“See that cute woman over there dancing?” Ksiusha whispered in my ear, “I slept with her. She’s really fun to make out with.” Later, in the middle of the dance floor, I saw the woman throw her arms thrown around Ksiusha’s neck, as their mouths joined in a great passionate flow.
Arkady, a friend of Ksiusha’s, sat at a table by himself most of the night, staring into oblivion. Once in a while he got up and came over to us to say hi. Ksiusha didn’t invite him to join us. Arkady was tall and lanky, with stringy hair and a scruffy beard. Despite Ksiusha’s rebuff, I noticed an easy affection among gays and lesbians, unlike the strict separatism in San Francisco. Arkady’s blue eyes, slightly effeminate intonation and deep, breathy voice were sexy. He didn’t seem to be having any luck meeting anyone.
A woman in a long dress came around to check me out a few times. I dodged her because she wasn’t my type. I must have seemed odd to her in my thick purple Patagonia sweater, jeans, and heavy hiking boots, which I was wearing because of the Moscow snow. With her typical spontaneity, Ksiusha had left me no time to get on the metro, go to where I was staying, and change into more disco-appropriate clothes.
Dagmar, a German woman who had been lovers with Ksiusha months earlier, swaggered over to me and asked where Ksiusha was. She said something in Russian about Ksiusha being upset with her. I pointed to our friend making out on the dance floor. She went up to her, said something, and then they went off together.
A while later I was ready to leave. I found Ksiusha at the three-friends’ table, the ones who danced with us at the beginning, and asked if we could go now. She completely ignored me, poured herself a vodka, and downed it. “Just a few minutes, Sonja,” she said curtly, and then disappeared again.
I went looking for Arkady. I marched around in my big boots like an uptight foreigner while Ksiusha was laughing and having fun on the dance floor. She came back to the table and collected her things as if to leave then she started kissing the two women sitting there. I started talking to Anya, the woman I had danced with earlier. I never found out if she was bi or a lesbian or what, but I didn’t hesitate to tell her I was a lesbianka when she asked. Anya said she came to the disco every night it was open. Did she? I wondered. Then again, she seemed so familiar with everyone, and why would she lie? Ksiusha, who thought Anya was cute, now began inserting herself into the conversation and kissing her. Obviously drunk, Ksiusha ruffled her hair with a goofy grin on her face and finally headed downstairs to the coat check, then realized Arkady had her ticket, which meant another delay.
I found Arkady in a corner making out with a blond guy. My interruption about the coat check startled them. The blond guy must have thought I was some American dyke maniac in boots. Arkady came with me, leaving the guy in the corner after a few whispered words. In the cab going home to Ksiusha’s, Arkady kept saying in his sexy voice, “If I had only had a few more minutes, I could have convinced him.”
Taking the toilety-stink trap elevator to the fifth floor of Ksiusha’s building, I tried not to breathe. It was such a relief to enter her cozy apartment. Clean sheets were awaiting us. I would sleep with Ksiusha and Arkady would sleep on the floor on some pillows. Sleeping in the same bed was not sexual in Russia; it was pretty common. Arkady whined good-naturedly to me, “I’ll never forgive you for what you did.”
Ksiusha, glasses off and hair messy, was deep under the covers. As I joined her she looked up at me, smiling, and kissed me goodnight. I felt happy to be in a heavenly bed at last.
The next morning Arkady called his wife to tell her he was coming home.
“What does she say about your lifestyle?” I asked. I didn’t know he was married.
“She’s very religious,” he said, deadpan, “A saint.”
“She’s a lot older,” Ksiusha said, as if that was an explanation.
Traveling and meeting queers in various settings was fascinating. I resolved that the best way to convey something of what I learned in Russia was to collect interviews without interpretation, unfiltered by my own background and reactions to experiences in Russia, so in 2004 I published Rozovye Flamingo: 10 Sibirskie Interv’yu (Pink Flamingos: Ten Siberian Interviews). While an American audience might have been more interested in a creative nonfiction book about Russian queers, I wanted to present the interviews on their own, as a documentary. To do this, I realized, the book had to be published in Russia, in the Russian language, and with the help of Russian editors—my friends at the dacha, Sveta, Lena and Vitya—so it was.
Siberians: Two Interviews
Even in remote Siberia, people have lived gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered lives and survived.
Krasnoyarsk, a large industrial city of about a million people built around the Yenisey River, a day’s train travel east of Novosibirsk, was closed to foreigners before perestroika because of defense and nuclear-related activity. While the winters could be extremely cold, there were conveniences like indoor heating and well-constructed apartment buildings, and there were beautiful summers to wait for.
My friend Natasha Ivanova, whom I had met in Moscow at Russia’s first gay symposium and film festival in 1991 was hosting my stay in Krasnoyarsk. We stood on the bank of the Yenisey as she pointed out the Pillars on the opposite bank, column-like rock formations over two hundred feet tall. She had sent postcards of them to me in California. More remarkable than the Pillars themselves was standing with Natasha in her Siberian city about a year after I first met her in Moscow.
My interview project interested Natasha, as a TV journalist. She wanted me to meet two women who shared an apartment on the other side of the river. They had lived together as a couple for six years. We took the bus to a very run-down tenement-like cluster of buildings. A huge bulldozer stood idle in front of some closed shops between two buildings. We picked our way through piles of dirt and chunks of concrete along a worn path that led to one of the buildings. We went in and walked up a broad, cold stairwell with stained, pea-green walls.
Natasha knocked on a door. A slight woman with dyed blond hair opened it and smiled. Natasha introduced me to Nadya. The room was neat and clean, but the right side and the corners were piled high with boxes, clothes, and assorted stuff. Space and storage seemed to be at a premium in Russia, especially in the obshchezhitie (dormitory housing) like this. The left wall was lined with a set of bunk beds, and above them shelves with more boxes and more stuff.
“Lusya went to buy us something to drink,” Nadya said. We sat down and began to talk. In the corner by the door, a curtain concealed their small kitchen area. It was hard to believe that two women and two children, who were with a friend during the interview, lived in a space slightly bigger than my bedroom in San Francisco.
Lusya walked in wearing a cap, looking as if she was just coming home from work. I knew she had a factory job. Both women worked in a factory, which was how they managed to get their precious living space.
“I’m a trained nurse,” said Nadya, “but in order to get this place I had to take a job in the factory so we could all live together.” The obshchezhitie was a benefit that came with working at the factory. Russian young people often lived with their families well into middle age because of the housing shortage. Marriage gave one the right to a separate apartment from the state but sometimes a married couple had to wait ten years or more to actually get an apartment. Although there were cases of bribery and privilege, another option was to find a job that included housing, which was what they did.