The Orchestra - Sinfónia Lifsins - 37. From Russia with Love

Jó didn’t even try to read the whole news article. He merely glanced at the headline ‘Russian Star Oboist is a Prostitute’ before grabbing his phone and running to his office.

“Is he going to yell at reporters again?” I asked Eiri, feeling a little intimidated by Jó’s uncharacteristically blunt manners. My cousin grinned.

“I think he’ll try to do much more than yelling. If you want to keep thinking of Jó as the gentle guy who cooks us food, you might want to stay far away from his office.”

Eiri’s advice gave me a bad feeling. “What’s he going to do?”

“Most likely curse their families for the next five generations, hire a shady Russian sniper to take care of the generations that are still living, and get a very influential, but easily corrupted member of our beloved parliament to plant a bomb in the newspaper’s headquarters,” Eiri deadpanned. His face was so serious I would certainly have believed him if I were a couple of years younger. As it was, he just made me feel a weird mixture of amusement at the extent of his lie and annoyance for him daring to joke at a time like this.

“Eiri!”

“Well, you asked. Jó, the Evil Overlord. You heard it here first!” Eiri winked, and we both laughed. Jó took another ten minutes to return to the breakfast table, during which time Eiri and I read the whole article with increased shock and disbelief. When Jó returned, he was still not happy.

“The chief editor had the balls to tell me they won’t apologise because they have a duty to keep people informed of possible threats to our country, and because their anonymous source was definitely trustworthy, or they would not have ran the story.”

“So they’re saying Dmitri is really a whore?” Eiri asked. “And trying to convince us it’s a bad thing?”

“They’re trying to get Dmitri to lose his job, that’s what,” Jó answered. For a moment I thought I saw storm clouds thundering above his head. “I don’t understand why they’re targeting him in particular, but it’s obvious they have some very strong reason to go to such a ridiculous extent to convince us Dmitri is a dangerous person.”

“I thought it was because he dared date Gunni,” Eiri said. As I listened to my cousins’ discussion, I started to feel like the little breakfast I had already eaten wanted to return to the plate, so I didn’t try to butt in, just in case.

“Might as well be, but I think it’s not that strong a reason. They’re sinking really low on their personal attacks; it can’t be just a case of ‘we’re jealous our new pet is dating a foreigner’.”

“Then maybe write your next column about how nice Dmitri is and point all that shit out, see what happens,” Eiri suggested. Jó’s eyes immediately lit up.

“That’s a great idea, Eiri! I knew there was a reason I loved you!” Jó exclaimed. He kissed his husband on the lips, and Eiri pretended to be offended by the joke. “I’ll get to work now, while I’m properly fired up! See you later!” Jó ran to his office, and even from the kitchen we heard the door bang shut.

(...)

I hurried to my room and accidentally slammed the door shut almost as loudly as Jó. I was anxious to check on Dmitri, to see how he was coping with so much horribleness being written about him. Tjúlli was, as per usual, sleeping on my bed, but woke up and gave me a dirty look because of the door banging shut.

“Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you.” I apologised to the cat. Tjúlli meowed and went back to sleep; hopefully this meant my apology had been accepted. Still, I didn’t like the idea of trying my luck with the psycho-cat, so I sat in my desk chair to call Dmitri. The phone rang twice before someone answered.

“Hi.” Siggi’s voice spoke through Dmitri’s phone. I immediately thought the worst: that something horrible had happened to my boyfriend that prevented him from picking up the call.

“Siggi? Where’s Dmitri? Is he all right? Why do you have his phone?” I asked at a thousand words per second. It was a wonder Siggi understood any of it.

“Too many questions, kid. Dmitri is here with me and he’s fine. I’m just answering all his phone calls today so he doesn’t have to deal with all the jerks and other assorted reporters,” Siggi answered in his usual annoyed tone, but I felt so happy and relieved that Dmitri was fine that I didn’t care that he was being rude.

“Oh, I see. Can I talk to him, then?”

“No.”

“Why not?” I asked. Why wouldn’t Dmitri want to talk to me? Or was Siggi just picking on me on purpose?

