Xenia

I have written about this on some Russian-language sites, and have (surprisingly) received a lot of hate for it, a lot of false accusations, but also an overwhelming amount of support. The name has been changed.

This is Xenia’s life. From start to finish. It’s condensed, and there are a lot of blanks that will never be filled. There is also a lot that I can only guess at – what she was like on her own, what she felt toward her mother, had she ever been in love, what was her quest and what was her favourite colour.

What I am reproducing here is something incomplete, but nevertheless, important and precious in its own right. Please read.

Xenia was the youngest child in a family of four: mother, father, brother, and her. This family lived in our building, in Kiev. My grandmother remembers that, a long time ago, they were happy enough.

In the late 1980’s, the father left. He claimed he was “in love” with another woman, and wanted everyone to leave him alone. At first, the wife thought this was a phase. But he simply disappeared out of their lives, and after a year went by, she started to drink.

Xenia was affected the most – she was much younger than her brother, no more than 8 years old at that time, and these new developments hit her hard. Her mother was not a monster, but she could be scary when she drank. Xenia spent most of her free time outside, away from mum.

A few years later, her brother began doing heroin.

Everyone knew what was happening, because the problems were dragged out into the public. Drunk mother screamed at high son. Xenia sat outside on the bench, and rocked back and forth.

It was around this time that I first met her. She was older than I was by a couple of years, or decades, in fact. She was not at all a child – even though her performance at school lead some to believe that she was “slow.” It was very hard for her to learn or develop in any way in her environment.

At age twelve, she was appropriated by a group of older kids. They lent her stockings, lipstick, short skirts. They liked to dress her up, like a doll. She was very willing – she would have done anything for affection.

There are a lot of college students in that neighbourhood, and the men took a liking to her right away. She was desperate for any sort of attention, if anyone bought her lunch, or a bottle of Coke, she mistook these gestures for love. People said a lot of unfair things about her, she was like a “dog,” she could follow you anywhere.

When she was spurned, also like a dog, she cried horribly, loudly, so that the entire neighbourhood could hear.

She ended up pregnant at fourteen. Her mother was seeing some sort of spiritual “guru” then, to try and stop her addiction. The “guru,” some bearded old guy, said that Xenia was a “whore” and that “pregnancy is the cross she must bear.” No attempts to establish paternity were made, although this was probably a case of statutory rape – considering the people Xenia was regularly seen with.

The mother, and the people in her circle, all agreed with this. Xenia gave birth to, and kept, the baby. People said that she probably hoped that the baby would bring its father back. Who knows.

The baby was born sick. It screamed all day and all night. You could hear it even through the tough brick walls of the building. The mother screamed at Xenia. The brother spent almost all of his free time out and about with his friends and heroin. The mother’s drinking got worse. She no longer wanted to stop. She bit off a whole lot more than she could chew.

Xenia worked as a prostitute. She didn’t return to school. She was a short, skinny girl with bangs who, at fifteen, still looked like she was twelve. A lot of perverts like that sort of thing, of course. She looked very “serious,” and a lot of people liked her by then, even though they wouldn’t admit it to each other.

No one offered to help her in any way though – even when it came to helping with the baby that the respectable public did not want “murdered.” No one wanted to deal with this.

One day, Xenia’s body was found outside one of the horrible high-rises that stand near the main train station. Someone tied her up, then threw her out of the window. She was sixteen.

My grandmother says that her mother quit drinking, and took the little boy to live in some village where she was originally from. People also say that her brother kicked the habit, and actually graduated, and did something with his life.

She was like a sacrificial offering – the rest of her family was eventually spared, at least in part.

I don’t remember her very well, just a few details: the bangs, the thin legs in black tights. One day, when we were still very small, she asked me what the word “rape” meant. I had some vague ideas, but couldn’t give a conclusive answer.

“Oh,” she said. We were sitting on the landing (the same landing my cousin and I use for smoking purposes when I’m in town and he’s around). My grandmother kept her cacti there at that point. Xenia pricked a finer and began to cry, horribly, to the point where even I could see that it wasn’t her finger that was hurting her.

Our Boy

Jenia solved a serious problem in figure-skating: It. Takes. Itself. Too. Serously. Screw the theory of relativity – this is real achievement right here.

I can’t believe it took me 6 years to see such genius at work, and I thank Hareega for bringing it to my attention here.

If lapushkas like this can go on to win gold at the Olympics, there must be something right with this world.

