Uzbekistan Blues
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Parts of Your Neighborhood You've Never Seen
I was always told that men don't wear shorts in Uzbekistan and that it was probably best if I only wore them in the house or for sports, but never out on the street. I was given no explanation for this. I simply assumed before arriving in the country that it was because of the religion or the conservative culture. But actually, what I much later found out was that it was what gay men wore. Boys could get away with it, but not grown men. So naturally, fearing that I should be discovered as a detested shorts-wearer, I did not wear shorts outside of my house.
It was finally coming to the end of the 40 days that are the hottest days of summer. Still, the heat was barely tolerable. And even in the heat, shorts were nowhere to be seen on men.
This Sunday, I had decided to make an exception. It was too hot to do otherwise. Besides, it wasn't like I was going to be walking in public in them -- I would only wear them to the street to get a taxi to the hotel, an enclave frequented primarily by expatriates, where I would sit by the pool all day. The shorts were not particularly tight, not particularly short, not particularly gay. They were short khakis that were about three inches above the knee.
I caught a taxi out in front of my door. These weren’t real taxis; they were just people driving around, doing their own business and willing to pick up a fare. Again, this was the reality of the Uzbek economy -- doctors, teachers, government workers behind the wheel were looking to make an extra buck. And I never felt that there was any danger in getting into a car with a stranger; everybody did it. I’d even been in cars that were used for transporting livestock, a Kamaz truck that was for transporting soldiers, and even once in an ambulance that supposedly was off-duty.
As usual, the driver detecting my accent, seeing my attire, pegged me as a foreigner. It was likely because of my foreignness that I could be excused for wearing shorts or maybe not. He asked me where I came from. They always asked where you came from. Some American friends I knew would play with this – they would say Canada or New Zealand, places it was likely an Uzbek didn’t know, because being an American meant you were rich and it was then assumed that you would pay a higher fare for your ride. Other Americans got irritated with all the questions. I sometimes got annoyed when they began asking my age and about my marital status and then proceeded to lecture me, or when they asked about how much my salary was, which, was actually quite a common question, rude enough, but common. But, I always tried to not let it get to me, to be respectful, and to answer everything honestly or to say when I felt uncomfortable answering certain questions and why. You never knew who your driver could be. Rarely they were just drivers. They could turn out to be your friend’s father or relative, or brother. They could be someone you may have dealings with at work. They likely could be someone you might run into again. Tashkent, for it's 2-3 million people felt small like a village and everyone was connected or related in some way. Also, the driver was the person behind the wheel -- they had some control, and my rule of thumb was to not piss them off.
I would ask the drivers questions too. I found that that was the most interesting way to avoid having to talk about yourself. Often, you found that they were just happy that someone was ready to listen to them, listen to their problems, listen to them talk about their families or talk about common interests -- music, sports, literature, politics. Some of the drivers I had met were fascinating. One had been a leader of an opposition movement that had long been driven underground. Another had been a published poet. One told me about how his entire family had been killed in a disaster. At the end of each ride, the driver shook my hand as though we had become friends and sometimes they even refused to take my taxi fare.
This driver was quiet and pleasant. He asked me how I was managing with the Tashkent heat. He told me that he thought it was a good idea to wear shorts in the heat. “I would wear shorts too…But...” Without negotiating the fare at the end of the ride -- as it is usually a process of bargaining -- I simply gave him a generous fare in gratitude for the quiet ride.
I spent the day at the pool, which offered a little respite from the reality of Tashkent. There, I would see the other Americans, who, like me, would have food served to them by the pool, while they escaped from the heat and read The Herald Tribune. The lawns were manicured. The pool water well treated. There never were many people there. Who else could afford it but foreigners and a few wealthy Uzbeks? The rest had the dirty public pools or the fountains in the parks.
The other Americans there included families with children; they sat by the kiddie pool. The rest, single expatriates would usually sit together and the conversation frequently gravitated to topics of work...Mostly, because the expatriates had little else going on in their lives besides work, and very little in common to discuss. I thought it was tragic that I shared a common language with these people, and there were so few people to speak with in English, and yet there was so little to speak about with each other. I tended to shy away from these conversations, perhaps because I was in denial that I was just like these people -- that they were omens to me of what I might become in a few years.
Some of the men lead completely debauched lifestyles. They drank, whored with the local women, who were easier than Western women and extremely tolerant of misbehaving men, as the region had a long history of its women taking care of their men, especially if they were wealthy foreigners. Western women were generally alone. The American men seemed to go after the young, gorgeous and easy local girls.
Many of the expats weren't much fun, didn't go out, didn't drink, and though they lived in this exotic land and some had lived in several interesting places in the world, many seemed to do everything they could in their power to make their environment and surroundings like a little replica of their own private Idaho or Ohio or Kentucky, or Virginia. They didn't bother to learn the language, were not terribly adventureous, save for shopping for the local crafts, biding their time, eagerly awaiting the end of their contracts. What united all kinds of expatriate was their love of complaining about the hardship, their dislike of the culture, the people. Their talk of their countdowns of days until their contracts ended raised an interesting question for me -- how long did I intend to stay in this country?
I didn't think much about the future. I didn't count away the days. I had a pleasure that I almost felt was wrong, immoral, unambitious, of being engaged so much in the here and now, of these sweet, quiet days, that I was content.
I was lucky today to find Henrietta, my close confidante and best friend without her Uzbek husband. His presence with us sometimes put a damper on the conversation. But I didn’t want to tell her about my latest escapades, or not just yet. Others joined us and somehow the subject came up of the most depraved sexual thing we’d ever done. The worst Henrietta could come up with was dating two men at the same time. Straight women are no competition for gay men in games like those and so, I decided that maybe for now, it was best for me to keep my recent escapades secret. I was, however, impressed by one straight guy admitted to having put his entire fist up a woman’s vagina and almost thought of sharing something from my own past experiences.
At the end of this lazy day, as the sun went down, I left the hotel, out to the street to hail a taxi. The street was empty save for a few prostitutes out already, also flagging down cars nearby, as hotels were generally a point (a “tochka” as they called it in Russian) where prostitutes peddled their wares and johns came looking for them. There was a “tochka” by this hotel known for being the deaf hooker district. Apparently there was such a “tochka” in every former Soviet city. One evening a few weeks earlier, I visited a friend who lived in one of the apartment blocks nearby and we heard a fight that had ensued between two prostitutes. The sounds were eerie; in the silence of the night we heard the echoes of slaps and beatings and then the garbled, wordless shrieks of the deaf. But that was just part of the neighborhood.
A car stopped for me. The car was nicer than the usual beat up old Russian Volga sedans or Ladas or Zhigulis, or the domestically produced Daewoo models. It was an old, yellow 1980’s Mercedes. The driver was an ordinary, paunchy middle aged Uzbek who flashed me a smile of gold teeth. As always, I sat down in the front seat, anxious to get home, breaking out in a profuse sweat from the heat. None of these cars ever had air conditioning. As usual, the driver asked where I was from. I said America.
He responded in a thickly accented Russian that was difficult for me to understand. He said something about Americans...Americans like to X ,and I didn't understand exactly what X meant, as my Russian wasn't that good. So I just nodded as though I understood and murmured "uh-huh." I didn't feel like making small talk and looked away out the window, watching the empty streets, the occasional made-up, mini-skirted girl standing in the street.
The lesson that I learned is that under no circumstances should one ever pretend to understand something when they really don't.
I then felt a hand on my bare leg. And prayed that I was imagining it. It's moments like these that you don't even feel like you are there, but like you are watching someone else's life happening. I shook the hand off my leg and looked his way. His pants were open and his very large penis out.
“Wouldn’t you like to X this?” he asked, and I had a much better idea of what X could mean.
"Put that away!" I said, disgusted.
“What? Too big? That’s what they all say…Just try to X a little,” he pleaded. "Don't be afraid." When he should have turned to the right, in the direction of my home, he turned to the left, to the street that lead to the Uzbek Parliament.
“Where are you going? I know my neighborhood well and this isn't the way to my house.”
“Don't worry," he said. "I know a nice, quiet spot. I can show you parts of your own neighborhood that you probably don’t even know about.”
I thought, what a charmer this guy is and tried to unlock the door. "Look," I said, "I think you somehow got the wrong idea here." The lock snapped back down -- he shut it with the remote.
"For the love of god, let me out." I shouted, I banged on the door, I opened the window, even though no one was out on the street, I pulled out my phone.“I’m calling someone and they'll come and fuck you up.”
“Okay, okay. Pipe down.” He turned the car around and we drove in silence to my house. I pointed at a spot to stop a few doors down from my house. I pulled out some money from my pocket and he pushed it away.
“Stupid boy, walking on the “tochka” in shorts, showing off his legs,” he muttered aloud. I wanted to respond -- but everywhere in Tashkent is a “tochka.” Where isn’t there a “tochka?” But I said nothing as he went on, “you’re just a tease.” And he called me a word that I hadn’t ever heard before, "dinamo," which is what they call someone who doesn’t put out.
I waited until the car left and ran down the street to my apartment block and upstairs to my apartment out of breath until I locked the door.
I put away the shorts, vowing never to wear them again on the street, even in the most extreme heat. I had forgotten that I had read in a book that until the 20th century in Uzbekistan, there had always been a tradition of pederasty; Uzbek parents wouldn’t even let their boys out alone on the streets for fear of them getting raped. And, on this day, I learned the hard way two new words in Russian -- the word for suck and the word for cock-tease. ¶ 6:56 AM 0 Comments
I was always told that men don't wear shorts in Uzbekistan and that it was probably best if I only wore them in the house or for sports, but never out on the street. I was given no explanation for this. I simply assumed before arriving in the country that it was because of the religion or the conservative culture. But actually, what I much later found out was that it was what gay men wore. Boys could get away with it, but not grown men. So naturally, fearing that I should be discovered as a detested shorts-wearer, I did not wear shorts outside of my house.
It was finally coming to the end of the 40 days that are the hottest days of summer. Still, the heat was barely tolerable. And even in the heat, shorts were nowhere to be seen on men.
This Sunday, I had decided to make an exception. It was too hot to do otherwise. Besides, it wasn't like I was going to be walking in public in them -- I would only wear them to the street to get a taxi to the hotel, an enclave frequented primarily by expatriates, where I would sit by the pool all day. The shorts were not particularly tight, not particularly short, not particularly gay. They were short khakis that were about three inches above the knee.
I caught a taxi out in front of my door. These weren’t real taxis; they were just people driving around, doing their own business and willing to pick up a fare. Again, this was the reality of the Uzbek economy -- doctors, teachers, government workers behind the wheel were looking to make an extra buck. And I never felt that there was any danger in getting into a car with a stranger; everybody did it. I’d even been in cars that were used for transporting livestock, a Kamaz truck that was for transporting soldiers, and even once in an ambulance that supposedly was off-duty.
As usual, the driver detecting my accent, seeing my attire, pegged me as a foreigner. It was likely because of my foreignness that I could be excused for wearing shorts or maybe not. He asked me where I came from. They always asked where you came from. Some American friends I knew would play with this – they would say Canada or New Zealand, places it was likely an Uzbek didn’t know, because being an American meant you were rich and it was then assumed that you would pay a higher fare for your ride. Other Americans got irritated with all the questions. I sometimes got annoyed when they began asking my age and about my marital status and then proceeded to lecture me, or when they asked about how much my salary was, which, was actually quite a common question, rude enough, but common. But, I always tried to not let it get to me, to be respectful, and to answer everything honestly or to say when I felt uncomfortable answering certain questions and why. You never knew who your driver could be. Rarely they were just drivers. They could turn out to be your friend’s father or relative, or brother. They could be someone you may have dealings with at work. They likely could be someone you might run into again. Tashkent, for it's 2-3 million people felt small like a village and everyone was connected or related in some way. Also, the driver was the person behind the wheel -- they had some control, and my rule of thumb was to not piss them off.
I would ask the drivers questions too. I found that that was the most interesting way to avoid having to talk about yourself. Often, you found that they were just happy that someone was ready to listen to them, listen to their problems, listen to them talk about their families or talk about common interests -- music, sports, literature, politics. Some of the drivers I had met were fascinating. One had been a leader of an opposition movement that had long been driven underground. Another had been a published poet. One told me about how his entire family had been killed in a disaster. At the end of each ride, the driver shook my hand as though we had become friends and sometimes they even refused to take my taxi fare.
This driver was quiet and pleasant. He asked me how I was managing with the Tashkent heat. He told me that he thought it was a good idea to wear shorts in the heat. “I would wear shorts too…But...” Without negotiating the fare at the end of the ride -- as it is usually a process of bargaining -- I simply gave him a generous fare in gratitude for the quiet ride.
I spent the day at the pool, which offered a little respite from the reality of Tashkent. There, I would see the other Americans, who, like me, would have food served to them by the pool, while they escaped from the heat and read The Herald Tribune. The lawns were manicured. The pool water well treated. There never were many people there. Who else could afford it but foreigners and a few wealthy Uzbeks? The rest had the dirty public pools or the fountains in the parks.
The other Americans there included families with children; they sat by the kiddie pool. The rest, single expatriates would usually sit together and the conversation frequently gravitated to topics of work...Mostly, because the expatriates had little else going on in their lives besides work, and very little in common to discuss. I thought it was tragic that I shared a common language with these people, and there were so few people to speak with in English, and yet there was so little to speak about with each other. I tended to shy away from these conversations, perhaps because I was in denial that I was just like these people -- that they were omens to me of what I might become in a few years.
Some of the men lead completely debauched lifestyles. They drank, whored with the local women, who were easier than Western women and extremely tolerant of misbehaving men, as the region had a long history of its women taking care of their men, especially if they were wealthy foreigners. Western women were generally alone. The American men seemed to go after the young, gorgeous and easy local girls.
Many of the expats weren't much fun, didn't go out, didn't drink, and though they lived in this exotic land and some had lived in several interesting places in the world, many seemed to do everything they could in their power to make their environment and surroundings like a little replica of their own private Idaho or Ohio or Kentucky, or Virginia. They didn't bother to learn the language, were not terribly adventureous, save for shopping for the local crafts, biding their time, eagerly awaiting the end of their contracts. What united all kinds of expatriate was their love of complaining about the hardship, their dislike of the culture, the people. Their talk of their countdowns of days until their contracts ended raised an interesting question for me -- how long did I intend to stay in this country?
I didn't think much about the future. I didn't count away the days. I had a pleasure that I almost felt was wrong, immoral, unambitious, of being engaged so much in the here and now, of these sweet, quiet days, that I was content.
I was lucky today to find Henrietta, my close confidante and best friend without her Uzbek husband. His presence with us sometimes put a damper on the conversation. But I didn’t want to tell her about my latest escapades, or not just yet. Others joined us and somehow the subject came up of the most depraved sexual thing we’d ever done. The worst Henrietta could come up with was dating two men at the same time. Straight women are no competition for gay men in games like those and so, I decided that maybe for now, it was best for me to keep my recent escapades secret. I was, however, impressed by one straight guy admitted to having put his entire fist up a woman’s vagina and almost thought of sharing something from my own past experiences.
At the end of this lazy day, as the sun went down, I left the hotel, out to the street to hail a taxi. The street was empty save for a few prostitutes out already, also flagging down cars nearby, as hotels were generally a point (a “tochka” as they called it in Russian) where prostitutes peddled their wares and johns came looking for them. There was a “tochka” by this hotel known for being the deaf hooker district. Apparently there was such a “tochka” in every former Soviet city. One evening a few weeks earlier, I visited a friend who lived in one of the apartment blocks nearby and we heard a fight that had ensued between two prostitutes. The sounds were eerie; in the silence of the night we heard the echoes of slaps and beatings and then the garbled, wordless shrieks of the deaf. But that was just part of the neighborhood.
A car stopped for me. The car was nicer than the usual beat up old Russian Volga sedans or Ladas or Zhigulis, or the domestically produced Daewoo models. It was an old, yellow 1980’s Mercedes. The driver was an ordinary, paunchy middle aged Uzbek who flashed me a smile of gold teeth. As always, I sat down in the front seat, anxious to get home, breaking out in a profuse sweat from the heat. None of these cars ever had air conditioning. As usual, the driver asked where I was from. I said America.
He responded in a thickly accented Russian that was difficult for me to understand. He said something about Americans...Americans like to X ,and I didn't understand exactly what X meant, as my Russian wasn't that good. So I just nodded as though I understood and murmured "uh-huh." I didn't feel like making small talk and looked away out the window, watching the empty streets, the occasional made-up, mini-skirted girl standing in the street.