“Because I know you’ll want to ask him questions about today’s news. He’s not ready to talk about it yet, so I won’t put you through to him,” Siggi answered. He sounded a lot like Jó when he had his ‘momma bear’ mode on, which was kind of nice of him, even though this ‘momma bear’ was preventing me from speaking to my boyfriend.

“Ok, if that’s what he wants,” I told Siggi. I really wanted to talk to Dmitri, but I could understand why he wouldn’t want to do that right now. “But then is it true what the papers said?”

“What if it was? Are you scared or disgusted by it?” Siggi asked, in his harshest tone yet. He sounded so aggressive I got scared of him.

“I don’t know. That’s why I want to talk to him,” I answered truthfully. I had been so worried about Dmitri I hadn’t completely absorbed the full implications of what was actually written on the papers. All I cared about until now was that they were hurting Dmitri and saying horrible things about him. But Siggi didn’t believe me, or at least took my lack of thought as something negative.

“If you don’t like the possibility that it might be true, then you don’t deserve to be his boyfriend. You say you want to talk, but are you ready to see what Dmitri is really like? Are you going to accept him still after you have your ‘talk’? Because if the answer is ‘no’, you don’t have to bother talking to him ever again.”

Siggi’s words hurt a lot this time. I understood he was just trying to protect Dmitri, but it hurt to be told I should never speak to my boyfriend again. I couldn’t think of anything to say, but thankfully Siggi didn’t end the call just because of my silence. The words I read in the newspaper created vivid fantasises in my mind. They claimed Dmitri was once a prostitute, and hinted that he still was. If this was true, then did it mean that Dmitri had asked me to keep our relationship open just so he could keep seeing his ‘clients’? Or was all of this not true to begin with? I couldn’t understand how I felt about all of this when I couldn’t tell truth and lies apart. “I want to hear it from Dmitri. Whatever his story is, I would rather hear it from him than from a reporter. I’m worried about him; I just want to talk and make sure he’s ok.”

“But are you going to keep talking to him no matter what, afterwards? Can he trust you with that, or am I about to send my best friend into even more pain and humiliation?” Siggi’s voice got colder with every word. It sounded like he was creating an icy protective shield around Dmitri that grew larger the more we spoke, and hurt anyone who tried to approach, including me. I had to keep telling myself that Siggi was just trying to help Dmitri, that he and I were both working towards the same goal, and that the most important thing was that Dmitri survived this nightmare.

“I don’t want to cause him pain! I just want to talk to him!” I nearly shouted in desperation.

“Then are you ok with having a boyfriend who was once, and might potentially still be, a sex worker? Are you going to accept that?” Siggi pressed me for a more definitive answer, and in doing so, he gave me the answer I needed.

“Yes,” I said as firmly as I could. Dmitri was my boyfriend and I wanted to help him and make sure he was fine. He had been nothing but nice to me ever since we met, and everyone around us liked him too. Those feelings couldn’t be conditional to Dmitri’s life choices.

“You know, I like how little hesitation you put in that answer. If you had said that five minutes ago I would’ve been done with you a lot sooner,” Siggi answered. He was no longer cold, no longer trying to pierce my soul with his every word. Instead, he sounded almost amused, or even relieved.

“Thanks, I guess. I’m glad Dmitri has someone so protective around him,” I told him, smiling in relief. Now that Siggi no longer seemed to consider me a threat, I could fully appreciate his protectiveness of Dmitri. They seemed like really close friends, and it was kind of beautiful to see (and to feel) how much Siggi cared about Dmitri. I guess I never expected that someone who was so angry all the time could be like that. It was a pleasant surprise.

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Siggi noted, quickly trying to dismiss my happy feelings. It didn’t really work, though. “Dmitri is a softy with a bleeding heart. He needs someone to call the bullshit for him or some shitty arsehole will come one day and step all over him until he can no longer stand. I needed to make sure you were not that arsehole.”

