September in Krasnodar

It's raining in Russia. The streets have given up the tired humid heat that tortured us all through August, sweating in the trams and suffocating until sunset. The dust has washed away and the stray dogs aren't barking. Autumn has come and we are starting to chill: if only for a few days. It will be warm again soon, they say: we're in the sub-med and you'll probably be able to walk around the city without a coat until January. Even in January there might not be snow. "There's practically no winter here," the taxi driver told me. This won't be the typical Russian experience, I guess. I won't be digging my feet out of 10 metres of snow, whilst it's minus 30, but I will be speaking Russian every day, meeting new people and reading as many Russian books as I can manage.

Sunset in Krasnodar: a living complex where I stayed for a few days

This will be my first post in my special 'year abroad' blog. It will be probably turn out fairly serious, because I'm trying to define some concrete goals for my writing. Moreover, it's raining and I've decided to indulge in some pathetic fallacy. No doubt
when the heat comes back and the rabid dogs start chasing me down the street again, I'll be more than willing to entertain all my readers with hysterically-humorous rants about how I love/hate Russia (This will depend on the day, and on my mood.)

I will continue to post pretty much the same articles in my personal blog (plus a few extras), but I am beginning a new page in order to make a clear start to a new project. Namely, I will be blogging regularly about the experience of a 20-something (partially) Cambridge-educated Northern Irish queer writer/artist/student who has for some odd reason decided to move to a city that almost no Westerner has ever heard of to do things that most people probably wouldn't like to do.

I have come to Krasnodar with a few vague goals:

1) I want to learn the language and learn the people.

I want to become fluent in this strange slavic speech, which regularly requires me to stretch my tongue around consonant clusters, complex grammatical structures and generally foreign sounds. I had always thought of Russian as some sort of unimaginably difficult, serious language spoken by a cult of beautiful and mysterious stoics. I wanted to have their chique and their mystery and say sentences like ‘Vladimir perished in the Great Patriotic War fighting the facist peril and will never return. Send Svetlana his love.’

In the process of learning Russian over the last two years at university, I've come to realise that my preconceived ideas weren't completely true: the culture shock between Russians and Westerners is large, but as you communicate with the people here it becomes more and more obvious that they aren't mysterious: they're just different. Moreover, they are often very stubborn in justifying or defending their differences. (Fair dues.)

Nonetheless, when you penetrate deeper, it becomes clear that the visible culture and the behaviour on the street are shells. Like in any place, you find people who will listen to you, who will trust you and who will help you. Provided you manage to break through the shell, of course, and get to the person. This can mean anything from learning to accept that the woman in the tram is going to shout at you if you don’t get your money out quick enough (even though she's a lovely person and takes great care of her grand children. She even brings them to the zoo once a month!) to accepting that a young lady probably shouldn’t smile too heavily at an old man on the bus (unless she wants him to think she’s a prostitute).

2) I want to write a dissertation that is topical.

I don't know exactly what words I will use, or how many pages I will write, or whether I will choose literature or politics or some other cultural aspect, but I do know the general topic of my research: everything queer. After all, what better time to analyse Russian attitudes to alternative sexualities than now, given that the LGBT rights movement inside of Russia seems to have hit a dead end. Propaganda of ‘non-traditional’ sexual orientations to minors has been banned, the adoption of Russian children to countries with legal LGBT famiy policies has been outlawed, and most activists I have spoken to are not very optimistic about the future.

I feel drawn to Russia for reasons I don't quite understand. I am not, per se, completely content here, but I'm not discontent either. I'm not religious, but something in my psychology is calling me to Russia: I feel like I have to live through this place, where, for various reasons, I either feel amazing or terrible, with very little in between. On the one side, I feel accepted immediately by a community of people who are marginalized i.e. gays, queers, young people with different views on the world, and outsiders. On the other side, I regularly experience the flip side of living in a culture that does not accept people who love outside of the heteronormative tradition: the awkward conversations with passengers on the train ('Where is your girlfriend?', ‘How would you rate Russian women?’ or, if they're drunk, 'Have you fucked a Russian girl yet?'); the casual homophobic comments from otherwise polite and well-educated people; the terrible news stories of abuse and arrests of gays; the stoic accounts from friends of what they have had to live through; and, most painful of all, those instances where you see hate and fear arising within the LGBT community itself: the gay men who refuse to talk to other gay men who they consider too 'effeminate' and therefore a threat to their heteroseuxal disguise (“they’re just...too much”); the gays and lesbians who criticize biseuxals; and the general reluctance to acknowledge the existence of transgendered people. Moreover, there is an unpleasant conflict between activists and non-politically active queers (I use the word ‘queer’ as a quick shortcut for LGBT+, i.e. anyone whose sexuality doesn’t fit a societally acceptable standard of heteronormativity. No offense is intended by this word.). Often activists feel frustrated and abandoned by the large majority of queers who are either too afraid to take action or just consider that it is 'too early' for Russia to change. I have met people who have told me that the activists' robust manner is simply 'not Russian' and is making the situation in Russia worse for LGBT people. It is sometimes painful to see individuals who I know to be queer spouting homophobic comments or telling lies to other acquiantances in order to leave no suspiscion that they themselves might be LGBT.

