There’s a bar near our apartment in South East London that I like. It’s one of the few places I’ve found in the UK that sells not your classic English beer – the Camden Ales, London Prides or Guinness, that make your stomach swell and eyes puffy the following day – but an actual, craft IPA – of which Moscow and European bars are abundant, but in the UK, it’s seen as a lesser form of drink.
One of the beers has a sharp citrusy flavour and a title that, needless to say, caught my eye—“Serge.” As self-absorbed as I am, this became my favourite beer and my favourite place near my house.
“Can I have two Serges to go?” I started saying, with an emphasis on the name, winking at the bartender, as if everyone should instantly know that my name is Serge and that this is all somehow funny.
“Of course,” said the young woman behind the counter. “Would that be all?”
“Yes,” I’d say. “Actually, no. My name is Serge as well. Get it?”
“Uh, that’s great, I guess?” she’d say.
How many of these essays were written there, under the low-lit atmosphere and with a citrusy Serge on my lips! (Well, actually, none, because I never write when I drink.)
As the beers arrive (and so does Masha), the bartender would suddenly change her attitude from semi-friendly to openly hostile.
“Can you put your feet off the table? Can you stop stealing chilli oil from other tables? How many times have I told you, that simply because cashews are in a glass jar, it does not mean they are free!”
“What’s wrong with her?” Masha would ask.
“I think she thinks I am hitting on her and then she saw you,” I’d reply. “Now she’s confused.”
To which Masha would nod, full of understanding, and then we’d talk about something else.
Musk. Putin. Council tax.
It’s dangerous to be a young, white, heterosexual male these days. You might have only the best intentions at heart but someone else – also white, heterosexual, male – once didn’t, and now everyone sees you as one tribe. You and Harvey Weinstein. You and Andrew Tate. (Who, it seems, judging from his behaviour towards women, is very angry at his mom.)
A few years ago, while working at my father’s company, I was tasked with hiring a PR firm. Through a mutual acquaintance, I found a startup that offered PR services. The founder was a skinny young man who looked about twelve, but I was working primarily with his employee, the account director, whom I’ll call Bug.
All went well at first. We made and published articles together in some of the largest publications in the UK. Like true corporate slaves, we had weekly syncs in Teams and in-between communication on Slack. We “circled back,” “touched base,” and “spearheaded” things, and the team showed themselves to be true “go-getters” who “walked the extra mile” and “were very passionate about PR.”
One day, I asked Bug out for coffee for some career advice.
I’ve done a version of this with other people in the preceding weeks. They were primarily women, but solely because a) I get along better with women and b) in my area of expertise – media and journalism – it just so happens that there are very few men.
Out of ignorance, stupidity, or naïveté, I saw no harm in inviting a colleague out for a coffee outside their office for a 30-minute work consultation. Hell, I even offered to pay for the coffee.
“I am thinking of leaving my father’s company at some point and maybe doing PR,” I said in my text. “I would appreciate some advice since that’s what you guys do.”
It was an honest and vulnerable request.
“Sure thing!” said Bug on one of our calls. “I’ll be happy to help.”
Then, one day before our meeting, she texted, “Can my boss come with me as well?”
I was a bit surprised but thought, “Why not?” So I replied verbatim, “Of course. The more, the merrier!”
Later that evening, as I wanted to discuss OKRs, KPIs, and Action Items for the upcoming Sprint (if I sound as if I am talking about medieval enchantments, you’ve been blessed to never work corporate), I discovered I was blocked on iMessage. My emails stopped coming through, I couldn’t access my Slack, and the interface through which I was accessing my PR dashboard was deactivated.
“What’s happening?” I messaged Bug, but kept getting red exclamation marks in a circle with a phrase: Message could not be delivered. Like your typical London bus driver, it was as if the messenger pigeon went on strike and decided to boycott me.
I shrugged and continued my business, half-expecting this was some technical glitch. But then, on the morning of our meeting, I received an email from Bug’s boss. The skinny founder guy who looked twelve. It was addressed to me but CC’d to my boss, the entire C-level suite of our company, and, of course, my father.
The email went something like this:
Serge’s suggestive messages asking Bug out to coffee is inappropriate and we feel strongly that we can’t continue this relationship any longer… Which is why we decided to fire you as a client.
I was so shocked that I read the email twice, just to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Then I called my father to explain the situation, in case he read the email and had questions. (He didn’t and, in fact, thought it was spam and sent it to junk.)
After I finished my story, which felt like a testament in court, I expected him to yell at me, to tell me I needed to be more careful, that the UK wasn’t Russia, where flirting was a natural way of communication, that I always had to double-check to make sure people didn’t see any hidden meaning in my actions or words, because the only thing that beats being a white, heterosexual young male is being a Russian white, heterosexual young male. I expected at least a Cliff Notes version of a lecture on political correctness, maybe even anger in his voice for losing a valuable PR asset, perhaps a cut in my salary, a demand that I apologize and fix things immediately, to avoid potential legal actions against us.
Instead, he waited for me to finish my story, cleared his throat, said, “That guy, the one who sent the email? I bet he is just one jealous motherfucker.”
Historically, there were always fewer men in Russia than women (they either die at war or from alcoholism or from beating each other up on the street). Hence, men are treated like Bitcoin – they’re rare and harder to get ahold of with each passing year and thus, their value increases.
“All I want is just a man. A guy,” you can easily hear a drunk woman in some Russian bar say. You half-expect her to follow with more criteria, such as “as long as he treats me well,” but she doesn’t. She might add, “I just hope he makes good money and leaves me alone.” People are different everywhere, but it’s hard to imagine that occurring in the UK or the US post-feminist society.
