textfiles/magazines/HOE/hoe-0702.txt

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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #702
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888               "My Russian Past Life"
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8
    888     888 888      888 888    "                  by Cyn
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               7/1/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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	Ah, that was beautiful.  I felt almost as though I were back in the
 old country.  Lovely.  What old country?  Why, Russia, of course.  Didn't
 you know?  I was born in Russia, the child of a traveling circus.  Pappa was
 the Fire Swallowing Man, and Mamma was the Bearded Lady.  Ah, the music
 tonight took me back there, sitting outside of our caravan, around a
 campfire.  There was a family of acrobats who would always camp next to us,
 and they used to sing just like that.  I could have been there tonight, with
 Mamma stroking her beard contentidly by the fire, and Pappa lighting bits of
 twigs and swallowing the tiny flames, and local boys from whatever village
 we were near occasionally running past, giggling to eachother and throwing
 stones at us.

        I lived with the circus until I was eighteen, when I met Gustov.  I
 had to work, of course, everyone had to work, but I had a trained dog act,
 and it didn't seem like work to me.  I had these beautiful, tiny, white
 dogs, and they would follow me everywhere.  I loved those dogs as though
 they were my own children, for indead, they were as clever as children, and
 far more obediant.  I would feed them from my own plate, bits of scraps, and
 at night, they would sleep with me, piled on top of me for warmth.

	They loved to perform, those dogs.  On circus days, they would be up
 at the crack of dawn, and they would wake me up, my living blanket moving
 about on top of me and nudging me with tiny cold black noises.  "Get out of
 bed, lazy bones!" they were saying.  And I would, and quickly too, for
 without the dogs' warmth on top of me it was colder than a gravedigger's
 arse in the caravan we lived in.

	They would circle about me, begging me to run through the act, and
 occasionally they would practice their tricks themselves, one of them
 jumping through a hoop another was holding in his mouth, and looking at me
 as though I now owed them a reward.  Ah, they could be quite mischevious,
 those dogs.  But then, when we were performing, they were always perfectly
 behaved, running and jumping and doing just what I ordered, I in my tight
 leotard that sparkled like a thousand diamonds when the lights hit it,
 nearly as white as the perfect coats of my babies, and the crowds would clap
 for us until it seemed their hands must be raw.

	I was a shelted girl, and knew nothing of romance.  The only love I
 knew was the pure, unconditional love of my dogs, who looked on me as though
 I was mother and god in one, and the doting of my parents, who spoiled me
 dreadfully, as I was their ownly child.  We never stayed in any of the tiny
 villages we performed in long enough for me to get to know any of the
 village lads, and since mostly I only saw them when they were daring
 eachother to look at my mother's beard, I can't say I wanted to.  When I was
 seventeen, I struck up a romance with the lion tamer, but the big cats were
 jealous of me, and would hiss and claw at me through the bars of their cage
 whenever I walked past.  Eventually, they started refusing to perform, and
 we decided it was best we stopped seeing each other, romantically speaking,
 there was no way to actually avoid seeing anyone in the circus, we were all
 thrown together, like the toys in your son's toychest.

	Then, on the eve of my eighteenth birthday, I met Gustov.  He was the
 count in a village were we were performing, and it was with much nerves and
 excitement that we performed the night on which he viewed us.  The
 ringleader had announced my birthday as part of my introduction, "the tiny
 Astra, a day short of eighteen, and her equally tiny dogs!"  My little
 darlings performed as beautifully as they always did, and after the
 performance, all the performers were brought in front of Gustov, who
 congratulated us.  He was a youngish count, perhaps thirty, and still very
 handsome.  He decided, since it was the night before my birthday, that he
 must help me celebrate, and so he dragged me out of the circus and into the
 town, still wearing my sparkly leotard, and with my dogs following after.
 
	I saw so many wonderful new things that day.  I drank champagne, and
 at cavier, and listened to muscians playing courtly instruments.  And
 perhaps it was the champagne, or perhaps it was Gustov, but I felt at home
 with these wonderful new things, with these wonderful new people.  I felt as
 though I were one of them, in my sparkling leotard, with my herd of dogs,
 rather than just a young circus girl, half dressed in a handful of sequins.
 I never wanted to leave.  So when the circus moved on, I stayed, as Gustov's
 mistress.

