Минск - город герой!
As a vaguely bohemian homoflexible Cambridge student, to say ‘I like queers’ is an understatement. They’re my brethren, my friends and my equals. I want to hear their stories: I want to know about their relationships with their parents, their first experiences of love and life, and their fears, hopes and views of the future of our movement home and abroad. I want to meet people who have asked themselves questions about gender and identity, and who live life in a more flexible, less binary way: experiencing without the need to judge.
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| Independence Avenue - The main street in Minsk |
I also like Eastern Europeans. Take me anywhere on the wrong side of the River Elbe and I’m fascinated. I want to hear old babushki reminisce about the Soviet Union, I want to remember the bread queues, I want to read Trotsky’s speeches, I want to buy pickled gherkins, I want to eat sunflower seeds on a Russian park bench whilst quoting Bulgakov, I want to suck in the Dostoevsky air in the Petersburg White Nights, and I want to walk around the Baltic imaging I’m a Grand Duke of Lithuania. Moreover, having studied Russian for about a year and a half, struggling through aspects, cases, consonant clusters, verbs of motion and constructions of negative potential, I am desperate to improve my language skills as quickly as possible. Especially given the fact that my university degree will soon require me to spend a year in a Russian speaking country.
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| Starovilenskaya Street |
In December 2012 I contacted my only Russian-speaking friend outside of the U.K., a Slavic beauty called Ala (yes, I was also initially shocked by her name’s similarity to that of the Arabic word for God, but not to worry, the Russian word for ‘Allah’ is different), and asked for a visa invitation to the Republic of Belarus: a country of 9.5 million people, governed by a moustached authoritarian figure called Alexander Lukashenko, who likes to make extremely insightful public statements such as ‘I’d rather be a dictator than gay’, keeps a fairly tight control on the press and lets relics of the Soviet Union flourish such as countless state-controlled institutions and statues of Vladimir Ilych Lenin. Shortly afterwards, I signed up for ‘qguys.ru’: a strange network of Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian gays who interact by rating each other’s profiles and photos (it wasn’t long before my profile picture was receiving full marks from 50 year old married men from Voronezh), writing each other messages and sending each other ‘virtual presents’. I hoped to meet people who would show me around Minsk, teach me about the intricacies of gay life in Belarus and help me practice my Russian. I soon made regular online contacts and interesting conversations about closed gay clubs, intolerant parents and how to survive the winter in primitive student dormitories ensued.
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| Statue of Lenin outside the National Parliament |
Riga and arrival in Minsk
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| Beautiful, deserted Riga |
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| Hero Milkmaid of the Soviet Union (as seen in a Minsk art gallery) |
1) “Young man, ask me more questions! We will never meet again and this is your only chance!”
2) “People in (insert anywhere that isn’t St. Petersburg) don’t speak proper Russian!”
3) “I’m going to get undressed. Look away!” and
4) “Drink more gin! But don’t get drunk! Just warm your stomach!”
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| Belarus National Library |
Oh, and I shouldn’t forget the middle-aged representatives of a Belarusian beer company who came to Minsk on a business trip and promptly got thoroughly shit-faced: they came into my room after midnight and invited me to come see a prostitute with them (I refused their kind offer). They then set off into the night (luckily leaving a quiet hostel behind them). In the morning their ring-leader, a pleasant, but extremely drunk chubby man, woke me up by shaking me vigorously and shouting “We’re going to be late for our train!” I responded in my delusional sleepy state with the words ‘Don’t wake me up! I’m Irish!’ (It seemed to make sense at the time). Then, after engaging in a 2 minute conversation (“You’re really Irish?”, “Does your army still fight the British?”, “Why do you speak Russian?”, “Are there a lot of ‘darkies’ in your country?”), he asked a rather strange question: “How would you react if I were to tell you that I find it very pleasant to talk to you?” to which I responded, in a very British manner, ‘извините, я вас не знаю.’ (“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you”), which resulted in the representatives of the beer company bursting into laughter (‘The Irish guy thinks you’re gay!”). They then vigorously shook my hand, as if we were great friends, and departed for their drunken train ride back to whatever provincial towns they had come from.
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| View of the Main Train Station |
I also discovered that I was often the first foreigner (bar Ukrainians and Russians) that people had exchanged more than a few words with: I was a speciality and was treated as such: with kindness and overwhelming interest. Sometimes I felt like a alien: misunderstood by a lot of people, but loved, none the less. The lack of tourists did have its funny side, though, as embodied by an official tourist guide to the Republic of Belarus which contained such gems as:
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| View of Minsk from the National Library |
1) 'Active rest at highest level. To feel joy of movement shaking off couple of dozens of years. Who would refuse such rare chance?.. Tune yourselves up for hog-wild enthusiasm from the date with heights and flight...movement is life! Get your sip of life from active rest in Belarus!'
