“We do not walk along the street and think: we are wives. We think: fuck your mother "

Two girls from Russia got married to the United States and returned to their homeland during the war. Here is their story

In recent months, Russia has finally criminalized any orientation, except for heterosexual: in November 2023, the non-existent “LGBT move” was recognized as extremist, which allows the security forces to put people in the insulator even for earrings of rainbow flowers. With all this, many representatives of LGBT continue to live in Russia - the exact number is unknown, but probably at least tens of thousands of such people. Some of them even dare to officially formalize the same -sex relations in those countries where it is legal, and return to their homeland, where such a marriage can potentially consider a criminal offense. "Cold" spoke with one such couple. For safety reasons, the names of girls are changed.

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How we decided to get married

Zhenya: After two weeks of relations, I called Kira the “wife” - she became the first with whom I wanted to marry. Prior to this, when I met with the guys, I thought: well, yes, once I would probably have to do it. This did not cause enthusiasm. And then I felt straight what I wanted and needed.

Kira: We sat down and talked: maybe it's time to marry? Times today are troubled.

Zhenya: At that time, a war was going on for a year and a half. I began to be afraid of everything. Suppose something will happen, we will have to fall out of the country, and abroad we will be no one for each other. We must get some papers so that at least somewhere our relationship is legitimate. And I began to push this topic. In October, we went on vacation, I bought a ring and made her an offer on a closed beach by the sea.

Kira: It was unexpected. I was so scared! Although we all spoke in advance. I just thought: “Oh God” - like a jenis of “friends”. I began to say that she went crazy, Durochka and Ku-ku. I then said that I would think about it, but it was a formality - of course, I agreed. And before I made her an offer in response, it took about three months. It was at a hotel in Moscow-a few days later we had a flight to New York.

How we signed in America

Zhenya: There is a Russian couple of open lesbians Seventeenine . They are both very beautiful, they have a very beautiful instagram. You look and want to believe that this picture is possible with you. So, they got married in New York and became an example for us.

Kira: In order to understand where we better marry, we took a free consultation from a human rights organization. The most ultra -budget option is a remote marriage that is concluded in the USA. But for us it was important to do it in person - as a symbol that we have the right to legalize our relationship.

Zhenya: Usually, one of the two countries-Denmark or the USA for LGBT Braks. In Denmark, the difficulty is that you must have a witness that speaks the language of the country, and more documents must be collected. In the United States, our girlfriend who lives there could be a witness. The only difficulty was to get there.

Kira: Our option is not at all budget. It took us 700 thousand rubles, it was fucked up, although we saved wherever we could. I put off half my salary. While we saved it, we spent only money on food, housing and transport.

Zhenya : We got married in the office of the city clerk in Manhattan-this is something like such a pathos American MFC. To sign up for the ceremony, you need to fill out a small questionnaire compared to the questionnaire for an American visa - this is nonsense.

There are no special wedding visas in the United States. I don’t know if they would give us a visa if we said that we were going to get married there. Perhaps they would consider this the reason for emigration, so it is better to say that you are just going, with a tourist purpose.

Kira: To leave for another country to marry is stress, because you do not know what water is there, you cannot take everything you need with you: there is no hair dryer, curves, and so on. Domestic conditions are not always as good as your at home. To bring with you everything to another continent is not an option. So we had the whole pre -wedding mandrazh.

Zhenya: When we flew in and came to confirm registration, the turn of the girls in wedding dresses lined up for us. It was scary that we had confused something and they would eat us right now, and we are in ordinary clothes and are not at all ready for such a situation. But we were reassured that they would not be eaten right now. We were called, the applications that we filled online, checked and signed, we paid tax. And after that, it was already possible to sign up for the ceremony itself. We signed up the next day.

Kira: We again arrived in the same building on Manhattan. Contacted. And then the process is the same: you take a number, go out the window, pay the tax again. Our girlfriend put a signature as a witness, and we were called for registration.