“So you think I’m good enough for Dmitri?” I asked, opening a big smile. Not only had I passed the test of Dmitri’s most fierce guardian, but Siggi of all people had finally said something good about me. At least for one thing I was on his good side. Hopefully this would be the beginning of something…

“I didn’t say that. I still think you’re an immature kid with mummy issues who’s biting more than you can chew, but you’re not the dangerous kind of arsehole that’s going to hurt my friend.”

“I feel weirdly happy about that,” I answered, hoping my voice didn’t sound too cheerful to not annoy him further. Hearing Siggi say even the tiniest good thing about me made my heart beat faster, bringing a lot of blood to my face, ears and neck. I knew I was blushing far too much, but his words made me really happy, so I didn’t care much.

“Whatever. You feel whatever you want. And you and your weird feelings can go talk to Dmitri now.” Siggi didn’t wait for a reply, just quickly passed the phone on to his friend.

“Hey, Gunni, sorry about Siggi…” My boyfriend’s voice was more cheerful than I expected, hopefully because hearing Siggi go to such lengths to help him made him feel better.

“That’s ok. It’s good to know that you have someone who cares about you so much,” I told Dmitri, hoping he would understand how much I appreciated what Siggi had done (at least now that his cold interrogation was over, anyway).

“Yeah. Siggi is my best friend for a reason.” Dmitri laughed. “And you should’ve seen him talking to the reporter too! It was hilarious!” I ended up laughing with Dmitri, even though I couldn’t understand how Siggi being rude to a reporter could be funny. As long as it made Dmitri happy…

“I just wanted to know how you’re doing. I can’t believe they attacked you again!” I said, trying to keep some focus on the conversation.

“I’m kind of ok. I talked to Gummi and he said he’ll get the ISO’s lawyers on board to see what they can do, and that I don’t have to go to work until I feel ready.” Dmitri still sounded upbeat. Hopefully it meant he was telling the truth, and not just trying to reassure me.

“I’m glad Gummi is helping out. Jó is writing his own column about how awesome you are, to balance the negative reporting a bit. I think if I’m quiet enough I can hear him breaking the keyboard as he types…” Dmitri and I laughed. The sound disturbed Tjúlli a bit, but thankfully not enough to turn the cute monster against me.

“Wow, cool! Let me know when it comes out! I think I’ll frame it and put on my wall. I could really do with an ego boost right now,” Dmitri answered enthusiastically, still laughing. When the laughter died down, though, he turned serious again. “Hey, you think I could go over your now? I think as my boyfriend you deserve to know the story behind what the papers said.”

“So they were telling the truth?” I asked. My heartbeat accelerated again while I waited for an answer. I had already assured Siggi that I wouldn’t leave Dmitri no matter what his answer would be, but it made me no less anxious about it.

“Just a little bit. Nothing they said about my life in Iceland is true,” Dmitri answered, in a quiet whisper. It sounded like he could barely bring himself to speak about it. “But I still think I owe you some kind of explanation for the stuff they did get right.”

“Ok.”

“Are you free now? I have nothing to do for the rest of the day, and I have Siggi as my bodyguard to scare away any overzealous reporters!” Dmitri became cheerful again by his mention of Siggi, but this time I didn’t really share his emotions.

“Sure, I guess. I’ll be waiting. And I think Jó wants to hug you.”

“Cool, so I’ll see you in a bit. Bye!”

“Bye.”I hung up and took a deep breath. Tjúlli was once again staring at me, following my movements while still curled into a fluffy fur ball on the bed. “Dmitri is coming, so you better behave,” I told the cat, and got an unenthusiastic meow for an answer. Tjúlli kept staring at me until I got the message and moved out of his territory.

(...)

Dmitri did not take long to arrive. Since Tjúlli expelled me from my bedroom, I had been waiting in the living room, looking out the window for signs of approaching cars. A taxi stopped in front of our house and Siggi’s head poked out. He scanned his surroundings, went back inside, and only then he and Dmitri opened the doors and got out. Siggi had his usual grumpy face on, but Dmitri looked somewhat cheerful.

“Gunni, it’s great to see you again!” Dmitri opened his arms, our signal for ‘permission to hug’, and I nodded to him. The next thing I knew, I felt my entire upper body being crushed against his chest. Under the circumstances, it was not actually unpleasant. “I really missed you!”

