One day in Rostov

This week I didn't have the best time. The reasons are as follows

1) I had a lot of problems with clients for my English lessons cancelling on me, leaving me with a lot less money than I had expected;

2) I went through an existential crisis where I wondered whether the reason for me feeling like I wasn't progressing as fast as I wanted in Russian was because I have too high standards, too little time or I just feel like I'm not progressing when it's late at night, I'm tired and said exhaustion is making me incoherent, raving, and unable to communicate even in English;

3) I received a lot of weird messages from rude people on the internet (oh, mamba. The home of the hysterical, sex-deprived and emotionally-hungry) , including more than one individual asking whether I would be interested in cross-dressing for his entertainment (only if I could provide my own woman's clothes, of course) and a person who told me they had a mental block that meant they couldn't kiss, only spit;

4)  I was unsure about when to leave Krasnodar. Theoretically, I have permission to stay until June, but I'm starting to feel a whole year here will be too much. It's hard to make good friends with Russians (they work far too many hours and are almost never free) and I feel like I've gone as far as I can. But the flights back after Christmas are booked, so I have to come back for at least a month or so. A part of me is thinking of moving to St Petersburg in Spring (i.e. when there is actually sunlight), but this will require bureaucracy, flights back home to the UK, money and lots of planning;

As a result, when the tiredness made me want to cry and almost dispel my cat for its incessant meat-hunger, I decided to go to another city for a while. Hence my day trip to Rostov. Having woken up at 4am to deliberately get on a 6.50 train that I had looked up on the internet, I discovered that the 6.50 train never existed. Perhaps a mistake on my part, perhaps just one of those inconsistencies of Russian transport: this is, after all, the country where, having got on the tram that has '7' written in huge bright letters at the front, the conductor then tells you that it's actually travelling on the 'eighth route'. That is provided she remembers to say the station names at all. In any case, having been sent to 4 separate ticket desks, I finally succeeded in getting a ticket to Rostov, leaving earlier than expected on the 'suburban' train to the 'suburban' train station (I had no idea what any of this meant). It turned out to be fine and take me to the 'suburban' train station, which, coincidentally, is in the city centre, right next to the 'main' station. It turns out 'suburban' wasn't the correct translation, not that it stopped the signs in the train station for being translated that way.

'Passengers of the suburban message'. Sounds like the title for a bad rock band for disaffected teenagers from some Parisian bandelieue. Thanks to my dear student, Marina, for the photo. 

 I ended up reading Confucius at 7 am in a very cramped train bistro and drinking overly-sugared tea. Pretty comfy, really. The bufet lady, obviously dressed up for the important task of selling Mars bars and beer to migrant workers, was wearing huge heels and seductive make-up. Oh wait, that's normal dress code here. Russian woman, as a rule, try to be a lot more sophisticatedly dressed than Westerners, even if all they are doing is buying milk or pickled cabbage.  In any case, just when 4 burly soldiers had entered the bistro, there was a temporary power cut in the train lights: the train kept going, but the corridor lights went out, leaving us in the sexual darkness of one lamp on the bistro bar. To summarize: four muscly soldiers and a seductively dressed young woman in the almost-darkness. Not gonna lie, I felt like I was in a sex dungen. Pity it only lasted 5 seconds. 

 I arrived in Rostov, after 4 hours, with nowhere to stay, no friends in the city and no idea of where the 'suburban' train station actually left me. I decided to just get on the same bus everybody else seemed to be getting on, pay 15 rubles and stop if I saw somewhere pretty. I saw a typically shiny onioned Russian orthodox church and decided to get off. It was really quite impressive, and almost up to the very walls of the church were the innumerable stalls of the 'Central Market', including some  Orthodox icon shops, endorsed by the church itself. 'Really helps the image of the church,' I thought cynically, 'Selling goods and haggling right up until the doors of the sacred building. The capitalism of Christ.'. 

Somebody at the market left an upside-down cup on a blue chair on top of some cardboard in the middle of the street I didn't asked who it was for and what liquid was turned upside down only to vanish and become absorbed into the layers of cardboard, but I did ponder.

At this same market, I soon witnessed a woman laughing hysterically whilst selling raw fish and another old broad selling clothes on coat hangers: including coat hangers that were being held my her mouth. She was quite a beaut. 