It was possible to dump several thousand dollars - there would be fanfares, an orchestra, rose petals. But we paid $ 25, so that we were just married to a woman who made a speech for two minutes, then we exchanged rings, kissed - and that’s all, we were given a marriage certificate.

Zhenya: But we were still Excited.

Kira: I initially wanted this day we spent together. My mother supported me how much it was possible to do from another continent. She wrote to me congratulations, said: "Here is my daughter, you are a bride." It was very nice.

Zhenya : I did not have this. Dad wrote, they say, we are well done, did it. And my mother ... I did not correspond with her at all while I was in America. Then we phoned her when I already returned. Mom asked me absolutely moronic questions: “And there are separate buildings for LGBT, and what is the percentage of them, and you were somehow married differently?” There was nothing sentimental at all.

How we started dating

Kira: None of my acquaintances expected that I would begin relations with the girl, because I did not have such an experience.

I had a relationship with the guys, and then I left my hometown to Moscow. We met Zhenya when both were looking for an apartment. We were small, many did not want to rent housing, so the apartments were offered only bad ones - with mold and cockroaches. Here in one such we settled. There was a day in five, and we spent a lot of time together. So, when we started dating in a couple of weeks, it did not look like we did not know each other at all.

Zhenya: The romance of life is separate, the first trips to the store, nothing happens, it doesn’t work, a lot of problems ... We had a sense of humor wildly, we neighing constantly. Kira didn’t look like a person who could enter into a relationship with girls, because she told me about 53 boyfriends, as she knows all the techniques of seduction of men and how to communicate with them. And I thought she was just the ideal of such a female woman. She breathes with a uterus, she knows how to dress, how to wink and what to say. She looked like the same lady who was brought up correctly.

Kira: I understood that I was not hetero: I liked the girls. But I did not have the experience of such a relationship and there was a great inner homophobia. I began to fall in love before we got out, just hardly realized this.

Zhenya: Once Kira got drunk in the bar. When we went home, she put on me a ring on a finger and said: "Now you are mine." I prepared pancakes to her, laid her to sleep, washed her makeup and that's all. I remember we went to the cinema for the “argument”, and after the film was the very moment when the air sparkles from how you are in love. But that day I went to visit dad with an overnight. She kissed her before leaving, as if we were married for 40 years, and dumped. She told dad [that she fell in love with a girl] - we have a trusting relationship. He says: “This is a difficult path, why do you need this? You will always be in resistance. ” But my dad is tolerant, in the end he accepted us and now calls us his daughters.

Kira: And most of my friends from my hometown were fucked up. There were two options: “You are a fool” or “I am not very related to this, but I love you, and therefore I am OK.”

But with Moscow friends there was a cring. Some asked: “And who is a man in your relationship? How do you have sex? " That is, all these stereotypical issues. And I was in euphoria, I told everyone about this relationship: mom, dad, sister. The sister took normally. Mom was painful, but she tried to understand me, read something and studied something. I told dad a year later. And then because he brought me with his homophobic speech, and I am: "Listen, I am also LGBT." To which he answered me: "And I guessed." I thought: where is the logic? But with dad everything is still very difficult. When I told him that we got married, he gave a hat.

Zhenya: We were all together in the same car, and this lasted more than an hour, until I started to cry.

Kira: When this happens, you, of course, do not feel that this marriage gives something. It must be hidden. We have rings, but I plan to shoot them when I see some relatives. And in all this situation it is most annoyed that I have to lie.

Zhenya : My grandmother never asked me about the relationship, because she believed that it was in no way. And so we came to visit her, spent several days together. She liked Kira. We had a family feast, we all rolled. We were talking about gays, and the grandmother began some kind of hatch. I took her hand and said, they say, I can tell you something, only you don’t be upset: I don’t like the boys-I like the girls. She replied: “Well, now you can do it! Che, are you and Kira? " I said: "Yes." Kira returned, grandmother told her: "Sit down, we are now a family." And then she talked about her girlfriend, who did not love the peasants all her life. It is only a pity, he says that society does not accept you, I am worried about you in this regard.

