Wake Up and Smell the Shit

by Kirsten Koza

  The entrance to the club was unmarked except for two pale men in suits framing the doorway like potted plants. Once past security, we were plunged into darkness. “It’s upstairs,” Katya said. “Watch your step.” I climbed with my hands thrust out in front of me, the faint thump of dance music and reek of cigarette smoke intensifying on each landing. At the top, strobe lights spilled into the hall. A poster on the wall used both Russian and an illustration to get its message across: no photographs.

  Inside, the place was packed. People shouted over the dance music and clinking glasses. After a while, the DJ turned the music down, and Elvina took the stage. She announced that the skating, volleyball, and badminton had all been shut down by the police. The crowd booed. However, she continued, the table tennis competition went unmolested. The crowd cheered. At her invitation, the participants came to the stage and bent to accept their medals. Cast in shades of gold, silver, and bronze, each award was a square piece of glass the size of a drink coaster, decorated by a local artist. The words “Russian Open Games” were etched into the back so faintly that they were almost invisible. A person—a police officer, for example, or an airport official—would have to turn them just so to make out what was engraved there. Everybody applauded, the music was turned up, and a couple hundred LGBT people from Russia and beyond drank and danced the night away in a secret club on the third floor of a building on a back street in Moscow.

  And so it went in the coming days. We would doggedly rise, gather our equipment, and trek to a location circulated last minute by text. Then we would play for fifteen minutes, or five, or not at all because the police would already be there, waiting. In the evenings, we’d reconvene to commiserate and exchange information. During the nights the organizers worked their contacts, looking for new locations that might allow us in.

  By the fourth day of the Games, not a single event had been spared a visit by the authorities. When the basketball tournament was interrupted by a smoke bomb hurled onto the court during a match, judging by the speed at which the police showed up, many felt it likely that they’d been behind the attack. That evening, realizing that they’d lost control of the situation, Konstantin and Elvina told us that they could no longer guarantee our safety. If any of us wanted to leave, they said, they would understand. No one fled, but every one of us knew that we were no longer there for the sport.

  I was registered to compete in the indoor soccer tournament. I’d signed onto Team Paris along with French activists I’d met the previous summer. It was a bright morning the day of our competition—clear and filled with birdsong. At the venue, Elvina was in a huddle with the other organizers, so my team and I hung back. Where the sun broke through the tangles of bare tree branches, it warmed our skin. As we waited, other soccer players began to emerge from behind parked cars. “Has anyone seen police?” someone asked. None of us had, and none of us could believe it.

  Suddenly, Elvina broke away from her group. “Hurry!” she urged. “Let’s get started!”

  Inside, we dashed into the change rooms and hastily stripped down, shedding parkas and boots and jeans to pull on shorts and tennis shoes.

  “Is there a bathroom in here?” someone asked. “Yes, but no toilet paper,” came the reply. A third person called out, “Front pocket!” offering the private stash from her gym bag.

  Out on the court, soccer players warmed up by volleying balls off the walls, firing shots at their goalies, and running wind sprints up and down the sides of the gym. Every time the rubber made contact with cement or the floor or flesh, it produced a familiar and satisfying crack. The space filled with shouting and sweat. I watched from the door, but only for a minute before I leapt out into the fray to play with my friends.

  Someone had a camera on a tripod. Behind the goalie crease, they were filming a group of people in formal dress. When I approached, Elvina introduced me, a mischievous look on her face. “This is Edith Schippers, the Dutch Minister of Health and Sport. The police won’t visit while she’s here.” I thanked the Minister, shook her hand, and bounded back onto the pitch.

  Minister Schippers stayed as long as she could—long enough for two matches to play out—but her duties demanded she be elsewhere. The door to the gym had barely shut behind her before it was flung open again. Burly men in plain clothes followed by uniformed cops flooded in, shouting. Several of the Russian-speakers including Elvina advanced on them, shouting back. Katya held her press identification in front of her like a shield and demanded answers. Several people had pulled out cameras and phones and were recording the altercation. I got close enough to show solidarity, but no closer.

