This is Like a Bad Comedy

Sometime toward the end of my first year in Uzbekistan, I went to pick up a female American friend, let's call her Henrietta, from her hairdresser before we went out to dinner and for drinks. Henrietta told me after we left the beauty salon that her hairdresser, Alexei, was gay. I actually hadn't taken notice.

I had already been in the country for so long and had given up on figuring Uzbekistan out in this respect. I hadn't had sex in all that time, tried not to think about it, resigned myself to never imagining that I would ever have it. I even suppose my faculties, such as "gaydar" were no longer functioning properly. There was nothing particuarly gay about Alexei. He just looked like an ordinary, depressed Russian guy. Didn't seem particularly friendly. Didn't look my way when I came to pick up Henrietta and sat and read a magazine in the waiting area.

I was actually quite amazed that there was another gay person in Uzbekistan. I had given up looking, though I cannot say I did so very aggressively, since I was much too scared. I don't know why I never suspected it, but as I talked with some other female expatriate friends, they mentioned that they also had gay hairdressers. Amazing that this stereotype of gay hairdressers seemed to cross cultures, almost like a bad comedy. Why had I not thought of this before?



My expatriate friends, much more world-travelled than I wondered how I could not go for the obvious. Is it so unusual to assume that a hairdresser is gay, they asked me. Furthermore, they had very strong Russian language skills, were able to have real dishy conversations with their hairdressers, much like they would in America. And, apparently, Alexei had asked Henrietta about her handsome friend -- meaning me. Was I Henrietta's boyfriend? "No," she told him, "he's just a friend," protecting my cover -- it was the unwritten code in Uzbekistan that one never pull a fellow expatriate out of the closet before the locals - the consequences could be ugly.

So, if I was to make contact with a gay person, I decided then and there that I should probably start going to more expensive places to get my hair cut, rather than the small holes in the wall, where ancient uzbek men ran a razor through my hair leaving me with something akin to a military buzz cut. So, I went to Alexei, even though he really only does women's hair. He seemed to be making an exception for me -- much to the chagrin of the manager of the salon. It also struck me, in my very basic Russian that he was inviting me to his house for dinner. I didn’t particularly care for this Alexei, he wasn't particularly attractive, had a grim demeanor, and I couldn't imagine what on earth we might have in common, but it made me happy to know that I wasn’t the only gay person in Tashkent and I did need to talk to someone.  ¶ 3:52 AM