Moscow never cared about me.
It tolerated me the same way its harsh weather tolerated the poor, the different, the forgotten,like we were non-existent.
Summer in Moscow shows off. The illusion of freedom, happiness. The nights are too long. The heat is heavy and suffocating for a placeholder like me.
Autumn helps Moscow to stop pretending. Autumn understands that everything is temporary. The air becomes deliberate.
There is nothing romantic about Winter in Moscow. It stays late and drags time like it is a sentence and you're a criminal. Brutal. It seeps through whatever garment, clothing, fabric you deceive your body to protect, but it hides the decay that is your soul as everybody looks down at your feet, breathes shallow, hurrying away for the safety of a shelter.
Autumn is true. It understands loss, time, and everything with it. It helps Moscow to stop pretending without apology. I fantasize about the moment I'll finally leave this city. It would surely be in this season.
Right now, it is heavy and persistent snow.
I live in Lyublino. It is a very tired place and different from the photographed and represented district of the city. The walls in my studio apartment are peeled off like dead, dry skin cells. The heater worked on some days and disappointed me on most days. I even have to boil water and sit by my little fire to warm my cold blood.
Poverty in this city is not quiet. People you've never known or met understand that you are not privileged. It is demeaning,degrading, humbling, and humiliating.
You forget your own voice, and your name does not ring a bell or mean a thing. You feel disposable and very self-aware.
You learn how to squeeze yourself in order to not discomfort a privileged, to lower your voice and its tone to not seem "not humble enough."
You are always too cold, too hot, too thirsty, too hungry, too everything, and little and in between.
Hope is a dangerous thing for people like us. Desire, impossible. Dreams, heartbreaking.
My name is Maksim Popov, an orphan. Don't feel sorry for me, I'm sure my parents didn't feel sorry when they burnt the house down with themselves when I was in middle school. I am 24, and I work day and nights at a bar in Patriarch Ponds. I got this job with tears in my eyes and scraps on my knees because I have no educational qualification and nobody to offer me the sweet buns of nepotism.
Patriarch Pond was quiet, but in a wealthy, arrogant, and demanding way. Very old money, quiet wealth, confident individuals,old and young,they seem to have figured out everything.
I wake up every day negotiating the day ahead. This would always remain foreign to me.
I clean glasses worth my rent and pour drinks worth my annual pay, while trying to engage rich folks in conversations that they feel disgusted to engage in, and nodding quietly as the arrogant, pompous, boring ones brag about who they are, who they've been with, what they do, where they are going, where they've been… I nod politely because I honestly don't see the vision of myself in these shoes. The bar role I took on was quite comforting, though. Roles are. I just have to be polite, little or no words necessary, pour drinks and clean. This was the only place I wasn't invisible.
This was where Leonid saw me.
He did.
On a fateful Tuesday night, I was cleaning the liquor glass. Then I got a whiff. Then there was a presence in front of the table.
I turned to attend to the customer, and there he was…
Delicious oud. Black coat. Ebony hair. Muscular face with the goatee and moustache. Sleepy eyes…
I was about to look at his lips. Then it started moving… he said, "Whiskey… straight."
And my body and mind moved swiftly to the command of his voice. He seemed to be lost in thought. I kept it in front of him, and he looked at me, drinking it. When his eyes met mine, I felt seen, exposed, chosen. It was like something woke in me.
I was so scared to talk to him. I felt quiet.
He asked for another round, four more even, and I just kept pouring.
In about 20 minutes of awkward silence and body movements,mine, by the way,he paid, tipped just enough, said thank you, and smiled.
He smiled with his eyes. It ran through my spine.
I've never been confused as this.
It haunts me till this day.