2) ' wonderful lakes shamefacedly hiding in bulrush and fast rivers'
3) ' the fate did not give Belarus a sea, but still the country is called 'blue-eyed'
4) 'Belarusian health resorts represent reasonable combination of price and quallity. Hurry up!'
Lyosha and his birds
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| A typical Soviet-style play park: Fun should be for the good of the state! |
My first meeting with Lyosha was completely unexpected. It was a fairly boring day and I received a phone call from an unknown number. I didn’t answer. I find it hard enough to answer phone calls from people I know, let alone from strangers: somehow the act of phoning rather than just simply sending an efficient, emotionless text always makes me think someone is contacting me to tell me something important has happened: a love one has died, a mysterious package has arrived or Nelson Mandela has walked on water. Maybe this is just a combination of two things: 1) a phone culture which differs from that of Belarus (i.e. Prudish Brits and Celts phone each other when something is important, whereas Belarusians seem to phone each other constantly, even for 20 seconds, to communicate the most basic information). 2) I’m just not that popular for phone calls.
In any case, I was intrigued to see who was calling and I sent a text message along the lines of ‘Dafuq bbz, hu r u? lol xoxoxoxoxox’.
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| Apparently these are the apartments where the rich Russian investors live |
The response was: ‘It’s Lyosha. Come to Moskovskaya. I’m inviting you over’. I didn’t actually remember ever sending a message to someone called Lyosha, I wasn’t sure how he had my number and Moskovskaya station was 20 minutes away, but I decided to go anyway. I vaguely suspected he might be a 20 year old guy I had been interacting with. In any case, we would be meeting in a public place. 20 minutes later I arrived at Moskovskaya and a frenzy of confused text messages ensued:
“Find bus number 90 and come to my house!” (He then called: I didn’t answer. Phone anxiety…)
“I don’t want to come to your house. Meet me at Moskovskaya!”
“Why don’t you just come to my bus stop?” (He called again. I answered, but didn’t understand anything he said, apart from something about taking bus 90.)
“No. I want you to come to Moskovskaya!” (You have to be assertive with Belarusians.)
“No. Get the bus and get out after 2 stations.”
“Come to Moskovskaya!”
“Okay. I’ll be there soon.”
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| Construction work in Minsk, the city seems to be ever expanding |
Eventually, Lyosha arrived. He called me and then beckoned over to me. I realized this was not the person I had expected, but I politely greeted him. He was very handsome with sharp Russian features and looked about 25 years old. I would only find out that he was actually 35 when, sprawled out in a weird seductive pose on his bed, he made me guess his age and started making comments about how ‘well preserved’ he was. We talked for a while. Like quite a lot of Belarusians, he was scarily assertive and direct, but actually very friendly. We got on a bus to his home and he reluctantly made me a fruit cocktail (‘Fruit is very expensive in Belarus!’). He explained how he had recently started to feel extremely ill after having transferred to a completely fruitarian diet. Given that my brother and a few friends are vegan, I have respect for people whose moral compass obliges them to live on well-planned animal-free diets: the important thing is to think about where you will obtain every necessary element of your nutrition and make good steps to ensure that everything is in a harmonised balance. However, Lyosha didn’t seem to have planned his diet at all. In fact, the whole nutritional programme seemed to be based on the basic idea of: ‘Fruit is healthy. I’m going to eat as much of a healthy thing as possible!’. In any case, I tried not to judge and he lapped up my uniformed nutritional tips. Somehow he seemed to believe that as a student of the University of Cambridge, I must be actually intelligent and knowledgeable about everything, rather than, as is really the case, just very specialized in certain aspects of Russian verbs and German passive constructions.
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His bedroom was infested with budgerigars… and I hate birds. Well, I can deal with them at a distance. I recognize their contribution to the circle of life and their function in the universe. But I don’t like anything that makes sudden movements, especially if those movements are above shoulder level. Lyosha seemed to find this incredibly amusing. He chased me around his apartment with a budgerigar in his left hand. I screamed and hid in the toilet. Then, throughout the rest of the time we spent together, he would occasionally pretend like he had a bird in his hand in order to scare me. I found his life interesting and I listened to his stories. He had recently come back from Dubai and his response to my question ‘What is your dream?’ was ‘To live in the tallest building in Dubai. That is my dream. And to love and be loved.’
