Translated from Russian by Geoffrey Carlson

“Life is a place where one cannot live.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva, Poem of the End

“He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.”

– George Orwell, 1984

Prologue
Confession of a Second-Rate Man

There are fewer and fewer of us. People laugh at us. They make jokes. To be honest, the jokes have become tiresome. It is difficult to find decent work. We can forget about being elected to public office – as mayors or members of Congress. People whistle at us. They ridicule us. They jeer at us. All because we are a sexual minority and represent a nontraditional sexual orientation.

We are the underdeveloped individuals of the male gender who prefer women for our sweet pleasures.

How has the world been arranged since ancient times? Men pair off with men, women pair off with women, and we, who are ashamed to admit, we are heterosexuals unable to overcome our sinful passion and become accustomed to same-sex love.

Homosexuals have stamped us with disgrace and demand the introduction of a new article in the criminal code: malicious cohabitation with individuals of the opposite sex shall be punishable by banishment to a corrective labor camp. Women shall be sent to women’s camps, and men to men’s camps. Just as it was in distant Siberia. They say that three years of isolation in a normal healthy environment will cure us, and that people will find their proper sexual orientation bestowed by Mother Nature. They will become gay or lesbian.

Human rights organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, International Amnesty and the Red Cross demand that people who check into these corrective labor camps on their own initiative should have their previous job positions held for them during their time of treatment. After a three-year trial period, they should be allowed not to report the sins of their youth in their biographical particulars.

But not everyone can conquer their own misgivings and turn themselves over to the police voluntarily!

It is very difficult for us to find each other. If we place an ad in the newspaper such as “Man seeks woman for love and marriage,” or the reverse, “Woman seeks close male friend,” the neighbors will break our windows, smear tar on our doors or slash the tires of our cars. And not every newspaper will risk printing such an ad. We can understand the editor’s position; a drop in circulation and a summons for a court appearance would be guaranteed.

How can we meet each other, and where? In a cafe or in the library, you gaze fixedly in a woman’s eyes, you detect a light movement in her lips, and your heart flutters in anticipation – here she is at last. But when the conversation timidly turns to the possibility of a friendly encounter, you recoil in horror at being discovered. It turns out she is a lesbian.

These homosexuals have respectable families. Their children are usually conceived in test tubes. A simple technology, and in fifteen minutes the laboratory technician selects the proper set of chromosomes. Lesbians receive a girl, and gays receive a boy. The customer’s wishes are the provider’s orders. The color of the eyes and hair, the height, weight and figure are all in the hands of the laboratory technician. The most complex task for homosexuals is to make a selection from the catalog. The latest fashion calls for yellow-eyed girls with blue hair – and red-haired boys.

A new technology has begun to take root in some medical offices – programming a code for changing the hair color. You could order a rainbow – and after a given interval of time, the hair color would become red, orange, yellow… You could order other palettes as well, but so far this is expensive and not within everyone’s budget. The technology has not been worked out, and medical errors occur – the green color in the rainbow sometimes turns to violet after passing through blue, and the red is replaced by orange…

In a lesbian family, one of the women gives birth to the child. If the spouses want twins, both women are involved in the creative process. For gays, the role of giving birth is performed by surrogate mothers. Every medical office has young nurses for this purpose.

It is different with us. There are sharp, clumsy movements, and a long wait for results. You never know ahead of time what to expect – a boy or a girl, a blonde or brunette.

But how do we get together? How can we avoid strangers’ eyes? Especially if you are in a prestigious profession and are under the watch of journalists, who monitor your every step and cannot wait to fill the pages of the tabloids with some new scandal. I won’t even mention the name of a famous composer who was forced to shoot himself after society learned about his lengthy romance with a female performer of fashionable pop songs.

People with high-paying jobs can still find a way out. Two heterosexual couples can disguise themselves as lesbians or gays, take out credit at a bank and purchase a two-family house. It would be difficult to find fault with them in public. When they visit friends, go to the movies or go on a walk, the women walk with the women, and the men with the men. Linking arms, in an embrace – they do what they can. Only when it becomes dark, when the doors are locked and the window shades are drawn do they run off to different bedrooms for an hour, and then come back. You never know when somebody might inform on you.

However, things are not quite so strict if you are not thinking of raising a family. After all this is the twenty-third century and we live in the USA, in a democratic country, where men are not prohibited from walking along the street with women, dining with them in restaurants, joking, snuggling up to them tenderly, and dancing the ancient tango. This used to be a rarity, acceptable only among the young hippies, people who grew up preferring audacious tricks, shocking those with refined morals. In our grandparents’ times, there were explanatory signs in all the public places – in theatres, in restaurants and in buses – “men only,” or on the other hand, “women only.”

In America, ostracism and witch-hunts are things of the past. In figure skating and in sports dances, besides the traditional performances by male and female couples, audiences have come to appreciate the variety of mixed formations. Perhaps this innovation will soon sweep over Europe, and someday it may even appear in the Olympics.