  “O.K., come outside everybody,” Elvina said, and everybody groaned. People complained in Swedish and English and French. Cold and grumbling, we filed out into the parking lot. Those with cameras documented the incident, pointing their lenses at the police and the vans in the yard. Some of us gave interviews. The police stood by, studying our faces.

  “I’m going back to the Bureau. I’ll text you later,” Katya said. While she was at her desk writing the report—one of the few to appear in the Moscow press during the Games—we walked to a nearby McDonald’s to take advantage of their wi-fi and warmth. It was more than an hour before the police declared the gym “safe” and allowed us to return.

  After a few improvised changes to the schedule, the tournament resumed, but I was exhausted from standing around in the cold in my soccer shorts. Unable to match the stamina of my younger teammates, I watched from the sidelines.

  My Games were over, but the truth was, I’d seen enough of Moscow.

  Keph Senett is a Canadian writer and activist whose passions for travel and soccer have led her to play the beautiful game on four continents. She writes about human rights, LGBT and gender, soccer, and her own folly. Keph spends her free time trying to figure out how to qualify for a soccer squad in Asia, Australia, or Antarctica.

  DAWN MATHESON

  The Big Forehead of Newfoundland

  Screech!

  THERE ARE SO MANY DEVILISH LITTLE THOUGHTS THAT PERSIST IN OUR minds, aren’t there? Most anyone I’ve known who said they don’t have dirty thoughts—never fantasized their coworker naked, never pictured pushing their neighbor off the roof, or imagined crushing a frog with their foot—have ended up acting on these things. That’s a far more dangerous mind.

  My one friend who said she would never think a sexual thought about another man while married was the first to have a raunchy affair. Me, I can’t stop these thoughts and I’m glad; they keep me, my coworkers, frogs everywhere, safe.

  They say that traveling with someone can seal or end a relationship—at the very least, make strangers intimate, desired or not.

  Take this example. I once went traveling with a man I’d just met on a yoga ashram in the States to his small cove town in Newfoundland. I certainly didn’t fantasize an affair with “Gerard”; we were seva (selfless service) buddies, having bonded while cleaning toilets as part of a spiritual cleanse. This guy was doing his masters in Jungian psychology, which intrigued me. Plus, who says “no” to travel with strangers? It’s usually far more successful than holidaying with one’s family. It’s about the expectations. Plus, we all know that the best way to see a place is from the inside, staying in the homes of those who live there.

  Within 15 minutes of my arrival, Gerard began to drive me mad—that nasal voice advising me through thin lips that I had father issues. His insisting that my dreams of the previous night were cause for my morning moods. And that quiet request he made to his childhood friends to be called Gerard instead of Ger-bear.

  All that superciliousness (well, that’s how I saw it) came from a shiny bulbous forehead I hadn’t noticed during early morning yoga on the ashram. Now it was all I could see.

  Naturally, I imagined an ice pick cracking it open. Pop! That arrogance released like a green cloud into the salty Atlantic. Carefully placed dead center where the skull bones meet, a light tap on the handle
and CRACK! What immense relief it provided, and, hey, no harm done.

  I filled my days with this perfect image while taking photos at Signal Hill, bird watching at shore, stepping over fish guts down at the dock. It made for a very tolerable week’s vacation.

  With his big head out of the way, I was able to notice that Newfoundlanders do indeed eat a lot of fish, drink lots, and say words funny like “hoik” for hike (which I was forever out on in order to be alone with my ice-pick revery). The wind really is so strong that you can safely lean at a 45-degree angle into a strong gust when standing at sea on a cliff edge—making it very difficult to push someone off. Most men on The Rock marry by twenty and nearly all sport a moustache, or so it seemed. Red-cheeked neighbors do sit at kitchen tables in unlocked homes, laugh and drink whiskey over lunch.