The only phrases he knew in English seemed to be ‘My name is Aleksei’ (said in an extremely cute accent) and, as the necessity of googling Anglo-Saxon porn obviously required, ‘I want monster cock’. His boyfriend lived several hundred kilometres away in Brest and he repeatedly assured me that he was hopelessly in love, that in the Summer they would move to St. Petersburg together, finally escaping Minsk for the first time, they would earn more money and they would be happy. Somehow, I was sceptical about his future, although I wished him the best. I grew to like him and I honestly told him what I thought about his life. In fact, in this moment I almost miss being chased around his apartment. I miss the almonds on the counter; I miss his direct way of speaking (‘Put your shoes on!’, ‘Get washed!’, ‘Drink your coffee!’); I miss hiding in his bedroom when the neighbours came to visit; I miss travelling at his side in the Matroshka; I miss bleak Belarusian play parks – isolated slides buried under the snow; I miss the fact that, like a lot of people I met, if you asked him a question he didn’t like, he just refused to answer, and I miss his extremely goofy smile. He was a simple, nice man.
Pancakes & Philosophy
On my third day I met P., a psychology student from Mogilev who studied on a long distance program and had come to Minsk for an intensive two week exam and lecture course. He is the first Russian-speaker I have met who corresponds, if only somewhat, to the stereotype of the Russian thinker; the great Russian soul: a person who analyses the meaning of the world, who asks himself questions, who suffers under the weight of society and dreams further, and further, and further, making progress towards something intangible, but great. I love him: a platonic, beautiful, whole, clean love. We spent countless days together talking about the meaning of things, our experiences of life, philosophy (he had a particular interest in Schopenhauer) and walking around the city. Our moments together were beautiful, and in this instance, I think it is probably best to show restraint, to leave words to float in the air, to twist and spread outwards leaving only fragments of memory:
1) His smile and the movements of his hands as he explained the pronunciation of the word Lyubov’ (love) (“любовь.... это не совсем «ф» а не совсем «в»”)
2) The pancakes he cooked for me, which sometimes were delicious and sometimes unpleasant, but in either instance full of care.
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| A notice telling me the internet in the hostel had run out: this happened on a regular basis. |
3) When we listened to ‘muslimgause’ together in the hostel: an alternative ‘British ethnic electronic and experimental musician’ which can be perfect for certain moments and dispositions, but is probably considered heavily disturbing by the majority of people
(Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC-g5I-QsH4 )
4) The time in Zerno Café when we practiced some English together before P.’s oral examination and a bearded young man with a laptop covered in animal rights stickers felt it was necessary to correct P.’s grammar mistakes, even though we had never met before and, if anyone should correct P.’s endearing errors, it should be the native speaker!
5) And many, many, many more… There are no words.
And then I met A: a very interesting man. The first day we met we got drunk together. The next day he swore he would never drink or smoke again. I was wary of him at first, because he didn’t speak enough Russian with me (his English was perfect). But soon, given the fact that I was speaking Russian with everyone else apart from him, his English knowledge became a comfort rather than a burden. He told me much about his life. He poured out thousands of memories, incoherently ordered, but sincerely expressed: memories of threesomes with beautiful girls; the time he was an illegal immigrant and homeless in London, eating the leftovers from wasteful supermarkets and sleeping under Spring trees; the time he earned a huge salary working as the manager of an internet café (oh, the days when internet cafes were a thing!); his memories of sailing the world on a cruise liner; the times when he wasted hundreds of pounds in casinos; the drugs; the rock band…. In a way, he was the perfect cliché of a bohemian experiencing everything life could offer and searching for the best life, but above that, he is a person, living in Minsk, staying in hostels, looking for a job, dating a beautiful and hopelessly elegant Belarusian woman, and wondering what he can make of his life in a country where the mentality and politics differ from that of his London dream. I wish him success. He opened everything to me, and yet I felt a little bit wary of talking openly about my life: he had so much to tell and with certain individuals I have a propensity to listen, rather than share. I wish he knew me better.
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| Studying in Cafe Zerno |
He took me to the bus station when I left Minsk. It was 7.00am and I had slept less than 3 hours. I was taking a bus to Vilnius, where I would meet a friend from University and then fly home after 2 days. The sun was extremely bright; the snow was melting. Spring had finally arrived. We took a taxi to the station and we drove past places I had barely noticed, whilst an indifferent feeling in my stomach: I needed food, and coffee, and my bus. We queued in the station for crisps: he was acting friendly, overly friendly, like a defence against the pain of departure. I was silent. As he queued for crisps, I suddenly became overwhelmed with a sickly sensation: and turning to the indifferent strangers, dining upright on high tabes beside impractical pillars, I promptly vomited. Clear, projectile vomit. Maybe it was a complete disconnection from body and emotion, maybe I simply didn’t realize my anxiety, which was building up in my veins, at an important moment, not knowing whether I would ever return to this country, to see again the people I had grown to love. But, probably, it was just the out-of-date kefir I had eaten the night before.
