I Do Nothing Wrong by Sveta Lukyanova
Translated from Russian by Nina Gorskaya
Image by Shvets Production for Pexels
CW: Explicit sex scenes
You say:
I'm gonna have a private queer party.
Dress code?
Tights and nothing else.
I put on tights, sneakers, a coat, headphones and a scarf. I order an Uber Select to the entrance. In your elevator, I unzip myself. The cabin shakes with nerves. I hurry to put the knot of headphones in my pocket before the doors open.
I thought this kind of thing only happened in movies. Movies about perfect, beautiful people. For a long time, I didn't understand why these games were needed at all. At twenty, sex was gushing out of me like a geyser; my husband-to-be and I kissed everywhere — on the bus, on the escalator, on the bench, on the street, at every party. Once he kissed my feet under the security camera at a club. Once we had sex in the car in the square outside the National Culture Centre, and then he turned on the lights, and we were naked, like in a fishbowl. I could hear laughter. Once we had sex in a car in someone else's yard, locked in some woman's Peugeot, and she yelled that we were cocky. There was no game; there was no need for games. We just needed to be inside each other.
And then the geyser drained away. I got off birth control. I went to a therapist and processed my sexual traumas. Went to a sexologist and realized that I like women. I got scared and stopped eating. And then I started again. I tried to get sex back in me. And it returned.
“Look how you’ve come!” you said and wouldn't let me wash my hands, “You won't touch anything.” I didn't touch anything obediently while you fucked me on the blue sheet. “Good girl.”
“Go wash your hands,” you usually say as soon as I walk into your house, and I add: “It's important in our business.” I love that I'm finally involved in “our business.” I wasn't wrong, this “business” really turned out to be mine. From my first lesbian sex (which wasn't with you), everything has come out easily and organically. I love doing cunnilingus.
When we drink tea between fucks (we like to say that lesbian sex is measured not in the amount of times you have sex, but in people-hours) you joke again that you are a 100% heterosexual woman, while I kneel in front of your chair, clamp two fingers on your nipple under your shirt and say, “Heterosexual women do not feel this way.”
Heterosexual women don't feel what I feel when I look at your pictures.
I thought we were only going to sleep together once. “Twice,” you answer me.
We've been sleeping together for two months and I don't want to stop.
“Let's do this while it's pleasurable?” you say as I kiss your neck, and that's the perfect description of our relationship. We're here for as long as it feels good. As soon as it stops feeling good, we stop.
This is part of our deal.
I like to think we'll part very peacefully. Ideally, you'll fall in love with someone god-like, “goddess-like,” you correct me. I'll experience compersion and let you go easily. We'll remain friends. It might be a little awkward at first, but pretty soon things will be great. We'll look at each other and find not even a trace of our former passion. And the others won't even notice.
Because we don't say anything to others.
That's part of our deal, too.
I thought we would sleep together once. But the next morning I wake up at 8:30, the repeating movie in my head keeping me from sleeping.
Remembering your fingers, I write.
I promised you a picture that's going to blow all the sex away, you write.
And you send a nude.
Elvina, hi! You told me once how you protect your nudes from being leaked, could you remind me how you do it?
Hi! There are apps where you can set a timer, and you'll be notified if someone takes a screenshot. If you have iCloud, it automatically sends it to the cloud.
Snapchat is, like, the most faithful option.
But, yeah, it's all about trust.
I trust the person, I just don't trust my phone.
Thanks.
I’m trusting a person I don't know at all.
I take pictures of my ass in the mirror.
I take pictures of my fingers.
I take pictures of my breasts. Again. And again.
I take pictures of my legs.
I take pictures of my face.
I record myself masturbating — 9 minutes and send it to Telegram. The most protected messenger. My security is limited to this.
Why is it so good? I ask you.
Why is it so good? you ask me.
We have some kind of unbelievable match. I like what you like and vice versa. All my requests make you thrilled. When you cum on my hands I am full with joy.
You're so fucking awesome.
You're so fucking awesome.
I go to work at the coffee shop, but instead of doing my job, I make a playlist for sex with you. I sit so no one can see the laptop screen and spend a long time picking tracks. I don't want the lyrics to be about love, but I don't want the lyrics to be about not love either. I don't take FOOL AROUND by YAS, I take F.U.C.K. By Victoria Monét. Alina Baraz, Syd, Doja Cat — I love sexy R&B. I grab the brim of the table and clench my fingers. I sway to the beat. I feel my nipples harden. The girl with the bob haircut sitting beneath the picture of the Heimlich maneuver stares mischievously. Does she recognize me? Or does she feel the vibe? (Or maybe I'm just assuming that everyone wants me again) The girl is very young. I don't sleep with kids.
I don't sleep with children. I need someone who doesn't lose their mind at the sight of a three-room stalinka. Career. The band. Everything I (together with my parents) have reclaimed from capitalism. I need someone who doesn't want what they can't have.