How we live in today's Russia

Zhenya : We both thought that we were going to the States to watch a potential option for emigration: if you like it, we will try to move. But, unfortunately, I can’t say that we had a Match with New York.

My friend said: "Most importantly, I am so enthusiastic about you that you have returned." I say: "So we initially told you to everyone that we will return." She: "Well, this is an act!"

Kira: We did not even have thoughts that we will stay there. Well, Kamon, we have a cat, work, study and everything you want. And in general, from here we have not left anywhere in all this time.

Zhenya : So, we should have some kind of cosmic motivation in order to dump.

Kira: It is clear that the state throws this motivation every day to us. But I never had a dream to leave Russia. Moscow is a city in which I wanted to live. Emigration is an extreme option. But this is now we are supermatoleous, we have some things here. And if we really want to live freely, build a family, think about children ... Here we stay in Moscow: we are 30 years old, we are two women who live together. This is all suspicious, questions.

Zhenya : I personally do not divert stress and anxiety. I'm just going crazy. I'm afraid to hold hands. I would like to say: "Set away from me by three steps, suddenly someone will think." This is usually trigger because of some news about LGBT. Someone pulled someone or put someone. I begin to think that everything is a nightmare. If we did not have such an aggressive environment, people would open. As Kostyuchenko said in an interview with Dudu: “Among your friends, relatives and acquaintances, there is definitely LGBT. If they have not opened you, then you have created an insufficiently comfortable environment. ” If people began to talk to each other, hatred would disappear.

When we started dating a couple of years ago, I was not so scary. I understood that if you are traveling with a taxi driver from the Caucasus, for example, you don’t need to bring a girl in the back seat, but we could kiss on the streets. In Moscow, we kissed, albeit not on a crowded street, but in St. Petersburg we sucked constantly. I calmly told everyone about the fact that we are meeting. But the last year or two it has become more difficult to talk about their relationships.

Kira: If this [love in a girl] happened to me now, I would not tell anyone. After LGBT was called the “extremist organization”, I often began to hear how people in Moscow are discussing this - in a coffee shop, on the street.

Zhenya : Recently there was a terrible moment when I just burst into tears. In the coffee shop next to me, the company of children of my age sat - judging by what they said, they were in practice in the State Duma. And for two hours they discussed the “ fagots ” how they “fuck in a point” - as if sixth graders who first watched porn. Or I was driving in a taxi on the tariff “Together”, I was sitting in front of me in the front seat and said: “No, well, of course, it is cool to get the citizenship of America, but they are transgender there, children force the children to choose the floor.” And this is constantly around.

Kira: And now this is a jurisdiction. Any police officer who detains us for anything, climbs into my phone, opens the gallery - and so I crouched for 20 years. It’s all scary, it is setting, it spoils the quality of the relationship.

Zhenya : A very cool option is to periodically go somewhere to weaken this level of anxiety and stress. As a wonderful Schulman said, it’s impossible to live in Russia - you will go crazy, you can’t leave here - you will miss it. For LGBT-Par, such a trip is a huge plantain for a mental state. You are charging and understand that the matter is not in you, it is a matter of propaganda.

Kira: We do not walk along the street and do not think: we are wives. We think: fuck your mother! In the United States, we felt that we can talk freely about ourselves, we can kiss and no one will tell us anything - and this is recorded at the legislative level. This gave some new wave of euphoria in a relationship. Added romance, some kind of tenderness and trepidation.

Zhenya : When the first time in the United States I said the phrase that I was waiting for my wife, I directly felt: "To go nuts." And when we returned, my depression began: "Fuck, here it does not mean anything, we must again hide in the sink."

Kira: The only thing that was cool was that we were congratulated by friends here. When we arrived, the wedding album was waiting for us, into which we can glue our history and so on. We were even presented with money in an envelope with the inscription "Happy Wedding".

Zhenya : Two bouquets of flowers at home are standing.

Kira : And the cake!

Zhenya: It says: "Love wins." In English.