White Sneakers
It was 1987, the summer of 1987.
My sister cooked up the idea. She’d found this Scandinavian Students’ Association trip that went across the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by train, stopping in different cities along the way. In those days you couldn’t really go to the USSR except on some sort of official tour like that.
The deal was, we’d pick up the train in Helsinki and go to Leningrad, and then to Moscow, and then across Siberia, and at the end, in Vladivostok, they’d put us on a boat to Japan. And it was cheap too, three weeks, everything included, for something like $700.
It was a really exciting time to go. Gorbachev had taken power and started perestroika and glasnost, which meant the country was opening up to more democracy and new ideas. Change was in the air.
I’d always wanted to see what socialism looked like, whether it was really socialism. The Communists and the Maoists and the Trotskyists were always fighting about how socialism works. This was my chance to see things first hand and talk to real Russians about their lives, and socialism, and revolution, and sexual liberation.
Oh, I should say, I was very much in serious gay liberation phase at the time. My BF would say whenever I introduced myself, I’d go, “Hello I’m gay, my name is Tim.” So, I was also interested in talking up gay liberation and learning about gay life in Russia. I wanted to know whether it was possible to speak openly about these issues as things relaxed.
And, between Leningrad and Vladivostok—more than 6000 kilometers—there’s got to be some cute Russian guys, right?
I don’t remember why, or whether it was a coincidence, but both my sister and I bought new shoes for the trip, brand new white sneakers, with white laces and white soles, 80s excess design. They wouldn’t have been out of place as part of a Star Wars Stormtrooper uniform.
We arrive in Helsinki and meet up with our tour in the railway station. The group’s a mix of young Scandinavians and Germans, some Brits, and a Japanese student who converted to Evangelical Christianity while studying in London. Perfect for a murder on the Orient Express kind of thing—all nice enough people, but, really, really straight. Nothing registers on gaydar at all, so there goes any fantasies of late-night naughtiness on the train. Plus we’re four to a cabin, so unless I really luck out and randomly select cabin mates who are all up for an orgy, it ain’t going to happen. And I’m expected to share with my sister so… it Ain’t. Going. To. Happen.
The first leg of our trip is from Helsinki to Leningrad. It’s six or seven hours, and we arrive at the Finland Station. It might not mean much these days, but that’s where Lenin arrived to start the revolution in 1917, so lots of historical significance for those of us steeped in that kind of thing, you know, overthrowing the Tsars, storming the Winter Palace, world historical ruptures, leaping historical stages.
It’s the late afternoon by the time we get to our hotel, which is all dusty overstuffed chairs and squeaky spring beds and old curtains like your grandmother might have had in the 50s. Or at least like my grandmother had in the 50s.
In fact, on each floor there’s a matron who looks a bit like a more sullen version of my grandmother sitting in a chair with a panoptic view of the stairs and the rooms to make sure nobody is getting up to any hanky-panky or anti-Soviet activities.
But this is summer far north of the equator, and the days go on forever, so my sister and I decide we’re going for a walk around town. That’s when we first realize that the white sneakers were maybe not such a good idea. In Leningrad, brown leather shoes are de rigueur. Nobody else in Leningrad has sneakers, and certainly not bright-white-glowing-in-the-late-afternoon-sunlight-Star-Wars-Stormtrooper type sneakers.
People stop in the street to look at us as we pass, and we begin to feel like our glowing illuminated futuristic feet are a bit out of place. Yes we’re tourists, but we’d hoped to be maybe a little less obvious.
Over the next couple of days we see the sights of Leningrad; the Hermitage Museum, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the prison cell where this and that revolutionary was held. Unfortunately, the Museum of Atheism was closed.
Each evening we attend the requisite Communist Youth Group meet and greets featuring official welcomes, folk dancing, and discussions, where one of the standard questions is about your family and whether you married, which is the perfect opportunity for me to come out and throat ram a little bit, because “Hi I’m gay, my name’s Tim” after all. And people respond by remarking on how cool my shoes are and does everyone in the West wear those kind of shoes? Sadly, being gay does not elicit much comment.
Leningrad, or St Petersburg as it’s called now, is a spectacular city, a kind of cross between London and Venice on steroids. I’d never imagined the huge wealth of the Russian empire it represented. I was suitably impressed. Definitely worth a trip. Definitely worth a revolution.
So on to Moscow and a new hotel. This one is newer, a blocky modernist 60s style, and on the outskirts of town, an hour-long bus ride into the centre. It has ten stories and real elevators and there are no supervising grandmothers on the floors this time. Here, they all sit at a big desk that guards the front doors and lobby.