I'm not leaving my husband.
It's part of the deal.
I give the playlist your name. Then I change it to your name translation. Not so evident.
I spend two weeks planning for your birthday. I buy tights, lace underwear, a short fringed skirt, a T-shirt with snakes, latex binding tape, sex toy soap, a bottle of bubbly and grapes. I book a room with breakfast at the Hilton. I pack your present, a vibrator, in black paper and tie it with a black ribbon. Before I open the door for you, I put on some music.
Shared playlist
Beautiful · 1 like · 15 tracks · 56 minutes, 9 sec
You say, “You know how to please a lesbian.”
But I don't know how to please a lesbian. I worry about every decision I make, I want to please so much, and I question everything. But you like everything. You take off everything but my stockings, put me in a chair, caress me with your tongue. I put one leg over the armrest, the other on your shoulder.
Our sex lasts much longer than fifty-six minutes. Spotify goes into the radio playlist — vibey tracks, that don't get in the way until you stop and look me in the eye. Feng Suave sings:
“It’s not love, but close enough.”
Damn it
Damn it
Damn it
Don't talk about love.
We fuck until the sun goes down. I haven't had lunch and I'm starving. We go to a fish restaurant on the main street. You ask me to undo one more button on my shirt, but I say the world isn’t ready for that. The waiter brings oysters and two shot glasses of red liquid. “This is France, this is Spain, this is Africa,” he recounts, “and these are oysters with blood, first you drink the blood, then you eat it.”
“It's an aphrodisiac, very popular in Japan,” he adds.
It's obvious to everyone.
We eat oysters and fuck each other with our eyes. We drink a bottle of wine. I try to drink more — I'm taller than you, I have more body mass, I don't want you to get too drunk. But by the time we finish dinner, we're both completely drunk. When we're out on the street, you say, loudly, “I want to kiss you now.” You see my face and continue, “But that's impossible.” And then I take your hand in the main street of the city.
“What if your folks see you?” you say.
“I'm doing nothing wrong,” I say.
“You know how to make a lesbian happy.”
But I don't know anything. I just do what I want.
At the hotel, we fuck until three in the morning. We try your new vibrator, but we never make it to the latex tape. I pass out from the wine, and you can't sleep. At six in the morning you go out for a smoke, you come back, and I lie down on your chest. I listen to your heartbeat.
I'm responsible for you not falling in love.
For that reason, I do things you don't know about.
I don't sing a sad song about you at a concert. And I don't show it to you.
I don't send you heart stickers.
I don't call you 'honey' or 'blueberry' out loud.
But I know I don't handle the responsibility well.
I promise myself not to say the wrong thing. And I still say it.
“I don't want to leave either,” I say when we can't get away from each other at five in the morning. We're in another hotel room, there's a picture on the wall of a dog with a leash in its teeth. “It's a whip,” you say, then spank me. You fuck me. I fuck you. And then we snuggle for a long time sitting up — your hands on top, my head on your shoulder. “How nice, I'm taller than you,” you say.
“I want this to go on forever,” I say as you give me cunnilingus the way I like it — very gently. Your sheet underneath me is completely wet. You do all the right movements. I beg you to get inside me. And looking into my eyes you fuck me with your fingers.
I say these things and then I regret it.
My biggest regret is on the day you start answering my texts with one-word messages, and then you don't say goodnight. The eighteenth of October. The day before yesterday.
On October nineteenth, you cancel our date.
I ask, Did I do something?
Sveta, you know you didn't do anything.
You say you're freaking out mainly because of work.
You don't read my messages.
And when you do, you don't reply to them.
The next day I feel fucked up.
And the day after that, too.
Then: Let's go out.
Let's go, I reply.
It is all clear now. It has already started. I put all my vibrators in my rainbow bag and spend half an hour choosing what to wear.
We don’t really go out. We go to McDonald's in the Novo-Savinovsky district and get coffee. In the parking lot you say:
“You know I want to take you back to my place, right?”
“And you know that I want that very much, don't you?” I reply.
You set your cup of coffee aside and start to buckle up, “Wait,” I say.
My friends cheat on their girlfriends. They cheat on them using the same scripts their fathers and grandfathers used to cheat on their mothers and grandmothers. Sloppily hiding, leaving traces, withdrawing, ignoring, gaslighting, lying. Bound by mortgages, children, shared projects, love, their girlfriends read the messages, stalk, guess at the tone of their voice, get angry, get revenge, forgive, suffer, suffer, suffer. Relationships turned into an endless marathon of misery, an endless autumn marathon.
I don't want that.
I want it to be ethical.
“Wait,” I say. That’s when we make our deal.
We won't fall in love.
We won't say anything to anyone (except close friends).
My husband knows.
I'm paying you back for my songwriting workshop.
After that, you start the car, put your hand between my legs, and we drive to your house. In the elevator we finally kiss.