Having bought a hat and gloves to greet the bitter, dusty wind, I found wifi and decided to log in to a site to see who would like to show an Irish man around the city. About 90% of people I wrote to didn't believe I was actually a foreigner given that a) there are practically no Westerners in this city and b) Westerners are expected to make a mistake in every second word when speaking Russian, given that it is a complicated language for those who don't have declension, perfective and imperfective tense systems and beautiful Slavic sounds in their native language. Nonetheless, after about 2 hours. I was being shown the city by Anton: a gay man from Rostov, who had studied philosophy at University, dreaming of becoming a professor infecting the youth with passion for knowledge and touching the edges of human mental gymnastics, but soon gave up realizing that the professors at his university were discouraged, ageing and not sure of the answers themselves. Not to mention, badly paid. In any case, he decided to become a chef and is now training, dreaming of emigrating to Sweden.

'I'm a Russophobe. I don't like life here, at all. I plan to leave, and luckily, my boyfriend supports me, even though he probably won't come with me.'

I asked him why he had chosen his boyfriend: whether they had some sort of deep intellectual connection, a passion for knowledge. After all, apart from the history of Rostov and the impressions it had made on my new friend's mind, we had been touching some pretty 'deep' themes.  He replied that no, his boyfriend was quite dim when it came to these topics, but he had concluded that an intellectual connection wasn't necessary for a long term relationship. After all, the keys to happiness and security aren't discussions about Kant (you can get that with friends, if necessary), but unconditional love and the ability to 'take someone as he is'. He also said that he didn't ever get tired of seeing him, which, I must admit, is a very good sign: I can't think of anyone I don't ever get tired of (sorry for offending every single one of my friends. The truth is I don't love any of you, at all. In fact, I despise you all. Go cease to exist in the ditches of your own filth.). I concluded that it sounded pretty good, especially given the fact that the boyfriend had concluded to 'appreciate every moment', not to hold Anton back, to be patient, and to love for what there is. I got a bit sentimental to be honest.

The abandoned building

Along the way, Anton showed me an abandoned, crumbling building with magical waters that managed to keep a constant temperature of 15 degrees all year long. Having heard these messianic words, I decided to immediately start worshipping walls, I threw myself naked into the water and baptised myself in the church of the fundamentally fantastic facades.  No, but really, I barely touched that water. It was cold in the air and I didn't want to become moist.

By 8pm, the hostel I had phoned in the morning still hadn't got back to me, so Anton invited me to stay at his house. I arrived pretty late, had tea with his mother, asked questions about the Soviet Union and then watched them smoke on the balcony, looking out on to the metropolis. 

The next day, suffering from a nose bleed and sleep deprivation, I walked the city, spent to much time on the internet, bought an etymological dictionary of the Russian language, ate pancakes and left.

Another city visited, another Oblast', another friend. 

I never did figure out whether this was just a random collection of exposed piping or a monument. I photoed it anyway. 

A little nipple tweaking

I aim to perfect the haiku-esque art of short and concise blogs. As a result here are five paragraphs on a nipple tweaking Armenian:

I met A. almost immediately after I had arrived in Krasnodar. And yes, of course, we met on the internet (the place for beautiful people and the insane. Much overlap). He is quite an interesting character. I recently described him as 'a really eccentric, camp, promiscuous, intellectual Armenian', but I'm sure this isn't the best way to describe him. He's quite complex: on the one hand, he loves Tolstoy, Russian literature and the Russian language in general. He is very well educated and speaks Russian better than Russians, despite only having arrived when he was about 17.  On the other hand, he is extremely hyperactive and scares me by his sudden movements. I don't like sudden movements- I like rest and reflection and chivalrous debauchery!

A quote on his past: 

'I didn't speak any Russian when I arrived, just a few words, but I ended up studying Russian philology (i.e. linguistics and literature of the Russian language) for 5 years and it turned into a great passion of mine....then I studied business for two years. But I didn't like that so much, so I paid someone to write my dissertation. Now I want to do a dissertation focussed on etymology and the psychological weight of words. But I don't have any money left. Maybe I'll marry one of my friends and get citizenship, just long enough so I can get a PHD and then leave forever.'

