Side By Side

From November 21st to November 28th we’ll be posting writing from Ed Wolf documenting his trip to the Side-By-Side LGBT Film Festival in St. Petersburg. Catch up with Part One, Part Two, Part Three.   

Part Four: I See You

Saturday November 23rd 

I hear someone laughing outside my hotel room and suddenly I’m wide awake. It’s 7 am and I’ve been able to sleep for six hours. I go downstairs to eat breakfast. Most notable are two hot porridges: one made of semolina, the other, pieces of bread. Excellent comfort food, as I am still worrying about my lost luggage and what to do if it doesn’t arrive. When I return to my room I put everything I have on the bed:

1. Cargo pants with coffee stains on them already. Dammit!

2. A watch, two pairs of glasses, two pens, sunglasses, a notebook and some Ambien.

3. A camera, a pill box with Tums, ibuprofen and Tylenol and a little book called Point It. It’s full of little photos of things—like a taxi or a chicken—that you can point to if you can’t speak Russian.

4. My passport, a book of Sudoku puzzles, a map of St. Petersburg, and my wallet.

5. A long sleeve t-shirt and a heavy cotton shirt. Both orange, a color I never wear as it makes me look jaundiced.

6. A raincoat, my laptop (now without power), two packages of tissue, and some Tic-Tacs.

7. My shoes and socks, not pictured.

I’m restless and need to get outside. The hotel’s on a very busy street and the sidewalk is full of Saturday morning errand doers. I see the entrance to a park and go through it. The day is cold, gray, and wet. The brochure in my room proudly announces that St. Petersburg has sixty-two sunny days per year, but today is clearly not one of them. With all the different feelings and thoughts I’ve had about coming here, it’s powerful to have my feet on the earth and be moving.

There are empty abandoned buildings in this area, stark and beautiful in their own way. Gigantic ravens circle overhead and one is screeching at me from atop a barbwire fence. He’s staring at me. My lost luggage, my anticipation of what will happen today, the grayness of everything feels a bit sinister, and so I raise my arms and swoosh the bird away. When I travelled to Kiev a year ago to attend the Molodist Film Festival, I was in-between knee replacements. My right knee had been replaced; my left would be done when I returned from Ukraine. I was limping then, unsure on the...