We had our own criminals around, the mafia-controlled scalpers working the Bolshoi Theater. Those guys were scary. It wasn’t like they were going to invite you to the premiere of La Sylphide. It was more like: “Today you’re coming to my house.” There was no point in putting up a fight or arguing. It was better to work things out with them peacefully.
Later, the cruising spot outgrew its usefulness because of the Internet. The first time I turned on a computer was in 1996. Egor bought an extremely expensive Texas Instruments laptop. I still keep it in my garage as an antique. When I was young, my avatar name was Tornado. Now I have another one, more appropriate for my age.
Are we in an open relationship? Well, you couldn’t say that either of us can do anything we want. Egor is a pretty jealous guy, and I only recently learned to forgive. As recently as three years ago, I would lose my mind, install spyware on his computer, and look at all the screenshots. I knew he was cheating on me and it drove me crazy. Then I told myself: “No, your own hands are dirty, you have to forgive,” and I deleted all the spyware. But situations come up. Like I’m going to the dacha and, just in case, I toss a dictaphone under the bed. Then, when I get back, it’s like: “So you just had coffee with him?!”
Now, because of the disease, I take better care of him. I say things like, “I’m going out of town for a week, you should meet someone, just be careful.” The situation is horrible. There’s a terrible epidemic. The official numbers lie. You could catch it even if you protect yourself. That’s my experience. I never had unprotected sex. When I was 14, I got syphilis and learned my lesson. I know a ton of people who also have HIV, even though their online profiles claim they’re clean. These people spread the disease. It’s scary. I’m not that young anymore. I no longer want to run around. I just want peace and quiet. I read. I recently read everything by Ulitskaya [a popular contemporary Russian author], both her plays and her novels. I like her prosody, plus, she’s for democracy.
I had a good friend, a straight guy from Birulievo. Then I went and told him I had HIV and I haven’t heard from him since. I said this to spite my enemies but it turned out it was to spite myself.
I did something very bad to someone once. We were friends, and lovers. He’d come visit me in the country. One day he called and said, “I’m positive.” And I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.” After that, I deleted him from my phone and never got in touch with him again. Six months later, I was diagnosed and decided to tell him. Why had I done that? It was probably the fear of death as an unknown. People want to distance themselves from what they fear.
I came to terms with my diagnosis pretty quickly. You can live with it. It’s not the ’90s when people would literally burn up from this disease. The most important thing is constant monitoring. For ten to fifteen years it should be fine. Sometimes I regret not having gone to Europe when I had the chance. Especially since Russia has been nothing but upsetting recently. On the other hand, you can’t beat fate. When I was 17, I thought that 22 was old age. Now I’m almost 40, but I still feel like a kid. My favorite saying is: “Don’t rush to live.” The older you get, the faster the days go by. When you’re young, a day is as long as a year. Now, I desperately want to run for a little longer.
A version of this interview was originally published in Afisha magazine Issue 339 (February 25, 2013). It was updated by the author and reproduced here by permission of Afisha
OLGA & MARIA
“I saw her and thought, therapy was successful!”
Seven years ago, Olga, a psychotherapist, traveled to the Crimea for an intensive summer seminar in Gestalt therapy. Olga was 27, married, with a 4-year-old daughter. There were over one hundred participants in the seminar. The majority of them were clients who had come for psychotherapy. Among them was 28-year-old Maria, an artist working as a designer in Moscow. She’d been suffering from a case of unrequited love for a woman who wasn’t available. She came to the Crimea in order to turn over a new leaf.
OLGA
I came to the seminar, as Vladimir Ilych Lenin said, to “study, study, and study more.”
I arrived a day early and settled into my hotel room. We were two to a room. I was supposed to have a roommate. The next day, when I was coming back from the beach, I heard the other participants arriving from Moscow. They were very loud as they moved in, and from the next room, I heard this voice.
Because of my background in music—I graduated from the vocal department of the Gnessin Academy of Music—the sound of a person’s voice is important to me. I didn’t see who was talking, I just heard their voice, and it didn’t matter to me whether it was a man or a woman. Everything inside of me turned upside down. I really wanted to see who it was. It turned out that my room shared a balcony with the one next door.
MARIA
It became our meeting spot.
OLGA
That evening, my roommate and I bought some Crimean wine and decided to make friends with our neighbors on the balcony. That was the first time I saw Maria.
MARIA
My first impression of Olga was that she was cold. I was kind of wary around her. I didn’t want to get close to her, especially when I found out that she was married and had a daughter. I’d come to the seminar in order to figure out why I was always choosing unavailable women. I knew that she was not at all what I needed.
OLGA
The next day, when the clients were assigned to their therapists, I found out that Maria was supposed to be my client. I was horrified. I went to the administrator and said that I couldn’t be Maria’s therapist because I was in love with her. She asked me when we had met. I said, “Yesterday.” She then asked whether anything had happened between us. I said, “No, but it will.” She tried to find another option, but she wasn’t able to. So I had to go and fulfill my duties as a therapist.
MARIA
I really liked the way Olga worked. First and foremost, I saw what a strong therapist she is. She really helped me. When we met outside of therapy, she could come up to me and touch my hair, and I saw that she was interested in me. She would sing a song, and it would turn out to be my favorite song. She liked the grey hair on my temples. We were leading two lives: our life as client and therapist, and our relationship outside of therapy.
OLGA
Then the seminar was over. After we had fulfilled all our duties, she came to me.
MARIA
This time, I wasn’t going to pass up what had come to me. I climbed over the barrier onto her part of the balcony, sat down in front of the open door, and started watching her change. I wasn’t hiding my presence: it was more of a provocation.
OLGA
I saw her and thought: “The therapy was successful!” I responded to her call. That was the first night we spent together.
MARIA
We saw each other again when we got back to Moscow. Several days later, when Olga was at her father’s birthday party, she sent me a message that said that she’d told her parents that she was going to get a divorce.
OLGA
My husband and I had a bad relationship. For the previous two years, I’d been attempting to save the marriage for the sake of our daughter. If it weren’t for her, we would have broken up ages ago. We started splitting up our property and I moved my daughter into my parents’ house. I had to work a lot to buy out his share of the apartment. Maria really supported me. But it all took time, and for five years I had two homes: one with Maria and one with my daughter. I couldn’t move my daughter in with me and Maria for a long time because I wanted to be certain that I would be moving her into a stable situation.