The next day we do the morning tour of the Kremlin where one of the women in our group is almost refused entry because her skirt is too short. Also, the guards said something to each other while looking suspiciously at our shoes. But, eventually, a good-natured guard found her a wrap, and there didn’t appear to be anything in the rule book about shoes, so we all got in. Then it was on to Lenin’s tomb. There we join the line where, incongruously, all sorts of little girls in frilly wedding dresses and bows in their hair are queuing to pass by the body in the crystal sarcophagus. Apparently, it’s a rite of passage connected with first communion. A kind of Frankenstein Cultural Revolution.
After lunch, a tour of the university is scheduled, followed by more meet and greets with Young Communists. By this time I’m really feeling for some adult company, if you know what I mean. I’ve just completed a second week of celibacy. So, I decide I’m going to play hooky and do a little exploring on my own. Instead of joining the tour, I get on the public bus and head off to downtown Moscow.
Somewhere I’ve read that around the Bolshoi Theatre is a bit cruisy. Of course, I get lost, but me and my shoes, which are no less interesting to the population of Moscow, wander around and finally figure out where it is.
When I get there, it’s two or three in the afternoon, not exactly prime cruising time, and I was beginning to contemplate an extended three weeks of celibacy in Siberia when I see this guy looking at me. And he’s absolutely gorgeous. Like a model. Cheekbones to die for. Blond hair, golden skin, green eyes. Looking straight at me. I smile, and he smiles. I walk closer, and we smile some more and then we try to talk. And we have a problem Houston.
I try English and he shakes his head and says something in Russian. I try French, and he shakes his head and says something in Russian. Spanish produces the same result. I even try Portuguese, and I don’t even speak Portuguese. We’ve basically got sign language, and neither of us is fluent.
So begins a very long walk around central Moscow unsuccessfully trying to communicate with our hands and random words from random languages. We both know what we want, but don’t have a way of saying it. After about an hour, somehow we determine that he doesn’t have a place we can go to. Then he points to me and says “hotel?”
I try to explain that there are guards at the hotel. Everybody’s key is held at the front desk, and you need to show ID to get it before you’re even allowed to go to the elevators. And there are big guys in plain clothes who stand around the lobby watching everybody going in and out. “Police?” I say.
We walk around a bit more and he says again, “hotel?” pointing to the two of us. And I say “Police?” and he says “Try?”
I’m beginning to think, we’re going into a tourist-only hotel and he’s not a tourist. This is illegal here. What happens if we get caught? Will they throw us in jail? Will I get to Siberia sooner rather than later, and for longer rather than shorter? But I have no way to actually convey such misgivings, so it’s off to the bus stop where we sit, side by side, knees touching, heading off to the suburbs.
By this point I’m getting a kind of queasy feeling in my stomach, but then he presses his knee against mine a little harder, and flashes me a big, gorgeous smile, and all that feeling in my stomach moves down to trouble a different part of my anatomy, and all I can think is, what if we don’t get caught?
Just the same, when we arrive at the hotel and are going up the front steps, I look at him and say, weakly, one last time, “police?” But he just flashes that smile again.
We go through the front door and I walk up to the committee of grandmothers at the front desk, show my passport and get my room key, and he just hangs back.
We walk over to the elevator, and I’m thinking, wow, we’re going to get away with this. We’re actually going to get away with this. But, just when I press the up button, two very large men appear on either side of us. Is it the KGB that deals with decadent tourists trying to smuggle innocent Russian lads up to their hotel room? That’s a question that I probably should have asked myself earlier.
One of them says, “Show me your keys,” in a Russian accent that I didn’t think actually existed outside of Hollywood movies. I show him my key and then, they both turn to my companion and with an authoritarian jerk of the forehead, the bigger one says, “Yours?”
Did my heart, and all of time, stop? Did visions of Siberian gulags flash before my eyes?
I don’t know, because all of a sudden, I hear him saying, in perfect American-inflected English, the phrase which he must have practiced in front of the mirror for many, many hours.
“I left mine in my room.”
And the two KGB agents are so impressed with his perfect American-inflected English, so taken aback, so stunned, that they just say, “oh” in tandem.
The elevator door slid open and we both stepped inside and left them standing confused, looking at us suspiciously, as the door closed with a thunk, and we were whisked upstairs.
The hallway seemed really long, but the other elevator did not ding and spew out a troop of pursuing KGB agents before we got to the room. I fumbled with the key a bit, but we finally got inside and got our clothes off and…
It was perhaps the worst sex I’ve ever had in my life, like maybe not the very worst, but certainly within the top five. It was like having sex with a sack of potatoes. Like he was obviously not into me at all. And then he left.
I lay there, asking myself, why did he cruise me? He was obviously not into me, so why did he pick me up? Why did he walk around with me for two hours? Why did he risk getting arrested or whatever to sneak into the hotel crawling with security? It made no sense.
And then in a flash I realized it. It wasn’t me he had noticed. He, like everybody else, had just been blinded by the damn shoes.
Photo by Brian Hall on Unsplash.