His current plans consist of:

1) getting out off Russia as soon as possible ('I love Russian and I love Russians, but Russians need some help... I mean, psychologically. It's going to get worse here. Nationalism is crazy and we're heading towards a dictatorship. I secretly hope Turkey invades us and we become one big happy Turkey')
2) learning Spanish
and...
3) trying not to get deported back to Armenia. His passport recently expired, but being in Russia for almost a decade, he doesn't want to go home -- he hasn't returned to Armenia since, has very limited contact with Armenians and has started to feel that Russian has become his native language.  'I'm not Russian, but I'm not Armenian, either. Maybe I can be Spanish. I ADORE Spanish people. But I like German and British culture better. And British humour. You say terrible, horrible things and then laugh with a sarcastic smile. I like that kind of humour.' 

In summary: he is beautifully insane. Sometimes it's hard for me to talk to him because I can't keep up with his energy: one moment, he's explaining the etymology of words one moment, then next moment he's jumping and dancing, next moment he's admiring someone's rear and maybe even taking a photo for posterity, next moment he's begging me to come to karaoke (he goes to karaoke about 3 times a week, even though he doesn't drink. He just turns up by himself and sings to the heavens.), then he's telling me about German literature, then he's raving about Spanish verbs, then he's complaining about Russians, then he's loving Russians, then he's telling me that British people are really cute, timid and sweet, then he's telling me that I am intelligent, then he's philosophizing on the meaning of love, then he's telling me that I'm emotional (this coming from a raving, hyperactive squirrel) and then he's taking pictures and screaming at me that I need to get instagram, that it is a necessity, that it is life or death, that it really is the crux of our generation, that I will die a horrible death without instagram, scarred and impaled on the pole of social rejection. Then he's singing again.

It's all a bit tiring if you haven't slept well, but I am very grateful to him for many funny moments, lots of educational tips on Russian philology and for the 500 rubles he lent me that time I thought I might end up homeless.

But, returning to nipples, and probably breaking my paragraph limit: he recently spotted one of my British friend's very Russian and very heterosexual acquaitances, a young man called Dima, on the street. Mistaking him for an old friend, who had moved to Moscow for good and had recently had a nipple operation for 'superficial cosmetic reasons', he ran up to Dima enthusiastically, grabbed his nipples, tweaked them and asked 'HOW ARE YOUR NIPPLES?'. Dima, a typical stoic replied 'Fine, thanks' and a normal conversation ensued. Only later did A. realize that this was the wrong person....

And here you have some stereotypical Russian stoicness: an almost stranger (they had met once before, but A. had mistaken him for another person) tweaks your nipples and, unshaken and unsmiling, you reply that you are fine and go on your merry way. 

I haven't been writing, but I have been living

I haven't been writing, but I have been living. A new phase of my time Russia has started: I went through the most difficult weeks, seriously considered moving away, cried on a dusty bridge, and then suddenly I started to become happier, to fall in love with the Caucasus and to travel every chance I get. There's a lot to tell, but I can't rush, so I will try to focus on more specific topics. Today I will talk about my roomates.

I live with 4 people: an Armenian guy, a Russian guy, a girl from the Caucasus and a Russian girl. In short, we're a typical Krasnodar family: a little bit of all nationalities, mixed up, tangled, and interwebbed. Although, maybe I should be careful about the word 'family'. Some of my roomates I can imagine becoming good friends for life. The others I do not intend to introduce into my family any time soon. If my daughter married one of them, I would ask for her to have her tubes tied.

At first I only lived with the boys. They each had their own room. I moved into the apartment at the beginning of September, having only been in Russia for ten days. The apartment is on the 4th floor of a four storey building: a large house made from wood, which, due to its mansion-like size, its spooky arch windows and deserted, weedy garden reminded me of a beautiful haunted house. When my friend saw it for the first time, he said 'I would never live here!'. When I saw it for the first time, I fell in love. I like dilapitation- I I think it's quirky and aesthetically pleasing --  provided the conditions on the inside are fine.

 I was desperate for somewhere to live, and I had had terrible success so far with looking for apartments near the university: they were either all taken or managed by expensive private agents. My friend and I tried looking through a website called Avito. The website has separate sections for estate agents and individuals who are simply looking to privately rent out their apartment or flat i.e. without commission. Unfortunately, as this is Russia -- the seatbeltless land of anarchic tendencies -- no one actually follows the regulations. My friend called the dozens of numbers listed as 'private individuals' only to find out that they were actually agencies.