The lesson that I learned is that under no circumstances should one ever pretend to understand something when they really don't.
I then felt a hand on my bare leg. And prayed that I was imagining it. It's moments like these that you don't even feel like you are there, but like you are watching someone else's life happening. I shook the hand off my leg and looked his way. His pants were open and his very large penis out.
“Wouldn’t you like to X this?” he asked, and I had a much better idea of what X could mean.
"Put that away!" I said, disgusted.
“What? Too big? That’s what they all say…Just try to X a little,” he pleaded. "Don't be afraid." When he should have turned to the right, in the direction of my home, he turned to the left, to the street that lead to the Uzbek Parliament.
“Where are you going? I know my neighborhood well and this isn't the way to my house.”
“Don't worry," he said. "I know a nice, quiet spot. I can show you parts of your own neighborhood that you probably don’t even know about.”
I thought, what a charmer this guy is and tried to unlock the door. "Look," I said, "I think you somehow got the wrong idea here." The lock snapped back down -- he shut it with the remote.
"For the love of god, let me out." I shouted, I banged on the door, I opened the window, even though no one was out on the street, I pulled out my phone.“I’m calling someone and they'll come and fuck you up.”
“Okay, okay. Pipe down.” He turned the car around and we drove in silence to my house. I pointed at a spot to stop a few doors down from my house. I pulled out some money from my pocket and he pushed it away.
“Stupid boy, walking on the “tochka” in shorts, showing off his legs,” he muttered aloud. I wanted to respond -- but everywhere in Tashkent is a “tochka.” Where isn’t there a “tochka?” But I said nothing as he went on, “you’re just a tease.” And he called me a word that I hadn’t ever heard before, "dinamo," which is what they call someone who doesn’t put out.
I waited until the car left and ran down the street to my apartment block and upstairs to my apartment out of breath until I locked the door.
I put away the shorts, vowing never to wear them again on the street, even in the most extreme heat. I had forgotten that I had read in a book that until the 20th century in Uzbekistan, there had always been a tradition of pederasty; Uzbek parents wouldn’t even let their boys out alone on the streets for fear of them getting raped. And, on this day, I learned the hard way two new words in Russian -- the word for suck and the word for cock-tease. ¶ 6:56 AM 0 Comments
The Secret Admirer I
After the unexplainable episode in the park with the mysterious Aziz from the SNB Institute, I wondered if having put in an appearance at the Pionerskaya banya meant that the whole gay underground network of Tashkent now knew about me and was abuzz with my arrival. I also had a dread feeling that something adverse loomed ahead for me.
I felt paranoid on my walks through the park on my way home from work in the evenings, finding the stares of the men sitting on the benches to be menacing. The attention that I had learned to play with, suddenly did not feel fun or flattering. What did they know about me, really?
By midweek, I started having the office driver drive me home. I had the air-conditioning repaired and stayed inside nights with the lights turned down. I sat on the floor, lit candles, listened to music, smoked my cigarettes and drank beer alone.
One morning that week I received an unusual email at work from an unknown address "saint72." It read:
Perhaps this was a practical joke from a friend, or an office mate, or, more alarming, a trap of sorts from the SNB. So, I just deleted it and decided to put it out of my head, trying not to let my leery imagination get the best of me, though I’d look at the people around me suspiciously. I told no one about the email or any of these things, such as the park, the banya, or anything for that matter, even to my trusted expatriate friend, Henrietta, whom I could tell everything and anything. I now had secrets and it felt like I had no one to share them with. ¶ 6:55 AM 0 Comments
After the unexplainable episode in the park with the mysterious Aziz from the SNB Institute, I wondered if having put in an appearance at the Pionerskaya banya meant that the whole gay underground network of Tashkent now knew about me and was abuzz with my arrival. I also had a dread feeling that something adverse loomed ahead for me.
I felt paranoid on my walks through the park on my way home from work in the evenings, finding the stares of the men sitting on the benches to be menacing. The attention that I had learned to play with, suddenly did not feel fun or flattering. What did they know about me, really?
By midweek, I started having the office driver drive me home. I had the air-conditioning repaired and stayed inside nights with the lights turned down. I sat on the floor, lit candles, listened to music, smoked my cigarettes and drank beer alone.
One morning that week I received an unusual email at work from an unknown address "saint72." It read:
You are beautiful man.
I see you on the street.
You have the love in your eyes.
Can I meet you sometimes?
Please excuse my poor English.
Perhaps this was a practical joke from a friend, or an office mate, or, more alarming, a trap of sorts from the SNB. So, I just deleted it and decided to put it out of my head, trying not to let my leery imagination get the best of me, though I’d look at the people around me suspiciously. I told no one about the email or any of these things, such as the park, the banya, or anything for that matter, even to my trusted expatriate friend, Henrietta, whom I could tell everything and anything. I now had secrets and it felt like I had no one to share them with. ¶ 6:55 AM 0 Comments
Money Matters
Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round, so the song from “Cabaret” goes. The song draws the link between economics and love. You never realize the importance of money and the reaches of its power, until you don’t have it, or are always around people who don’t have it.
To start, the Uzbek economy was terrible. The transition to a free market economy from communist planned economy was slow. There were still restrictions on currency conversion capacity, a highly restrictive trade regime, closed borders with neighboring countries, an unfavorable investment climate, and extensive state control of agriculture – which was the mainstay of the economy. Schoolchildren and students were expected to pick cotton for free, during the autumn term of their studies. Salaries were extremely low: an standard salary which was 100$/month by official exchange rates, had an actual value of $30, based on the black market exchange rate, which reflected real currency values. That meant that people were expected to live on $1 a day.
And whereas I had the comfort of never having to worry about money ever, at all, I was tweaked with guilt about my relatively extravagant consumption. The ladies who swept the dirt on the streets in the mornings earned in one month about as much money as I spent on my lunch in a day in one of the high-end restaurants that primarily expatriates patronized. This was for a lunch, which I thought was a bargain, at $5-10.
It was no wonder that local people saw foreigners as rich. We carried around bulky bags with the money for our purchases or to go out for dinner, go out drinking, buy groceries. The money was packed into bricks of 10,000 soms, as the denominations of the bills did not carry much value. At some point, the highest denomination was the very rare 1000 som note, which was worth, at best, one dollar. The more common denominations were the 500 som note, the 200 som note, the 100s, 50s, even 10s. Paying for a lunch which was roughly 5000 som, with some of the smaller notes, was like paying in dimes and quarters.
One learned how to count this money very quickly with time. I remember once at a strip bar with some friends, one American friend, who was regularly getting lap dances, would slip the 500 notes into the girls’ thongs. “Best thirty cents I’ve ever spent,” he laughed.I truly had no idea how people got by. I know they had all kinds of ways to supplement their meager incomes, working on the side, begging, stealing, borrowing from friends and family. Everywhere you could people selling things, selling bananas on the street at night, or during the day, big flea markets called “baraholkas” where people, many of whom were leaving the country, sold whatever was left in their homes, their family crystal, old Lenin statues, soviet flags, salt and pepper shaker in the shape of monkeys, tea services, chess sets, busts of Pushkin, books, ancient Soviet electronics, scraps of metal, scraps of fabric. Or folks from the country selling produce from their farms or gardens. Everywhere a car could be hailed by a driver, who was maybe a dentist or a lawyer or a professor, who was just trying to pick up some fares. Once I was picked up by an ambulance that was supposedly off duty.
Everyone sold whatever they could, and at night, the prostitutes had the streets. A friend from Tashkent who had traveled a bit around the world used to say that when he was out of Tashkent, he was amazed how in most cities, there’s a specific area for prostitutes, a red light district. But in Tashkent, they were everywhere. Sure there was the Katartal district, which was like the prostitution supermarket of the city with the quantity and selection and range to cater to all tastes, perversities, and budgets, etc. But they were everywhere else in the city: in the parks, near hotels, in and around restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, saunas, beauty salons, train stations, bus stations, bus stops…and so forth. Out at night, often you couldn’t tell which girls were prostitutes, which were “honest givers” which is the Russian term for a girl who has sex for love, or freelancers. Regardless, it was inexpensive. Or so, I was told. There’s an interesting posting on the internet with a price list: http://www.forum.uz/showthread.php?t=1019
Money and love were always mixed up and there was a very different cultural perception of them from what I was used to. There’s a Russian joke here that goes, “what is love? It’s something that the Americans invented so that they don’t have to pay for sex.”
And this made me wonder if ever finding someone in Uzbekistan would come with a price tag – I would likely be expected to be what they called a “sponsor.” It was sort of an unwritten but understood rule among gay men in Uzbekistan – that older men, often wealthier, sponsor younger gay men. And it was likely an inevitable fact that I would always be expected to play the role of sponsor, and this was not something I should take too personally – as though I was being taken advantage of. Sometimes I wondered if people only liked me because they perceived me as rich, since everyone seemed to be selling something to make ends meet, so why not friendship, love, sex. I really had never dreamed of becoming a sugar daddy, at least at age 30. It was just the law and reality of the economy. Nevertheless, it was also a depressing thought, to imagine that there was no real love out there. ¶ 1:11 AM 2 Comments
Friday, July 14, 2006
Cruising around Tashkent
The following week, I didn’t sleep well at night. My air conditioner was officially broken. My apartment retained the heat of the day like a furnace and I would open the windows, lie on a cushion on the floor with a fan pointed at me, twisting and turning over a sweat drenched pillow. It was impossible to sleep. Outside, it was only slightly cooler and the streets were alive with others unable to sleep in the heat, and often less fortunate than me – not even owning air conditioners, even broken ones. An adventurous streak overtook me. I wanted to explore.
I felt like I saw everything around me with new eyes. My recent awareness of a gay scene in Tashkent was like a revelation. I felt like there were others, many others, just like me. I’d look back at the people on the poorly illuminated streets instead of looking down, as I always had, self-conscious of all the stares my way. And I had a sense that the stares weren’t only because I was a foreigner. In some of the looks I recognized a curiosity a little less innocent than simply that.
I walked through the park, to the opera house with its outdoor cafes, down the promenade that they now called “Broadway,” full of vendors and cafes and karaoke booths, down to the Amir Timur Square, which boasted a large bronze sculpture of the great Mongol conqueror Tamerlane on horseback.
If you went behind the horse on the left side and looked under the horse’s leg, you could see the horse’s enormous testicles. How poetic that this was a spot where gays, prostitutes, and their johns clustered at night. You could see the visitors from out-of-town looking up the left leg, to see the legendary balls. I too, when I first arrived, was shown them – there were balls, but no shaft. And I was told that as the lore goes, when the statue was first erected in the early 1990’s, when independent Uzbekistan adopted Tamerlane as its national hero, there had been one, a very large one. But it was later removed.
I walked around the sculpture with a bottle of beer with that liberated feeling of walking and drinking that you just can’t enjoy in the US anymore. I decided I wouldn’t sit down and get sucked into a conversation with a stranger, as I had with Kirill a week earlier. I just walked, drank, and observed the small groups of boys talking, some looking at me as I walked by, unwilling to engage. I passed groups of prostitutes, or what they called “butterflies of the night,” flashing a golden-toothed smile at me and saying, “good evening.”
There was Kirill, with a group of boys he separated from to approach me. He apologized for being drunk and obnoxious the other day. Was I offended, he asked, he hoped not, and, would I want to buy a watch? He had a gold watch he had to sell because he needed money.
Everyone here always seemed to need money, and somehow managed to survive without it, or with very little of it. I wondered if when people saw me, or any foreigner for that matter, they saw dollar signs. I’d developed something of a complex over that. I curtly said that I didn’t want a watch and walked on, saying that I needed to go.
Then a figure emerged from the shadows, seeming to leap from a small wall that surrounded a flower garden, approaching me, calling my name and saying, in perfect English, “is it you?” Under the streetlamp light, I could see that he was young, in his 20’s, tall, handsome, but unfamiliar.
“Yes,” I said, “do I know you?” He explained that I knew him – his name was Aziz, and that I knew his brother Farhod, with whom I had some professional dealings. I couldn’t remember Aziz or his brother, which struck me as unusual; I have an uncannily good memory for names and faces. I decided to act as though I remembered his brother and told Aziz to send him my best, that he should call me sometime or drop in at my office.
“Be careful,” he warned me. “Those guys are blues. This park is full of blues and bitches.” Again, this confused me; I had assumed that Aziz was just another gay guy, like me, cruising the square, maybe ashamed to admit it, somewhat like me. I told him that I wasn’t afraid of blues or bitches and asked him what he was doing out so late among them. I, after all, had an excuse: I lived nearby and was escaping the heat, having a beer before bed.
He told me he was studying at the SNB Institute (SNB is the successor agency to the KGB). He was supposed to observe the square in advance of the Independence Day celebrations that would be taking place in a few weeks. At those celebrations, Tashkent’s parks fill up with crowds of visitors from the provinces and can become targets for terrorists. Since 1999, after 14 explosions rocked Tashkent, the government constantly raised the specter of terrorism from Islamic militants. But though there are scores of theories running around Tashkent about who might really be behind them.
I had a deep inclination to dislike the secret services and the way the government used them to instill a sense of paranoia in the population as a tool for subordination. Interestingly enough, though people were scared by them, they were tired of them but used to them, accepting them as just another nuisance in life that you have to learn to live with. People can get used to anything; I learned this lesson every day in Uzbekistan.
“Are we in danger?” I asked with a note of skepticism in my voice.
“We always are,” he said.
“Well, then I will make sure I will stay away from the park on Independence Day.” I told Aziz that it was time for me to go to bed and I walked back home confused.
Who was this Aziz, really? Was he really who he said he was? Or was he just another gay guy, caught cruising in the park and making a plausible sounding excuse to a seemingly gullible foreigner because he was afraid of being discovered. Did I really know his brother? Or was this all some plot to play with my head or to bait me. Was Aziz a pretty young thing that the police or security services used to bait gays, perhaps foreign gays, since he spoke good English? I’d heard stories along these lines of young attractive men used as bait for gays in the parks so that the police could later blackmail them for having violated the law against Besakalbazlyk from Article 120 from the Uzbek penal code.
Or was he was just trailing me? There was a belief so commonly repeated among the expatriates, that it was almost taken as gospel, that every foreigner had a secret service person trailing them, informing on their doings and whereabouts, so that the government could be on top of your every movement. This person could be someone you work with, someone you believe to be your friend, your lover, your driver, your pet… It was impossible to know for sure, and thinking about it too much only made you crazy with paranoia. For the longest time, I did wonder about people I knew or worked with or even felt quite close to, and it was burrowed deep in my subconscious. But after time, like the Uzbeks, I just accepted it as a nuisance that you have to learn to live with. ¶ 8:14 AM 0 Comments
The following week, I didn’t sleep well at night. My air conditioner was officially broken. My apartment retained the heat of the day like a furnace and I would open the windows, lie on a cushion on the floor with a fan pointed at me, twisting and turning over a sweat drenched pillow. It was impossible to sleep. Outside, it was only slightly cooler and the streets were alive with others unable to sleep in the heat, and often less fortunate than me – not even owning air conditioners, even broken ones. An adventurous streak overtook me. I wanted to explore.
I felt like I saw everything around me with new eyes. My recent awareness of a gay scene in Tashkent was like a revelation. I felt like there were others, many others, just like me. I’d look back at the people on the poorly illuminated streets instead of looking down, as I always had, self-conscious of all the stares my way. And I had a sense that the stares weren’t only because I was a foreigner. In some of the looks I recognized a curiosity a little less innocent than simply that.
I walked through the park, to the opera house with its outdoor cafes, down the promenade that they now called “Broadway,” full of vendors and cafes and karaoke booths, down to the Amir Timur Square, which boasted a large bronze sculpture of the great Mongol conqueror Tamerlane on horseback.
If you went behind the horse on the left side and looked under the horse’s leg, you could see the horse’s enormous testicles. How poetic that this was a spot where gays, prostitutes, and their johns clustered at night. You could see the visitors from out-of-town looking up the left leg, to see the legendary balls. I too, when I first arrived, was shown them – there were balls, but no shaft. And I was told that as the lore goes, when the statue was first erected in the early 1990’s, when independent Uzbekistan adopted Tamerlane as its national hero, there had been one, a very large one. But it was later removed.