Child of Choice

God, they say, is against abortion. Here is a two-part response to this pressing dilemma:

1. This used to bother me, even as I continue to wax and wane in my spiritual beliefs, but it doesn’t anymore. This is because I’ve learned to recognize the fact that the “godly” utopia that religious fundies of stripes push on us has never existed, and will never exist, on this earth. The laws of the world are not the laws of God. Not that abortion is even included in “God’s Law,” especially if you’re a Christian. The prohibition against abortion was made by the Church. It’s interpretive.

God does not define women solely on the basis of their reproductive potential. A society that bans abortion, however, does. Because God and society are two separate entities; the people who wish to ban abortion want to merge the two. They are afraid of the realities of life on this earth – the idea that if women have babies not because they want babies, but because the STATE tells them they must, women will, once again, cease to be viewed as human beings by law.

How many of these idealists (and i use the term loosely) are interested in taking a teenage, unwed mother into their home, and not just for a few days? How many of them are committed to babysitting a single mother’s kids, and not just once every few months, whenever the mood strikes them…? Even if the majority of them did this today, tomorrow, right this second – it wouldn’t be an argument for banning abortion. It might be an argument for respecting their position, though, and I am all about respect. I want to respect others, but they continue to spit in my face and in the faces of those like me.

Of course, these are not logical arguments – there is nothing remotely logical about God (or Gods or gods, for that matter), our belief in God, our worship of God, from Christianity to those who still worship the deities at Mt Olympus. I wish more people would see this.

2. God is against abortion – yet it would appear that She is the world’s greatest abortionist. 25% of pregnancies are naturally rejected by the body at an early stage, the same stage that, fundies argue, the fetus is already a “human being.” It’s is natural, not unnatural for a woman’s body to reject a pregnancy. The problem only arises when a woman decides to reject a pregnancy. Which is really weird – because her health (both physical and emotional), and her economic situation – are both natural factors that contribute to the situation.

So we are left with the idea that throughout the entire pregnancy – what’s growing inside the woman is a human being. Which is really interesting because if I’ve ever gotten pregnant and didn’t even know about it before my body said NO (which can happen, more often than you’d think) – a human being passed in and out of my womb, like a drifter.

It’s a concept that doesn’t sit well with me, both from a religious, scientific, and personal perspective. My body is not a HALFWAY HOUSE, and I refuse to see it as such. When I have MY babies, they are going to be brought into this world as human beings, as people I want to spend time with until the end of my days, not as little buns I pop out because the patriarchy tells me to.

Of course, none of the above matters if you’re for the separation of church and state.

I am.

I speak all about this, knowing that my own parents were told to abort me. They were unmarried, and my mother was worried about some pills she had taken when she did not yet know she was pregnant with me, and everyone screamed abort.

Difference is, my parents wanted to have me.

Would it have been a good idea for me to be born, unwanted, left in an orphanage, in the dying years of the Soviet Empire? I don’t know.

I’m glad I wasn’t bloody forced on my parents, I can tell you that much. I’m glad they chose me. This is why I am pro-choice.

Dishing on Dinesh

I haven’t discussed Dinesh D’Souza on this blog (or my previous blog) – mainly because going after him is sort of like going after Paris Hilton. It’s easy, it’s obvious and anyway, you know he loves the attention.

Following the release of his new book, however, I can no longer contain myself. D’Souza, you see, has joined the knitting circle that includes such luminaries as Jerry Fallwel, in claiming that the “cultural left” ought to be blamed for 9/11. Amanda Marcotte rightfully calls him out on his appeasement strategies – I mean, Chamberlain and Hitler, anyone? It’s one thing to say – there are things happening in this country I do not agree with (I say this all the time, although not in reference to the tiny percentage of married gay couples). It’s quite another thing to say, and I quote his Salon interview:

“Well, put it this way — if what the radical Muslims said was totally wrong, it would not convince anybody. An argument only works if it contains some element of truth.”

I see. This explains the Salem Witch Trials perfectly; the witch-burners were right all along! After all, their community agreed with them! Ditto for Hitler, Stalin, Ghengis-fuckin’-Khan. Basking in the brilliance of Dinesh sure enables one to see an entirely new, exciting version of history. Wow. I feel as if my life has been changed.

D’Souza takes a potentially interesting topic, how the Middle East and South Asia see the U.S., and turns into a very unfunny sort of joke. If I was a conservative, I’d probably be moving very far, far away from him right now.