X-Men Chapter 8. Sergeant Z

X-Men is a novel about the lives of homosexual men during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The text is divided into chapters with the names of fictional superheroes, the title referring to the renamed Twitter, which has become the main social network of Russian-speaking gay men who fight, meet, post nudes and porn there. The novel spans the lives of dozens of characters from famous drag queens to corporate accountants and top executives at art institutions who face a variety of political and romantic challenges.

"This novel is an unprecedented statement in its cynicism about how heterogeneous a world we heterosexuals are used to viewing from only one lens. Another conclusion I drew from reading it is that the sexual is definitely political"

Ingrid Konstlig, The Kirkenes Fake Review

April 2023

The cafe would have to close in a week, as a small poster from the front window announced. The hostess who served the Americano said that they had just lost the battle to the chains. Although it was probably because she just didn’t understand anything about coffee. The coffee was watery with an unpleasant bitter flavour. Viktor even liked it. He liked witnessing withering of every kind and shape.

When the invasion began, he was one of the first on Facebook to notice that all the horror of what was happening, the fear, the despair, the merry-go-round of historical scenarios gave the observer an embarrassing aesthetic pleasure. An important attribute of our days played no small role here — a momentary opportunity to receive fresh information from the battlefield, from the unsuspecting people on the streets and in public transport, from the lunchtime conversations of colleagues, from the inane reflections of subscribers in social networks, who publish the same evidence under a greasy film of intellectual arrogance.

Viktor was waiting for Lesha to discuss just such observations. After leaving the Department of Sociology at Vyshka, Lesha had taken up training artificial intelligence at one of Russia’s IT giants. Viktor had prepared a topic for the entire planned conversation. In his head and drafts, he already had a theory about the new ethical paradoxes that this war presented us with.

— You’ve probably noticed it too! In the Hornet and the Grindr.

— What’s that? More idiots?

— There’s always been a steady majority of them there. No! There are a lot of heroes of the "СВО"[1] with Russian flags, Z’s and V’s, camouflage and helmets. There never used to be such an indulgent fetish for the military. The horror and blood that everyone sees on TV, on social media, in outdoor advertising is creating a surprising demand for the sexualisation of the trappings of this war.

— To be honest, it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. What do you mean? Do you think they are not real there? — Lesha wondered

— Take a look at this. — Viktor took out his phone and started flipping through the photos — I took screenshots. Here is one in camouflage, with a protective mask, here is just a naked torso, here is such a Vanka-Vstanka in a Suvorovtsy uniform, here are two with balaclavas, the photo was supposedly taken at the front. I put all these photos into an image search. There were no results for any of them, just similar pictures, and some of them popped up immediately in several social networks and dating sites. Here is Vadim, aka Andrei Voroshilov, aka Anton Antonov, aka Alexei Alexandrovich. This one is an top guy who is looking for quick sex. This one wants a quick blowjob and also has the hashtags #rimming, #socks, #jeans. bambalBee likes massages, car journeys, healthy lifestyles and shorts.

— Are you saying that this war has become the new kink in the gay community?

— Absolutely! Or rather, presumably. That is, some of it, and most likely everyone, is borrowing the discourse, probably the "СВО" aesthetic would be appropriate here to find a mate.

— You don’t think there could be someone real out there who’s on the front right now?

— I’m not sure. Remember about the phenomenon of male prostitution in military units, in the 1990s-2000s it was a source of income for many conscripts coming from poor families, many were simply forced into it. Officers and dedy[2] were pimps-workers. I had an acquaintance from St. Petersburg who even used such services on a regular basis. There were special chat rooms and forums. Only now they add prices to you with tales of a Ukrainian tank hit and a burnt village. Where we have rolled back a few years is here. And sanctions have nothing to do with it.

— I think this work is not even sociological, but psychoanalytical. Discuss it with Rytvin.

— We haven’t spoken to each other for a long time after that incident…

— Have you written to these people, these "veterans"? What do they say? Are they mobilised or serving under contract? What are they doing in Moscow?

— Yes, one wrote that they were released from the unit to visit their relatives. But that’s nonsense. Wives and mothers of those mobilised have been trying for months to get some kind of response, and these homosexuals are just let go? You’d have to believe in a worldwide LGBT conspiracy.

