One day I understood that I simply had to see her. This was about ten years ago. There was a big Rembrandt retrospective at the Hermitage so I decided to go to St. Petersburg. I called her early one morning and asked her to come outside. It was like the day we met all over again.
I remember that we were walking somewhere and then we realized we were lost. Something magic was in the air and I think we both understood that it was happening to us again. In the evening, she came to the train station to send me off to Moscow. While we were talking on the platform, I understood she also regretted the way things stood, that we weren’t living together when we should have been. But she was a married woman and she didn’t expect or ask anything of me.
OLGA
By the time Ira got in touch with me again, I was already well aware that my marriage was meaningless. When we saw each other, it became completely clear to me that I no longer wanted this weird life. But I didn’t want to tell Ira that I was getting a divorce. I thought that I needed to get out of that relationship before starting a new one. After I finalized my divorce, I called her and told her. A few months later, we saw each other again.
IRINA
I was afraid that I’d stop drawing because she’d take over and I’d lose my mind. The opposite happened: I had an artistic breakthrough. It was as though all of the pieces of the puzzle had come together and now everything was finally in the right place.
We couldn’t live together for a long time because our children went to school in different cities and we had to split our time. Every two or three weeks, we would travel between Moscow and St. Petersburg. Daniel graduated from high school in Moscow and enrolled in a university in St. Petersburg in 2010, and then we were finally able to start living together.
OLGA
Today, we live in St. Petersburg with my daughter, Christina. Daniel lives in the dorms but comes over all the time. Our children get along very well, they consider themselves brother and sister, and they constantly come to each other’s defense if one of them is arguing with us.
IRINA
Children need to grow up in a loving environment. It’s a shame that our children missed out on so much of it. We’d gone about our lives idiotically. But we are very happy that we were able to find the strength and take the chance to try again.
OLGA
You’re not always prepared for so much feeling. It’s overwhelming. Everyone dreams of love. Everyone dreams of meeting their soul mate. But when it comes, it can be hard to deal with such a huge emotion.
IRINA
Everything that makes it clear that we need to leave this country already happened a long time ago. It’s scary to walk down the street. The aggression is through the roof. On June 29, we went to an officially sanctioned gay pride event on the Field of Mars [a large park in the center of St. Petersburg] and ended up in a police transport van. We were pelted with rocks. One hit me in the stomach.
OLGA
Ira told me, “Don’t look down at your feet. Look into the sky. That way, you can see where the rocks are going.”
IRINA
What country are we living in and in what year, when priests bless half-drunk nationalists that pelt people with rocks while the police look on and then load us into police cars? People break bottles on us. We got cut and covered ourselves with our pride posters. When we got out of the police station and got on the subway, I had the clear sensation that we are aliens here.
OLGA
We need to protest and fight, but there is no sense that it will make anything better. At the same time, we know that we only have one life to live and we want to live it in peace, to walk down the street, be happy, and not be afraid that a rock is going to come flying at us.
OLEG DUSAEV & DMITRIY STEPANOV
“I think we’ve killed our mothers.”
When we meet, Oleg pulls out a novel by journalist Artur Solomonov, which he says caused a fair share of controversy when published earlier this year in Russia. Its protagonist is an actor who falls in love with another actor. None of the major publishing houses would publish it. A small publisher finally picked it up, releasing the book with a disclaimer on the back cover: “This work does not contain homosexual propaganda and is not meant to offend people of faith.” Despite—or perhaps thanks to—the controversy, Oleg says the book is selling well.
Oleg Dusaev, 33, and Dmitriy Stepanov, 30, met on an online dating site six years ago and have been together ever since. In the fall of 2013, they flew to New York to visit friends and to get away from a stressful month in Moscow, in which Oleg, an executive producer at a major TV news network, had lost his job contract after coming out on Facebook. While in New York they also took the opportunity to rent tuxedos and stop by New York City Hall to get married. The news spread quickly after they and their friends posted photos to Facebook, causing some commotion with their respective families back in Russia.
DMITRIY
My mother was crying on the phone. She said it was very strange; she was confused, disoriented, basically she didn’t know how to react. She had a stroke two years ago, so I was really worried. Basically my Mom is still trying to understand our relationship. She’s a very educated woman, but she has very traditional values.
OLEG
My mother was at home when she found out, but then the next day when she was at work they had to call an ambulance for her: apparently, she had a minor stroke. I feel like we’ve killed our mothers. We know it’s their problem, but we’re still worried. I understand that my mother loves me a lot, but she thinks of me as somebody with some kind of sickness, like Down syndrome. Obviously I wish she loved me differently. Dima’s family is very tight knit: he has a sister, a father. But my mother and I, it’s just us, she’s all alone. I was scared she was going to die in her sleep. So they’ve given us a very nice wedding gift.
DMITRIY
My mother loves me the way I am, but she still thinks we should both get married to women, and have children. That people like us—smart, educated—should be raising children. She has this inner conflict, she knows it’s impossible, but she still wants us to have wives. My father doesn’t know yet, I’m scared of how he’s going to react. It’s all a little crazy right now.
OLEG
But my mother has always been difficult. She still won’t talk to Dima. When he and I first got an apartment together, it was really hard for her. Mom and I lived together then, and when I moved out she acted like I was her husband leaving her, and leaving her for a man no less! It was very stressful; I basically became a wreck, I was having all kinds of panic attacks. Dima took care of me, and it worked out in some crazy way. I was having all of these problems, and Dima is a psychologist. Of course he didn’t treat me himself, but he referred me to good therapists. Three of them.
DIMITRIY
I scared Oleg when I first told him that I really liked him. It was just a few weeks after we met, and I was pretty scared of what he would think. I thought he would freak out, that it could end everything. But somehow I knew I loved him already, so then a few weeks after that first conversation, we were at this members-only restaurant, one of these places where journalists and artists hang out, and this time I told him that I loved him. I could tell I scared him, but a little less this time. A few days later he told me he loved me too.