I don't know where this ‘research’ or collection of experiences will take me. I don't know whether it will lead to me meeting the queer Ghandi, falling happily in love and creating a family of 2.3 children or whether I will simply become exhausted by general pessism and lack of progress in the movement. Maybe, like most people I've met, I will end up just accepting that things aren't going to change in the next twenty years. In the words of my friend, Rumpel.: 'You say it was 16  years between when Margaret Thatcher introduced anti-gay legislation (i.e. Section 28:  that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship") and the legalisation of gay civil union and adoption in the UK. You're right, 16 years is quick and, it was probably a very unexpected rate of progress. But for Russia you might as well take that number and multiply it by 10. Russia isn't a post-industrial country, Russia is barely even an industrial society. We live on gas.'

What she forgot to mention (in my view) is the fact that change might come even slower to Russia not just because of the level of economic development, but also because of the fact, that for whatever reason (culture, climate, tradition), Russians are often naturally pessimistic when it comes to politics and very stubborn about changing their opinion. This is a generalization, of course, and I do not mean to offend anyone. But I have already experienced enough instances of discussions with Russians which never managed to develop into useful exchanges of opinion: a stereotypical English man will probably listen to your opinion and give you time to finish whatever point of discussion you are talking about, even if later he rejects your view and expresses his own opinion (however bigoted it may be). Many Russians, on the other hand, simply don't listen in the first place.

Here's an example of a discussion I had yesterday with a group of students at my university:

Random Russian man: In your country, who do they think won the second World War?

Me: Well, most people would just list of the names of the Allied countries: so, UK, America, Russia, France....

Russian man (already indignant!): What a crock of shite! In our country 20 million people died. You would have been fucked by the Germans without us!

Me: Let me explain why people in my country think that way...

Russian: What propaganda! In your country they always forget about Russia!
Me: That’s true to an extent, but let me explain....
Russian: You people don't respect Russia! You would have died without us...
Me: Let me explain...
Russian: You just bombed Japan to show off your weapons. Nobody even really died there compared to Russia!
Me: (trying to be humorous) I didn't bomb Japan, but...
Russian (continues a rant about the second world war, even though he clearly isn't very clued up on the facts. He seems to think it started in 1941, not 1939 -- probably because this was the year the Soviet Union was invaded.)
Me: (exasperated) Alright then.

There are lots of conversations like this. My friends here tell me that when a person has an opinion in Russia, there is no point trying to convince them that they are wrong, even if you use facts and evidence, they won't listen. After all, it’s not always clear where you’ve taken the facts from. They might just be ‘propaganda’ invented by our governments/states/whoever. The old suspicion between our countries lives on: as much in the UK and the US as in Russia itself (but that is a topic for another blog post.)

In the future, I will try to avoid talking to drunk men who only want to shout about Russia's sacrifices in the Great Patriotic War, but nonetheless, it goes against my upbringing not to express my opinion. Moreover, it can be endlessly frustrating when even people you like refuse to listen to your opinion e.g.

'No, that's wrong'

'But why?'

'It's just wrong.'

'But why?'

'It's just wrong?'

'But why?'

'It's propaganda.'

'Why do you think it's propaganda?'

'You're runing my lunch. Let's talk about something else'

'But why am I ruining your lunch? Why can't you just listen to my opinion?'

(At this point, I will feel tempted to cry and move to a yurt in Mongolia where I will give up all interaction with civilization until the year 2046 when we will all be programmed by computer chip to be tolerant, loving people with impecable physical and emotional attributes.)

To be fair, I am a little overemotional at times, and also quite stubborn and annoying when it comes to these things. I probably come across as some sort of patronizing Westerner who thinks he always knows better and is trying to convince all Russians that they are wrong, when in reality, I just want to talk openly about various topics so that people can understand why we think the way we do. I often end up frustrated at the fact that people won't let me express my opnion, because they think I'm trying to convert them like some Jehovah's witness.