  Our hostess, Gerard’s aunt, the only one in the house still employed, worked at the Sears catalogue outlet store. She smoked upon rising, served black coffee with squinting, smiling eyes, fluffed the best pillow in the house just for me, and whipped up variations of fish three times a day during my four-day visit. I was given no end of gifts, in spite of the family’s minimal income: a large ceramic lobster, a mini-wicker lighthouse, even a locket. Inside was a picture of this near-stranger lady and her husband. Lovers have never thought to give me such an intimate gift.

  Thank God it was in Newfoundland where all those airplanes were grounded on September 11. More than 6,000 people were promptly screeched-in, destined to down whiskey and kiss cod at kitchen tables until the airspace reopened.

  With such kindness, I had twinges of guilt over my head-cracking fantasies of their Newfie nephew. I had tried to convince myself that I was being generous, thinking the thoughts on behalf of the whole fishing community. Taking the hit for the team. What the aunts and uncles must have thought of their large-headed boy, the picture he carried around of his guru, his arrogant moustache-less goatee! He didn’t even drink whiskey; he toted his own chai.

  Gerry hadn’t just “gone away,” he went “way away.”

  My fantasy reigned supreme until the very last moment, when it was smashed to smithereens. At the airport in St. John’s, the kind auntie and leathery uncle couldn’t stop the tears. They begged Ger-bear to write, phone home, and return soon. How they loved their boy!

  Then the aunt did the unthinkable. She kissed Gerard on the forehead.

  Dawn Matheson is a traveler, writer, and multimedia story producer from Guelph, Canada. She’s told audio stories on CBC Radio, video stories on gallery walls and in outdoor installations across Canada, plus written travel tales for numerous national publications. Find her ramblings at thiswasnow.com

  SARAH ENELOW

  A Real Piece of Americana

  What’s black-black?

  I STOOD ALONE AT THE BAR AT DOUG & MARTY’S, A SMALL EXPAT CLUB in Moscow. Red lights were flashing, and “Back That Ass Up” was playing five years too late, or two vodkas too early. My friend Jane was grinding on the dance floor with a cute Russian guy she’d just met.

  At the bar I tried to make eye contact with a guy—any guy—but it wasn’t working. Jane motioned for me to come dance with her, but I didn’t feel like being a third wheel. I smiled and waved, stayed at the bar, and spent the next half-hour fidgeting with my massive curly hair, trying to smooth it out, tuck in the flyaway frizz, and pull it back into an inconspicuous bun, over and over again. I wiped some condensation off my cocktail glass and used it to “gel” some curls behind my ears, so they wouldn’t look like sideburns. I’d been told that I looked like a Hasidic boy with payot, and Jane seemed to agree.

  Three hours earlier, Jane and I were at home in our warm, Soviet-block-style apartment, getting ready to go out. I was in my room, surveying my three pairs of jeans. I picked my favorite dark pair to wear over my wool tights (it was still zero degrees Fahrenheit in March), and then I put on my standby red tank top and black cardigan. Having been raised in Central Texas, I’d never worn wool tights under my jeans before.

  I peered into Jane’s room next door. She wore a sparkly gold top that flaunted her breasts, between which a silver necklace had been swallowed up. Her jeans were vacuum-sealed onto her body and her dirty-blond hair was silky smooth. She leaned into her mirror, expertly applying foundation to her blemish-free face.

  “Oh my God, is that what you’re wearing?” Jane asked with pleading eyes.

  “Yeah...why?”

  “Those pants are too big, you look like a stick.”

  “Do I?” I asked, twisting around to check out my own butt.

  “Very heroin chic.”

  Jane started on her eyeliner, and I knew that in her own sweet way, she was just trying to help me. She wanted me on the dance floor too, with my own date. Jane was my only real friend in Moscow, and I was hers. We moved there together for an internship (a semester of administrative work for an orchestra), and neither of us was good at speaking Russian. We relied heavily on each other. I’d try to translate labels for her at the grocery store, and she’d share her DVDs, all thankfully undubbed in their original English. I’d locate a decent English-language bookstore, and she’d make me laugh when gusts of arctic wind knocked me over.

  “Forget your pants, we need to finally do something about your hair,” Jane added.

  “Like what?” I asked, my muscles tensing as I leaned against the doorframe.