I walked around the sculpture with a bottle of beer with that liberated feeling of walking and drinking that you just can’t enjoy in the US anymore. I decided I wouldn’t sit down and get sucked into a conversation with a stranger, as I had with Kirill a week earlier. I just walked, drank, and observed the small groups of boys talking, some looking at me as I walked by, unwilling to engage. I passed groups of prostitutes, or what they called “butterflies of the night,” flashing a golden-toothed smile at me and saying, “good evening.”
There was Kirill, with a group of boys he separated from to approach me. He apologized for being drunk and obnoxious the other day. Was I offended, he asked, he hoped not, and, would I want to buy a watch? He had a gold watch he had to sell because he needed money.
Everyone here always seemed to need money, and somehow managed to survive without it, or with very little of it. I wondered if when people saw me, or any foreigner for that matter, they saw dollar signs. I’d developed something of a complex over that. I curtly said that I didn’t want a watch and walked on, saying that I needed to go.
Then a figure emerged from the shadows, seeming to leap from a small wall that surrounded a flower garden, approaching me, calling my name and saying, in perfect English, “is it you?” Under the streetlamp light, I could see that he was young, in his 20’s, tall, handsome, but unfamiliar.
“Yes,” I said, “do I know you?” He explained that I knew him – his name was Aziz, and that I knew his brother Farhod, with whom I had some professional dealings. I couldn’t remember Aziz or his brother, which struck me as unusual; I have an uncannily good memory for names and faces. I decided to act as though I remembered his brother and told Aziz to send him my best, that he should call me sometime or drop in at my office.
“Be careful,” he warned me. “Those guys are blues. This park is full of blues and bitches.” Again, this confused me; I had assumed that Aziz was just another gay guy, like me, cruising the square, maybe ashamed to admit it, somewhat like me. I told him that I wasn’t afraid of blues or bitches and asked him what he was doing out so late among them. I, after all, had an excuse: I lived nearby and was escaping the heat, having a beer before bed.
He told me he was studying at the SNB Institute (SNB is the successor agency to the KGB). He was supposed to observe the square in advance of the Independence Day celebrations that would be taking place in a few weeks. At those celebrations, Tashkent’s parks fill up with crowds of visitors from the provinces and can become targets for terrorists. Since 1999, after 14 explosions rocked Tashkent, the government constantly raised the specter of terrorism from Islamic militants. But though there are scores of theories running around Tashkent about who might really be behind them.
I had a deep inclination to dislike the secret services and the way the government used them to instill a sense of paranoia in the population as a tool for subordination. Interestingly enough, though people were scared by them, they were tired of them but used to them, accepting them as just another nuisance in life that you have to learn to live with. People can get used to anything; I learned this lesson every day in Uzbekistan.
“Are we in danger?” I asked with a note of skepticism in my voice.
“We always are,” he said.
“Well, then I will make sure I will stay away from the park on Independence Day.” I told Aziz that it was time for me to go to bed and I walked back home confused.
Who was this Aziz, really? Was he really who he said he was? Or was he just another gay guy, caught cruising in the park and making a plausible sounding excuse to a seemingly gullible foreigner because he was afraid of being discovered. Did I really know his brother? Or was this all some plot to play with my head or to bait me. Was Aziz a pretty young thing that the police or security services used to bait gays, perhaps foreign gays, since he spoke good English? I’d heard stories along these lines of young attractive men used as bait for gays in the parks so that the police could later blackmail them for having violated the law against Besakalbazlyk from Article 120 from the Uzbek penal code.
Or was he was just trailing me? There was a belief so commonly repeated among the expatriates, that it was almost taken as gospel, that every foreigner had a secret service person trailing them, informing on their doings and whereabouts, so that the government could be on top of your every movement. This person could be someone you work with, someone you believe to be your friend, your lover, your driver, your pet… It was impossible to know for sure, and thinking about it too much only made you crazy with paranoia. For the longest time, I did wonder about people I knew or worked with or even felt quite close to, and it was burrowed deep in my subconscious. But after time, like the Uzbeks, I just accepted it as a nuisance that you have to learn to live with. ¶ 8:14 AM 0 Comments
Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Banya on Piyonerskaya, Part III
I had had enough of the banya. I showered and went to the dressing area where Kirill was already very drunk, and giggling with his friends. I told him that I was leaving.
“Wait,” he followed me to my locker, standing behind me as I dried off. “Why don’t you stay?”
“I have things to do.”
“But we only just got here.” It was true, we had only been there for an hour or so. People came to the banya and usually spent hours.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I continued to dress and he had a look on his face as through I had punched him in the stomach.
“Don’t you like it here?”
“I do like it,” I said politely. “But I have to go.”
“But…” he began as though he had something terribly important to tell me.
“But what, Kirill?”
“But…I think I love you.”
“Kiril, that’s lovely,” I said disbelievingly. This was like a scene out of one of those dreadful Latin American soap operas, people so lovingly watched here, such as "Esmerelda." I couldn’t say much more since my vocabulary in the Russian language was really not so strong. In the year I’d been here, I was like a gay baby, just learning how to walk and to speak, having difficulty making myself understood.
He clung to my arm drunkenly and I shook it off. Kirill was just a stupid boy, but nonetheless, I apologized, concerned about offending him. In fact, I suddenly felt very nervous about being in the banya altogether, especially the way everyone was looking at me about what kind of trouble I could be getting myself into. I dressed quickly – politely kissed on the forehead a crestfallen Kirill crumpled in the corner behind me, not taking his eyes off of me. “I’ll see you again soon.”
I ran out of there and hailed a gypsy cab on the street and thought -- I finally saw the gay subculture of Tashkent. I felt like I had really seen something that no one else had seen. However, I felt a wave of dread: once you’ve been there, you are “out” you have made your “debut” the whole underground becomes abuzz with the news of a new initiate to the secret brotherhood – and there’s no turning back or hiding after that. I was a bit concerned about how I could possibly keep a low profile, especially being an American – that really would make me stick out.
Though it’s risky to be out in Uzbekistan, and sometimes this concerned me, I can’t say that anything truly terrible ever happened to me. If anything would have, I would probably have left the country, returned home. If anything, though, once I became exposed to this side of Tashkent, and once I got a cell phone, things got interesting. ¶ 5:12 PM 1 Comments
I had had enough of the banya. I showered and went to the dressing area where Kirill was already very drunk, and giggling with his friends. I told him that I was leaving.“Wait,” he followed me to my locker, standing behind me as I dried off. “Why don’t you stay?”
“I have things to do.”
“But we only just got here.” It was true, we had only been there for an hour or so. People came to the banya and usually spent hours.
“I know, I’m sorry,” I continued to dress and he had a look on his face as through I had punched him in the stomach.
“Don’t you like it here?”
“I do like it,” I said politely. “But I have to go.”
“But…” he began as though he had something terribly important to tell me.
“But what, Kirill?”
“But…I think I love you.”
“Kiril, that’s lovely,” I said disbelievingly. This was like a scene out of one of those dreadful Latin American soap operas, people so lovingly watched here, such as "Esmerelda." I couldn’t say much more since my vocabulary in the Russian language was really not so strong. In the year I’d been here, I was like a gay baby, just learning how to walk and to speak, having difficulty making myself understood.
He clung to my arm drunkenly and I shook it off. Kirill was just a stupid boy, but nonetheless, I apologized, concerned about offending him. In fact, I suddenly felt very nervous about being in the banya altogether, especially the way everyone was looking at me about what kind of trouble I could be getting myself into. I dressed quickly – politely kissed on the forehead a crestfallen Kirill crumpled in the corner behind me, not taking his eyes off of me. “I’ll see you again soon.”
I ran out of there and hailed a gypsy cab on the street and thought -- I finally saw the gay subculture of Tashkent. I felt like I had really seen something that no one else had seen. However, I felt a wave of dread: once you’ve been there, you are “out” you have made your “debut” the whole underground becomes abuzz with the news of a new initiate to the secret brotherhood – and there’s no turning back or hiding after that. I was a bit concerned about how I could possibly keep a low profile, especially being an American – that really would make me stick out.
Though it’s risky to be out in Uzbekistan, and sometimes this concerned me, I can’t say that anything truly terrible ever happened to me. If anything would have, I would probably have left the country, returned home. If anything, though, once I became exposed to this side of Tashkent, and once I got a cell phone, things got interesting. ¶ 5:12 PM 1 Comments
Golden Teeth
For the uninitiated who read the previous post -- the mention of golden teeth may have raised a question. The old man in the banya refers to a handsome boy to introduce to me who has golden teeth. This needs some explanation for those who don't know Uzbekistan well.
There’s an old joke from the end of the Soviet Union, when droves of non-Uzbeks left the country. In typical Soviet fashion, it plays with racial stereotypes and is not politically correct in the least. It goes: "all the Russians have left, they had golden hands...all the Jews have left, they had golden brains. What are we left with? Golden teeth."
At first, I thought that it was just a legacy of Soviet dentistry or dental restoration. I was shocked to find out that Uzbeks purposefully replaced their teeth with gold ones because for aesthetic purposes. They were proud of their golden teeth. It was a display of wealth, influence, prestige.. Many an Uzbek girl I knew, beautiful girls, with mouths full of pearly white teeth, upon being given up into marriage into wealthy families, within a week of a wedding had an upper rack of all gold.
In Uzbekistan, there are so many golden teeth; they are almost surreal at first. But after a while, you stop noticing them.
Uzbeks, only if they have left the country, realize that golden teeth are uncommon to most of the world. I was in New York with an Uzbek friend with a rack and he noticed, walking around the city that only black hip-hop youth had golden teeth or “grills.” This Uzbek began to understand what it was like to have everyone staring at you. He began to feel self-conscious and spoke very little. When he did open his mouth to speak, he kept his upper lip as closed as possible, to cover his upper teeth.
I knew of a case of an Uzbek woman, who had lovely ivory white teeth. She worked for an American organization. Apparently, she too, once upon a time, had the rack. After she was sent to her headquarters for training in the US, she returned and then changed her teeth for a white set. She probably experienced a lot of stares while in the US.
Maybe I lived around them for too long, but I think they're pretty cool. And they're catching on here, too.
Check this out from “Grill Mouth” http://www.grillmouth.com/
Blingy selections can be found at hustlagrillz, which boasts FDA approved and Hustla certified grills:
http://hustlagrillz.com/grillz-gold-teeth-hip-hop/
Before you know it, you might have a set of grills too! Read this BBC Business News Report about grills going mainstream.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1471097.stm ¶ 6:13 AM 0 Comments
For the uninitiated who read the previous post -- the mention of golden teeth may have raised a question. The old man in the banya refers to a handsome boy to introduce to me who has golden teeth. This needs some explanation for those who don't know Uzbekistan well.
There’s an old joke from the end of the Soviet Union, when droves of non-Uzbeks left the country. In typical Soviet fashion, it plays with racial stereotypes and is not politically correct in the least. It goes: "all the Russians have left, they had golden hands...all the Jews have left, they had golden brains. What are we left with? Golden teeth."
At first, I thought that it was just a legacy of Soviet dentistry or dental restoration. I was shocked to find out that Uzbeks purposefully replaced their teeth with gold ones because for aesthetic purposes. They were proud of their golden teeth. It was a display of wealth, influence, prestige.. Many an Uzbek girl I knew, beautiful girls, with mouths full of pearly white teeth, upon being given up into marriage into wealthy families, within a week of a wedding had an upper rack of all gold.
In Uzbekistan, there are so many golden teeth; they are almost surreal at first. But after a while, you stop noticing them.
Uzbeks, only if they have left the country, realize that golden teeth are uncommon to most of the world. I was in New York with an Uzbek friend with a rack and he noticed, walking around the city that only black hip-hop youth had golden teeth or “grills.” This Uzbek began to understand what it was like to have everyone staring at you. He began to feel self-conscious and spoke very little. When he did open his mouth to speak, he kept his upper lip as closed as possible, to cover his upper teeth.
I knew of a case of an Uzbek woman, who had lovely ivory white teeth. She worked for an American organization. Apparently, she too, once upon a time, had the rack. After she was sent to her headquarters for training in the US, she returned and then changed her teeth for a white set. She probably experienced a lot of stares while in the US.
Maybe I lived around them for too long, but I think they're pretty cool. And they're catching on here, too.
Check this out from “Grill Mouth” http://www.grillmouth.com/
Whether you call them grills, plates, shines, caps, or choppers, a custom made grill is the way to go when you're looking to make a really brave fashion statement.
Blingy selections can be found at hustlagrillz, which boasts FDA approved and Hustla certified grills:
http://hustlagrillz.com/grillz-gold-teeth-hip-hop/
Before you know it, you might have a set of grills too! Read this BBC Business News Report about grills going mainstream.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1471097.stm ¶ 6:13 AM 0 Comments
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The Banya on Piyonerskaya, Part II
The bathhouse itself had open stall showers of crumbling marble that maybe once was elegant, with broken spigots spouting out uneven bursts of water. The floors were of cracked slate tiles bathed in a slick of soap scum. There were rows of marble benches with troughs of water, where bathers put their soap, shampoo and shaving gear. There was a lot of shaving gear.
Almost all of the men walked around naked. I walked around with a towel wrapped around my middle. As always, people stared. And, as always they could tell I was a foreigner. I knew it from the way they whispered among themselves as I entered, the way the whispering dwindled as I drew near and then crescendoed after I passed by them to go under the shower. How was it that even naked and silent, something about me screamed that I was foreign? It is that I have a fair amount of hair on my body – on my chest, legs, and, of course, crotch, which they saw when I went into the showers. I have never shaved any of my hair off off. At the banya, I saw Uzbek men, most of whom aren’t very hairy to begin with, shaving themselves – shaving their pubic hair and leaving just a hint, like an Adolf Hitler moustache, above the penis or sometimes, shaving themselves bald. I watched with unease as they pulled and stretched out their scrotums so that they could scrape their Bic disposable shavers against them, leaving them hairless.
When they leave to go into the sauna and there are no voices and nobody present, there is something very lovely about the sound in the room – it’s a hollow echoic room and there is only the sound of water falling and dripping, like in a cave.
Suddenly, in burst a group of 30 or 40 young men. Kirill comes to tell me that this is the 3:00 shift in which the soldiers come in to bathe for 15 minutes. The room is full of young flesh – the boys are in their early twenties. They are mostly small, sinewy, muscular, and they rush into the sauna, those who don’t fit into the small room, go under the showers, soaping themselves up, soaping each other’s backs and then rinsing off. I go off to the stone benches with the whispering Uzbeks and watch this living fantasy, which ends quickly. Not before long, the young soldiers are scurrying out into the locker room to dry off and put on their military uniforms.
After they leave, I notice that the place is filled with bathers, all who seem to have arrived to watch the spectacle of the soldiers’ 3PM bathing shift, which has now left them aroused. They go into little private nooks behind curtains – massage room, or little tables where a group of men are playing cards or nardi, or drinking vodka.
Kirill sits with a group of men around a small table with several bottles of vodka on it and empty shotglasses. They offer me a seat and I decline – I’m in no mood to drink after episodes such as with Alexei. Usually, after a hangover like that, I vow to myself that I’ll never drink again and I don’t for about two weeks. Instead, I go into the sauna and think how strange it feels to purposefully go somewhere to sweat in such heat of the Tashkent summer. I close my eyes, feel someone’s hands on my back and a voice offering a massage. Not wanting to open my mouth and betray my foreignness – my accented Russian, I go “uh-uh” to indicate a “no.”
The man offering the massage leaves and I am alone with a kindly looking elderly man sitting across from me, who smiles at me and asks in surprisingly unaccented English with some grammatical idiosyncrasies – such as dropping the article, “are you foreigner?”
This actually shocks me. It is generally the younger generation that is able to speak English. I rarely come across any English speakers.
“Yes I am,” I say.
“Where from?”
“From the US. How is it that you speak English so well?”
“I was gas station attendant in New Jersey.” It was interesting – Uzbeks were all over the world working as labor migrants – sending money back home to Uzbekistan to support their families. “You know you look like famous movie actor”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Like Jean Claude van Damme”
“Yes…it’s very nice. He is very beautiful man.”
We sat in silence for a while. “You know, I have such nice Uzbek boy to introduce to you. I think you will like him very much. His name is Sherzod.”
“What is Sherzod like?”
“He speaks English very well. He’s tall, handsome, nice face, with golden teeth. He’s good boy.”
“He sounds very nice. I would be happy to meet him sometime.”
“You come here next Sunday, yes?”