In any case, I have disgressed drastically from the topic of gay rights in Russia. I intend to help in some sort of capacity, if I can. Maybe I will translate a few articles into English, maybe I will help out a few friends in personal matters. I won't, however, be protesting on the street: I don't want to be prematurely arrested and deported. I want to respect the people here and try to understand them and in order to understand them I have to respect the laws to the right extent. It might look very nice on my CV to write 'deported from Russia for human rights activism', but it will probably simply have an adverse effect on the situation on Russia: Don't you see! It's another Westerner trying to import homosexuality to Russia! It's always the Westerners who protest! i.e. Homosexuality is a Western import.

3) I am here because I love Russia and I want to enjoy my time here, even if it is only a year of my life.

I don't love the state, but I love Russia. I like to dream about the vast expanses (like any cliched Westerner, I suppose). I love the feeling of finally being able to communicate to a decent level having struggled through endless grammar and lots of new words. I love the literature. I love being able to understand a whole new world of inside jokes and puns. I love the script. I love many things, in short. And I especially love the matter-of-fact attitude of a lot of people -- it can be very funny e.g.

Tram conductor scolding a man blocking her way: 'Young man, who do you think I am? A snake? I have bones, you know, I can't just wriggle my way through your junk!' 

I love many things and I won't spend the rest of the post listing my loves: that is probably a gradual task for my future blogs.

4) I want to write beautiful things.

I am a writer. I like poems. I like stories and I need to write. Russia can be hard, but living through experiences that are strange or difficult make you a better writer and a more experienced human. By the end of this year, I thoroughly expect that my poems will be as widely read as the collected works of Fedor Dostoevskii. (Well, I can hope, anyway).

To summarize: I am in Russia and I will be posting blogs. Please become a reader. I will shower you in imaginary Matroshkas.

Take care, dear readers,

yours,

D.

Gay Teenagers Targeted by Russian Internet Gangs

Hi guys, 

I have been translating, editing and abridging lots of articles concerning LGBT+ rights in Russia. While I will continue to publish some of them on here, perhaps with some personal insight, I will also be starting another blog, exclusively dedicated to the translations of these articles. I will post the link as soon as I am finished.

In the meantime, here is a suitably depressing article which I have translated from the following Gay Belarusian News Portal, although the subject matter concerns Russia, not Belarus:

http://www.news.gayby.net/news/ehkho_krestovogo_pokhoda_na_geev_v_rossii/2013-07-17-7632

GAY TEENAGERS TARGETED BY RUSSIAN INTERNET GANGS

17 July

Caption: BANNED

The popular Russian social network site Vkontake has blocked the group #Okkupai-gerontofiliai due to 'violating the rules of the site'. The page was full of video clips of homophobic 'raids' against adolescents. One of the most recent items caused particular indignation: in the post, the creator of the group, 16 year old far-right activist Filipp Dionits Razinskii persuades a gay adolescent to perform oral sex on one of the members of the so-called “safari” gang, threatening to otherwise upload an abusive video to the internet.

The site newsru.com provides the following example of the boy’s emotional blackmail: “I know you don’t want to, but this is your only option. Otherwise this clip is going to end up online. Your friends will definitely see it. Your parents too. You’re not the first. About 4 people have gone through this now, and we haven’t uploaded a single clip yet!” At present the clip has been deleted from Dionits’s personal page, however one of his warning statuses still remains on the site: “New release! Young cock-sucker in need of fame! 500 reposts and there will be a new release”.

The current surge of gay persecution can be traced back to a recent vote by the Russian State Duma, which introduced a ban on homosexual “propaganda” and therefore de facto outlawed gays in the country (ed. or at least their public manifestation). The deputy chairman of the State Duma’s Cultural Committee even went so far as to call gays “mutants”. Some observers think that these teenage homophobes took their inspiration from this recently passed law outlawing “the propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations among children”, and from the recent ban on gay adoptions of Russian children. The youths are completely convinced that their actions are justified. They aren’t bothered by the fact that they are destroying these citizens’ right to a personal life. They continue to insult and shame young people across the country. Nonetheless, Russian Law does seem to indicate that the homophobic youngsters could face serious punishment.

The under-aged followers of the leader of the “Occupy paedophilia”* page, Maksim Martsinkevich Tesak, took it upon themselves to hunt down young people with “non-traditional” sexual orientations. They track down young gays and those who are suspected of having a tendency towards homosexuality. Having caught them, they then force them to speak to the camera and say “I am gay and proud of it.”