“I missed you too.” I snuggled against Dmitri, trying to get a bit more comfortable in his tight embrace. Jó heard the commotion by our front door and came out to greet the guests.

“Hi, Dmitri, welcome to our humble home!” Jó greeted Dmitri enthusiastically, but when it was time to greet Siggi, he sounded only borderline polite. “Hi, Siggi, it’s good to see you again.” Siggi scoffed at that, but Jó ignored it, turning his attention back to Dmitri instead. “Would you like something to drink? Tea? Fruit juice? I think you already know we don’t have alcohol at home…”

“No, that’s fine. Thanks, anyway, Jó.” Dmitri smiled to my cousin and let go of me. “I think it’ll be better if I don’t try to drink anything for the time being… I really just want to get on with I came here to do, before I change my mind.”

“That’s ok, I understand. I’ll let you get on with it, then. If you need anything, I’ll be in my office writing about what a wonderful person you really are.” Jó smiled, and Dmitri lunged forward to hug him. His eyes were slightly wet.

“Thank you so much, Jó. Gunni told me what you’re doing, and I really can’t thank you enough. It’ll be great to read something good about me for a change.”

“Don’t worry, I got it covered. I’m really appalled by what my colleagues have been doing to you; I can’t just sit here and do nothing.” Jó hugged Dmitri for a considerably long time. It felt kind of awkward to look at them, like I was intruding on something private, but it also felt awkward to look at Siggi while we waited. Thankfully, Siggi made a point of avoiding looking at me too. When my cousin and boyfriend finally let go, Jó smiled, patted him on the back, and retreated to his office, leaving the three of us alone in the hall.

“Let’s go to the living room,” I suggested. “Tjúlli is upstairs taking over my bed, so it’s probably wise to stay away.”

“I don’t want to get close to pets anyway,” Siggi said. “My allergies will declare a wild party time if I do.”

“Ok, then, that’s settled!” I nearly shouted in a horribly high voice. Siggi’s attitude was making me nervous, and my body was making it very obvious. Still, I smiled and tried to be a good host for Dmitri’s sake. “It’s the first door on the left. Just sit anywhere you want…”

Siggi chose one of the comfy armchairs, while Dmitri sat sideways on the couch and pulled me with him so that I sat between his legs, with my back against his body. He caressed my hair for most of the time we stayed in this position, and when he stopped it was only to hug me tightly.

“Thanks for having us so suddenly, Gunni.” Dmitri began. He sounded anxious. Siggi looked out of the window, purposely avoiding us. “Siggi already knows all the stuff I want to tell you, so you don’t need to worry about him.”

I nodded. “Ok.”

“Actually, Siggi is one of the two people in Iceland who know about this. You’re about to become the third, and I would really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone else,” Dmitri explained, kissing the top of my head.

“I won’t tell anyone, I promise,” I said, hoping this would reassure him. Knowing that I was about to be let in on something that so few people knew gave me a kind of warm, tingly feeling. It made me feel special.

“Thanks. I’m not exactly ashamed of my past, but I know it’s the kind of thing that people will use against me, like in the newspaper today. So I don’t want it to become common knowledge,” Dmitri explained.

“That makes sense.” I nodded. The past couple of days had sadly proved his fears to be very true.

“Ok, so here goes, before I get too nervous and Siggi ends up doing it for me. I know Siggi already tried to make sure you won’t think I’m a disgusting human being after this, but I’m still quite scared, so…”

“That’s ok.” I felt bad that Dmitri was scared because of me. I took a deep breath and tried to prepare for what was to come. I had to accept my boyfriend’s past no matter what. I realised that even a small automatic, unconscious negative reaction could hurt Dmitri, and that made me even more anxious. It was in this horribly tense atmosphere that Dmitri began telling his story. I closed my eyes to listen, feeling his hand on my hair and the warmth of his body against my back. As he spoke, my mind turned his words into a movie in which Dmitri was the narrator and the protagonist.