  “Like straighten it. Have you ever done that?”

  “Yes, it was horrible. It looked like a Halloween wig for a witch’s costume.”

  “Well, it looks like a rat’s nest the way it is. Your choice.”

  “Ooh, I have a choice!”

  Yes, my hair was unruly sometimes. It was very curly, thick, dark brown, and it looked different every single day. Humidity turned it into a full-on afro, but not a cute symmetrical one that had been styled appropriately. Dry air turned it into a frizzy “rat’s nest.” Rain and snow weren’t good either.

  “Jane, I’m doing the best I can. I’ve got ten pounds of hair product in there—if you lit a match, my head would burst into flames.”

  “Well, it’s not working.”

  “I can’t actually change my hair; I can only try to control it. You know my mother’s black, and black hair is totally different from hair like yours.”

  “I’ve never even seen your mother.”

  I went into my room and pulled out a photo of my parents. My mother sat with regal posture on a park bench next to my father, who’s white with a mustache and a gentle smile. Mom had what my father called a “cream in your coffee” complexion and very short black hair, a broad nose, a strong jaw line, and the cheekbones of a queen.

  “She’s not even really black. Get over it and fix your hair,” Jane said, handing the photo back to me.

  “What?”

  “She’s not even, like, black-black.”

  “What’s black-black?”

  “You know.”

  “Well, her whole family is black, even if they’re not black enough to impress you.”

  Jane shrugged and went to her closet to find her high-heeled boots. I continued to stand in the doorway and thought back on other people’s reactions to my mother’s appearance. Some people didn’t realize she was black, because in truth, she had an exotic face—they thought maybe she was Cherokee or Mexican or whatever came to mind. People’s reactions to my appearance varied too. Many black people recognized my roots, but others guessed that I was Puerto Rican, Jamaican, or even Egyptian, depending on how good my tan was at the time. Spanish people guessed Spanish, Jewish people guessed Jewish, and so on. When someone asked my mother that blunt, recurring question “What are you?” she once said, “I’m a real piece of Americana.”

  My mother didn’t talk much about her past, but slowly over the years, I learned enough to figure out where I came from. In 1939 my mother was born in Lexington, Mississippi, which was a dangerous, segregated community. To escape, her family moved up to Detroit d
uring the Great Migration, where my grandfather found work on a Chrysler assembly line. That couldn’t have been easy, and I was proud to have such determination in my lineage.

  I wandered back into my bedroom and flopped onto my bed, to think about how my rat’s nest was chasing all the Russian men away. The fact that no one in Moscow shared my hair type certainly exacerbated my insecurities. In three months, I’d only seen two people of color: a black woman attending a symphony orchestra concert and a black man dressed as a piece of chocolate, passing out flyers for a nearby candy shop. On top of that, it was very popular for Russian women to dye their hair blond or red. It appeared that Anglo Saxon hair was attractive and black hair was not.

  The following Friday night, Jane and I were getting ready to go out again. So I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and made a decision. Instead of trying to force my hair into submission with all of my “damaged hair” products, gallons of which I brought with me from the U.S., I would just wear it down and leave it alone. I wanted to make peace with my asymmetry, coarse frizz, and errant baby hairs. Jane didn’t say anything, maybe because she’d given up, maybe because it looked better than the previous weekend, or maybe because I’d finally taken a crucial step toward being myself.

  Jane and I went to a local bar this time. There was a small dance floor in the middle and a handful of cream-colored tables under green lights along the edge of the room. Jane and I stripped off our bulky winter coats and ordered a plate of pickled vegetables with two shots of vodka.

  Two Russian guys at another table saw us unaccompanied and came over. Slava introduced himself in broken English, along with his friend, who didn’t say a word, and they sat down and ordered some more vodka. Slava was a 30-something journalist for a local paper, covering human-interest stories, something about bicycles, and after some time, I realized that Slava was talking to me. He looked at Jane every now and then, but he was mostly checking me out. And despite my urges, I hadn’t been fidgeting with my hair, or trying to fix it, all night.