*Ed: yes, dear readers, once again, another conflation of consensual homosexual love and sexual practises between same-sex adults with paedophilia. Oh Russia….

They use the following tactics, designed by Tesak, to carry out their “struggle against gays”: they find young homosexuals on the internet, persuade them to meet up with them (ed: largely for dates, often pretending to be attractive young men. More about this in future articles…) and then carry out a degrading “educational chat”. This takes place on camera and the footage is then uploaded to the internet.

This degrading “educational chat” largely consists of a lecture on morals, taunts and insults (including, horribly enough, urinating on the young man). The video is then uploaded to the internet. The leader of the young homophobes is a schoolboy named Filipp, who started the “okkupai-gerontofiliai”* movement. A group of the same name was started on the social networking site VKontakte, where the videos resulting from these “raids” are posted.

*Ed: this title is a bit hard to translate but, needless to say, related to persecuting “perverts”

The young homophobes “work” actively in both Moscow and Tambov. At present they have “destroyed the lives of about ten people”, the newspaper “Moskovskii Komsomolets” writes. The amount of young people they have succeeded in luring online, to then ridicule them in front of the whole country, is written in the article.

Law Enforcement has now begun to look into the young homophobes' case. Law Enforcement officials have so far refrained from making any comments regarding the repercussions that threaten the young homophobes. The actions of Filipp Dionitsa and his partners could, at the very least fall under statute 133 of the Civil Code – coercion into acts of a sexual nature. (…)

Former child ombudsman of Moscow, Evgenii Bunimovich, took the matter to the public prosecutor’s office requesting that they check the actions of the self-proclaimed anti-gay campaigners. In his opinion the posts on the site contain indications of violence and physical intimidation.

Anna Efimovetz, “Nedelia” newspaper

Link to Moskovskii Komsmolets article (in Russian): http://www.mk.ru/old/article/2013/07/16/884583-sotsset-vkontakte-zablokirovala-soobschestvo-okkupaygerontofilyay.html

WARNING: Gay Propaganda. 18+

 If you are a minor, shield your eyes. Or read Dostoevsky to your grandmother instead. She's lonely. 

A beautiful, ironic meme making reference to the newest laws passed in the Russian Federation and showing a picture of  Vitalii Milonov, the author of the initial 2012 law in St Petersburg, banning the "propaganda of homosexuality and paedophilia" among minors. The caption translates as "Atheists who smoke and have a non-traditional sexual orientation and download pirate music from torrents....aren't having the best time recently."

So, as many of you will already know, I am moving to Russia. And as many as you will also know, I am getting more stubborn with the years and I like to express my opinions. 

But no worries, I probably won't get deported. And if I do, there's always Ukraine. Or Kazakhstan. Or that tiny village with Russian elders in Alaska...

In any case, I have started volunteering as a translator for some organizations, including LGBT activists, something which is a hot topic at the moment, given the new law signed by President Putin, prohibiting the 'propaganda' of 'non-traditional sexualities' among minors. This is basically an excuse to prevent anyone from publicly talking about LGBT+ people and issues in a positive light, as this may expose the poor little children to gayness. And as we all know, gayness is highly contagious. Why I turned 16 people gay just last week. All I did was invite them to my home, where I exposed them to countless hours of gay cinema, fed them rainbow waffles, spanked them with fishing rods and told them the countless advantages of being discriminated on a daily basis, rejected by your family and possibly even beaten without police repercussions. They were pretty enthusiastic.  

The law is fairly ill-defined. Here is a section of an article by travelandescape.ca 

In a throwback to the country’s authoritarian ruling, Russian president Vladimir Putin has signed a controversial law that punishes people for “homosexual propaganda.” The law fines people—including tourists—up to 200,000 rubles ($6,240 CDN) for “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations.” For Canadians—where same-sex marriage is legal—it is unfathomable that Russia’s laws permit the government to arrest and detain gay, or pro-gay, foreigners for up to 14 days before they would then be expelled from the country.

So what is considered pro-gay? Anything from gay-affirmative speech to hand-holding; even displaying a rainbow flag alongside a maple leaf on your backpack is illegal. Recently in southern Russia, there were complaints that Elton John’s stage outfits fell under “gay propaganda.” While LGBT are being told they are unwelcome in Russia, with such vague definitions, one wonders if anyone who even looks like they might be gay could also be fined or deported from the country.