I was born in Volgograd roughly two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. My father worked for the government and, as far as I know, life wasn’t too bad. My father was a kind of idealist by nature, and he believed that the Soviet Union would one day change the whole world for the better. So, when the Soviet Union broke up, he lost his job and his life purpose. He didn’t try to find another job anywhere else and he became a very bitter man. He spent most of the day on the couch, drinking and listening to Soviet music. It was always my mum who brought money into the house. She worked at night, so I rarely saw her. When I got home from school, it was my father who was there to greet me, though he didn’t really do much else. I think the day we did the most stuff together was a day when I came home upset because of a low grade in school.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked from the couch, not even bothering to look at me. He only noticed I was there because I had thrown my schoolbag on the floor with more force than necessary.

“Got a two at school and my classmates made fun of me.”

“Oh, I see. How old are you again?”

“I’m ten, and I’m in fourth grade.” I reminded him again. He seemed to forget this information roughly every two weeks or so.

“Good. Come here, then, and I’ll show you something that will help you feel better. If you’re old enough to have things bothering you, you’re old enough to drink things that make you forget them.”

And that’s how my father got me to taste vodka. I didn’t like it at first, but he made me drink it every time something bad happened. I had learned to like it by the time that school year was over.

So, anyway, that was my family life. With just my mum working and half of her earnings going towards my father’s (and, increasingly, my) drinking habits, money was often short. At age twelve I started doing small jobs after school to get some extra cash. At fourteen, I was studying during the day, drinking in the evening, and working nights at a restaurant. Compulsory school finished at fifteen, and by that point I had such a low expectation about my life that I didn’t care to continue any kind of education afterwards, which meant I didn’t care if I flunked all my tests. I wasn’t learning anything because of lack of sleep and excessive drunkenness, and didn’t feel like doing anything about it.

I looked older than I really was. I think it was because of my work hours, and because I drank more than most grown-ups. One day I was on my way home, at four in the morning, when a well-dressed gentleman came up to me. I had stopped in a little side street to clear my head before going home, like I did most days, when he found me.

The man was a foreigner, and I didn’t speak any other languages, but somehow, after sharing a few drinks there and then, and with many exaggerated hand gestures, I gathered he was willing to pay me lots of money to do him a favour. I didn’t know what kind of favour it was, but he had way too much money for me to worry about it.

I don’t really remember what happened after that. All I remember is waking up naked in a hotel room, with a pile of cash stuffed into my clothes on the floor. I wasn’t sure what had happened, so I decided to wait a bit and see. The man I had met the night before came back after a while, and there was a Russian man with him. It was through that man that I eventually found the hidden gay bars, and loads of people willing to pay for some fun. A couple of months after meeting the foreign man, I quit my job at the restaurant because I was earning a lot more money with my new clients.

At that point, Dmitri stopped talking and stopped caressing my hair. I opened my eyes and noticed Siggi was staring at us, or most likely at Dmitri. He seemed worried.

“Are you ok?” I asked my boyfriend, concerned by the sudden change.

“Are you?” Dmitri asked back. I leaned against his body even more, and felt his accelerated heartbeat. I took some time to answer, because I didn’t want to say something that could hurt him.

“I’m ok. I just… I’m sorry about your family, and how you didn’t care about things. It all sounds so… awful.”

“That’s just how things were. I don’t feel particularly bad about it.” Dmitri shrugged, but he was still tense. I felt the unspoken pressure to talk about the last part of Dmitri’s story, the reason we were having that talk in the first place. He wanted me to say something, hopefully to reassure him that I was ok with a fourteen-year-old having sex for money in an underground gay bar. I had promised I would be ok with it, but… was I really?

It was kind of scary to think that someone so young was doing this kind of thing. As a rule, underground places were never nice; they were dirty at best and dangerous at worst. And to think my boyfriend spent night after night in a place like this… Had he ever gotten hurt? Were the people mean to him? I felt like I couldn’t really ask any of those questions, at least not yet. But other than that, what else could I say to reassure him?

“Did you… did you like it?” I finally asked. It was the best kind of question I could come up with, and I tried to sound like I was worried rather than judging.

