Muscle Hunks A Russian In Paris Bollettini Memory Ex — Ivan Dujhakov -

The Bollettini of a Lost Russian

The (as his Italian lover, Enzo, used to call them— little bulletins ) were his only archive. A dry cleaner’s ticket from 1995. A handwritten receipt for steroids purchased near Pigalle. A Polaroid: Ivan, flexing his biceps in a tank top, sweat oiling his skin, eyes looking not at the camera, but through it, back toward a Moscow that no longer wanted him. The Bollettini of a Lost Russian The (as

had not looked at the bollettini in thirty years. A Polaroid: Ivan, flexing his biceps in a

He had arrived in Paris in the early 90s, a wall of a man with a shaved head and a passport that felt like a lie. The Soviet Union had just exhaled its last breath. But Ivan? Ivan was —a bear in a city of greyhounds. He didn’t speak the language of love; he spoke the language of iron, of grunts, of protein powder and chalk. The Soviet Union had just exhaled its last breath