“Ok.” I agreed. ¶ 5:32 PM 1 Comments
The bathhouse itself had open stall showers of crumbling marble that maybe once was elegant, with broken spigots spouting out uneven bursts of water. The floors were of cracked slate tiles bathed in a slick of soap scum. There were rows of marble benches with troughs of water, where bathers put their soap, shampoo and shaving gear. There was a lot of shaving gear.
Almost all of the men walked around naked. I walked around with a towel wrapped around my middle. As always, people stared. And, as always they could tell I was a foreigner. I knew it from the way they whispered among themselves as I entered, the way the whispering dwindled as I drew near and then crescendoed after I passed by them to go under the shower. How was it that even naked and silent, something about me screamed that I was foreign? It is that I have a fair amount of hair on my body – on my chest, legs, and, of course, crotch, which they saw when I went into the showers. I have never shaved any of my hair off off. At the banya, I saw Uzbek men, most of whom aren’t very hairy to begin with, shaving themselves – shaving their pubic hair and leaving just a hint, like an Adolf Hitler moustache, above the penis or sometimes, shaving themselves bald. I watched with unease as they pulled and stretched out their scrotums so that they could scrape their Bic disposable shavers against them, leaving them hairless.
When they leave to go into the sauna and there are no voices and nobody present, there is something very lovely about the sound in the room – it’s a hollow echoic room and there is only the sound of water falling and dripping, like in a cave.
Suddenly, in burst a group of 30 or 40 young men. Kirill comes to tell me that this is the 3:00 shift in which the soldiers come in to bathe for 15 minutes. The room is full of young flesh – the boys are in their early twenties. They are mostly small, sinewy, muscular, and they rush into the sauna, those who don’t fit into the small room, go under the showers, soaping themselves up, soaping each other’s backs and then rinsing off. I go off to the stone benches with the whispering Uzbeks and watch this living fantasy, which ends quickly. Not before long, the young soldiers are scurrying out into the locker room to dry off and put on their military uniforms.
After they leave, I notice that the place is filled with bathers, all who seem to have arrived to watch the spectacle of the soldiers’ 3PM bathing shift, which has now left them aroused. They go into little private nooks behind curtains – massage room, or little tables where a group of men are playing cards or nardi, or drinking vodka.
Kirill sits with a group of men around a small table with several bottles of vodka on it and empty shotglasses. They offer me a seat and I decline – I’m in no mood to drink after episodes such as with Alexei. Usually, after a hangover like that, I vow to myself that I’ll never drink again and I don’t for about two weeks. Instead, I go into the sauna and think how strange it feels to purposefully go somewhere to sweat in such heat of the Tashkent summer. I close my eyes, feel someone’s hands on my back and a voice offering a massage. Not wanting to open my mouth and betray my foreignness – my accented Russian, I go “uh-uh” to indicate a “no.”
The man offering the massage leaves and I am alone with a kindly looking elderly man sitting across from me, who smiles at me and asks in surprisingly unaccented English with some grammatical idiosyncrasies – such as dropping the article, “are you foreigner?”
This actually shocks me. It is generally the younger generation that is able to speak English. I rarely come across any English speakers.
“Yes I am,” I say.
“Where from?”
“From the US. How is it that you speak English so well?”
“I was gas station attendant in New Jersey.” It was interesting – Uzbeks were all over the world working as labor migrants – sending money back home to Uzbekistan to support their families. “You know you look like famous movie actor”
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “Like Jean Claude van Damme”
“Yes…it’s very nice. He is very beautiful man.”
We sat in silence for a while. “You know, I have such nice Uzbek boy to introduce to you. I think you will like him very much. His name is Sherzod.”
“What is Sherzod like?”
“He speaks English very well. He’s tall, handsome, nice face, with golden teeth. He’s good boy.”
“He sounds very nice. I would be happy to meet him sometime.”
“You come here next Sunday, yes?”
“Ok.” I agreed. ¶ 5:32 PM 1 Comments
What's with all the Talk about Intestinal Distress?
A comment pointed out that I mentioned intestinal stress twice already in this blog. It does merit some explanation, as it will probably come up again and again and may be a recurring theme. Since, I also mentioned the filth of the Pionerskaya banya. I thought that this would be an appropriate time to take moment out from the story to talk about the issue of hygiene in Uzbekistan, which is of a pretty low standard.
My intestinal stress likely could be the subject of a whole other blog relating adventures of nearly crapping in my pants, occasional “double-purging,” frequent “spraying the bowl," or "blowing ass.” Most expatriates I knew there constantly battled with diarrhea, loose stools, as well as gastro-intestinal parasites, such as giardia. Giardia has symptoms of sulfur-burps, toxic flatulence, and chronic diarrhea. I didn’t experience it first hand – I’ll leave those people to tell that story. But being next to the afflicted is quite a trying experience, a potpourri for the senses.
Furthermore, frank discussion of our various bowel and gastro-intestinal afflictions and the many embarrassing and/or near-catastrophic situations they put us in was a popular subject of conversation among the expatriates, a topic, which I think is considered gauche or rude in polite society or for those uninitiated with the experience of Uzbekistan, but among us, it was simply therapy necessary for enduring the trauma.
Travelers’ diarrhea is apparently one of the most common ailments plaguing the visitor to Uzbekistan. There are a proliferation of travelogues from Uzbekistan on the Internet, nearly all of which make mention of gastro-intestinal stress. It doesn’t only seem to affect the traveler, but even those who have chosen to settle there in the long term, it is something you simply get used to living with. Rarely have I heard of the case in which it simply goes away. One person I know had chronic giardia over the course of her two years living in Uzbekistan. The only time she had a reprieve from it was when she went on a vacation trip outside of the country.
The reasons for it are several:
• The dry climate leaves the body dehydrated. So does heavy alcohol consumption. And dehydration is a cause for diarrhea.
• The water supply is bad. All water supplies in Uzbekistan are suspect, including municipal tap water, which may be untreated and grossly contaminated. Even if you don’t drink this water (drinking bottled water, boiled water, distilled water), you still may have some contact with it in your food.
• Food, in particular food that you might eat at a restaurant or at the home of an Uzbek host, can often be subject to non-hygienic handling.
I remember once sitting with some colleagues at a restaurant. Everyone ordered the same dish – which happens quite often in Uzbekistan. Everyone ordered airan—a Turkish dairy drink, except for me. I didn’t know what it was, and asked one of my colleagues. He said that it was very tasty and that I shouldn’t worry about drinking it. He actually said, “it won’t give you diarrhea.” It was very sweet of him to say, and I also found it very funny. So I responded, “don’t worry, I’m not worried about diarrhea – I already have it.” ¶ 5:01 PM 0 Comments
A comment pointed out that I mentioned intestinal stress twice already in this blog. It does merit some explanation, as it will probably come up again and again and may be a recurring theme. Since, I also mentioned the filth of the Pionerskaya banya. I thought that this would be an appropriate time to take moment out from the story to talk about the issue of hygiene in Uzbekistan, which is of a pretty low standard.
My intestinal stress likely could be the subject of a whole other blog relating adventures of nearly crapping in my pants, occasional “double-purging,” frequent “spraying the bowl," or "blowing ass.” Most expatriates I knew there constantly battled with diarrhea, loose stools, as well as gastro-intestinal parasites, such as giardia. Giardia has symptoms of sulfur-burps, toxic flatulence, and chronic diarrhea. I didn’t experience it first hand – I’ll leave those people to tell that story. But being next to the afflicted is quite a trying experience, a potpourri for the senses.
Furthermore, frank discussion of our various bowel and gastro-intestinal afflictions and the many embarrassing and/or near-catastrophic situations they put us in was a popular subject of conversation among the expatriates, a topic, which I think is considered gauche or rude in polite society or for those uninitiated with the experience of Uzbekistan, but among us, it was simply therapy necessary for enduring the trauma.
Travelers’ diarrhea is apparently one of the most common ailments plaguing the visitor to Uzbekistan. There are a proliferation of travelogues from Uzbekistan on the Internet, nearly all of which make mention of gastro-intestinal stress. It doesn’t only seem to affect the traveler, but even those who have chosen to settle there in the long term, it is something you simply get used to living with. Rarely have I heard of the case in which it simply goes away. One person I know had chronic giardia over the course of her two years living in Uzbekistan. The only time she had a reprieve from it was when she went on a vacation trip outside of the country.
The reasons for it are several:
• The dry climate leaves the body dehydrated. So does heavy alcohol consumption. And dehydration is a cause for diarrhea.
• The water supply is bad. All water supplies in Uzbekistan are suspect, including municipal tap water, which may be untreated and grossly contaminated. Even if you don’t drink this water (drinking bottled water, boiled water, distilled water), you still may have some contact with it in your food.
• Food, in particular food that you might eat at a restaurant or at the home of an Uzbek host, can often be subject to non-hygienic handling.
I remember once sitting with some colleagues at a restaurant. Everyone ordered the same dish – which happens quite often in Uzbekistan. Everyone ordered airan—a Turkish dairy drink, except for me. I didn’t know what it was, and asked one of my colleagues. He said that it was very tasty and that I shouldn’t worry about drinking it. He actually said, “it won’t give you diarrhea.” It was very sweet of him to say, and I also found it very funny. So I responded, “don’t worry, I’m not worried about diarrhea – I already have it.” ¶ 5:01 PM 0 Comments
The Banya on Piyonerskaya, Part I
So, Kirill, who I had met in the park, met me at the Cosmonaut Metro station on Saturday at 2pm as planned, to show me the banya on Pioneer Street, which was renamed Mukumi Street. The banya is across from the “bird store.” It no longer exists. At the time I left Tashkent, it was being demolished. When I visited a few years later, it was replaced with a posh café with fake, plastic palm trees decorated with Christmas lights out front. Inside, I saw a floorshow with young children performing very sexually inappropriate ballroom dancing.
But back, when it was for all ostensible purposes, the gay meeting place, when I first stepped in the place, it was probably one of the filthiest places I’d ever imagine to be a bathhouse. There were lots of filthy places in Tashkent that I’d seen – filthy toilets, filthy restaurants, filthy houses, filthy offices, but this place took the cake.
First, the building looked as though it was going to collapse. You entered and paid 200 soums (something like 30 cents) to an ancient man who sat behind a window. You walked up stairs to a drab changing room, with lockers that didn’t have locks, but pieces of string that Shukhrat the attendant tied through the holes for you. Shukhrat was 32, but looked much younger. I complimented him and he told me that his secret to staying young was the sperm of young boys. So, this was Uzbek camp humor.
The floors were grimy, the benches splintery, the wall had a poster of Yulduz Usmanova covering decrepit plaster with chunks falling out. The men too, a few of them there, looked old and broken and drab, like the rest of the room. They were ordinary Uzbek men, the kind you see everywhere on the street, nothing distinctive about them. Not particularly flamboyant. All wearing wedding bands – they were married, as, seemingly all men in the country, gay or straight. I suppose with mostly arranged marriages, everyone is left to find what they really want on the side.
I suppose this was it. I had arrived. I found gay life in Tashkent. ¶ 9:11 AM 0 Comments
So, Kirill, who I had met in the park, met me at the Cosmonaut Metro station on Saturday at 2pm as planned, to show me the banya on Pioneer Street, which was renamed Mukumi Street. The banya is across from the “bird store.” It no longer exists. At the time I left Tashkent, it was being demolished. When I visited a few years later, it was replaced with a posh café with fake, plastic palm trees decorated with Christmas lights out front. Inside, I saw a floorshow with young children performing very sexually inappropriate ballroom dancing.
But back, when it was for all ostensible purposes, the gay meeting place, when I first stepped in the place, it was probably one of the filthiest places I’d ever imagine to be a bathhouse. There were lots of filthy places in Tashkent that I’d seen – filthy toilets, filthy restaurants, filthy houses, filthy offices, but this place took the cake.
First, the building looked as though it was going to collapse. You entered and paid 200 soums (something like 30 cents) to an ancient man who sat behind a window. You walked up stairs to a drab changing room, with lockers that didn’t have locks, but pieces of string that Shukhrat the attendant tied through the holes for you. Shukhrat was 32, but looked much younger. I complimented him and he told me that his secret to staying young was the sperm of young boys. So, this was Uzbek camp humor.
The floors were grimy, the benches splintery, the wall had a poster of Yulduz Usmanova covering decrepit plaster with chunks falling out. The men too, a few of them there, looked old and broken and drab, like the rest of the room. They were ordinary Uzbek men, the kind you see everywhere on the street, nothing distinctive about them. Not particularly flamboyant. All wearing wedding bands – they were married, as, seemingly all men in the country, gay or straight. I suppose with mostly arranged marriages, everyone is left to find what they really want on the side.
I suppose this was it. I had arrived. I found gay life in Tashkent. ¶ 9:11 AM 0 Comments
The Banya
For a nice introduction to the history of the bathhouse, check out:
http://www.pomegranatehouse.org/places.html
In Russian, banya (баня) can refer to any kind of steam bath, and usually refers to the Russian sauna. In the steam room, called a parilka (парилка) there is a wood stove, where the heat comes from. Beside the stove stands a bucket of water that is poured over the heated stones of the stove. Usually across the stove are wooden benches. The banya is less hot than the Finnish sauna, but what it lacks in temperature is compensated by pouring more water over the stones of the stove, creating steam.
There are lots of interesting facts about the long and venerable history of the banya (from the time of Herodotus, to the ancient Slavs, to the Christian Russians, through the Russo-Tatar war, through the Russian Empire, at: http://www.saunahistory.com/
Going to the banya in Uzbekistan is not only sometimes necessary – when water utilities in the home are not always reliable enough for bathing. It is also a social place for weekends, evenings and holidays. People often drink, play cards, gossip, and talk about the news in the banya. ¶ 8:31 AM 0 Comments
For a nice introduction to the history of the bathhouse, check out:
http://www.pomegranatehouse.org/places.html
In Russian, banya (баня) can refer to any kind of steam bath, and usually refers to the Russian sauna. In the steam room, called a parilka (парилка) there is a wood stove, where the heat comes from. Beside the stove stands a bucket of water that is poured over the heated stones of the stove. Usually across the stove are wooden benches. The banya is less hot than the Finnish sauna, but what it lacks in temperature is compensated by pouring more water over the stones of the stove, creating steam.
There are lots of interesting facts about the long and venerable history of the banya (from the time of Herodotus, to the ancient Slavs, to the Christian Russians, through the Russo-Tatar war, through the Russian Empire, at: http://www.saunahistory.com/
Going to the banya in Uzbekistan is not only sometimes necessary – when water utilities in the home are not always reliable enough for bathing. It is also a social place for weekends, evenings and holidays. People often drink, play cards, gossip, and talk about the news in the banya. ¶ 8:31 AM 0 Comments
My Uzbek Closet
In those first months, I felt guilty about being in the closet in Uzbekistan. As though I was being dishonest with people. This was a genuine challenge for me -- especially since I really did like the people and felt that this barrier -- this inability to come out, would always stand in the way of true friendship.
Even of my friends who were quite progressive in their views, or friends who I knew would come around, I was never quite sure how they would react, whether they would accept it. Furthermore, I was concerned about burdening them with my secret. I'm certain that those who got to know me really well suspected. With many, they knew, but it was tacitly agreed upon that it was not a subject for discussion. It was quite a tightrope I walked.
Just to give you a sense of what the attitudes are like there, and what it's like for a gay person in Uzbekistan, I found this link to an online bulletin board in Uzbekistan:
http://forum.arbuz.com/showthread.php?t=18421&page=2
The topic:
It's interesting to me that they're even having these discussions. Most of the responses are rather compassionate and tolerant.
or
Some are the usual conservative, to be expected:
Some are outright silly, and sadly, the most typical, in my experience there:
In those first months, I felt guilty about being in the closet in Uzbekistan. As though I was being dishonest with people. This was a genuine challenge for me -- especially since I really did like the people and felt that this barrier -- this inability to come out, would always stand in the way of true friendship.
Even of my friends who were quite progressive in their views, or friends who I knew would come around, I was never quite sure how they would react, whether they would accept it. Furthermore, I was concerned about burdening them with my secret. I'm certain that those who got to know me really well suspected. With many, they knew, but it was tacitly agreed upon that it was not a subject for discussion. It was quite a tightrope I walked.
