On the drive, the girls asked me if I was on Facebook. “Of course!” I said, and Nastya handed me her iPhone. “Put your name,” she said, in English—she wanted to friend me. I took her phone, then felt a pang of dread.
If she looked at my Facebook page, she’d see right away that I was married to a woman, as there were numerous of photos of Randi and me, including many from our wedding. Somehow, it hadn’t occurred to me that this might be a problem on the trip, even though I’d known that Russians used Facebook. What to do? I assumed the girls would be shocked, and probably embarrassed, to find that I was gay. And I had to decide within the next 30 seconds what to do about it.
I handed her phone back. “I’ll find you later,” I said. “How do you spell your name?” It made absolutely no sense to do it this way, but Nastya spelled out her last name as I typed it into the memo app on my phone. “OK!” I said, a little too chipper, and put the device back in my pocket. Maybe, I thought, I’ll wait until I’ve left Vladivostok and friend the girls then. Or maybe I’ll just never do it—though the thought made me sad.
Arriving at Vladivostok’s Chinatown, I was surprised to find it was small, dirty, and enclosed by a tall metal fence. The Chinese presence in the city had grown exponentially since I first came here in ’95, when there were hardly any foreigners of any kind. By 2005, Chinese restaurants had opened up all over town, and one Russian woman informed me that most food products in the city were imported from there. “If it weren’t for China, we’d die of hunger!” she’d told me then. Now, ten more years down the road, the Chinese influence on Vladivostok was even more widespread, with vendors, markets, and even tourists visible throughout the city—so this modest little Chinatown felt unexpectedly small.
When we walked into the Dobrynya i Anya restaurant, the staff greeted us warmly, as Lusya and her family were regulars. At the table, Sergei took the lead, ordering a half dozen dishes while the girls and I went to wash our hands. By the time we returned, a bottle wrapped in bright green paper had appeared on the table.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Chinese vodka,” Lusya said. The waitress had put two shot glasses on the table, so Sergei waved her back over. “We need three,” he told her.
“Yes,” I said, gesturing to the girls. “One, two, three. For them.” They giggled.
Lusya tore off the paper and cracked open the bottle. Thus began a series of toasts while waitresses brought out dish after dish of what I can only call Russo-Sino-themed food. There were a couple of garlicky beef dishes, chicken in some kind of tomato paste, a sweet slaw, and a mayo-drenched salad. Eleven-year-old Karina got soup, into which she enthusiastically poured several packets of sugar. And of course, there was the Chinese vodka, which was one of the strangest beverages I’ve ever tasted—sharp and highly alcoholic, with a decidedly petrochemical edge.
We ate and drank until everyone was in a post-hike, postprandial stupor. At this point, the owner—the eponymous Anya, though she was Chinese—came over to see how we had enjoyed our meal. We had a nice little chat, notable primarily because it was fascinating to hear someone speaking Russian with a strong Chinese accent. Then Anya gestured at me and asked Lusya, “So, is this your mother?”
I stared at her, mouth agape. Really? Did I really look old enough to be Lusya’s mother—and, oh god, the grandmother of these children? Lusya, the fixer of all things, leapt in to say, “No, no. She’s only ten years older than I am,” to which Anya replied drily, “Aha. Maybe it’s the haircut. She should get a different haircut.”
I’m not especially vain about my looks, but as we got back in the car I was stewing. “You know,” I said to Lusya, “my friend who I live with”—meaning Randi—“is your age, and occasionally people ask if she’s my daughter. Strangely, it’s usually Asian women who ask.” This was true; when Randi and I had traveled in Thailand, we were asked several times if we were mother and daughter. I was horrified then, and horrified now, but I wanted to believe this was a cultural quirk rather than an accurate assessment of my appearance.
Lusya turned in her seat to look at me. “You live with her because you love each other, right?”
I stared at her. “Um… yes?” I said. Had she really just asked me that, so bluntly, in front of the girls? The conversation quickly turned in another direction, but I felt sure that Lusya knew, was inviting me to share, and didn’t really care one way or another.
Sergei drove us through winding streets, up and up, until we arrived at a scenic overlook. We all piled out of the car, and spread out before us was the whole of Vladivostok, lights twinkling in the night, reflecting in the dark water of the bay. The Golden Bridge was a bright ribbon through the blackness, its V-shaped supports lit by red lights, and its slender cables branching outward like delicate spider webs.
As we walked to the overlook, I caught Lusya’s arm. “When you asked me that, in the car… You understand, yes?”
“Yes,” she said. She told me she’d guessed after our conversation on Russian Island. “And I don’t mind at all. Neither do the girls. At their age no one cares.” Just then, Sergei meandered over and asked what we were talking about. “Girl talk,” she said, cutting him off, and she took my arm and walked me a few steps away.
I told her that people had advised me not to reveal this in Russia, but it was hard to pretend I was single and alone when I’m not. She nodded. Then I said, more as a clarification than a question, “You won’t tell your mama, will you?”
“No,” she said. “She’s a different generation. Why upset her?”
But two days later, I told Valya myself, when the two of us went for a picnic. As we nibbled at deep-fried meat pastries and sipped from the cans of Yarpivo she’d brought, she said gently, “Liza. I was just thinking that while you know everything about us now, I still don’t know anything about you.” She seemed confused, even a little hurt, by my reticence to share. So I told her about my life, including Randi.
Her eyebrows flew up. “Ahhh. I’ve never known anyone like that before.”
“Sure, you have,” I said. “You’ve known one for 20 years, even if you didn’t realize it. People don’t always tell.” She pondered this.
“Well,” she replied, “the main thing is, you’re happy. That’s what counts. But… maybe don’t tell a lot of other people.”
I was relieved that my coming-out-in-Russia process seemed to be going smoothly so far,[6] and this bonding with Valya seemed like the perfect way to end my time in Vladivostok. But, as I was just about to discover, my time here wasn’t destined to end quite yet.
I was in my hotel room, starting to pack, when a maid came by to say I had a phone call at the front desk. This was weird; why would someone call me at the hotel rather than on my cell phone? I walked to the lobby and a desk clerk handed me the receiver. A woman at the other end of the line began speaking very quickly, and though I missed much of what she said, it gradually became clear that she was calling about the package with my new laptop: she was telling me it was undeliverable, and they were sending it back to the United States.
“No, no, no!” I said. “Why?” A string of impossible phrases followed: There’s a problem with the invoice, you can’t receive a package at the hotel, the hotel isn’t licensed to receive commercial goods, the value of the package is over the allowed amount, we’re sending it back, there’s nothing we can doooo…
6
I should note that in general, coming out as a gay woman is far easier than doing so as a man. In Russia—and pretty much everywhere, really, except perhaps ancient Greece—the idea of two women together creates far less panic than that of two men together.