Homesickness, fall 2004, Russia, by Anonymous

From MemoryArchive

Who: Anonymous
What: Debauchery and loneliness in Russia
When: Fall 2004
Where: Russia

I spent the fall of my junior year of college in a small Russian city east of Moscow with a family of five: two parents, a brother and sister, and a babushka (grandmother).

The brother, we'll call him Vladimir, was 19. He loved fast cars, American profanity and a pirated copy of Scary Movie 3.

But most of all, he loved women. And in Russia, fast cars, American profanity and a bootleg copy of Scary Movie 3 can apparently get you all the women you could ever want.

He had a girlfriend, we'll call her Olya. I pictured her as a typical young Russian woman: skinny, tall boots with piercing high heels, and a short skirt, regardless of how many degrees below freezing the temperature fell. But he had his own description of her.

“Mai gerl-friend,” Vladimir said in halting English, “she looks laik Breetney Speers”

“Right...” I thought, making a mental note of yet another instance of Artyom worshiping at the altar of American pop culture. Maybe his obsession with it had gone overboard.

But still, he claimed his girlfriend looked like Britney Spears.

I was interested.

The chance to meet her finally came about a month after that conversation. He came into my room one day after I had come home from classes. This was an afternoon ritual: He'd knock, open the door, plop down in a chair and say hello: “Ah, privet!” He'd then shake my hand and start a conversation about how similar my life was to teen sex comedies like American Pie, or about how his favorite movie was 2 Fast, 2 Furious.

But this day he explained to me about a chance to meet the beautiful and talented Olya. They were going out on a coming night. You know, to a cafe or some place. Oh, and her friend, let's call her Natasha, was going to come along too. It would be just a friendly gathering.

But it could be more than that, if I were interested.

“Eftervards vee ken leev yoo end Natasha toogeter,” Artyom said while forming a suggestive little smile. I could tell where this was going.

“Or, yoo, me, kher end Olya ken doo sahmting... toogeter.”

Well, maybe I didn't know exactly where it was going.

This seemed to be a pretty clear invitation to some sort of group-oriented debauchery. All I'd wanted to do was see if Olya really did look like Britney.

Most 20-year-old American guys would be at least a little intrigued by an invitation to a foursome. Especially if the women are probably on the attractive side. Especially if the invitation comes in Russia. The phrase “what happens in Russia stays in Russia” is a useful code, should chances at debauchery beyond your wildest dreams arise.

But I was in a relationship and aware of Russia's sexually transmitted disease epidemic, which wasn't very encouraging. The pure mechanics of a foursome also seemed a little uncomfortable once I thought about it.

So I told Vladimir: “We'll see.”

At first it was hilarious. Vladimir was a parody of the pop culture-obsessed Eastern European. The foursome just added to it. It was such a bizarre, yet exciting proposition, like getting asked to slow-dance for the first time in middle school . My heart raced and I started sweating. I couldn't stand to see Vladimir at dinner, knowing what he wanted me to do.

I frantically called up one of my American friends on the other side of town. Russia had dealt me some weird things, but this one was the weirdest. I couldn't keep it to myself for more than a few minutes.

We talked for about half an hour, both of us in shock, yet reveling in how over the top Vladimir was. Then I hung up.

And then I was on my own, trapped on the eighth floor of a Russian apartment building with this strange family. Never before had I felt that much longing for my real home.

I couldn't talk to anybody else about this thing that had surprised me so much. I was out of phone cards to call home. The Internet cafes were closed. I had read through my stack of letters. And I couldn't escape reality with a book: The only English reading material I had was the aptly titled Lonely Planet guide for Russia that I had read about a dozen times already.

It wasn't the first time I'd felt lonely. There had been other times when I'd picture where I was on the globe and how far away from anything remotely familiar I was. My city was in the middle of the Eurasian landmass, then Moscow was to the east, which meant Sheremetyevo Airport and an escape route. But even beyond that was renegade Belarus, the developing states of Eastern Europe, before finally somewhere past Poland, the rusting Iron Curtain fell away and the good folks in NATO territory were enjoying the Western world. I imagined kissing the floor of my Frankfurt-bound Lufthansa plane when I left, just because it wasn't Russian.

It was more than just a physical space that caused this isolation. I didn't have anybody to fall back on when strange things happened. After I hung up the phone, the only thing there was my host family. Five people who had spent their whole lives either on the other side of the Cold War or piecing together their society after it ended. They enjoyed slurping down canned-fish soup, never wearing seat belts despite vomit-inducing driving, and laughing at me for bringing home the fire extinguisher my program required.

After the Berlin Wall came down, it was said East and West Berliners had a wall in their mind. That's what I had, and it was never more pronounced than it was the day Vladimir made his offer.

Why do we depend so much on the company of others who can understand us and relate to us? We're supposed to be individuals, and the young age of 20 should be one of the best times to go out and seize that individualism. Everybody is supposed to love going abroad, and I was on the trip of my dreams after studying Russian for six years. But the only thing I could think of was how I wanted to return to the recognizable United States of America and not being able to do a thing about it. I felt trapped in Russia and in my own body for not being able to mentally bear the situation.

I decided to sleep on it, going to bed around 8:30 p.m. as I usually did when despair overcame me. The next day in school, I talked to the other American students about it, joking about how I should take up the offer or how ridiculous the whole thing was.

When the laughing stopped, I was alone again with my thoughts. The wall came back to my mind. I dreaded going home to my family. The idea of it killed my appetite and made me sick.

I couldn't believe I was feeling such intense longing, because I always counted on my sense of humor to pull me through somber times. Where was it then? I just felt pathetic, as though one of my core principles had been deflated.

Maybe I hadn't lost all of it, though. In my conversation class, taught by a 5-foot tall, 70-year-old ex-dissident, I decided to bring up what happened. It didn't matter that she was a little old lady. My story was too strange to hold from anyone.

She didn't react negatively. Instead she told me the Russian word for Artyom's proposition, “gruppovukha,” and turned the class into an advice session for me. I could make some excuse to get out of, like that I was engaged. Or I could just go along with it. Like they say, “What happens in Russia stays in Russia.”

It was therapeutic for me. I had taken a moment that had only added to my intense loneliness and used my sense of humor to turn it around. Now everyone knew about it. American college student, old Russian teacher, it didn't matter.

With that I realized I wasn't completely on my own, either physically or mentally. The wall in my mind began to fall away. I still had my quirky family, but at least I had a handful of people in the city that always made sense to me. If I had stayed out of my true character by staying silent, I would have been crushed by the despair of loneliness. But by grasping at whatever sense of humor I had left at that low point, I made it through.

In the end I told Vladimir it wouldn't be a good idea if I went with them. He persisted a little, explaining how Natasha would feel alone if she was the third wheel and how she had to go because she already told her 30-year-old boyfriend she was going out with Olya. Needless to say, he didn't change my mind.

But I still ended up meeting Olya at a family party before I left. She did sort of look like Britney Spears.