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| The joys of inflation. Total value: less than £0.10 |
I boarded the bus to Vilnius (after giving all my rubles to a friendly old woman who told me to pay for my baggage and coincidentally asked for the exact sum of currency I had left), hugged A. and, after discovering that the crisps he had bought me were crab-flavoured (I detest seafood) I promptly fell asleep, disconnecting myself from my memories. After 3 weeks I was leaving Belarus behind.
My Twink
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| My beautiful twink, doing what he does best: looking for hot men in fashion magazines |
But of course, a trip to Belarus is never complete without a love affair, or a twink, for that matter. In this instance, the twink is called V.: an 18 year old Lady Gaga fanatic (“she taught me to love myself!”), author and artist, who lives in Minsk with two middle-aged women, who like to smoke all day and eat семечки (sunflower seeds, of the unpeeled variety). We met in an improbable circumstance. But then again, most of my experiences in Minsk are fairly improbable circumstances. I was invited to a chill-out by a 30 year old overweight man from qguys. I accepted and turned up at his apartment at 11pm. I was soon greeted by two eighteen year old boys. I didn’t really understand what they were doing there, or what kind of relationship this friendly, but slightly creepy man was trying to build with them. Nonetheless, it was interesting to share stories with them, in a tiny kitchen, with faint lighting and Russian bread on the table. I told them about my love affairs with Hungarians, my experiences with depression and the advantages and disadvantages of studying in Cambridge. They listened with interest. At 3 am I decided to leave. I left the apartment and climbed down five flights of stairs to be greeted with a scary metal prison door. I didn’t know how to open it. I pressed a button which made a weird buzzing noise: I panicked because I assumed I was activating some kind of panic alarm and I ran back upstairs to the apartment in order to find out how the hell I was supposed to open the door. V. greeted me, smiled, told me how to open the door (I did, in fact, have to press the scary button) and gave me his number. The next day we met up alone in Victory Square: one of my favourite places in Minsk.
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| Victory Square, Minsk. The letters read (roughly translated): 'The victory of the people is immortal' |
V. told me of his past relationships, of his suicidal thoughts at the end of a certain break up, of his view on sleep (‘It’s a waste of time!’) and of his relationship with his middle-aged roomies: he had met L., a happy, charming and caring woman, at a gay bar in Minsk (back when there was an official gay bar… It has recently been closed by the police). She was on a hen night (apparently it’s not just straight British girls who like to dance with gay men.) and, in a strange coincidence of fate, they decided to chat over a cigarette until the early hours. And then they met up again. And again. And again. Eventually, he moved in with her and they became best friends. Life is full of beautiful, unexpected bonds.
We went to an underground gay club together where we met an enthusiastic and thoroughly pissed straight girl who insisted that we kiss each other and repeatedly shouted ‘I love you! I love it when gay people kiss! Kiss more!” It was a surreal experience.
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| 50p cigarettes. No wonder everyone smokes |
After this, V. invited me to stay in their home for a few days. I spent my time in his kitchen, shrouded in smoke (cigarettes cost 50p and most people seem to be addicts), eating sunflower seeds, speaking Russian, drinking too much coffee, watching badly dubbed episodes of ‘Queer as Folk’, reciting the words ‘babushka, babushka, babushka’ (this is my technique to get rid of unwanted erections.) and, of course, kissing my twink. He is beautiful. And a brave man. He reminds me of what I used to be: and there is something glorious in that memory; a naivety and a hope for something new. He is currently attempting to get out of military service (a fate worse than death) by telling the officers that he is openly homosexual. This will probably work, as being gay in the military is unthinkable in Belarus. Nonetheless, they might expose him to a ‘gay test’. Or even worse, tell his parents, who will potentially disown him. Life is not easy in Belarus. The winter is long, the summer is wet, and the gays are hidden.
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| A list of stern instructions about what guests in the hostel should and should not do |
And yet, things are beautiful. There is life. There is hope. There is potential. There is humanity. And most of all, for me there are memories, which I treasure.
I want to return. I want to lie on V.’s bed, staring at roof, writing poetry and thinking about the meaning of things, but in this moment of life, I don’t know where my heart and head will take me, whom I will grow to love and who I will become.
But in any case, I wish all the beautiful people I met endless success, happiness and much love.
I left my heart in Minsk.
P.s. If you speak Russian, then this little video montage my twink made for me may be of interest
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