This is the situation where in public life and the proclaimed equal rights of men and women. Hollywood stands apart. As a rule, it tries to impress everyone, using drugs and heterosexual relations in its circles. For the world of cinema, society has made an exception – let people behave oddly. Hollywood is allowed some indulgence. But outside the walls of Hollywood, family values remain patriarchal, just as they have been for thousands of years – marriages must only be unisexual.

But it is not our fault that Mother Nature has created us differently, and has not made us quite the same as other people in our sexual preferences. In all other respects, we are the same kind of people! White or black, with two arms and two legs, eyes placed symmetrically on both sides of the nose. We do not differ in any way from the ninety percent of the population that constitutes the homosexual world. Why do people refuse to accept us as we are, with our slight deviations that do not affect anyone’s interests? Why are we not allowed to have heterosexual marriages? Even Mormons who practice gay or lesbian polygamy have more rights and freedoms than we do and society closes its eyes to their private lives.

We have to be afraid of our own children, for they may naively blurt out our secret.

They are always asked provocative questions in kindergarten or elementary school: “Who puts you to bed?” “Who fixes dinner in your family?” or “Who helps you do your lessons?” In the upper grades, when schoolchildren have definitively formed their sexual outlook, they are trained for adult life: in their “History of the Ancient World” lessons, they read excerpts from the Old Testament, which demands capital punishment for those convicted of heterosexual tendencies. Beginning in the ninth grade, the back cover of every school textbook contains the biblical prohibition against heterosexual love: “If a man lies with a woman as with a man, both have committed an abomination: they shall be put to death.”

When they reach the age of eighteen, we can take a risk and try to tell our children the truth. Not everyone is able to understand, forgive or endure such a shock. For many it creates an enormous amount of stress. To go through their entire lives with the stigma of not being conceived in a test tube! There have been instances of suicide – after learning about their inferiority, adolescents have slit their veins or poisoned themselves…

But we have no other choice – when we receive our drivers’ licenses for personal identification, our test tube number and genetic code are printed under our photographs. Those who were conceived differently are outcasts. They cannot raise a family of worthwhile people, genetically pure and devoid of hereditary diseases, and they are doomed to marry only second-class people like themselves.

Perhaps my testimony should have had a different name: “Confessions of an Unhappy Heterosexual.” One who lost both his beloved woman and his child…

Chapter 1
A Heterosexual’s Love

I was working as a programmer for a small Internet company in the Greenwich Village area, and if I had time, I would stop at Starbucks for a cup of coffee before work. That was where I met Liza, who was sitting at the next table. She was getting ready to leave, and she offered me the latest issue of the New York Post, which she had just finished looking through.

There was nothing suspicious about this, but in her eyes – there was no mistake about it – I caught a fiery glance and accepted the challenge. It was just the way signals were given in Morse code in ancient times.

For almost a month, we met at Starbucks. I carefully tested my original sensation, afraid that I might stumble; there were such cases, where a “decoy duck” provokes an attempt at flirtation that ends with handcuffs and jubilation on the television news: another successful operation by our valiant police. Liza was also afraid to take a risk prematurely – until she released her trial balloon.

“My fiancée Chris has a virus in her home computer. Would you be able to help?”

It was a risky offer, but I agreed, although I left a means of retreat:

“My boyfriend Michael goes to his college class in the evening, and I’m free after six.”

Of course, I was lying about the boyfriend, but if she was from the police, I had given the signal: I was a normal, gay man.

That evening nothing happened. However, there was one moment that came close: we were sitting innocently at the computer when our knees touched and froze, without giving a twitch. My heartbeat quickened; I was afraid to move. Her reaction was the same. Our knees were stuck together, and it took some effort to detach them. In a voice trembling with agitation, Liza whispered: “That will do for today.” As we said goodbye, I hesitated to extend my hand – it was moist with sweat. But at our very next meeting – another alleged problem with the computer – we found ourselves in a semi-lit room (“the light bulb burned out, and I don’t have a spare,” Liza spoke in a whisper, with aspiration), and after she repeated the trick with her knees, we abandoned all restraint. I was blown away. We rushed into an embrace, into the insane passion of man and woman.

This continued for about six months, until Liza acknowledged that her friends Daniel and Helen suffered from a secret passion just as we did. She proposed a solution – we would buy a two-family home on Staten Island. For outsiders’ eyes, she would live on the first floor with Helen, and I would live on the second floor with Daniel.

As far as everyone was concerned, we were exemplary homosexual families. We even went through marriage ceremonies and held receptions. Incidentally, marriages between men and women can only be registered in Holland, which is known for its liberal morals. Moreover, the Dutch parliament had voted to allow heterosexual marriages only five years before, with only a three-vote majority. To this day, the parliamentary opposition is demanding a new vote, and the Dutch church cries out against the ruin of society’s foundations.

Daniel and I successfully played the role of lovers, as did Liza and Helen. We gave each other flowers, walked along the shore and tenderly held each other’s hand, and when it was time to have children, we maintained our cover by visiting Dr. Hansen’s office regularly and studying the catalogues.

This was the public side of the coin. In fact, Liza was carrying the fruit of our love in her womb. Helen and Daniel did not lag behind – the time between conceptions was only a couple of weeks.