Just to give you a sense of what the attitudes are like there, and what it's like for a gay person in Uzbekistan, I found this link to an online bulletin board in Uzbekistan:
http://forum.arbuz.com/showthread.php?t=18421&page=2
The topic:
Imagine your best friend, whom you adore, comes out to you about his homosexuality. What would you do? Would you accept the fact and keep your friendship? Would you think he is freak and keep distance from him? Would you do anything else?
It's interesting to me that they're even having these discussions. Most of the responses are rather compassionate and tolerant.
One of my (not best, but close) friends told me recently he was gay. I can see he is happier now since "coming out of the closet". And if he is happy - I am happy for him.
or
We do not choose friends for their sexual orientation (unless you make friends to get jiggy with them). He was already gay when your have started building your friendship; you liked his ways, you cherished him without knowing he was gay. What's changed now? Really?
Some are the usual conservative, to be expected:
Man, I am warning you -as a straight friend.
Read in Quran how ALLAH dealt with the people of Lot....Let all gays and gay-friends read it....before it is too late....That is very dangerous. And that is what Shaytan and Kuffar want to happen worldwide.style="font-style:italic;">
Some are outright silly, and sadly, the most typical, in my experience there:
me for examle used to be fan of Elton John for long time till the day¶ 7:53 AM 0 Comments
i was informed that he was a gay.
Aimless Soul
Uzbekistan was a place ripe for missionary activity. With official Soviet atheism gone, no common morale like the Communist Party, a Muslim tradition that the government kept in check, fearing threatening tendencies towards fundamentalism like in Taliban-controlled neighboring Afghanistan, there was a vacuum for the searching spirit – looking for a home in which to worship.
Churches opened for the hungry soul. A few cults appeared. The Lubavich revived and supported the synagogues. Sometimes a Jehovah’s Witness stopped me on the street to offer a Russian language Watchtower magazine.
My office was near the Vatican Embassy, that had a small monastery, with monks who ministered to the Church and the small Catholic population of Tashkent, that consisted of Poles, Ukranians, some converts and several expatriates. My office was also near the Ashkenazi synagogue. There were two Bukharian synagogues not far either. One of them had a fire (and rumour had it that it was set by members of the other one).
Sometimes, attendants from the synagogue would come to my office looking for a jew to be the tenth man at their minyan, hearing a rumor that the American working in the office may be a Jew. I would instruct my secretary to tell them that I was out of the office.
The Catholics would send over young monks, I couldn't tell where they were from, but somewhere in Eastern Europe, inviting me to the opening of the newly restored Sacred Heart Church – a church which had begun to be built at the beginning of the 20th Century, but which had been built at the beginning of the 20th century, never finished, finally completed and restored. The monks would also invite me to organ concerts. I would pass on the invitations to one of the guys in my office who was Polish Catholic.
In Uzbekistan, it seemed that everyone had a place in the society. They had their families, which were large, they had their religious communities. But for me, I couldn’t really fit into any of these things. Not even with the expatriates. Most of them were older, mostly with families. They didn’t drink, didn’t go out. Didn’t know the language, and didn’t even try to learn it.
But, being on the fringe, as I was, was liberating. And as I got to know the language, I was going out more, making friends with young people who liked to dance and stay up late at night in clubs, and go to the theater.
But as a free and unattached person, I was like a flystrip for these religious groups – looking for aimless souls like my own. ¶ 7:51 AM 0 Comments
Uzbekistan was a place ripe for missionary activity. With official Soviet atheism gone, no common morale like the Communist Party, a Muslim tradition that the government kept in check, fearing threatening tendencies towards fundamentalism like in Taliban-controlled neighboring Afghanistan, there was a vacuum for the searching spirit – looking for a home in which to worship.
Churches opened for the hungry soul. A few cults appeared. The Lubavich revived and supported the synagogues. Sometimes a Jehovah’s Witness stopped me on the street to offer a Russian language Watchtower magazine.
My office was near the Vatican Embassy, that had a small monastery, with monks who ministered to the Church and the small Catholic population of Tashkent, that consisted of Poles, Ukranians, some converts and several expatriates. My office was also near the Ashkenazi synagogue. There were two Bukharian synagogues not far either. One of them had a fire (and rumour had it that it was set by members of the other one).
Sometimes, attendants from the synagogue would come to my office looking for a jew to be the tenth man at their minyan, hearing a rumor that the American working in the office may be a Jew. I would instruct my secretary to tell them that I was out of the office.
The Catholics would send over young monks, I couldn't tell where they were from, but somewhere in Eastern Europe, inviting me to the opening of the newly restored Sacred Heart Church – a church which had begun to be built at the beginning of the 20th Century, but which had been built at the beginning of the 20th century, never finished, finally completed and restored. The monks would also invite me to organ concerts. I would pass on the invitations to one of the guys in my office who was Polish Catholic.
In Uzbekistan, it seemed that everyone had a place in the society. They had their families, which were large, they had their religious communities. But for me, I couldn’t really fit into any of these things. Not even with the expatriates. Most of them were older, mostly with families. They didn’t drink, didn’t go out. Didn’t know the language, and didn’t even try to learn it.
But, being on the fringe, as I was, was liberating. And as I got to know the language, I was going out more, making friends with young people who liked to dance and stay up late at night in clubs, and go to the theater.
But as a free and unattached person, I was like a flystrip for these religious groups – looking for aimless souls like my own. ¶ 7:51 AM 0 Comments
Goodbye America!
Uzbekistan is a strange place for a gay American to move to. I left a good job, a good city, a comfortable life, a very sweet boyfriend.
The boyfriend, at first, thought he could wait for me, maybe for a year. We would talk on the phone once a week, we would make plans to meet up in Europe. But then he realized that he couldn’t wait. Towards the end of that year, he called and told me that he had started seeing someone else a few months back. I cried. But, literally, within days, I had forgotten about it.
After all, I would wake up every morning in Tashkent with a tremendous feeling of calm, a peace of mind I had never experienced in my life before before. I would wake up realizing that I was somewhere very special and that my life was very exciting, in a way I had never dreamed of. And, I was far, far away from my family -- a complicated family, that seemed to only draw me into their problems.
There was plenty of stress – the stress of making oneself understood, understanding others. I felt at times that I was like a babe in the forest, learning how to walk, how to talk. The stress of coming home and finding that there was no water. Or no electricity. Or when police could stop you for no reason at all on the street and ask for documents. The tremendous stress on my intestinal tract. And, I was completely alone, which was something I grew to enjoy and cherish.
On the other hand, it took very little out there to make me happy. I felt that happiness every morning -- with the sweet calm of early morning, before the heat of the day came, waking up to the rhythmical scratches of the sweeping against the pavement, the bent old ladies endlessly fighting with the desert dust. ¶ 7:36 AM 1 Comments
Uzbekistan is a strange place for a gay American to move to. I left a good job, a good city, a comfortable life, a very sweet boyfriend.
The boyfriend, at first, thought he could wait for me, maybe for a year. We would talk on the phone once a week, we would make plans to meet up in Europe. But then he realized that he couldn’t wait. Towards the end of that year, he called and told me that he had started seeing someone else a few months back. I cried. But, literally, within days, I had forgotten about it.
After all, I would wake up every morning in Tashkent with a tremendous feeling of calm, a peace of mind I had never experienced in my life before before. I would wake up realizing that I was somewhere very special and that my life was very exciting, in a way I had never dreamed of. And, I was far, far away from my family -- a complicated family, that seemed to only draw me into their problems.
There was plenty of stress – the stress of making oneself understood, understanding others. I felt at times that I was like a babe in the forest, learning how to walk, how to talk. The stress of coming home and finding that there was no water. Or no electricity. Or when police could stop you for no reason at all on the street and ask for documents. The tremendous stress on my intestinal tract. And, I was completely alone, which was something I grew to enjoy and cherish.
On the other hand, it took very little out there to make me happy. I felt that happiness every morning -- with the sweet calm of early morning, before the heat of the day came, waking up to the rhythmical scratches of the sweeping against the pavement, the bent old ladies endlessly fighting with the desert dust. ¶ 7:36 AM 1 Comments
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
More about Alexei
Ok. Since someone was dying to know more about Alexei, why he was grim, what he was doing in Uzbekistan, how well I got to know him, here are the details.
Alexei spoke slowly, deadpan andin a monotone, punctuated by sighs. In his utterances, there was no levity, no wit. He was ordinary looking, slim, with blow-dried hair that was thinning at the top, pouty lips, forever in a frown. He generally struck me as rather sad character. I found out a bit more later why -- I suspect it had to do with a lack of kielbasa.
Alexei was part of that official 8% of non Sunni Muslims in the population – that is Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, German or Jewish; the part of the population people commonly call “European.” They were part of displaced populations that came to Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union – perhaps offered good jobs, good pay, military postings, others were forcibly displaced there by Stalin, such as the Tatars or the Volga Germans. But today, they are the unlucky ones stuck in Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was lead to believe that these “Europeans,” as they weren’t Muslim were more liberal and progressive than the Uzbeks. Maybe there's some truth to it. For one, they tended to be more tied in with Russia and the outside world, as that was where their friends and relatives who got out of Uzbekistan after the fall of the USSR were. And they communicated with their friends and even visited them. So, they weren't living in complete isolation from the world.
Alexei was 30. He was originally from the Ukraine. His parents relocated the family from Kyiv to Uzbekistan when he was 15 to take on positions at the tractor factory in Tashkent. His father passed away several years back. His mother continued to work at the factory as a bookkeeper.
I called Alexei on his mobile phone -- I didn't have one yet at that time. And he invited me for dinner. My Russian was so poor, especially on the phone. We agreed to meet at the metro station at the end of the line. He said he’d meet me there and take me to his home from there. It was far, he told me, so I should be prepared to come over “nanoch.” I had no idea what that meant – I later learned that it meant to spend the night – though not necessarily implying sex, well, not in most cases. He lived in the TTZ district – which is near the tractor factory and where all of its employees lived. It was actually quite far from the end of the metro line, we had to take a 30 minute marshrutka – which is like a little mini-bus - to get to his apartment block.
Alexei shared a small two room apartment with his mother. This is how people really lived. Crammed into small apartments. People did not have their own rooms. They slept on pull out sofas, or on cushions that they rolled out onto the floor. I felt a little guilty because I lived alone in an apartment larger than this, with many rooms.
I asked if his mother knew about his being gay. Of course she knew. She wasn't thrilled about it, but she knew. It must be hard to have a personal life when you live with your mother, I mused. His mother was out of the country on business, he told me. She often was. He began cooking a chicken for dinner and put on a video that he shot in St. Petersburg of his trip there earlier in the summer. He spoke animatedly about the sites, about Catherine the Great. I understood very little, actually. But felt that I gradually began to understand more as we downed shots of vodka. There was always that illusion that language comprehension goes up with alcohol.
He loved St. Petersburg and said that he would move there eventually, that all his friends had left Uzbekistan and moved there because Uzbekistan sucked.
Why does Uzbekistan suck?
Well, in the end, it seemed that it all came down to kielbasa – the sausage that was sold in the stores. He gave the example of kielbasa in the stores. In Uzbekistan there wasn’t much of a variety. But, in St. Petersburg, there were hundreds of varieties in the store.
Was kielbasa so important? I didn’t eat it, so perhaps I didn’t understand it well enough of it to realize its value. But over time, I grew to understand that lots of people would leave Uzbekistan for Russia or anywhere for better kielbasa and the greater selection of kielbasa. People didn’t see much choice, hope or much of a future in Uzbekistan, not in kielbasa, and not in a lot of aspects of their lives.
The penis shaped meat was actually of tremendous symbolic value to people who lived here. It was a way of measuring the economy or democracy. Either people were strapped for money to buy kielbasa, or they didn’t find much of it in the stores, or they couldn't find the kind they wanted. In fact, I was always amazed by supermarkets in general -- particularly in the provinces – big buildings with shelves only with condiments, vodka, and cottonseed oil.
After we ate the chicken Alexei prepared, and drank some more vodka, we walked around his neighborhood – one that was well known to have been very much preserving its old Soviet flavor. Actually, I was stumbling. The people were mostly Russian, the night seemed lively, with people out on the streets, walking around, drinking beer. Big boxy apartment blocks, all of which looked identical to me. We picked up some beer at the corner kiosk as he showed me around the neighborhood as we drank. It felt so liberating here to be able to drink while walking in the street. No policeman would stop you for that. We walked a few apartment blocks over – we were going to his sister’s house, he had some gifts to bring over for his nephew – some sneakers a knapsack, made in china, as the boy was just going to start school. By the time we got to his sister’s, my memory gets a little fuzzy. I had this powerful buzz from the beer (Baltica 9 -- 40% proof), the alcohol. And I remembered that she opened up a bottle of Sovetskaya champagne which I drank a bit of.
Finally, we went back to his place and by this point, I could barely stand anymore. I only remember he popped a porn movie into the VCR and I sat down on his sofa and could barely sit up, move, speak. The room was spinning around me pretty fast, my body felt like jelly, Alexei tried to kiss me. Though I didn’t find Alexei attractive in the least, after over a year of having absolutely no sex at all, he had a really great chance to have his way with me, were I not too drunk. But he didn't. It was impossible for him or me to get my clothes off, and after a little effort of trying, he stopped and then I passed out. I got up the next morning lying on his sofa, drenched in my sweaty clothes with a collossal throbbing headache. He offered me some tea and aspirin which I took and sheepishly left his place, catching a taxi to get back home.
I felt kind of awkward after the whole incident and didn't call him after even to thank him. I know that he felt bad. Henrietta had gone in to get her hair done a few weeks later and Alexei asked her why her friend (meaning me)never called... ¶ 8:32 PM 0 Comments
Ok. Since someone was dying to know more about Alexei, why he was grim, what he was doing in Uzbekistan, how well I got to know him, here are the details.
Alexei spoke slowly, deadpan andin a monotone, punctuated by sighs. In his utterances, there was no levity, no wit. He was ordinary looking, slim, with blow-dried hair that was thinning at the top, pouty lips, forever in a frown. He generally struck me as rather sad character. I found out a bit more later why -- I suspect it had to do with a lack of kielbasa.
Alexei was part of that official 8% of non Sunni Muslims in the population – that is Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, German or Jewish; the part of the population people commonly call “European.” They were part of displaced populations that came to Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union – perhaps offered good jobs, good pay, military postings, others were forcibly displaced there by Stalin, such as the Tatars or the Volga Germans. But today, they are the unlucky ones stuck in Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I was lead to believe that these “Europeans,” as they weren’t Muslim were more liberal and progressive than the Uzbeks. Maybe there's some truth to it. For one, they tended to be more tied in with Russia and the outside world, as that was where their friends and relatives who got out of Uzbekistan after the fall of the USSR were. And they communicated with their friends and even visited them. So, they weren't living in complete isolation from the world.
Alexei was 30. He was originally from the Ukraine. His parents relocated the family from Kyiv to Uzbekistan when he was 15 to take on positions at the tractor factory in Tashkent. His father passed away several years back. His mother continued to work at the factory as a bookkeeper.
I called Alexei on his mobile phone -- I didn't have one yet at that time. And he invited me for dinner. My Russian was so poor, especially on the phone. We agreed to meet at the metro station at the end of the line. He said he’d meet me there and take me to his home from there. It was far, he told me, so I should be prepared to come over “nanoch.” I had no idea what that meant – I later learned that it meant to spend the night – though not necessarily implying sex, well, not in most cases. He lived in the TTZ district – which is near the tractor factory and where all of its employees lived. It was actually quite far from the end of the metro line, we had to take a 30 minute marshrutka – which is like a little mini-bus - to get to his apartment block.
Alexei shared a small two room apartment with his mother. This is how people really lived. Crammed into small apartments. People did not have their own rooms. They slept on pull out sofas, or on cushions that they rolled out onto the floor. I felt a little guilty because I lived alone in an apartment larger than this, with many rooms.
I asked if his mother knew about his being gay. Of course she knew. She wasn't thrilled about it, but she knew. It must be hard to have a personal life when you live with your mother, I mused. His mother was out of the country on business, he told me. She often was. He began cooking a chicken for dinner and put on a video that he shot in St. Petersburg of his trip there earlier in the summer. He spoke animatedly about the sites, about Catherine the Great. I understood very little, actually. But felt that I gradually began to understand more as we downed shots of vodka. There was always that illusion that language comprehension goes up with alcohol.
He loved St. Petersburg and said that he would move there eventually, that all his friends had left Uzbekistan and moved there because Uzbekistan sucked.
Why does Uzbekistan suck?