— No, I’m more of an in-depth interview. Someone agreed to go on a date?

— You think it’s safe? What if it’s a blackmailer? It used to be you could just pay them off, now they can kill you. I’m more likely to be concerned about kink and fetish in this context, I’d talk to people who fall for this and why? Are they not scared? I’ve come to terms with the fact that gay people turn a blind eye to everything going on, as if it’s all not with us, not about us. There are those who "propagandise" and we just satisfy our desires. It doesn’t concern us. But it doesn’t work that way, they are all included in it.

— Not everyone has a habit of political activism, not everyone knows the difference between democracy and authoritarianism, not everyone knows the name of Hannah Arendt or Aleida Assmann. Not one of them has read Heinrich Striefler. I hope you won’t argue that when or if "this is all over"[3], few people will be ready to fully realise what has happened. Many simply don’t have the will to do so. You correctly point out that for many, this is just theatre or, if you will, a war movie. They watch it like a pornographic film or a computer game, today the object of their desire is firing a BUK, and tomorrow he is taking off his trousers in front of you. It doesn’t matter if it’s a game or if it’s real. You should definitely read something about how it was under similar regimes of violence, of course in Germany. The same SS with the cult of masculinity and repression, it can’t help but settle into sexual practices. Think of Ernst Röhm, whose frontline experience attracted numerous lovers to him. Hypermasculine behaviour, complete with gory evidence, will unfortunately always be one of the objects of fetishisation, going back to the archaic. All of this has gone further into gated communities: leather, latex, Tom of Finland. We unfortunately can’t do anything about it, as long as war exists as phenomenon, it will be sexually attractive.

— You can refocus on fishing, sports, fixing roofs in denim overalls. — laughs Viktor — Can you imagine such pictures on the Hornet? Manual labour ennobles and cleanses the mind. Would you fall for that?

— Not when war has become part of your life. I think gays are traumatised by the war, and from that want to be fucked by a returning from СВО. They hardly know what PTSD is and would be pleasantly surprised if a man who lived through the experience of real war gutted their guts by cutting across their anus. It seems to me that our government didn’t see it through, they could have taken the destructive side of male homosexuality and turned it to their advantage, as they did with Anton Krasovsky, but they were scared or squeamish and rejected him like food they couldn’t digest.

— Do you think it would be possible to get statistics on how often people click on such profiles with weapons and the letters Z, V, symbols of war, so that they can be distinguished from role-players?

— Dating services won’t go for that, but Pornhub or someone else, I don’t remember, published statistics in 2022, I think, that, in general, the demand for military porn in Russia has increased, and in the so-called Western countries for the tag "Ukrainians".

— So conventionally, I can offer the hypothesis that this fetishisation is not something new, but an archetype or something like that that exists in the culture, and maybe even neurobiologically driven, like the choice of a stronger male, suggestive of associations with power and violence? I remembered, and I definitely need to add this to the research, that there was a big sex party going on a while back that unfortunately announced it was closing. So, even after the whole thing started [4], they managed to enforce a military style dress code.

— I myself was once at a gay club on 23 February, where a line of privates, naked from the waist down, marched on stage to a rabid pop song.

— Actually, I didn’t say everything. — Lesha said as they walked out onto Novokuznetskaya Street. — I went on such a date myself

— Are you kidding? Why didn’t you tell me right away?

— Don’t think, he didn’t have anything like that in his profile, he only sent me a photo in camouflage afterwards. You know, a lot of people served. Before the war, there was a flash mob on Twitter. Russian gays were posting pictures of themselves in the army. A lot of them were smiling, I remember someone smiling with a mop in some soviet corridor. I wanted to go to the army myself, you know, that atmosphere…I don’t have to explain it to you. Same-sex communities, nudity, homoeroticism, uniforms.

— But that has nothing to do with what’s going on now, does it?

They stopped at the Ozerkovskaya Embankment. Lesha leaned over the shaped railing and looked at the rippling blue-grey water.

— Yes, of course. Ilya was his name. He went to serve on contract, and not because of money, he really believes in all this nonsense about defending the homeland and the NATO conspiracy.

— Lesha, are you fucking kidding me? — Viktor exploded

— Fuck. I thought you wouldn’t understand me. — sighed Lesha. Let’s go to the Yuzhnaya. I’ll try to explain.