Beautifully enough, most people I have talked to seem to agree with this law. Often conflating homosexuality with paedophilia (yes, because two adults who mutually consent to love each other, which does not affect anybody but themselves, is obviously the same thing as an adult who abuses and lures a child, without their permission, and leaves them emotionally damaged...). Most people just don't like to think about homosexuality at all.  It seems just a bit too icky, for them. And anyway, many assert, it's against the bible! God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve! Jesus hates gays! But yes, I won't go into this. There are many beautiful sites, such as this or, if you prefer it in Russian, THIS. 

Here are some of the articles I have edited and translated within the first 2 days of volunteering.  The rate of hate crime seems to be quite high, and with the new laws, it doesn't look like many people will be able to speak freely of this kind of "propaganda" outside of internet forums without falling into the suspicion of Law Enforcement. I am not doing this as some sort of Jesus-like Westerner, thinking they will save Russia. They are more than capable of deciding how they want to live. I am doing this as a favour for friends, out of personal interest, and for language practice. I am therefore not an enemy of the state. In fact, I would like to drink schnapps with Milonov, maybeI should send him an e-mail? He's a cutie.

A Wannabe Hipster's May Week

What even is May Week? Is that, like, a thing?

Well, yes, it is most definitely a thing and it can be probably be interpreted in two manners by the general public. Let me demonstrate:

Model A (aka the Nerd Model):

May Week is the time of the year when hard-working Cambridge students drag their pale, exam-wartened skin out of their little bookish hovels, where they have been living in retreat amongst Shakespeare and Quantum Mechanics, and finally attempt the unthinkable: partying. Pathetically enough, the poor little socially inept studymonkeys are so embroiled in odd impractical traditions that this period of festivities takes place in June, not May, and lasts little more than a week (they can’t stomach the party). They’re probably still living in some sort of Druidesque adaptation of the Julian calendar, or, perhaps, they just lose track of time. In either case, they all gather together, travel down rivers on punts and drink Pimms in little suits dreaming of the Knowledge Nirvana.

Model B: (aka the Daily Mail Model):

May Week is the time of year when privileged little rich kids, who have been given all the opportunities they could possibly need in life and were probably spoon-fed Pythagoras by a Ph.D-qualified Belarusian nanny from the age of six months, do what privileged little rich kids do best: go to insanely expensive Balls, squander their brains in the soap of Bacchanalian alcoholic excess and burn 50 pound notes in the face of peasants.

....

Both of these models are, however, ever so slightly exaggerated. Most Cambridge students are actually really quite intelligent (surprisingly enough) and work hard at their exams. Moreover, quite a lot of them do manage to retain functional social skills and participate in society at an acceptable level. Most Cambridge students aren’t actually rich kids. Yes, there are a few. And some of them are outrageous prats. But some of them are kind of nice, actually. It’s often reassuring to realize that people with posh accents have the same hopes, sense of humour and fears, and it’s entertaining to hear them swear in their crisp tones. (Somehow “You’re an absolute cuntish whore!” sounds so much nicer in a posh voice).  In any case, quite a lot of us Cambridge students are dirt poor! We just choose to squander governmental loans on pleasure and YOUTHFULNESS. What a ridiculous thing for a student to do, right? How dare the young indulge in fun? Fun is for the weak!

Anyway, in order to give an insight into a non-stereotypical May Week (well, apart from the fact that lots of money was squandered), I will now proceed to tell of my adventures. And I will describe it DAY BY DAY, just to make it extra-tedious! Enjoy, my dear readers!

Tuesday, 11 June (May Week -3):

First day of freedom, pre-May Week, and the sun has arrived. I met up with my strong, tall Italian friend who says beautiful things, makes good coffee and once danced with me to reggae music in Churchill College library at 3am with a lampshade on his head. He said lots of beautiful things (as to be expected), asked meaningful questions and took me to this wood I never knew existed, where I lay on his lap, stared through the trees at a colourful sunset and realized that everything was glorious. Then I went back to my room, read a little book of poems and lyrics by Leonard Cohen and disconnected myself from the real world to set up a hammock in his throat, vibrating joyously with each line. It was a good beginning.

Wednesday, 12 June (May Week -2): Spectrum #1: Jessie J and the bad Wingman

May Week still hasn’t officially started by this stage, but if you are finished your exams, which most people are, there are quite a lot of parties. I decided to go to the only gay student club night in Cambridge: ‘Spectrum’ in a place called, surprisingly enough, ‘The Place’, where everybody knows everybody else and they play lots of cheesy music: suitably amazing for drunken gymnastics. It is full of groups of happy friends with slightly too sexual dance moves and quite a few hormonal Freshers, who have just discovered the glories of university freedom and try their best to snog a stranger, which, of course, they do. Very often. Very, very often, in fact. But no bother: It’s always fun to discover a particularly passionate homosexual kiss in the back of your standard facebook photos of someone pulling a face and another person imitating Gangnam moves.

