I was born in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Russia, to a Ukrainian mining engineer and a woman of French ancestry. Go figure. I was a precocious youngster, starting piano lessons at the age of five and sending my first teacher to the hospital, suicidal with shame and inadequacy, 3 months later. :-) I studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory from 1861 to 1865, while you stupid Americans were embroiled in some pointless Civil War. In 1866, some rube appointed me professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory, which was established that year. I guess they were hard-up for instructors (it is Russia after all), but I held the post until 1878.
A few decades after my 'nads dropped, I finally decided to involve myself with women, when I married Antonina Milyukova, who had written to me declaring her undying love, on July 18, 1877. I don't know why the alarm bells didn't go off immediately. Maybe it's because I was unbelievably horny and Russia is freakin' cold. Anyway, the marriage was hasty (duh), and I quickly found that I couldn't stand the bitch. I mean it was so bad that 2 weeks after our wedding I was already putting a razor to my wrists. That didn't go as planned, so I fled to Saint Petersburg a nervous wreck, and told the psycho hose-beast to get lost after only six weeks of wedded "bliss". We never saw each other again, although we never divorced either (I just hate lawyers, and the thought of having to interact with the she-freak, for any reason, made my penis shrivel up like a stack of dimes). I died a "married" man, but that's only 'cos I discovered that pussy would come out of cracks in the walls as long as I had that ring on my finger. Heh.
Oh wait. This flirtation with married life only served to confirm my flaming homosexuality, which really I tried to conceal through the marriage. Sorry about that. Death makes you forget things, y'know?
Anyway, a far more influential woman in my life was this wealthy widow, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, with whom I corresponded from 1877 to 1890. At her insistence we never met (she didn't want to be known as a fag-hag, I guess), but we did encounter each other on two occasions, purely by chance, although we didn't talk. WTF? BITCH. Is it any wonder I was gay? She did give me 6000 rubles a year as hush money, but apparently she dug my tunes. But then one day she stopped payment. I guess she found out that I liked the dudes. She said something once about one of her daughters being available, but I wasn't interested. I heard later that she tried to pawn the little harpy off on Claude Debussy, but I think he was gay, too. Tough luck, huh?
Just nine days after the first performance of my Sixth Symphony, Pathétique (and was it ever!), in 1893, in St. Petersburg, I snuffed it. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Cut loose these earthly bonds and joined the Choir Invisible. Lots of people think I succeeded in killing myself, which I guess, in a sense I did, but I wasn't trying. The water was contaminated; that's all I'm saying.
They buried my exsquisite corpse in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg. A nice place. Beautiful view . . . of the fucking dirt.