'Why are you listed as a private individual if you're an agency?'
'Ehh. Just because.'
'Don't you realize that's dishonest?'
'Yeah, but what are you going to do about it?'

And... that's it. Conversation over. Start again and repeat fifty times.

In any case, I took one of the first houses I found as I was desperate to have somewhere to live: some stability, even though they were still carrying out repair work in my section of the building i.e. I didn't have a door, I didn't have a kitchen and I didn't have curtains (Oh wait, I still don't have curtains. Maybe I should do something about that...). Despite those restrictions, it was all pretty fine, at first. I work in the evenings, so I always came back after the repair work was finished and found it quite pleasant to be constantly confronted with a new surprise: oh, today I have a toilet. Oh today I have a bath. Oh, today I have DECKING. Oh golly, look at that fridge! Gee swizz, it looks like that sink came from nowhere! Great golly bejuz, a microwave! OH MY GOD, TODAY I HAVE A WARDBRODE. OH WAOW, WHERE DID THIS KETTLE COME FROM? THIS IS A MAGICAL HOME, FULL OF MAGICAL SURPRISES.  I'VE ALWAYS WANTED A SKIRTING BOARD.

What I didn't want, however, was an extra bed. And yet one day I came home to find I had just that: an extra bed, glistening in its redundancy. This would have been nothing more than a small shock, if it hadn't have had some unpleasant consequences. During the process of setting up the bed, my flatmates, i.e. the Armenian guy and the Russian guy, decided to 'help' the landlord. They noticed that my drawers were a bit wonky, and using this as an excuse, they decided to look through my things. There they found some indiciations that I was gay.

That evening, I returned home in a really good mood and had a nice chat with them. I was so jovial, they thought I was drunk. I was joking about the fabulous, amazing, splendiferous redundancy of the second bed and enjoying their company: they're not the smartest, I thought, but they're quite quaint in some ways, quite friendly and even though I have no desire to get pissed off my face on vodka, it's sweet that they always offer. An hour later, however, they knocked on my door and the confrontation started.

'Daniel, we found signs that you're...you know....not the way you're supposed to be.'
(I didn't understand what they were talking about. The conversation about the buoyant gayness they found in my drawers ensued.)
'You're not a pedik (an insulting slang term for 'gay', that, unfortunately, derives from the word for paedophile), are you? You know it's very bad if you are...If the landlord finds out, he might kick you out. If university finds out, they might kick you out, too. Those kind of things shouldn't be seen. In Russia, it's illegal.'

At this point, I am very confused. Part of me wants to assert myself and remind them of three crucial points:

1) Homosexuality is completely legal in Russia. Yes, there have been some new restrictions recently on free speech or on adoption by gay couples abroad, but, in essence, the actual phenomenon is still legal, and there are still lots of people who will defend your right to do whatever on earth you want in your own private space, as long as it is consentual and doesn't bother anyone else. Russia still has brains.

2) They had no right to look through my things, even if it was under the pretext of fixing wobbly drawers. Even if they had books or pamphlets about homosexuality, they should have ignored it -- after all, they didn't ask my permission to be in my room in the first place. Let alone to look through a very private space: someone's drawers.

3) They shouldn't be talking to me in such an unsettling, semi-threatening tone, especially for something which in no way affects their lives.

Instead of reminding them of these points, however, I panicked. I didn't think they would physically hurt me -- in fact, I knew they wouldn't, but suddenly all the cautious remarks of my parents and friends back home came rushing into my head and I decided to lie. I hate lying -- to me it is one of the most shameful acts. It makes me feel really dirty, especially when I don't feel like I deserve to be forced to lie. In any case, in the heat of the moment, I invented a girlfriend. Her name is Victoria, she's 5'10 and she doesn't exist.

They started to talk quickly. They were a little drunk. They asked me weird and invasive questions about how Victoria and I have sex. I didn't understand and tried to avoid the questions. I was afraid and I just wanted to leave and sleep. Words started to get mixed up, I couldn't listen properly with my worries getting in the way and they didn't annunciate very well. In the end, they got a picture of Victoria which pleased them. They concluded that she was a 'whore' (yes, double whammy: insulting women who have active sex lives and homosexuals in one night). They said that they wanted to see her as soon as possible.