On this particular night, I was playing my usual oblivious role: I have very bad gaydar and an almost non-existent sense of flirtation. As a result, I danced happily and spasmodically to terrible music, focusing on nothing but the bliss of my loose limbs. This was very fun. However, a little bit counterproductive to my friendship with A.. My beautiful accomplice had recruited me as her ‘wingman’, which essentially meant that I was supposed to find her a pretty young maid for the smoochin’. I tried my best, but I wasn’t very good, at all. I couldn’t smell the lesbian in the air. Nonetheless, I introduced her to Poppy: a tattooed, black-haired woman with beautiful curves, red lipstick and a very sly smile. The conversation went something like this:

Me: This is Poppy. I hear she’s one of those lesbians.

Poppy: Yeah, I’m not actually gay though. I just like gays.

Me: What, not even for Jessie J?!

Poppy: No, I’m more of a Dita von Teese kind of girl.

Poppy’s ‘hot’ female friend, who looked a bit like Jessie J: I’m gay! This is my fag hag! *sly wink*

Me: Let’s go, A., she doesn’t fancy you, because you don’t look like Jessie J.

It was only afterwards that I appreciated that:

a) It’s a very bad wingman who pulls his friend away from a potential mate

b) I have an obsession with Jessie J

c) I am a mean drunk, and I need to stop telling people they don’t look like Jessie J. It’s very offensive.

Fortunately, the next day I realized my stupidity and apologized to A. We shugged (a hug that also involves a tender leg embrace) and laughed about Jessie J.  It was beautiful.

Thursday, 13 June (May Week -1): The Night of the Cake Robbery

The Rainbow Ball: an event organized every year by the Cambridge University LGBT+ society, which claims to be something like a Ball, but is actually more like a cocktail party in a dark saloon with some live music and lots of finger food and overpriced drinks. And it ends much too early. It’s still pretty fun, though.

I met up with another of my beautiful friends, C., and we slowly drank wine, embracing regularly and talking about the exams. Watching my friends, I had noticed how everybody was slowly losing  their mind and so I just assumed that she had too. C. was a little annoyed at the fact that I had been messaging her regularly asking whether she was having a breakdown. She was actually having a great time. She was doing jigsaws, learning about viruses and smoking marijuana. A pretty good set-up, really.

We arrived at the cocktail party. I danced spasmodically once more, drank too much and retreated to the bathroom, where I sat staring at the walls and thinking sensible Presbyterian thoughts:

‘Things are spinning too much. This is dangerous. You should really be sensible. What are you doing to your body? YOU ARE POLLUTING YOUR PRECIOUS VEINS, YOU DIRTY DRUNKEN SWINE.’

Pushing my Ian Paisley alter-ego to one side, I then went outside to where my friends were smoking. We sat on the pavement and soon friendly strangers rode past on a bicycle and gave us a free bottle of wine. We were almost thrown out of the cocktail party as the bouncer seemed to think C. had been hiding it up her skirt the whole time. An unlikely scenario, given that she had been dancing for quite a while and the wine seemed like it was chilled. Who puts chilled wine against their jingly janglies? That’s just absurd!  

In any case, we soon exacted our revenge. C. spotted a lonesome cake on the table. She looked in her handbag, noticed it was the perfect size for storing the cake and slyly slipped it right in. She cycled home, with great drunken prudence, and managed to keep the cake perfectly intact. Four days later, when I came to her house, I noticed she still hadn’t eaten it. She doesn’t even like cake. She just loved the thrill of the robbery. I guess you can’t steal your cake and eat it too.

I also met a friendly Russian, peed in Jesus College and got hit on by a large, posh lad in black tie who called me ‘a very striking young man’. It was pleasant to hear, but disconcerting in its source.

Friday, 14th June:

On this day we all got UV paint on our faces (I looked like Joker from Batman with my luscious yellow lips) and went to a cheesy school disco. It was kind of hard to wash off and I had fluorescent eyebrows for many days.

Saturday 15th June: The day I hoovered and discussed Quenza

My poet friend, Z., came around for a few drinks. We sat on the ‘mild humps’ of Churchill College’s grassy plains and talked about life and THINGS. It was beautiful. We invented a new word: Quenza -- rape of the mind, but not the body. When you have theoretically consensual sex i.e. you do not resist physically, but your mind is protesting against it and afterwards you feel dirty and betrayed.

