Grumpy Goes to Russia (pt. 2)
By Yvonne Zipter

The cranky traveler you met in part 1 of this piece was ultimately delivered into a state of bliss. This was my first trip abroad, and like McDonald's, I was lovin' it: if I say I was enchanted with the experience, I risk understatement.

But fortunately, being under this spell did not impede my gaydar: I was five for five at guessing the queers at the seminar. Of course, there was little guessing needed about me as I was out to nearly everyone at the get-go: as you may have noticed if you've ever read this column, when it comes to talking about my partner Kathy, I am like a river that cannot be dammed—although I'm guessing I have been damned, as in, "Damn, I wish she'd shut up about her girlfriend already." Don't get your hopes up: it's been nearly seventeen years now, and I still think she's the greatest thing since indoor plumbing.

I suspected I was identifiable to the natives as well—with whom I seldom talked, owing to the fact that my vocabulary was pretty much limited to "thank you," "key," and "potato"—given that I was only one of a few people in all of St. Petersburg wearing a baseball cap. In contrast, I had trouble identifying queer Russians: citywide, for instance, women walk arm in arm together, sometimes even holding hands. It would be nice to think that Russia is practically bursting at the seams with lesbians, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case.

I came to that conclusion when, after not connecting with the queer professor I'd hoped to interview about gay Russia, I decided I'd see what one of the young women in the office knew about gay life in St. Petersburg. I mean, the mayor's not gay, but he knows where the gay neighborhoods are, right? So even if she wasn't queer herself, she must have an inkling about gay culture in her city. So there we were, Svetlana and I and some others, on the subway car during rush hour, on the way back from our Baltika Brewery tour. "So what's gay culture like here?" I shouted conversationally over the noise of our 35-ton BB rattling around in the tin can of the subway tube. "What?" she shouted conversationally back. "Gay culture," I yelled back in a friendly fashion, thinking, I guess, that with fewer words to hear, she might hear me. "What?" she bellowed back. "Gay people," I roared. "HOMOSEXUALS." And then it occurred to me that it was a bit odd to be screaming that word on a crowded train in a foreign country. But I knew that at last she'd heard me, because the right side of her upper lip lifted into an unmistakable sneer of disgust. Given that, it was not a surprise to discover that she did not, unlike the mayor of Chicago, know a great deal about gay people. Yet despite her clear preference for a het'rosexual lifestyle, she remained quite friendly toward me. Maybe she didn't know that "Kathy" is a woman's name?

Because I never got around to going with my friend Nathan to the gay leather bar across the Griboyedev Canal—where they discourage women from entering by charging them five times more than men—I think I remained invisible as a lesbian not only to Svetlana but to all of greater St. Petersburg, minus my seminar colleagues—this in spite of my baseball cap and despite wearing comfy shorts instead of painted-on stretchy pants and Birks instead of shoes with four-inch heels and pointy elf-curled toes like all the Russian women. But being there, in my English-language bubble, away from work constraints and everyone who knows me, it was like being in suspended animation anyway, so I hardly noticed that no one noticed. Or maybe I didn't notice because whenever I dropped off my key before leaving the inn, pretty copper-haired Nadya behind the desk smiled at me shyly. Of course, even if I were to forget about Kathy and the fact that I'm twice Nadya's age, "Good day, potato, you are key—thank you" wouldn't have been much of a come-on. Given that my pick-up lines were never that well-honed here in the States, it looks like Kathy's stuck with me now that I'm back. To paraphrase Ogden Nash, "Vodka's a blast, but I'm painfully steadfast."

^ back to top