	Now, don't be shocked.  Yes, mistress was a harsh word then, as it
 sometimes is now.  And people have said that he was taking advantage of me,
 a young girl who had never left her family, my wonderful huge circus family.
 But I knew what I was doing, as innocent as I was in the ways of love.  I
 knew what goes on between a man and a woman.  I could hardly have avoided
 it, what with everything anyone did being in everyone's faces in the circus.
 I even knew what went on between a man and two women, or a man and five
 women, or two women and a man.  The acrobats seemed to switch partners in
 love as deftly as they did in the air, and just like their acts, they
 involved more than one person in most cases.  Some of those partnerships, or
 rather, groupings, lasted through a number of seasons.  And it was more than
 a couple of times that I walked into the practice room to be surprised by
 what was happening on the trapeze.

	I have always considered myself a luxory item.  The circus, and I, as
 part of the circus, had been a luxory to the people who saw us, and while we
 may have dressed in cheap sequins and rinestones, they were as close to
 jewels as anything the majority of the people who watched us had ever seen.
 So it seemed only natural that I should join Gustav's collection of
 luxories.  He had his purebred horses in the stables, his fine wines, his
 wonderful food, his well trained servants, his beautiful house, and me, a
 slender young circus girl, in his bed.  But of course, I also got his
 horses, his windes, his food, his servants, and his house.  And I still had
 my dogs, my precious babies, as well.

	At least, I did until one of the grooms shot them.  The brute claimed
 that they had been attacking one of the horses, something I don't believe
 for a minute, since they  had cohabited with horses all the time in the
 circus, and had been quite friendly with them.  There was only one of them
 who survived, a puppy who had been with me at the time.  After Gustov
 explained to me that always traveling with the entire pack of them caused
 far too big a commotion to be acceptible in polite society, I had started
 taking a different one of them with me everywhere I went, while the rest of
 them wandered the property, or slept in the gorgeous room Gustov had decided
 was theirs.

	Gustov believed the groom, of course.  The horrid man even had a
 horse with a blood foot to back him up, although I firmly believe that
 either he or the horse did it himself, and didn't want to get blamed.  Also,
 the groom was the only one who Gustov really trusted with his horses, so of
 course, he didn't want to be forced to fire him.  But I knew that I couldn't
 live on the same estate as the man who had shot my dogs.  I told Gustov so,
 but he just held me to him tight, and stroked my hair, and said "Now,
 sweetie, you don't mean that."

	But I did mean it.  Gustov, I'm sure, thought that my appreciation
 for the finer things in life would win over my love for my precious dogs,
 and I would remain despite my heartbreak.  He was wrong.  I spent a week
 planning how to get away, and then in the dead of night, I awoke, dressed in
 petticoats and a fine dress under a more modest one and a heavey cloak,
 slipped a thousand rubles into my purse (Gustov had left them lying on the
 nightstand), and went down and put my last remaining baby on her jeweled
 lead.  Then I went down, attached horse to coach, and was off through the
 night.

	I had sewn many of my jewels, as well as a diamond the size of my
 fist, into my petticoat, so naturally it was quite heavy.  Nonetheless, I
 sold the horse and coach as soon as I got to the port town to which I was
 headed, and spent the rest of the week walking about wearing that very
 petticoat under my dress.  I had bought a ticket on a boat that was leaving
 for America in three days as soon as I had sold the horse and coach, and I
 spent those three days shopping, for I was terrified Gustov would send
 people to search for me, and they would recognize me in my dress and cloak.
 I had to have lugguge on my journey, it would hardly look proper to leave
 with only two dresses, a petticoat and a cloak.  It was bad enough that I
 was a young single woman, accompanied only by a dog.  Of course, there was
 food for both me and my darling, and a hotel, as well.  Some things I bought
 soley to assure myself that I was not leaving the life of luxory wholly
 behind with Gustov.  So by the time I boarded the ship, I was without any
 real currency, although I had many splended new possesions.

	Fortunately, when I got to America, I managed to sell the diamond I
 had stolen from Gustov for five million dollars.  Then I found this lovely
 young stockbroker, and he invested it for me, and my finances have been
 right as rain ever since.  His grandson's my stockbroker now.  He's so
 adorable, in his little suits.  He has the cuttest little butt, too.
 Everytime I go over to see how my stocks are doing, I drop a lot of things,
 so he has to pick them up for me.  Oh, don't look so shocked, old ladies
 have to get their kicks somehow.

	So, I suppose you people would like to go out for a drink?

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!        HOE #702 - WRITTEN BY: CYN - 7/1/99 ]