Well, in the end, it seemed that it all came down to kielbasa – the sausage that was sold in the stores. He gave the example of kielbasa in the stores. In Uzbekistan there wasn’t much of a variety. But, in St. Petersburg, there were hundreds of varieties in the store.
Was kielbasa so important? I didn’t eat it, so perhaps I didn’t understand it well enough of it to realize its value. But over time, I grew to understand that lots of people would leave Uzbekistan for Russia or anywhere for better kielbasa and the greater selection of kielbasa. People didn’t see much choice, hope or much of a future in Uzbekistan, not in kielbasa, and not in a lot of aspects of their lives.
The penis shaped meat was actually of tremendous symbolic value to people who lived here. It was a way of measuring the economy or democracy. Either people were strapped for money to buy kielbasa, or they didn’t find much of it in the stores, or they couldn't find the kind they wanted. In fact, I was always amazed by supermarkets in general -- particularly in the provinces – big buildings with shelves only with condiments, vodka, and cottonseed oil.
After we ate the chicken Alexei prepared, and drank some more vodka, we walked around his neighborhood – one that was well known to have been very much preserving its old Soviet flavor. Actually, I was stumbling. The people were mostly Russian, the night seemed lively, with people out on the streets, walking around, drinking beer. Big boxy apartment blocks, all of which looked identical to me. We picked up some beer at the corner kiosk as he showed me around the neighborhood as we drank. It felt so liberating here to be able to drink while walking in the street. No policeman would stop you for that. We walked a few apartment blocks over – we were going to his sister’s house, he had some gifts to bring over for his nephew – some sneakers a knapsack, made in china, as the boy was just going to start school. By the time we got to his sister’s, my memory gets a little fuzzy. I had this powerful buzz from the beer (Baltica 9 -- 40% proof), the alcohol. And I remembered that she opened up a bottle of Sovetskaya champagne which I drank a bit of.
Finally, we went back to his place and by this point, I could barely stand anymore. I only remember he popped a porn movie into the VCR and I sat down on his sofa and could barely sit up, move, speak. The room was spinning around me pretty fast, my body felt like jelly, Alexei tried to kiss me. Though I didn’t find Alexei attractive in the least, after over a year of having absolutely no sex at all, he had a really great chance to have his way with me, were I not too drunk. But he didn't. It was impossible for him or me to get my clothes off, and after a little effort of trying, he stopped and then I passed out. I got up the next morning lying on his sofa, drenched in my sweaty clothes with a collossal throbbing headache. He offered me some tea and aspirin which I took and sheepishly left his place, catching a taxi to get back home.
I felt kind of awkward after the whole incident and didn't call him after even to thank him. I know that he felt bad. Henrietta had gone in to get her hair done a few weeks later and Alexei asked her why her friend (meaning me)never called... ¶ 8:32 PM 0 Comments
The Conspiracy
It was the middle of the summer and the Tashkent heat was unbearable. There are 40 days of the year in Uzbekistan called “chilla,” the hottest days of the summer. You are constantly dehydrated by the dry heat and one feels tempted to walk around carrying a parasol, since it’s a lot more bearable in the shade.
Every day, I’d go to the swimming pool during my lunch breaks. Those who either couldn’t afford the pool or didn’t have the time, would simply strip down and take a dunk in the public fountains all around the city.
Only at night is it bearable to be outside, but still it is hot. My air conditioner was on the fritz and so I went outside to the square downstairs to have a cigarette.
The square rather lively for a city that feels a bit desolate or sleepy, where the streets are for the most part quiet, lifeless, with little traffice, rarely a crowed.
It was a nice change to be around life and activity. I hadn't yet been told the significance of the square, but I knew in my heart that this was where gay people would congregate, if they existed in Uzbekistan.
The square, dense with trees and growth was poorly illuminated and I found an empty bench to smoke, watch people pass, watch boys and girls sitting together on other benches.
Soon, I wasn’t alone at my bench – three young men joined. Two sat, one stood. The one who stood seemed to be holding court before the other two and looked over at me imperiously. He looked Russian and spoke with his cohorts animatedly, loudly, rather effeminately. The whole party eyed me.
As always now, I was accustomed to all the attention I attracted. Though my Russian language skills weren't very good, I sensed that they were talking about me in front of my face. The standing one asked me for a light and smiled flirtatiously. He said, “can I ask you a question? Do you like men or women?”
“That’s a rather personal question,” I responded,”isn’t it? Which do you like?”
“Men, of course.”
“Well, I suppose that’s obvious.”
He threw me a catty look as his friends giggled. Of course, they asked where I was from. From the accent, it was obvious that I was a foreigner. Was I a tourist, they asked. I said no, that I lived here, that I'd been here for about one year.
“A year? And how come we haven’t seen you before?” Why should they have seen me before? I asked them Tashkent was a city of over 2 million people. Nonetheless, it did have the feel of a small village.
“Well, we haven’t seen you on the square, or at the banya or at the café…”
I told them I didn’t know about these places.
“Well, you are on the square right now.” He pointed at the restaurant with the blue domes across the park,”the café is right there.”
“And the banya?” I asked.
“It’s on Piyonerskaya street.”
“Don’t know about it.”
“Well, we can take you there on Saturday, if you like. But still you didn’t answer the question – do you prefer men or women?”
I smiled him a knowing smile and we all laughed, and formally introduced ourselves to each other. The one standing was Kiril. Timur, sitting down, was his cousin, and beside him, Oleg, was Timur's boyfriend. We would meet by the Cosmonaut metro station at 2pm on Saturday. I asked Kirill what he did for a living – and, can you guess what he was?
A hairdresser. Go figure… ¶ 6:48 PM 0 Comments
It was the middle of the summer and the Tashkent heat was unbearable. There are 40 days of the year in Uzbekistan called “chilla,” the hottest days of the summer. You are constantly dehydrated by the dry heat and one feels tempted to walk around carrying a parasol, since it’s a lot more bearable in the shade.
Every day, I’d go to the swimming pool during my lunch breaks. Those who either couldn’t afford the pool or didn’t have the time, would simply strip down and take a dunk in the public fountains all around the city.
Only at night is it bearable to be outside, but still it is hot. My air conditioner was on the fritz and so I went outside to the square downstairs to have a cigarette.
The square rather lively for a city that feels a bit desolate or sleepy, where the streets are for the most part quiet, lifeless, with little traffice, rarely a crowed.
It was a nice change to be around life and activity. I hadn't yet been told the significance of the square, but I knew in my heart that this was where gay people would congregate, if they existed in Uzbekistan.
The square, dense with trees and growth was poorly illuminated and I found an empty bench to smoke, watch people pass, watch boys and girls sitting together on other benches.
Soon, I wasn’t alone at my bench – three young men joined. Two sat, one stood. The one who stood seemed to be holding court before the other two and looked over at me imperiously. He looked Russian and spoke with his cohorts animatedly, loudly, rather effeminately. The whole party eyed me.
As always now, I was accustomed to all the attention I attracted. Though my Russian language skills weren't very good, I sensed that they were talking about me in front of my face. The standing one asked me for a light and smiled flirtatiously. He said, “can I ask you a question? Do you like men or women?”
“That’s a rather personal question,” I responded,”isn’t it? Which do you like?”
“Men, of course.”
“Well, I suppose that’s obvious.”
He threw me a catty look as his friends giggled. Of course, they asked where I was from. From the accent, it was obvious that I was a foreigner. Was I a tourist, they asked. I said no, that I lived here, that I'd been here for about one year.
“A year? And how come we haven’t seen you before?” Why should they have seen me before? I asked them Tashkent was a city of over 2 million people. Nonetheless, it did have the feel of a small village.
“Well, we haven’t seen you on the square, or at the banya or at the café…”
I told them I didn’t know about these places.
“Well, you are on the square right now.” He pointed at the restaurant with the blue domes across the park,”the café is right there.”
“And the banya?” I asked.
“It’s on Piyonerskaya street.”
“Don’t know about it.”
“Well, we can take you there on Saturday, if you like. But still you didn’t answer the question – do you prefer men or women?”
I smiled him a knowing smile and we all laughed, and formally introduced ourselves to each other. The one standing was Kiril. Timur, sitting down, was his cousin, and beside him, Oleg, was Timur's boyfriend. We would meet by the Cosmonaut metro station at 2pm on Saturday. I asked Kirill what he did for a living – and, can you guess what he was?
A hairdresser. Go figure… ¶ 6:48 PM 0 Comments
My Safe Uzbek Closet
I was completely in the closet and extremely careful always in Uzbekistan, though I began to relax after a few years of being there. Why, you ask? First there was the law, which, though it was ridiculous, still set the atmosphere in the country. Besides the law’s threat of incarceration – being gay was socially dangerous…Foremost, I was scared for my life.
I’d heard from an older gay American man here that only a few months before I had arrived in country, and before he had as well, that there had been a gay Fulbright scholar living in Tashkent. He hung out with local gays – he found out where they were, became friends with them, apparently even took their photographs and kept a scrapbook with them, with their names and numbers.
The guy was later murdered in his apartment. Apparently it was not gay-related, just some guys who wanted to rob his apartment, expecting to find money, maybe a VCR…people always assumed that Americans are rich.
After that, I was told, the police began rounding up gay people in the places where they gathered (apparently, at the time I didn’t know, there were certain cafes, toilets, public parks, and saunas – the older American guy had an interesting UN unofficial report about homosexuality in Uzbekistan that he showed me that detailed all this) and would bring them in for interrogation.
Given the level of police corruption, they most likely shook these folks down for bribes, so that they didn’t wind up being tortured in police custody, as is often the case. And for those who feared it, they could blackmail people – and out them among their families or at their place of work.
It was impossible to confirm any of this, as there is nothing on the US state department’s website. But as time went on, as I met more gay men in Tashkent and asked them about this, they were aware of the case – they were aware of people who had been called in to the police in the investigation. ¶ 5:07 PM 0 Comments
Seagulls? In a Landlocked Country?
With my introduction to Alexei, slowly began my introduction to what is gay in Uzbekistan. And actually, there are so many things that are similar in both countries. Seems like just like in the US, a lot of gays in Uzbekistan have a “girlfriend” or a “fag-hag.” In fact, they have a special name for it as well – they call such girls a “chaika” or a seagull and I don't know why. However, it seems like the common wisdom here is that a gay guy is a straight girl’s best friend and vice-versa. I suppose that wisdom was passed on here and announced through the American movies that were very popular when I was leaving the US – like “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” or “The Next Best Thing,” which were popular imports in Uzbekistan.
The TV show “Will and Grace” didn’t cross with the rest of the American dreck that made it there, (Baywatch, for example is huge), but when I did bring the collected first and second seasons, it seems that my local English-speaking friends would watch it and dream about the way their lives could be, had they lived somewhere else in the world. Just like the local, more progressive Uzbek women I knew would feel, when they would watch the midnight showing of “Sex and the City” on the Russian satellite channels, dreaming of how their life would have, could have been, had things been different and an accident of cruel fate had not made them be born in Uzbekistan.
I never came out to any Uzbeks, ever. They could think what they wanted about me, I even know of some cases after several years of being there where some girls had asked a close American friend of mine -- let's call her Gertrude -- because I always seemed to be attending social functions with young attractive men around me. Men never brought up the issue to me, even gay men I knew who were not open with their sexuality, probably because the topic just has too much taboo attached to it. But I will talk more about my Uzbek closet later.
The only time I ever said to someone that I was gay was to this girl Lena. And I was really drunk at the time and I was in between a rock and a hard place. Let me explain. Lena was a somewhat plump, loud and alcoholic girl who was born in Tashkent, but had married some small, skinny, and rich British fellow (who I had never seen) and lived in Highland Park with him. But she was back in Tashkent visiting her family and hanging out with her friend Kristina, who, at the time was dating a friend of mine who was working for one of the foreign embassies in Tashkent.
We all went out one night to a nightclub, and as we were the only people in our little group without a partner or date, we danced together, drank together – she could drink me under the table easily, and we had a really pleasant time. I did begin to worry, however that this was the kind of woman who devours men and of course, as I suspected, she asked me if I’d go home with her.
“I can’t, ” I said. “I’m gay,” I blurted out, drunken and realizing that this was a bit risky and that she could possibly unmask me before a crowded nightclub and I might be running for my life to the airport to home to safe haven from a mob wanting blood. But I just really didn’t want to have to sleep with her to save my skin. I held my breath, fearing her response. But, in the end what a relief. “I’m so happy,” she said. “All my friends are gay. All my friends in Tashkent, in London, in Moscow. They are all gay. This is so great. This means that we can be friends.”
I later would have some really crazy adventures around Tashkent with Lena, all of which involved lots of alcohol. ¶ 5:50 AM 0 Comments
With my introduction to Alexei, slowly began my introduction to what is gay in Uzbekistan. And actually, there are so many things that are similar in both countries. Seems like just like in the US, a lot of gays in Uzbekistan have a “girlfriend” or a “fag-hag.” In fact, they have a special name for it as well – they call such girls a “chaika” or a seagull and I don't know why. However, it seems like the common wisdom here is that a gay guy is a straight girl’s best friend and vice-versa. I suppose that wisdom was passed on here and announced through the American movies that were very popular when I was leaving the US – like “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” or “The Next Best Thing,” which were popular imports in Uzbekistan.
The TV show “Will and Grace” didn’t cross with the rest of the American dreck that made it there, (Baywatch, for example is huge), but when I did bring the collected first and second seasons, it seems that my local English-speaking friends would watch it and dream about the way their lives could be, had they lived somewhere else in the world. Just like the local, more progressive Uzbek women I knew would feel, when they would watch the midnight showing of “Sex and the City” on the Russian satellite channels, dreaming of how their life would have, could have been, had things been different and an accident of cruel fate had not made them be born in Uzbekistan.
I never came out to any Uzbeks, ever. They could think what they wanted about me, I even know of some cases after several years of being there where some girls had asked a close American friend of mine -- let's call her Gertrude -- because I always seemed to be attending social functions with young attractive men around me. Men never brought up the issue to me, even gay men I knew who were not open with their sexuality, probably because the topic just has too much taboo attached to it. But I will talk more about my Uzbek closet later.
The only time I ever said to someone that I was gay was to this girl Lena. And I was really drunk at the time and I was in between a rock and a hard place. Let me explain. Lena was a somewhat plump, loud and alcoholic girl who was born in Tashkent, but had married some small, skinny, and rich British fellow (who I had never seen) and lived in Highland Park with him. But she was back in Tashkent visiting her family and hanging out with her friend Kristina, who, at the time was dating a friend of mine who was working for one of the foreign embassies in Tashkent.
We all went out one night to a nightclub, and as we were the only people in our little group without a partner or date, we danced together, drank together – she could drink me under the table easily, and we had a really pleasant time. I did begin to worry, however that this was the kind of woman who devours men and of course, as I suspected, she asked me if I’d go home with her.
“I can’t, ” I said. “I’m gay,” I blurted out, drunken and realizing that this was a bit risky and that she could possibly unmask me before a crowded nightclub and I might be running for my life to the airport to home to safe haven from a mob wanting blood. But I just really didn’t want to have to sleep with her to save my skin. I held my breath, fearing her response. But, in the end what a relief. “I’m so happy,” she said. “All my friends are gay. All my friends in Tashkent, in London, in Moscow. They are all gay. This is so great. This means that we can be friends.”
I later would have some really crazy adventures around Tashkent with Lena, all of which involved lots of alcohol. ¶ 5:50 AM 0 Comments
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 2 Comments
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 2 Comments
Stare Stare Stare!!!
OK, now that I've given you a bit of atmosphere, I'll get back to my story for a little bit.
Now, if things around me were exotic and strange to me, people around me likewise found me exotic and strange. Everywhere I went in Tashkent, people were always staring.
I must have looked so strikingly exotic. Imagine, an all-American guy as an item of exotica. I don’t know what it was that made me stand out so much. I didn't think that I looked that much different that people there. I have an olive complexion like some Uzbeks. I have narrow asiatic eyes that subjected me to taunts as a child. I deliberately wore understated clothing -- though, in Uzbekistan, even generic stuff from the GAP was quite distinct from the options offerred at the local bazaars. Americans carried knapsacks on their backs, wore eyeglasses more frequently, had better sneakers, had better teeth. Didn't have gold teeth (See later posting: Golden Teeth)
One local friend there said that Americans were identifiable because they carried themselves differently. With confidence, perhaps. Perhaps also, we looked a little bit lost and overwhelmed by our surroundings. I know I must have at the beginning. By the end, I felt like I knew the city of Tashkent like I knew the back of my hand, as well as I knew any place I have ever lived.