'Why don't you organize a party?' the Russian said slyly, with an oddly sexual tone. I felt sad for his sexual frustration and angry at his assumption that he could just 'take' her, even if she didn't exist.

Only later did I find out that they never actually believed that Victoria existed. Instead they had decided to tease me. I told some of my Russian friends, who support gay rights and who know about me. Typically, where an English person would try to reassure you and tell you 'everything will be fine', Russians criticize you for your mistakes: it's considered better not to comfort your friends over what has gone wrong, but to show very little sympathy, point out people's mistakes so they don't make them in future and then try to distract them by completely changing the topic. I know that this is the way it's often done in Russia: a bizzare kind of tough love. But what I wanted to hear from my friends was 'it will be fine', 'I support you', 'I love you', instead what I heard was 'You didn't hide well enough', 'why did you think you could live with straight people in the first place?' and 'You should have been more careful'. Instead of being comforted, I got angry: I shouldn't have to hide in the first place. It isn't an illness, it isn't a crime! But okay, I hid as best as I could, but they found out by breaking my privacy. How was I supposed to expect that they would search through my wonky drawers? Aren't drawers supposed to be the one sacred, untouched place where you store your secret books (in my case, gay literature), frilly knickers and old love letters?

The next day, they knocked on my door again. I panicked and refused to answer. Through the door I agressively told them that their behaviour was unacceptable, that I was immediately moving and that I would phone the landlord and explain that they had driven me out of my own house. Suddenly their tone become a whole lot nicer. They apologized profusely and decided not to talk about it again. They returned to their original state: freakishly quiet young men, who always leave to visit their parents for 2 days at the weekends, who go to bed at 10pm on weekdays and don't make a noise, apart from once a week when they get drunk and invite me to talk about the Great Patriotic War in their bedroom with some vodka. I decided that even though they had been pacified and tacitly accepted that I was gay and had a right to live with them, I would still move: after all, it's not psychologically comforting to live in a house with people who don't accept who you are.

Nonetheless, my search for a new apartment was very unsuccessful. I was too busy and I didn't have time to search through the necessary sites: I needed to search via gay websites to be certain I would find tolerant people. After having met some potential roomates who turned out to be batshit crazy in the unpleasant sense of the phrase, I also came to the realization that it's not someone's sexuality who will make them a good roomate, tolerant of who I am, but rather their personality. Gays can be just as crazy as straights. Especially here, in Russia, where, due to the cultural shock, everyone seems a little bit insane to me in the first place. (Even if I do love them, the wee critters.)

After a few days, I decided to stay. The reason for this was the arrival of two more girls in my flat: they decided to live together in one bedroom and the boys decided to live together in the other bedroom. From the outset they knew I was gay (I overheard the boys passing on the information to them in the kitchen -- 'What do you think of the other flate mate?', the girls asked, 'He's alright. He's Irish', the Russian guy replied, 'But...ammm..he doesn't like the right gender'. 'Ah okay,' they replied.). They immediately reacted very positively to me and decided to mother me. One of them actually turns out to be biseuxal, the other is just tolerant of who I am -- and all their friends are also tolerant. It seems I rarely have a problem with girls in Russia, just with boys and the elderly, but then again, how often do I talk about my love life or political views with the elderly or hormonal teenage  boys anyway?

I now have a great relationship with my female flatmates and the boys have become pretty tolerant (the girls had a talk with them). We travel together, talk about love, literature and psychology until 3 am and even sometimes party together (although one of the girls always gets too drunk and ends up sleeping on me). As a result, it seems that my experience in Russia has shown how easily homophobic people can become, if not supportive, at least tolerant enough to let someone live their life.  But, on the other hand, I know that this is only a very small exception to a generally widespread problem. There are millions of homophobes in this country and the number is growing.

But life has shown me that no matter how awful the politics may be in your country, you can normally find happiness: as long as the people around you are stimulating, positive and beautiful you can forget about the suffering and injustice that happens to others. Until one day it touches you and wakes you up again. Right now I am sleeping for a while - happy and warm - it's a good way to survive.