After discussing the tragic cases of  Quenza we had both lived through, we then retreated to my bedroom, where we lit candles and incense against college regulations, talked in more hippy tones and then decided to vacuum at 2 am. We took a hoover each, played motown as loud as we possibly could and vaccuumed to the Gods. May Week: the only time when you can make noise in Cambridge and no one gives a jolly roger. Not even the studious international engineers who you only see in fresher’s week and graduation. Even they are probably shit-faced behind the bike sheds.

Sunday 16th  June: Suicide Sunday

This day is the biggest drinking day in Cambridge, where everybody is expected to celebrate the fact that none of their friends or acquaintances has committed suicide due to the stress of exams. There are lots of garden parties with watered down drinks and weird jelly wrestling.  I decided to rebel against the system and sleep all day, occasionally stretching like a cat and eating nibbles on all fours. Miaoooooow, bitches, miaoooow.

Wednesday 19th June: Garden Party and Spectrum #2

I skipped a few days, but basically they only consisted of me discussing life, veganism and suffering with my brother, going to the Russian Embassy for a visa, enjoyably watching bad television and eating cashew nuts with an ex-flame and getting really frustrated at Londoners and their busy lives.

On this day, I watched my beautiful friend, C. sing amazingly (as always), wrote a poem about humidity (I love that sweaty pits can be an inspiration for creativity), retreated to my room to sit in the dark for a few hours and then later went back to the gay club night, where we all danced like hamsters on crack. There are many photos of me looking like a wriggling Kafkaesque beetle on a sofa. I hope I washed afterwards. I bet people had intercourse on those cushions.

Thursday 20th June: The Summer Solstice is Coming!

I went to the Erasmus Society Garden Party, which basically consisted of sitting under a marquee on a horribly rainy day, stealing the left-over free drinks, chatting shite to Northern Irish people and eating strawberries. It was pretty amazing.

I spent the rest of the day on Russian facebook (vkontakte), talking to gays in Krasnodar and using them as an excuse to improve my Russian and do ‘dissertation research’ all at once. Suddenly I realized it was 3am and the sun was about to rise on the longest day of the year. I decided that I really ought to wake up my hippiest friend, K.. She wouldn’t want to miss out on a druid sunrise.

I knocked frantically on her door.  She woke up disorientated and unable to find the light. Nonetheless, within a few seconds she was enthusiastically bounding downstairs to watch the sunrise. She likes hippy stuff. It makes her tingle. It makes me tingle, too. We are a beautiful match.

We sat on the mild humps of Churchill, talked about life and parents and how to live. I was wearing her fake fur hippy coat, which only reached half way down my arms, a dirty bed sheet and obnoxious orange slippers, designed like clogs. I didn’t think I would be seen by anyone. We drank the stolen alcohol. But it was raining, and there was no sun, and no moon.

Nonetheless, we decided it was the perfect time to walk halfway across Cambridge dressed like homeless people. We woke Z. up at 5am, walked into his bedroom, ate some hummus, drank whisky and fell asleep on one pillow, all of us cuddled up like little kittens.

In the morning we awoke to discover Z. had formed stonehenge from books, accurately based on a photo. It was sort of magical. They were good books, too: Burroughs, and Ginsberg, and some wise Indian man. It wasn’t too painful to dissemble. It would have been much worse if he had have made stonehenge out of copies of Mein Kampf and Cilla Black’s autobiography.

I walked home, at midday, dressed like a crackhead. The elderly looked at me with wide eyes: some bemused, some frightened. Then I slept.

Friday 21st June: I don’t even remember. I was probably rocking back and forth in a hungover corner, reading Sylvia Plath, writing bad poetry and hysterically crying into a jar of mustard. Or maybe I was sleeping.

Saturday 22nd June: Ode to the Snail

Sidney Sussex Arts Fesitval: an Arts Festival that wasn’t too bad, but proper expensive. So  I snuck in without paying, instead. The security was awful. And I know a Maths student from Sidney Sussex College who doesn’t even like “art” (“I mean, I kind of get it, but a lot of it’s just all a bit shite, really”), but was willing to be my accomplice.

I attended a lecture on the history of the college (don’t remember a thing), listened to music and got free vegetarian hog roast. I also attended a reading competition, where I sat alone and absorbed lots of voices taking sonnets and prose awfully seriously, including a poem about a snail. Some of them were really quite good, though. One of them even had a beautiful deep New England voice with a kind of s-trill which made me felt like I had entered a strange, but pleasant alternate reality. I know it’s silly, but after never having talked to Americans properly for the first 18 years of my life, I still find it hard to believe they actually speak like that. I mean, it’s nice and interesting, but surely, isn’t that just a voice you put on for TV? Maybe I’ll marry an American one day and we’ll live in California and re-enact the plot line of A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood, and I’ll become a cynical British professor, mourning the loss of his lover in the Pacific heat, and everybody will think my accent is strange and I am the one who speaks like he is on TV. Or maybe I’ll end up selling my body on the streets of  Ulaanbaatar, screaming for another fix of Opium and playing chess with my imaginary lovers. Life is full of possibilities.