In the Western world, it’s the ladies’ market. It’s the guys who look great, it’s the guys who work out, it’s the guys who chase the women, not the other way around. Which is how it should be. In the animal world – of which humans are a part, no matter how we like to think otherwise – the males are the ones who chase after the females. The cocks look brighter and more colourful and beautiful than the chickens because it’s the males who compete for the attention. And whoever competes tries harder. Somehow, this logic is broken in Russia.
One of the most significant differences between living in Russia and the UK is how you’re treated as a man. In Russia, if you’re a man, you’re treated like a sheikh.
At least in Moscow, women are expected to look beautiful – to wear mascara, hit the gym, eat broccoli, and pay attention to how they look. If you’re a guy and you say you do yoga, people will look at you and say, “What are you, a faggot?” As if Real Men have to grow fat, stink, and not shave their armpits. All of this relaxes men to a point that you’ll see bulky, greasy men walking around with stomachs protruding two feet in front of them, as if the bod guides them like a compass. Looking at the man, you wonder whether they were born that way – a baby with a huge belly. Then you spot a thin, fragile, beautiful, model-like woman next to him.
And you can’t help but wonder, exactly how much money is he making?
Back when I studied in the US, I made the mistake of holding the door for people – men and women alike, but mostly women – because that’s what my Russian grandmother taught me was the polite thing to do. I remember one evening, as I was coming back from the cafeteria on my way to my dorm room, to spend the evening doing what I loved most – watching YouTube videos and masturbating – a female classmate was fidgeting with her key card in her pocket.
“Allow me,” I said, opening the door and holding it for her, like a true gentleman.
She took a beat and stared at me, her eyes bulging. “What, you think I am weak?!”
“Eh,” I said, unsure how to proceed, and simply walked inside and tried to avoid her for the next several months until I dropped out. Looking back, I should have probably explained that I was trying to be polite, but then, some people just want to fight you for the sake of it.
It’s the little things that give you away as an immigrant.
And an immigrant man.
Because Russian women historically compete for men, their sense of ownership goes through the roof.
Of all Russian women I’ve dated, Masha is among the least jealous people I’ve met. Whenever I’d even as much as look at another woman or say, “Wow, she’s beautiful, isn’t she?” my previous girlfriends would snap, “So go and live with her! You filthy pig!”
No explanation of my having no such desires would be enough. The spell was broken. I’d have to bend backwards and use my father’s advice: “If a woman is wrong, apologize to her.” And then, perhaps, take them to some fancy place to dinner.
Whenever we go to ZIMA (a Russian place with karaoke in London) with Masha, I get a lot of female attention, which isn’t surprising because I monopolise the karaoke mic. Drunk Russian women flock to me like bees on honey (or something less desirable) and put their heads on my shoulders and touch me like I have a T-shirt that says, GROPE ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT. And Masha doesn’t even notice.
When I tell her, “Did you see that woman who is older than my mother touch my ass?”
She just laughs and says, “No! Really? Make her touch you again, I want to see!”
ZIMA is the only place in London – or maybe the UK, or the entire Western world besides strip clubs – where I get so much unwarranted female attention. Whenever we go to regular English bars, people compliment Masha and I just stand there, like a ghost, waiting to be noticed. They only spot me as an unwanted afterthought, with a look on their face as if they’ve spotted a fly and now have to get rid of it, when Masha says, “I am here with my boyfriend.”
“Oh,” they say. “You are a very lucky guy,” they say.
To which I never know how to respond.
Thanks? I try? Too bad it’s not you?
I sometimes wonder whether I’d be able to be in a non-monogamous open relationship. It sounds appealing: no drama, multiple partners, loads of fun. But when I think about it, reality kicks in and I start feeling the same things I do in the morning when I hear that Teams call ringing with someone wanting to do a “one-on-one” to “hash things out” and “align on key priorities.” Dating one person is hard enough, but dating multiple partners? That’s like having several jobs you pay for.
Plus, there’s the jealousy aspect. I am not like Masha in the sense that I do get jealous. Whenever she talks to some guy in public, I eye him suspiciously and start planning where I’d hit him so that it hurts the most. Whenever a message chimes on Masha’s phone and I spot a male name out of the corner of my eye, my brain goes, WHO IS THAT?! Though I keep it primarily to myself.
Masha notices, of course, and before I could even inhale to say something that would break the awkwardness, she says, “So that you know, it’s my ex-boyfriend asking whether it’s too gay to listen to your stories on Substack.”
I mull this over for a while, but because of all the stories of her ex-boyfriends, I feel like I’ve dated them. I say, “I don’t think so. I think it’s cute. Tell him I’ll sign my book for him. Jake, is it?”
And then I give her a little wink.
I love women. In truth, I probably like them more than men which might say something about my relationship with my father. This is one of the reasons why I always had girlfriends (and girl friends), but very few “bros.” I grew up with women; my favourite people are my mother, my three sisters, and, comparatively recently, Masha.
But I also know that because of this comfort around women, sometimes, I send mixed signals.
A casual compliment can be seen as a flirtatious comment. A touch on the shoulder, like groping, a conversation in the bar, like I am trying to pick people up, or an innocent request for a lunchtime coffee in the middle of the workday, like I am harassing someone.
Where I come from, these things are expected (but so, of course, are police bribes and fights on the streets). But here, in this strange land of Thursday after-work drinks and some women always waiting for a chance to point out what an animal you are simply because you’re young, straight, white, and male, I have to be more careful.
This is why, I guess, even though I am only 27, I prefer to be married.
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