There were so few Americans there – we were such a rarity and an object of curiosity and fascination in this remote and isolated corner of the world. Sometimes a young person who spoke some English would come up to me and ask me "do you know Mister John, he’s from the state of Missouri," or "do you know Miss Rose, from the state of Nebraska, she taught me English." This was likely the only other American they may have ever encountered and they asked as though the US were such a small country, like Uzbekistan, where everyone knows each other. I would always have to explain that America was a big country, with places that I'd never been to -- like Missouri or Nebraska.
People would ask with such interest about the cost of my things, my sneakers, about my salary, all of which were unheard of sums of money. They would ask if my lifestyle was anything like Santa Barbara, a soap opera which I had never seen, but they all had and it inspired their imaginations with an American life of lavish, luxurious homes, clothes, cars, etc..
All the attention was a little overwhelming at the start. At first, it made me feel self conscious and awful. And I was afraid to stare back. I was confused. What were people looking at? Were they interested in my foreignness…or were they interested in me in the way you sometimes attract a cruisy glance in America.
Then you get used to it and learn to play with it. At one point I developed a sense that this was the part of the world where I was really considered beautiful. In fact, a friend of mine who traveled around a lot in the world, would say that she had a theory that everyone has a place in the world, where they are fascinating, exotic, beautiful, etc. For me, that was Tashkent.
People often said that I looked like a movie star - which reminded me of the Angela Patrinou story. It would be nice if they said that I looked like someone really hot, you know, like George Clooney or Brad Pitt.
But no, they said I looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme, the martial arts actor, the "Muscles from Brussels" whose real name is Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, the guy who says he learned English from watching the Flintstones. Now he may be pretty insignificant in the US, but in Uzbekistan, he's huge. Nonetheless, he's awful, he has a bipolar disorder that has lead him to cocaine abuse and charges of spousal abuse and an abuse of any member of the general public that has ever suffered through watching any one of his terrible films. But people there eat them up like pie. And he has made many, many films (Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Death Warrant, Universal Soldier, Lionheart, Timecop, Double Impact, Hard Target, Nowhere to Run, In Hell, Double Team, Cyborg, Sudden Death,...need I go on?) I have never watched a single one of them.
Here's a lovely bit about him from Wikipedia, I thought I had to share:
This all served me well, especially with the boys. And even in all those routine dealings with the police, the routine document checks, and such, in which I would need to charm them and somehow make small talk. Though I would get a bit tired of the usual routine that I was always privy to, in which someone there would ask, "hmmm...you resemble a famous movie actor...I can't remember exactly which one it is," and I'd roll my eyes and moan, "you mean Jean Claude Van Damme," with the policemen I'd let them keep guessing, as though I had no idea who they were thinking of and then when they would suggest Jean-Claude Van Damme, I would often say coyly, "you don't say...Why you're the first person who'se ever said that to me."
After some time, I just got used to the looks, the attention, Jean Claude Van Damme. Sometimes, outside of Uzbekistan, I even miss it, probably. ¶ 2:45 AM 2 Comments
OK, now that I've given you a bit of atmosphere, I'll get back to my story for a little bit.
Now, if things around me were exotic and strange to me, people around me likewise found me exotic and strange. Everywhere I went in Tashkent, people were always staring.
I must have looked so strikingly exotic. Imagine, an all-American guy as an item of exotica. I don’t know what it was that made me stand out so much. I didn't think that I looked that much different that people there. I have an olive complexion like some Uzbeks. I have narrow asiatic eyes that subjected me to taunts as a child. I deliberately wore understated clothing -- though, in Uzbekistan, even generic stuff from the GAP was quite distinct from the options offerred at the local bazaars. Americans carried knapsacks on their backs, wore eyeglasses more frequently, had better sneakers, had better teeth. Didn't have gold teeth (See later posting: Golden Teeth)
One local friend there said that Americans were identifiable because they carried themselves differently. With confidence, perhaps. Perhaps also, we looked a little bit lost and overwhelmed by our surroundings. I know I must have at the beginning. By the end, I felt like I knew the city of Tashkent like I knew the back of my hand, as well as I knew any place I have ever lived.
There were so few Americans there – we were such a rarity and an object of curiosity and fascination in this remote and isolated corner of the world. Sometimes a young person who spoke some English would come up to me and ask me "do you know Mister John, he’s from the state of Missouri," or "do you know Miss Rose, from the state of Nebraska, she taught me English." This was likely the only other American they may have ever encountered and they asked as though the US were such a small country, like Uzbekistan, where everyone knows each other. I would always have to explain that America was a big country, with places that I'd never been to -- like Missouri or Nebraska.
People would ask with such interest about the cost of my things, my sneakers, about my salary, all of which were unheard of sums of money. They would ask if my lifestyle was anything like Santa Barbara, a soap opera which I had never seen, but they all had and it inspired their imaginations with an American life of lavish, luxurious homes, clothes, cars, etc..
All the attention was a little overwhelming at the start. At first, it made me feel self conscious and awful. And I was afraid to stare back. I was confused. What were people looking at? Were they interested in my foreignness…or were they interested in me in the way you sometimes attract a cruisy glance in America.
Then you get used to it and learn to play with it. At one point I developed a sense that this was the part of the world where I was really considered beautiful. In fact, a friend of mine who traveled around a lot in the world, would say that she had a theory that everyone has a place in the world, where they are fascinating, exotic, beautiful, etc. For me, that was Tashkent.
People often said that I looked like a movie star - which reminded me of the Angela Patrinou story. It would be nice if they said that I looked like someone really hot, you know, like George Clooney or Brad Pitt.
But no, they said I looked like Jean-Claude Van Damme, the martial arts actor, the "Muscles from Brussels" whose real name is Jean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg, the guy who says he learned English from watching the Flintstones. Now he may be pretty insignificant in the US, but in Uzbekistan, he's huge. Nonetheless, he's awful, he has a bipolar disorder that has lead him to cocaine abuse and charges of spousal abuse and an abuse of any member of the general public that has ever suffered through watching any one of his terrible films. But people there eat them up like pie. And he has made many, many films (Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Death Warrant, Universal Soldier, Lionheart, Timecop, Double Impact, Hard Target, Nowhere to Run, In Hell, Double Team, Cyborg, Sudden Death,...need I go on?) I have never watched a single one of them.
Here's a lovely bit about him from Wikipedia, I thought I had to share:
Van Damme has gained a reputation for numerous nude appearances in his films and has become a definite favorite for fans for his on-screen nudity. He first appeared nude in Bloodsport, with numerous such appearances in his subsequent films, including a lengthy one in Universal Soldier. Though only showing rear nudity, the athletic quality of Van Damme's posterior has heightened his appeal. Van Damme is on record as saying, "If you have a decent body why not show it? I'm very proud of my butt." This was the subject of parody in the television show Friends, where Van Damme, guest-starring as himself, flirts with a main character by announcing that he can "crack a walnut with [his] butt."
This all served me well, especially with the boys. And even in all those routine dealings with the police, the routine document checks, and such, in which I would need to charm them and somehow make small talk. Though I would get a bit tired of the usual routine that I was always privy to, in which someone there would ask, "hmmm...you resemble a famous movie actor...I can't remember exactly which one it is," and I'd roll my eyes and moan, "you mean Jean Claude Van Damme," with the policemen I'd let them keep guessing, as though I had no idea who they were thinking of and then when they would suggest Jean-Claude Van Damme, I would often say coyly, "you don't say...Why you're the first person who'se ever said that to me."
After some time, I just got used to the looks, the attention, Jean Claude Van Damme. Sometimes, outside of Uzbekistan, I even miss it, probably. ¶ 2:45 AM 2 Comments
This is really more like what the music is like. Just to give you some exotic color.
¶ 2:01 AM 0 Comments
¶ 2:01 AM 0 Comments
Yulduz (Part II)
Yulduz embodies the deep hidden passionate temparament of the Uzbek. Not only is she a diva of international proportions, she's a deputy of the Uzbek parliament and they say that she also wrote the new Uzbek national anthem...but I have conflicting sources on that.
The pop diva also had a bit of a fabulous scandal in her personal life with a messy breakup. Here's this article from 2002 about her called "Yulduz Usmanova -- Shooting Star" (Yulduz means star in Uzbek).
http://www.uzland.info/2002/january/31/09.htm
It's in Russian, but in short, it's like something out of a gangster movie. And the information is clearly something put out by her ex-lover Farhod Tulyaganov. On January 15, 2002 at 9:30 in the evening, Farhod returned home with his friend Anvar and upon approaching his home he saw someone standing by his gate in the shadows, who invited him for a smoke. When he lit up, he saw a stranger with a pistol in hand.
Farhod managed to knock the weapon from the hands of the assailant who then ran into a car and drove off. A car chase ensued in which Farhod trailed the car to a dead end, cornered the attacker, who turned out to be none other than Bonu -- another famous Uzbek singer, a protigee of Yulduz. The police later discovered a Makarov pistol with eight cartridges in the car.
When later interrogated, Bonu allegedly confessed that Yulduz asked her to shoot Farhod and his family (he's married, of course, as is everyone in Uzbekistan), promising her that she would be awarded the title of National Singer of Uzbekistan if successful.
None of this information could be confirmed. The article is the typical kind of compromising materials people put out about their enemies in this country.
Yulduz shortly after the incident checked herself into a hospital...Someone I know went in to see her and said that she looked fantastic. The matter was later resolved quietly. First of all Yulduz has immunity as a parliamentary deputy. Farhod is from one of the most powerful families in Tashkent. Somehow, an agreement was worked out between the two parties.
By the way, the name of the song in the last post translates as jealousy. ¶ 12:23 AM 1 Comments
Yulduz embodies the deep hidden passionate temparament of the Uzbek. Not only is she a diva of international proportions, she's a deputy of the Uzbek parliament and they say that she also wrote the new Uzbek national anthem...but I have conflicting sources on that.
The pop diva also had a bit of a fabulous scandal in her personal life with a messy breakup. Here's this article from 2002 about her called "Yulduz Usmanova -- Shooting Star" (Yulduz means star in Uzbek).
http://www.uzland.info/2002/january/31/09.htm
It's in Russian, but in short, it's like something out of a gangster movie. And the information is clearly something put out by her ex-lover Farhod Tulyaganov. On January 15, 2002 at 9:30 in the evening, Farhod returned home with his friend Anvar and upon approaching his home he saw someone standing by his gate in the shadows, who invited him for a smoke. When he lit up, he saw a stranger with a pistol in hand.
Farhod managed to knock the weapon from the hands of the assailant who then ran into a car and drove off. A car chase ensued in which Farhod trailed the car to a dead end, cornered the attacker, who turned out to be none other than Bonu -- another famous Uzbek singer, a protigee of Yulduz. The police later discovered a Makarov pistol with eight cartridges in the car.
When later interrogated, Bonu allegedly confessed that Yulduz asked her to shoot Farhod and his family (he's married, of course, as is everyone in Uzbekistan), promising her that she would be awarded the title of National Singer of Uzbekistan if successful.
None of this information could be confirmed. The article is the typical kind of compromising materials people put out about their enemies in this country.
Yulduz shortly after the incident checked herself into a hospital...Someone I know went in to see her and said that she looked fantastic. The matter was later resolved quietly. First of all Yulduz has immunity as a parliamentary deputy. Farhod is from one of the most powerful families in Tashkent. Somehow, an agreement was worked out between the two parties.
By the way, the name of the song in the last post translates as jealousy. ¶ 12:23 AM 1 Comments
Yulduz Usmanova
She's what they call the Uzbek Madonna. And let me tell you, nothing stranger than a bunch of gay Uzbeks voguing to this music. When I saw that, I realized that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Check it out -- it's pretty camp.
I met her daugher in a gay club in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Very pretty girl. She was looking very bored hanging out with her mother's hairdresser and makeup artist, both Uzbek...both gay (see later post entitled: Like a Bad Comedy). I invited her to dance with me -- we danced to Tatu -- that teenage Russian lesbian duo:
¶ 12:13 AM 0 Comments
She's what they call the Uzbek Madonna. And let me tell you, nothing stranger than a bunch of gay Uzbeks voguing to this music. When I saw that, I realized that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. Check it out -- it's pretty camp.
I met her daugher in a gay club in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Very pretty girl. She was looking very bored hanging out with her mother's hairdresser and makeup artist, both Uzbek...both gay (see later post entitled: Like a Bad Comedy). I invited her to dance with me -- we danced to Tatu -- that teenage Russian lesbian duo:
¶ 12:13 AM 0 Comments
Monday, July 10, 2006
White White Black Stork
White White Black Stork is an original play at Tashkent’s experimental “Ilkhom Theater” about homosexuality in pre-soviet Uzbekistan, based on a novel by national Uzbek Writer Abdula Kodiri. The story is about Makhzum, a dreamer, a poet, a young Muslim boy from the Old City of Tashkent, who “wasn’t like everyone” who couldn’t fight like the other boys, with no friends, who dreams in his yard. His parents send him to Madrassah, where he falls in love with his classmate.
Upon his parents discovery of his forbidden love and to avoid the rumours that might spread around the town, his parents forced him into an arranged marriage, he is forced into an arranged marriage to the daughter of a neighbor, a girl who only dreamed of the man, whose voice she fell in love with, the man who sells fabric.
Here's a link to the theater and the play:
http://www.ilkhom.com/english/repertoire/rept/article/17
This play is set in old Tashkent of 100 years ago, but the story rings so true today. In fact, it's very much like the story that I want to tell, eventually, as this blog develops. A foreshadowing of things to come. ¶ 10:34 PM 0 Comments
White White Black Stork is an original play at Tashkent’s experimental “Ilkhom Theater” about homosexuality in pre-soviet Uzbekistan, based on a novel by national Uzbek Writer Abdula Kodiri. The story is about Makhzum, a dreamer, a poet, a young Muslim boy from the Old City of Tashkent, who “wasn’t like everyone” who couldn’t fight like the other boys, with no friends, who dreams in his yard. His parents send him to Madrassah, where he falls in love with his classmate.
Upon his parents discovery of his forbidden love and to avoid the rumours that might spread around the town, his parents forced him into an arranged marriage, he is forced into an arranged marriage to the daughter of a neighbor, a girl who only dreamed of the man, whose voice she fell in love with, the man who sells fabric.
Here's a link to the theater and the play:
http://www.ilkhom.com/english/repertoire/rept/article/17
This play is set in old Tashkent of 100 years ago, but the story rings so true today. In fact, it's very much like the story that I want to tell, eventually, as this blog develops. A foreshadowing of things to come. ¶ 10:34 PM 0 Comments
I think most of the foreigners who had ever been there were touched by Uzbekistan, like me, and fascinated by it, by its contradictions, by its ancient charms, its kind, hospitable people, its somewhat tragic state of unfulfilled promises, optimism in the face of despair, its music, its desert emptinesses, silences.
And, there are so many pretty awful things there. Sure, there are the discomforts of living in an underdeveoped country -- intestinal stress, inescapable heat, bad food, bad phone lines, never toilet paper when you need it. But there are the much further, beneath the surface parts that the locals tend to hide behind the pleasant smiles, the lavish spreads that they put out for you when they receive you as a guest, that is, that their lives are so hard.
It’s hard there to make money honestly. And tomorrow, there could be a knock at the door and everything, the little that you have can be seized.
I’d have taxi drivers with PhD's or who were once working as surgeons or university professors. People had seen better times.
And the country was run by a cruel and corrupt system. When I first got there, either it was my bad language skills or my lack of understanding or people not yet trusting me or perhaps it was the times, too early for people to give up on their optimism, but people didn’t speak so badly about the system.
Over time, I noticed that with the little or lack of improvement in the country, they were livid and they expressed it openly, sometimes furiously, which actually was a dangerous thing -- potentially leading to an arrest.
By the time I was leaving, there were protests, which was unheard of – small fringe groups, calling for the president’s resignation, an elderly pensioner, war veteran, after veterans benefits were cancelled, drove around the city with a sign “Karimov should resign” but he was stopped. And that was only the beginning of the series of protests and demonstrations -- some of which lead to tragic consequences. ¶ 9:46 PM 0 Comments
And, there are so many pretty awful things there. Sure, there are the discomforts of living in an underdeveoped country -- intestinal stress, inescapable heat, bad food, bad phone lines, never toilet paper when you need it. But there are the much further, beneath the surface parts that the locals tend to hide behind the pleasant smiles, the lavish spreads that they put out for you when they receive you as a guest, that is, that their lives are so hard.