The only seats in the ryumochnaya were at a communal round table, where two giggling young women in their twenties sat. They seemed a little embarrassed that two men in their thirties in dark pullovers were sitting next to them. Two shot glasses of raspberry-basil tincture immediately appeared on the table, followed by sea buckthorn. Lesha looked at the endlessly laughing girls with a clouded look with some suspicion.

— But let’s keep it down. Ilya is very good, in every sense, except for this…

— Except for the СВО? Amazing! — Viktor interrupted him — And in the others, what are they?

— He was discharged on disability. He walks with a prosthesis.

— What does he think about the war, after it crippled him? That gays are persecuted!

— He says that’s different. You and me reading books, doing research, playing activism on Twitter, he’s a real person. He doesn’t care about community, parties, Navalny, etc he’s outside of the whole gay thing, for him LGBT is really a non-existent conspiracy organisation. Remember Husserl’s theory of the lifeworld and then Schutz’s? Well, for some reason we don’t take it into account in such a case. We should not try to understand people like Ilya from our arrogant attitudes and mental projection. Each of us grows out of our own social soil.

— Okay. And how is it sex with a prosthesis? — Viktor decided to change the subject.

— Same as everyone else, even better. To be honest, it’s the best sex I’ve ever had. Some people can’t even use two legs.

The laughing girls disappeared, as did most of the visitors to the Yuzhnaya. Horseradish tinctures appeared on the table.

— Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is. — After a short pause of digging in the phones said Lesha — I think that among these people in the applications there are real participants of СВО, not only sex workers or fans of role-playing games. Ilya and I don’t discuss it. He is a very nice and sweet person. He has an English bulldog named Marta, by the way. She’s beautiful.

— And he doesn’t have any PTSD? You didn’t wake up with a rifle in your mouth? — Viktor laughs.

— With a rifle, no — giggles Lesha nervously.

— Maybe you still secretly hope to be suppressed, raped? You know, while we were talking I was thinking about this fetish aesthetics of modern times, it comes from the times when the images of Nazi officers were rapidly commodified and sexualised. Strangely enough, for gay men in Germany, with all its "Never Again" rhetoric, this aesthetic is very popular and it is not Russian militarism, which is popular also because of its social nature, but a very real association with gassed people and barbed wire. Perhaps it was your secret desire to be captured by someone like that?

— Are you saying that my Ilya is a fascist?

— Of course not! Perhaps it’s better to say a victim of Putinism? You have created an image of a kind and nice guy with a bulldog, but also with a disability, such people should be pitied and applauded, as well as admired for their courage, because they came back from the crucible of war, one of the most cynical in history. Although, can war not be cynical? I mean, I wish you’d introduce me to your Ilya.

— No! That’s never gonna happen. Listen! You’re gonna start interviewing him. Try talking to those Grindr dudes first. Maybe you’ll get to meet someone. No one in Russia will give you money for this research, but invest, maybe you’ll get something out of it. You can send me questions in advance. We need to understand how many of these characters have appeared, who is a fake, who is a sex worker, who is a veteran from the billboard, then find out about their political attitudes. But, Vitya. This is a extremely dangerous. Be careful, if at any point you think it’s risky, just write a fiction about it.

— There’s nothing else for me to do! I have to do something, I feel like I’m falling into a common pit.

-----

1. СВО — written in Cyrillic letters is the abbreviation for a special military operation (специальная военная операция), which is how Russian authorities refer to the invasion of Ukraine. This abbreviation has become the official name of the war not only in the propaganda, but also in everyday life among different groups of Russians. Among other things, this abbreviation has ironic contexts and may also be referred to as "the so-called "СВО".

2. dedy — comes from "Dedovschina", the informal practice of hazing and abuse of junior conscripts historically in the Soviet and Russian Armed Forces. Dedy — conscripts, NCOs, and officers.

3. when this is all over — phrase, part of the Russian neo-newsword that appeared in 2022 as a censorious form of talking about the end of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as it is legally forbidden in Russia to criticise the war directly and even to call the war "war". "this" in this case is not only the war, but also the repression that the Russian authorities are waging against the population. Western sanctions are also part of "this"

4. the whole thing started — description of the start of the invasion, sanctions and repressions