But I digress. After the Arts festival, we had a end of the year hummus-based get-together of a few good friends. We ate hummus, listened to Chocolate Rain, watched awful Harry Potter fan fiction, discussed the pros and cons of having erotic times with different types of food (Along the lines of: “Custard would be great for sex”, “No, I think I would prefer to lick a tuna sandwich off my lover” etc.) and then decided to improvise a rendition of ‘The Edge of Glory’. A. played the guitar and sang in soft tones, I screeched the high notes and my mathematician did the low notes. It sounded like a beautiful, special, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime car accident.

Sunday 23 June: Can’t remember. Probably more Sylvia Plath and crying in corners.

Monday, 24 June: Fraternal Pole Dancing

May Week had already ended by this stage and most of my friends had tragically left (unfortunately I’ll be moving to Russia next year and they will all graduate without me), but I still could allow myself one more night of fun. After all, I’d soon be going back to rural Northern Ireland, where there’s about as much chance of a good night out as there is of being raped by a Bonobo in Buckinghamshire.

I had to go to London to collect my visa. So I tottered on to the overpriced Cambridge-London train and picked up my visa. Then I sat in a noisy Arab cafe for a while, reading a book about gays in Russia (I felt so subversive. Reading about gays in the midst of people, who come from a culture that ain’t down with that sort of thing. But really, it was a very boring, bourgeois afternoon.) I met up with my two brothers and a man from Tobago. He bought us lots of drinks and showed us a video of a cat performing cunnilingus on a tuna-smeared woman. It was one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever seen. Please, don’t google that. It’s probably not legal. And you will get arrested. And, let’s face it, would you not rather get arrested for something cool, like whistleblowing or protesting in Istanbul, rather than having your name smeared with a reputation for kitty porn? Just sayin’.

In any case, things escalated quickly, and somehow I ended up in a really empty bar on a Monday night, which had two slippery poles on platforms in the middle of the dance floor. I ended up pole-dancing with my brother, a South African and a friendly Italian woman, who later made me salad. Her English wasn’t very good, but she did know the phrase ‘once you go black, you never go back’ and thoroughly agreed with the sentiment of the sentence.

We also got kicked out of another bar, because we decided to read the bouncer’s copy of ‘How to Get Abs in 4 Hours’. It was really quite annoying, because we were at least 10 minutes into being buff and bulging with muscles. But he didn’t like us touching his baby.

We walked home singing Minnie Riperton and  then I fell asleep in a spare bed in my brother’s hostel, lost my glasses for about an hour and sat, upset and blind, in reception listening to them discuss bed linen. It was enlightening.

Tuesday: Sleep again. Purrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Wednesday, 26 June: National Yurt Day!

I said goodbye to one of my dearest friends on this day. She gave me a souvenir of a Mongolian yurt within a yurt within a yurt. It came from Kazakhstan and I will cherish it dearly. I’ve always wanted a yurt (mainly so I can keep saying the word: yurt, yurt, yurt, yurt, hurdy gurdy it’s a yurty) and I will miss her deeply.

I also packed frantically, sending everything hope in boxes and suitcases in the post, and trying my best to keep myself so busy that I wouldn’t grow too nostalgic about leaving Cambridge, after 2 beautiful years. I only cried once: when I handed over my bike to my Italian friend. I’d been through difficulties with my bike, but I loved him nonetheless. It was like that scene in the film Matilda, where the mother signs over her daughter to another women:

I never did understand you, bike, but maybe he’ll love you the way I never could. Take care. Farewell. Go forth and multiply!

Cheesy conclusion:

So, there ya go. My expensive May Week, which, despite involving absolutely no balls or expensive parties, drained me of all my cash and has left me destitute at my parents’ house: reading books, drinking coffee and dreaming of the future. It has been a beautiful, challenging year, and I am glad it ended in such a pleasant way. Next year, after exams, things will probably be much more boring: I’ll go to the zoo by myself, stare at some lemurs indulging in Quenza and eat hummus, thinking of all the Cambridge beauties I miss. Maybe I’ll steal a cake, too.