“I did,” Dmitri answered. He tried to sound relaxed, but his body was still rigid. “It was a lot more fun than working low jobs at a restaurant. For better or for worse, the sex work taught me things about my sexuality, the things I like to do, how to please other people… And Russia was, and still is, a very homophobic country. The people who went to those bars were basically hiding their sexuality in their daily lives, and went there to express who they really were. It was all very secret, which is why no one bothered to check my age. There was a kind of thrill about being in that kind of atmosphere.”

“Ok, then…” Dmitri’s explanation made me feel a bit better. If he liked what he was doing, then it couldn’t have been so bad. I worried about him as a person more than I worried about his actions, so his happiness was really all that mattered. My relief probably showed in my overall posture, because Dmitri too became gradually more relaxed as he continued to tell his story.

Thanks to the sex work, I was making more money in a night than I used to make over a month in my previous job. I had disposable income for the first time in my life, and I wanted to spend it.

I had always liked the oboe as a kid. I didn’t listen to classical music often, but the oboe had grabbed my attention from very early on. I never said anything about it to my parents because I knew there was nothing they could do about it. They would either tell me I couldn’t learn it, or tell me they would try to find a way to get me lessons, only to then change their minds because we would of course never have money for that.

But now I had my own money. I could do anything I wanted, and the first thing I did was to look for oboe teachers. I found a man in his late forties that seemed nice enough, and he helped me buy my own oboe. I had lessons with him after school, went home to drop my things off, and went out again to work. When the lessons started, I was still convinced I was going to drop out of school and just live forever on sex work money, but my teacher slowly convinced me that I was talented enough to carry on and even try for a music degree at university. I started to put an effort into school again, my grades improved, and I finally found a goal in my life.

Dmitri interrupted the story again. This time though he seemed lost in thought. Even Siggi seemed curious about what he was thinking. It took Dmitri a while to realise we were waiting for him to carry on.

“In a way, if it wasn’t for the sex work, I would never have learned the oboe. That’s probably the main reason I don’t want to be ashamed of that part of my past,” Dmitri finally said. “It was really important for me back then, and it opened so many doors in my life that it’s hard to imagine what I would be like now if I hadn’t done it. If things kept going the way they were, I would’ve ended up throwing myself into the Volga before I turned eighteen.”

“That’s really terrible,” I said, slowly understanding the full implications of Dmitri’s story. He was basically saying that having sex for money at the age of fourteen not only gave him a career, but saved his life.

“But that’s not the end yet,” Siggi said, turning away from us now that Dmitri was speaking again.

This went on for nearly three years. I learned music very quickly and practiced every chance I got. Then, when I was seventeen, I saw my teacher at the gay bar I where I worked. He had been told by some friends that there was a young sex worker who was nice to elder clients, and he wanted to have a go and see what it was like. As it turned out, that sex worker was me.

My teacher got very angry when he realised that it was that kind of work that had allowed me to have lessons with him. He was also horrified because he knew exactly how old I was, as opposed to everyone else at the bar, who thought I was in my early twenties. He took me to his house that night and had a very long and serious talk with me.

He asked me if I ever used a condom, if I knew who I was having sex with, if they had any STIs, and if they ever hurt me. Until that night I had never really heard much about condoms or sex diseases, at least not in a gay context, because in Russia there is no gay sex education. My oboe teacher taught me all about the horrible things that I was at risk of getting in my job, and told me he could arrange to get me tested in secret to see which ones I already had.

“If you’ve been doing this for three years and never once used a condom, it’s not about ‘if’s anymore, but ‘how many’,” he said. It was really scary. I started noticing all the things in my body that could’ve been signs of an STI, and I couldn’t sleep for a few nights worrying about my test results.

As it turned out, I did have a few nasty things, but thankfully nothing too dangerous in the long run. It was a really lucky escape.

“And in case you’re curious, I’m now clean of everything apart from mouth and genital herpes, which never really go away. But they are only contagious if you can see the open sores, so it’s nothing you need to worry about,” Dmitri told me, pausing his story again to concentrate on the present. “I usually talk about STIs with new partners because that’s the right thing to do, but since you don’t want sex yet and talking about it makes you kind of uncomfortable, I figured we could wait until you actually want to go beyond kissing for that. Hope you don’t mind?”

