chances in U.S.?  Brave courage!  Now, he wants to make an alliance with a Russian “courtesan”?  Seems he want a retreat back home to Russia, or, at least, insures this option for himself with this “wife in waiting”... That's all I may say by guess ... Knowing you some way, I should say that nobody have a right to presume that the other choice of your fiancé might be more charmful and beautiful than you ... It's a Russian proverb that they do not change horses before the ford and you are no horse ... hm ... hm ... wanted I to say ... (joke) ...  No doubt, that your fiancé simply does not want to take namely the ford -- to settle in U.S. ... As for myself, if I lived in U.S., I would live with a U.S. woman ... That would be the preference ... I would have more ingo to the culture of U.S. and much like this ... Hardly, I would make a union with another immigrant woman ... and so, only if I would be very young and timid ... I say plainly as a fool should do ... If there is a place for a courtesan of a king (your fiancé as a king), there should be a place for a joker fool which I take ... I respect your choice and do not infer that your beloved one just wants some boost in personal self-estimation at your expense ...  I see that he just looks for other ways to turn over ... So, the Queen (and, that is you)  should prevail over a courtesan taking into account that she keeps the crown and throne ... So, Ann, no doubt that you will stay you yourself after that blow of fate once you just shake your head to chase “groggy” and keep your hands at level ... People often play such jokes as your fiancé to feel important and the part of the victim is whether to weep or to realize that one always have a personal value nobody could have doubted, while the life is full of ordinary people whom only a relationship may make important ... So, keep up and do not lose the dignity of a Queen as we your citizens beg you.

Sorry, Ann... I did not see from the very beginning your fiancé was not also a Russian ... An American citizen betraying another American citizen for a Russian lover—resembles a state betrayal ... Unfortunately, do not have the competence to judge on such cases.

Dear Maxim, thank you for writing to me. Your words (above) are beautiful despite any land or law.  I'll read them again.  And take comfort in them.  Tell me how you're doing.

Hello, dear Ann. I am fine ... As for now, I do not practice law much and stopped writing stories ... It's because my seemingly occasional juridical practice was almost too much for a fresh-starter ... And, hence I am active in love, I often got under an emotional pressure and turned up in the asylum for mad people ... It was like this way:  I spend days on writing poems and short stories or drawing some legal papers, or else giving verbal legal advice, all that time waiting for my beloved ones ... after which I would lose my temper and guide my steps to a local bar where all women at reach became actually and sexually mine ... Due to my reputation, it did not cause any trouble ... After a wave of such love during a week, I would hap to get into asylum where I did not remember what I got there for ... The treatment was harsh, but that was the price of love ... It also happened when I had about 50 women during a night on my way home from local music folklore festival where it all started and, of course, I again started to get into asylum ... I also tried to do all it in a stealthy way with one woman or two but the bulk and intensity of love came on me like a locomotive with the numbers of women loved ... Once I even came into shame of punishing several local male youngsters on the grounds that our young people insulted the criminal mob who had taken a pow-wow in our town ... The trick is that as a matter of fact I should have been a 100% psychiatrist after the university ... But, because the medical faculty was just on the way to be organized I had to study mainly in the law school with future lawyers ... However, I got the diploma of a therapist doctor (a physician), a surgeon, a psychotherapist and as a main document a psychiatrist ... All doctors said that I was normal in the asylum and thus my stays in the madhouse were qualified as an internship practice where and when the doctors very well appraised my medical work ... My books I also wrote in a way to influence people in a positive way emotionally... I also collaborated with the State and earned some money for the medical program where I am to give healthy progeny from women with sicknesses ... For example, only one episode when I helped Russian bankers get rid of extortion from illegal military groups, with guns and rifle in my hands, I got approximately 20—30 million U.S. dollars with a right to take loans and not to return them or use this scheme for already existing debts ... I said that I would not take money with a right to make a bank for certain people in the future (I mean the members of my future family) ... So, I hope that nonetheless the bank will exist, I will provide some money for this program ... By my different projects, I help the women get substance for their children from me with some financial trusts for their future ... The women and girls that have sex with me get money for providing biological material for giving birth to children ... So, now, I have to work on psychiatry because I got huge material by my own experience when I triggered all this syndromes in my own soul ... Now, I stopped writing because I cannot give material on the stories that are very fresh for the time now ... So, I want to work on psychiatry from the positions of medicine, philosophy and even religion, to establish practice more on the beginnings of the human rights of patients and persuasion than violence ... SO, YOU SEE, ANN, THAT I AM AN ACTIVE MAN.  AND, FROM MY POINT OF VIEW YOU ARE VERY ATTRACTIVE AND INTERESTING WOMAN WHO MAY GIVE TO A MIDDLE-AGED MAN, FOR EXAMPLE, MORE THAN A YOUNG WOMAN ... I CAN JUDGE LITTLE ON ALL THE INTRICACIES OF YOUR ROMANCE AND WHO IS OR MIGHT HAVE BEEN BETTER WHOM ... AND THE IMPLIED CHOICED ... I MAY AND SHOULD ONLY SAY THAT YOU ARE A DAINTY WITH A GUARANTEE OF GOOD TASTE AND SHOULD KEEP ON THE FLOW AND KNOW THAT YOU ARE A REALLY PRECIOUS ITEM OF AMERICAN FEMININE CULTURE ... BYE ... CHASE FOOLS BACK TO THEIR HOLES OR MAKE THEM CLEVER ENOUGH TO DEAL ON CIVILIZED RULES OF BEHAVIOR.

Thank you so much, Maxim, for writing to me again.  Each time I read something you have written, I think it ought to be published in a magazine.  I always feel that no one else writes as you do about what you do.  With your permission, I'll use some of our correspondence (here) and let others read it at the fiction website.  Writers publish poems there as well.  Probably, you will find the suggestion too risqué.  If so, I'll understand.  I'll do nothing without hearing from you first.  Nonetheless, I'll read it again for its own sake.

It's OK, Ann.  Feel free in doing that.  I also hope to get published, though I am not an expert where it might be possible. Thanks from beforehand.  I hope I will be published.  Thanks again.