High voltage.
Sasha Kazantseva makes a post with a promo code for Yasno service. I register and spend a long time leafing through the profiles of LGBT-friendly psychologists. There are mostly Gestaltists; my acquaintance with schizophrenia once said that Gestalt is unscientific. There are also psychoanalysts, who I just don't like for some reason. I can’t find anyone offering CBT. And nowhere can I find the word “non-monogamy” — on the client questionnaire I can’t specify that I am concerned about “relationships with my partnerS”.
I download the Co-star app and start sending Elvina screenshots.
Are you looking for a compass?
Today you feel torn between being pleasant and having a real personality. It’s good to get lost in a crowd if that’s what you need. Just make sure you’re not doing that thing where you betray yourself, and then start to believe that you have to become someone else. Expand the definition of who you are.
I really felt torn between showing acceptance and mindfulness and shouting out
WHAT THE FUCK?
What work problems? Don’t we have fucking awesome sex, so we can forget about work problems?
Even on my busiest days, I found time to text you that I was biting your neck.
To take pictures of my nipples through my T-shirt.
To ask for a whipping next time.
What
the
fuck?
I write, I've come up with so many scenarios in my head, I've gone over every date and every word so many times that it's impossible to go any further. Can we talk about it? I think I'm ready for anything, including nuclear war, the worst being the unknown.
And I send it to Elvina.
Elvina replies: You have to figure out who's a minus and who's a plus, that science never fails.
Who needs it more? Who is in a position of strength?
I'm in a position of strength.
I am.
I am not looking for a partner to take out a mortgage.
To have a baby.
To be together for the rest of our lives.
(I already have all that)
I don't fall in love.
I don't believe in monogamy.
I don't show my nasty traits.
I don't share my problems.
I do things that give me pleasure.
As long as it gives me pleasure.
That rule wasn't in our original deal. We added it later. But it's an important rule.
The most important, probably.
We didn't discuss what would happen if someone broke the terms of the deal.
I get really drunk at the Queer party. You and I allow ourselves even less than we used to before we started sleeping together. I am afraid to look at you, even though I want to touch you all the time. You bring me water, but only after all the other girls in our friend group. I go to the bathroom, unbutton my blouse, take a picture, send it to you. I want to get you in that bathroom with me, but it’s not allowed, not allowed, not allowed (part of the deal), there are lesbians around, they can see right through everyone.
On my way out of the toilet I meet E. We met at a fem-party with her, her girlfriend and their friends. They are all cool zoomers with coloured hair, writing posts about abuse and pay-gap, posting pics with cats. We always say hi when we run into each other, but we've never had a long conversation. In the pulse of loud music, we embrace excitedly. She runs her hand down my back, lingers on my waist. She's drunk, I think. “I'm drunk,” I say.
She's close:
“How's it going?”
“It’s just me and the girls hanging out.” I look a little sideways.
“How many girls do you have?”
“There's seven of us, six, no, seven, horrible, I haven't been drunk like this in a long time, champagne is poison.”
“What are your plans next?”
Or she said: “What's next?”
Or she said: “What are you planning to do next?”
Or did she ask: “Do you want to come to my place?”
People in sequins walk past us, I stagger over, she holds me up, puts her hand lower — on my ass. I know from her stories that her girlfriend is now in Nizhny.
I pretend I don't understand anything. I laugh.
I text Elvina in the morning, Even woke people find it hard to be ethical when it comes to sex. Desire strikes.
I am talking down, of course. Is it so hard to be ethical? Not cheating? Not hurting? Active consent, have you heard of it? Agreements. Concern for feelings. Responsibility. Ethical non-monogamy.
Who's a minus and who's a plus?
I'm a plus.
I am.
So I guess I have to work on my own feelings and stay away from her, I write to Elvina.
On the morning of the twentieth of October, I go to the post office and pick up a parcel from Asos — a satin bodysuit with mesh on the sides, a lacy thong, and a ring. When I can't think about anything but sex with you, I sit around online shopping and buy sexy things. I try on bodysuits in front of the mirror — clothes for fucking, you can't wear them anywhere else. I cut off the tag and hang it up in the wardrobe.
I take a picture of the hand with the ring and send it to you. You don't reply.
I go to the lesbian Instagram account and take a long look at the posts. I find a picture of Jodie Foster and her wife — they're walking down the street, so pretty, wearing coats. They have a big height difference — Jodie is just over her shoulder. They are holding hands. The wife is holding an umbrella over them. I send you a picture.
You like it.
I'm not ready to stop.
I want more.
Sveta Lukyanova (she/her) is a writer and co-founder of writing courses and community for women* WLAG Russia. She is working on an queer autofiction novel “Yevpatoria” that will be published by No Kidding Press. Sveta lives in Kazan with her girlfriend and a toy poodle Virginia Woof.
Visit Sveta’s website