“No, that’s ok,” I answered, slightly embarrassed that the conversation had turned to our current (lack of) sex life. And in front of Siggi no less. “It never occurred to me we should talk about that stuff either.”

“Good! I’m glad, because don’t want to be a bad boyfriend!” Dmitri smiled, and despite my embarrassment, I smiled too.

“That’s all great and good, but can you please finish your story so we can go home?” Siggi asked, crossing his arms in front of his chest to make it clear he was really annoyed and impatient.

“I’m getting there, Siggi, don’t worry!” Dmitri hugged me from behind and resumed his story.

My teacher convinced me that continuing sex work with clients who didn’t want to wear condoms was dangerous, but it would be difficult to stop it if I didn’t have another source of income. So my teacher offered to hire me as his secretary, making me work in exchange for lessons and a bit of extra cash. I wouldn’t earn as much as before, but I would get to follow my teacher in everything he did and make some important contacts over the years.

My teacher had contacts everywhere. He even arranged for a friend of his who was in the army to sign papers to save me from the mandatory conscription to the Russian military when I turned eighteen. My teacher and all his contacts were actually closeted gay men who kept their secret safe in their little group and helped each other out as a matter of principle. Most of them were nice. I even fucked some of them (not for money, and using condoms).

And that was my life for the next three years. I kept studying music, practicing in my free time, and my new job eventually led to me moving in with my teacher. By that point, he had kind of become like a new father figure. I rarely saw my parents after I moved out. I never told them I was gay, and the only reason they know I’m in Iceland is because I sent them a letter when I played my first concert here. I told them about my new job and attached the concert programme with my name in it. They never replied.

“That’s kind of sad,” I said. “You don’t talk to your parents at all?”

“No.” Dmitri shrugged. “But I don’t really miss them. By the time I left their house, I was keeping so many secrets from them that being around them had become a burden. The last thing I heard about them was three years ago; my father was finally getting sick from all the alcohol and needed to go to hospital.”

“Is he ok?” I asked. Siggi rolled his eyes and sighed impatiently.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter.” Dmitri hugged me again. “All that I care about now is that I live happily in Iceland, work at my dream job, and am surrounded by the bestests friends and boyfriend I could ever ask for.” He kissed the back of my head. “Thanks for listening to everything and not freaking out.”

“That’s ok. It was kind of a shock to realise that the stuff the papers are trying to use against you is the very thing that allowed you to be here, though,” I said, hoping that by now Dmitri wouldn’t feel bad if I expressed more negative emotions.

Dmitri nodded. “Yeah. It kind of hurts that I can’t tell people what helped me turn my life around because of the way they’ll most likely react. It’s like I got free of one closet, but got stuck in this other one. So much for Iceland being an open-minded country.”

“How did you end up in Iceland, anyway?” I asked out of innocent curiosity, but it quickly became obvious that my question was not so innocent. Immediately after I spoke, Siggi turned his head towards Dmitri so fast I feared he was going to break his neck. He seemed even more apprehensive than before, like he saw someone about to step on a landmine, but could do nothing to stop them. I couldn’t see Dmitri’s face, but his body became immediately tense.

“That’s another very long story, and now is not the time to talk about it,” Dmitri answered slowly and carefully, like he too was avoiding a landmine. “I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s ok. I didn’t know it was something I shouldn’t ask about. I’m the one who should be sorry!” I tried to reassure my boyfriend. Siggi and Dmitri’s reaction to the question made me curious, but I knew better than to press them for answers. If Dmitri didn’t want to talk about it, I had to respect his decision and hope someday the time would be right.

“Then let’s both not be sorry and just cuddle instead. How about that?” Dmitri offered, pulling my body closer to his again.

“Fine by me.” I closed my eyes and felt Dmitri’s arms envelop around me. The familiar feeling of his body encasing mine was comforting; the warmth of the embrace felt peaceful and safe. Siggi grumbled something about having better things to do, but we were not paying attention.

We had better things to do too, like staying in each other’s arms for as long as we could.