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.