It’s hard there to make money honestly. And tomorrow, there could be a knock at the door and everything, the little that you have can be seized.
I’d have taxi drivers with PhD's or who were once working as surgeons or university professors. People had seen better times.
And the country was run by a cruel and corrupt system. When I first got there, either it was my bad language skills or my lack of understanding or people not yet trusting me or perhaps it was the times, too early for people to give up on their optimism, but people didn’t speak so badly about the system.
Over time, I noticed that with the little or lack of improvement in the country, they were livid and they expressed it openly, sometimes furiously, which actually was a dangerous thing -- potentially leading to an arrest.
By the time I was leaving, there were protests, which was unheard of – small fringe groups, calling for the president’s resignation, an elderly pensioner, war veteran, after veterans benefits were cancelled, drove around the city with a sign “Karimov should resign” but he was stopped. And that was only the beginning of the series of protests and demonstrations -- some of which lead to tragic consequences. ¶ 9:46 PM 0 Comments
Uzbekistan and America
There was a time when there were Americans in Tashkent, never many, but always a few. Those were the good days, before things soured between the US and Uzbekistan. They had warmed up after September 11th, when the US built up a military presence at the airbase near Afghanistan and the Uzbeks became a key partner in the US lead coalition in the war against terror.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,,564348,00.html
Relations cooled with the US and the West, reaching an all time low when after a massacre in the country, the US called for an independent investigation.
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/2005-06/2005-06-14-voa1.cfm
Shortly thereafter, the Uzbeks asked the Americans to vacate the airbase.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/07/f30ba0ce-ce97-47a1-9116-e27d25bbce8a.html
At the same time, US businesses -- the few that existed -- were getting harassed, assistance programs were getting kicked out. Today, there are hardly any foreigners left there. ¶ 9:30 PM 0 Comments
There was a time when there were Americans in Tashkent, never many, but always a few. Those were the good days, before things soured between the US and Uzbekistan. They had warmed up after September 11th, when the US built up a military presence at the airbase near Afghanistan and the Uzbeks became a key partner in the US lead coalition in the war against terror.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,,564348,00.html
Relations cooled with the US and the West, reaching an all time low when after a massacre in the country, the US called for an independent investigation.
http://www.voanews.com/uspolicy/archive/2005-06/2005-06-14-voa1.cfm
Shortly thereafter, the Uzbeks asked the Americans to vacate the airbase.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/07/f30ba0ce-ce97-47a1-9116-e27d25bbce8a.html
At the same time, US businesses -- the few that existed -- were getting harassed, assistance programs were getting kicked out. Today, there are hardly any foreigners left there. ¶ 9:30 PM 0 Comments
Random messages
Last week, on the fourth of July, I got a random email from a businessman who I had tangentially done some work with in Uzbekistan years ago, from one of the very remote provinces.
I actually get these messages pretty often but figured I'd write a bit about it because there was a time when US and Uzbekistan relations were quite good, both official policy as well as on the ground, with ordinary people. These days, official policy is bad and I suspect that as a result I would be denied a visa to enter the country.
But, I suppose it's nice to know that there are people one the ground there who would welcome me. It's hard to put down in words how kind, warm and hospitable people are there.
He wrote (I'm translating here) "I almost forgot that today is your big holiday. I congratulate you with your holiday -- Independence Day. I wish you and your country and its people happiness, success and health. Again, I congratulate you on behalf of my staff from XXXX business. I am proud of your country and its people. Best of luck to you!" ¶ 9:19 PM 0 Comments
Last week, on the fourth of July, I got a random email from a businessman who I had tangentially done some work with in Uzbekistan years ago, from one of the very remote provinces.
I actually get these messages pretty often but figured I'd write a bit about it because there was a time when US and Uzbekistan relations were quite good, both official policy as well as on the ground, with ordinary people. These days, official policy is bad and I suspect that as a result I would be denied a visa to enter the country.
But, I suppose it's nice to know that there are people one the ground there who would welcome me. It's hard to put down in words how kind, warm and hospitable people are there.
He wrote (I'm translating here) "I almost forgot that today is your big holiday. I congratulate you with your holiday -- Independence Day. I wish you and your country and its people happiness, success and health. Again, I congratulate you on behalf of my staff from XXXX business. I am proud of your country and its people. Best of luck to you!" ¶ 9:19 PM 0 Comments
Shaving Down South
Also, a response to the question about why Uzbek men shaved down below, I never really quite understood this and just accepted the fact.
Uzbekistan consistently remained to me a fascinating place becuase I never always discovered truly satisfactory answers to the questions I brought up. People were a little elusive in that way and I had to take whatever insight was offerred with a grain of skepticism.
I wondered it if was perhaps from the Muslim traditions of the Uzbeks. I remember reading in 2001 that the terrorists on the flights that hit the World Trade Center had prepared to meet Allah upon their death, and in doing so, had prepared their bodies by shaving them. This may have been an aspect, but Uzbeks were so nominal in their observance of Islam. They drank vodka. They used prostitutes. It didn't seem to be Islamic tradition that explained this phenomenon -- no one had answered my questions indicating such, as most of the people I knew and talked to were particularly observant, save a few. The answers they gave were either about the heat, about how it made the penis look bigger, or other aesthetic purposes...But the most interesting of them all was from a straight and shaven male Uzbek friend who spoke rather good English, who told me that it was more hygenic this way, and that little goblins lived in the public hairs.
Goblins... is that how they refer to crabs? ¶ 8:38 PM 1 Comments
Also, a response to the question about why Uzbek men shaved down below, I never really quite understood this and just accepted the fact.
Uzbekistan consistently remained to me a fascinating place becuase I never always discovered truly satisfactory answers to the questions I brought up. People were a little elusive in that way and I had to take whatever insight was offerred with a grain of skepticism.
I wondered it if was perhaps from the Muslim traditions of the Uzbeks. I remember reading in 2001 that the terrorists on the flights that hit the World Trade Center had prepared to meet Allah upon their death, and in doing so, had prepared their bodies by shaving them. This may have been an aspect, but Uzbeks were so nominal in their observance of Islam. They drank vodka. They used prostitutes. It didn't seem to be Islamic tradition that explained this phenomenon -- no one had answered my questions indicating such, as most of the people I knew and talked to were particularly observant, save a few. The answers they gave were either about the heat, about how it made the penis look bigger, or other aesthetic purposes...But the most interesting of them all was from a straight and shaven male Uzbek friend who spoke rather good English, who told me that it was more hygenic this way, and that little goblins lived in the public hairs.
Goblins... is that how they refer to crabs? ¶ 8:38 PM 1 Comments
Hey, is this blog just about sex?
Some people are asking, did I have a long term relationship while in Uzbekistan? People want to know if it was just sexual exploits all those years and that's all I'm going to write about. The answer is ,of course not, there is so much more to life than sex. But there is so much about living in a foreign place that you fall in love with that is very much like sex, the immersion into another place or being, the moments of forgetting oneself, the moments of inexpressible joy for no particular reason, save for simply your being there. But I would rather not give away too much too soon, developing a relationship with a place has an arc of its own, with much preparation and development and perhaps a climax or several. But this takes time and I will write until I feel that I am able to express it with some justice, explaining the process of learning about the country, the language, the lay of the land of the first few months. And then later, the search for something more. ¶ 8:10 PM 2 Comments
Some people are asking, did I have a long term relationship while in Uzbekistan? People want to know if it was just sexual exploits all those years and that's all I'm going to write about. The answer is ,of course not, there is so much more to life than sex. But there is so much about living in a foreign place that you fall in love with that is very much like sex, the immersion into another place or being, the moments of forgetting oneself, the moments of inexpressible joy for no particular reason, save for simply your being there. But I would rather not give away too much too soon, developing a relationship with a place has an arc of its own, with much preparation and development and perhaps a climax or several. But this takes time and I will write until I feel that I am able to express it with some justice, explaining the process of learning about the country, the language, the lay of the land of the first few months. And then later, the search for something more. ¶ 8:10 PM 2 Comments
Typical Uzbek Conversation
Here’s a typical conversation that I would often have upon meeting people for the first time– one that I could muster in my basic command of the local language in the first year, and that the few people who spoke a little bit of English were able to manage.
Uzbek: How old are you?
Me: 30
Uzbek: Are you married?
Me: No
Uzbek: No??? Why Not?!!!! (usually accompanied by a grimace of horror on their face).
And as my command of the language grew better, I could come up with a number of defenses…The usual one being “In America we marry later.” I think someone must have suggested that one to me early on. It seemed that there was a conspiracy among Americans that “this is the line, and we’re all sticking with it,” because many Uzbeks had heard this before. In fact, they often said that they had heard this. So why do they continue to ask it…Maybe they weren’t buying it.
Anyway, fact of the matter was, I wasn’t about to tell them that I was gay. That was just out of the question. I’m sure that straight people weren’t very happy about the question either. Most people who wound up in Uzbekistan and were single didn’t want to have to talk about their failed and complicated romantic life – I met plenty of those people who regaled me with tales from the kitchen sink. It got me thinking at times that maybe our lives would be simpler if we were thrown into arranged marriages like in Uzbekistan.
Sometimes the conversation didn’t just end there. Sometimes there were the preachy conversationalists determined to teach me something. They’d say that I was letting time pass and that soon it will be too late. I’m not sure if this was meant to make me feel better about myself. They would say that by my age, they already had three children.
After some time, when I got to know the trajectory of this conversation well…and because I could get away with it, I would lie about my age, and just tell everyone I was 25. I looked younger than my age, certainly younger than a 30 year old Uzbek, because I moisturize and stay in shape. Most Uzbek men age quickly – their skin wrinkles from the harsh sun, from the tough life, from poor nutrition .They grow paunches which they lovingly call their “autoritet” or “authority.”
It was the perfect ruse. I figured, if I’m 25, I’m not violating the life schedule of an Uzbek, not yet. And they’d lay off with their preachiness. Sometimes they’d jokingly tell me that I should marry an Uzbek girl, that they make fine wives. They would advise in an avuncular manner that I still had some time to marry, it was not too late yet, but shouldn’t wait too long, before I got too old, which in reality, apparently I was. ¶ 7:59 PM 0 Comments
Here’s a typical conversation that I would often have upon meeting people for the first time– one that I could muster in my basic command of the local language in the first year, and that the few people who spoke a little bit of English were able to manage.
Uzbek: How old are you?
Me: 30
Uzbek: Are you married?
Me: No
Uzbek: No??? Why Not?!!!! (usually accompanied by a grimace of horror on their face).
And as my command of the language grew better, I could come up with a number of defenses…The usual one being “In America we marry later.” I think someone must have suggested that one to me early on. It seemed that there was a conspiracy among Americans that “this is the line, and we’re all sticking with it,” because many Uzbeks had heard this before. In fact, they often said that they had heard this. So why do they continue to ask it…Maybe they weren’t buying it.
Anyway, fact of the matter was, I wasn’t about to tell them that I was gay. That was just out of the question. I’m sure that straight people weren’t very happy about the question either. Most people who wound up in Uzbekistan and were single didn’t want to have to talk about their failed and complicated romantic life – I met plenty of those people who regaled me with tales from the kitchen sink. It got me thinking at times that maybe our lives would be simpler if we were thrown into arranged marriages like in Uzbekistan.
Sometimes the conversation didn’t just end there. Sometimes there were the preachy conversationalists determined to teach me something. They’d say that I was letting time pass and that soon it will be too late. I’m not sure if this was meant to make me feel better about myself. They would say that by my age, they already had three children.
After some time, when I got to know the trajectory of this conversation well…and because I could get away with it, I would lie about my age, and just tell everyone I was 25. I looked younger than my age, certainly younger than a 30 year old Uzbek, because I moisturize and stay in shape. Most Uzbek men age quickly – their skin wrinkles from the harsh sun, from the tough life, from poor nutrition .They grow paunches which they lovingly call their “autoritet” or “authority.”
It was the perfect ruse. I figured, if I’m 25, I’m not violating the life schedule of an Uzbek, not yet. And they’d lay off with their preachiness. Sometimes they’d jokingly tell me that I should marry an Uzbek girl, that they make fine wives. They would advise in an avuncular manner that I still had some time to marry, it was not too late yet, but shouldn’t wait too long, before I got too old, which in reality, apparently I was. ¶ 7:59 PM 0 Comments
Some More Facts about Uzbekistan
I lived for nearly 5 years in the Republic of Uzbekistan. CIA World Factbook information on the country can be found at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uz.html
Uzbekistan is a developing nation in the lowest 25% of the world's economies. It has a barely functioning, though extant infrastructure left over from the Soviet Union.
According to figures in 2006, the population is around 27 million. The median age for a male living in Uzbekistan is 22. The population growth rate is 1.7%. There are 26.36 births for every 1000 persons. 1.05 male to females born. There are 2.91 children born per woman. It is a generally young population.
The culture is primarily Sunni Muslim (88%), but moderate in observance; this translates into cultural attitudes which are traditional and conservative.
This strongly affects family life – as marriages tend to be arranged and occur in the late teens or early 20’s and families are expected to have children immediately and they tend to have many children.
Everyone was married with kids. Almost all of the gay people I ended up meeting there who were over age 25 were married with kids. ¶ 7:43 PM 0 Comments
I lived for nearly 5 years in the Republic of Uzbekistan. CIA World Factbook information on the country can be found at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/uz.html
Uzbekistan is a developing nation in the lowest 25% of the world's economies. It has a barely functioning, though extant infrastructure left over from the Soviet Union.
According to figures in 2006, the population is around 27 million. The median age for a male living in Uzbekistan is 22. The population growth rate is 1.7%. There are 26.36 births for every 1000 persons. 1.05 male to females born. There are 2.91 children born per woman. It is a generally young population.
The culture is primarily Sunni Muslim (88%), but moderate in observance; this translates into cultural attitudes which are traditional and conservative.
This strongly affects family life – as marriages tend to be arranged and occur in the late teens or early 20’s and families are expected to have children immediately and they tend to have many children.
Everyone was married with kids. Almost all of the gay people I ended up meeting there who were over age 25 were married with kids. ¶ 7:43 PM 0 Comments
Living on the Square
Only as my progress learning the local languages developed, so did my awareness of the gay life in Uzbekistan grow. I finally met some local gay people who let me in on a few secrets. Some of the secrets would astound me – at my own cluelessness. I hadn’t even realized – not until after a year of living there and someone told me, that my apartment block was right on the “pleshka” or the “square.”
Every Soviet city has such a square –where gays gather clandestinely or informally – to meet, for trade, sometimes to cruise, etc. There was even a famous café on the square – Golubiye Kupola, or “Blue Domes” that had three blue, eastern-style phallic domes, serving traditional Uzbek fare in Soviet times for tourists. Today, it’s better known for the gays congregating there after twilight to drink tea.
Until this discovery, I honestly had no idea why the men sitting on the park benches near my apartment were always watching me as intently as I came home, as everyone seemed to stare at me wherever I went. (See later posting “Stare Stare Stare!) I just assumed that they were typical nosy neighbors.
I sometimes laugh at how not clued in to the place I was that first year. It’s likely I didn’t understand anything in that country at all. ¶ 7:38 PM 0 Comments
Only as my progress learning the local languages developed, so did my awareness of the gay life in Uzbekistan grow. I finally met some local gay people who let me in on a few secrets. Some of the secrets would astound me – at my own cluelessness. I hadn’t even realized – not until after a year of living there and someone told me, that my apartment block was right on the “pleshka” or the “square.”
Every Soviet city has such a square –where gays gather clandestinely or informally – to meet, for trade, sometimes to cruise, etc. There was even a famous café on the square – Golubiye Kupola, or “Blue Domes” that had three blue, eastern-style phallic domes, serving traditional Uzbek fare in Soviet times for tourists. Today, it’s better known for the gays congregating there after twilight to drink tea.
Until this discovery, I honestly had no idea why the men sitting on the park benches near my apartment were always watching me as intently as I came home, as everyone seemed to stare at me wherever I went. (See later posting “Stare Stare Stare!) I just assumed that they were typical nosy neighbors.
I sometimes laugh at how not clued in to the place I was that first year. It’s likely I didn’t understand anything in that country at all. ¶ 7:38 PM 0 Comments
