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Queer Ghosting
2026
“I’ll meet you at Faktoriya, by the bus stop,” ██████ writes to me in a dating app for men seeking romantic and sexual encounters with other men.
As we walk, and I still have no idea that we’re heading somewhere specific, I tell him that I spent most of my life in different neighborhoods of Varavino–Faktoriya:
“My parents live by the Second Sawmill, my grandparents by the Third Sawmill. For a while I rented a place on Voronina Street, in a building for people relocated from dilapidated housing. Before that, very close by”—I point to a turnoff on the right—“over there, in a building converted from some old factory. The mattress was full of bedbugs, there was a cat-urine stain on the drywall from a neighbor’s cat, and once I left the window half open—a faucet broke off together with the icicle hanging from it. But the view from the smoking area was magnificent: it was the first building from the river. In summer I’d come here and see men fishing even during the middle of a workday. Actually, that view was supposed to be from my apartment, but I was afraid to ask about it from the stern man with prison tattoos who handled the lease.”
We walk through the industrial zone of the district—huge piles of sawdust, the smell of smoke from the seaweed-processing plant and other factories, and everywhere the skeletons of cars belonging to scrap-recycling companies.
“And over there is the punk club Fish Workshop,” I point into the distance. “It’s in a former fish-processing plant. I go there sometimes.”
“This way,” ██████ says, pointing to a path beside a fence where the remaining functioning part of the industrial zone begins. A bag of garbage stands beside the path. “That’s mine. I clean up around here. Didn’t have the strength to carry it all the way out last time.”
We follow a narrow trail through thickets of willow, birch, tall grass, nettles, raspberries, and currants. ██████ points at nearly every bush and, in a slightly drunken but deeply proud tone, tells me about them.
“I even found morels here once!”
“I thought they didn’t grow around here.”
“Last year they did! I froze them, but then people at work told me, ‘Don’t eat them, you’ll die,’ so I ended up throwing them away. I cut back the nettles here, clear sticks off the trail. Really, I ought to get hold of a chainsaw.”
We emerge at the Northern Dvina. There’s a stretch of sandy beach with charred wooden stumps, remains of a nineteenth-century pier, and chunks of concrete mixed with red brick, arranged into two low walls by ██████. The river has also washed ashore several huge pieces of carpeting, plastic sheeting, and other fabrics.
This spot lies right beside a layered, patchwork fence made of concrete, rusted metal covered in graffiti, driftwood, planks, plastic, slate, rebar, barbed wire, cables of various thicknesses, and bushes. Cranes are visible beyond it.
██████ notices a plastic bottle on the shore and tosses it farther into the bushes.
“I made a table here,” he says, pointing to half a log balanced on stumps.
He sits on another large log some distance away, takes off his backpack, and pulls out the ingredients for a cocktail mixed inside the body itself: the cheapest flask of vodka, the cheapest lemonade, and an apple.
“Want some?”
Wordlessly, I accept, impressed by the fact that a place like this has its own caretaker.
“This is my section, up to that tree.”
“And beyond that?”
“That’s where the younger crowd usually hangs out. They drink beer, swim. Sometimes they climb over the fence, though.”
Instantly, a map forms in my mind, resembling the layout of fishing grounds and netting stations used by different Pomor fishing cooperatives along the White Sea coast.
“Do you want to?”
“I do,” I answer, having already spent some time inching closer and closer along the log until I’m sitting at an increasingly intimate distance from ██████.
After a while, having had a few drinks and gotten to know each other a little, we head into the undergrowth.
“There’s a camera on that pole by the fence,” he says.
Understanding, I follow wherever the caretaker leads.
A gentle blowjob, accompanied by confessions of pleasure and compliments, seasoned with the fear of picking up a tick.
“Will you show me what’s farther down there?”
“Let’s go.”
As we walk, and I still have no idea that we’re heading somewhere specific, I tell him that I spent most of my life in different neighborhoods of Varavino–Faktoriya:
“My parents live by the Second Sawmill, my grandparents by the Third Sawmill. For a while I rented a place on Voronina Street, in a building for people relocated from dilapidated housing. Before that, very close by”—I point to a turnoff on the right—“over there, in a building converted from some old factory. The mattress was full of bedbugs, there was a cat-urine stain on the drywall from a neighbor’s cat, and once I left the window half open—a faucet broke off together with the icicle hanging from it. But the view from the smoking area was magnificent: it was the first building from the river. In summer I’d come here and see men fishing even during the middle of a workday. Actually, that view was supposed to be from my apartment, but I was afraid to ask about it from the stern man with prison tattoos who handled the lease.”
We walk through the industrial zone of the district—huge piles of sawdust, the smell of smoke from the seaweed-processing plant and other factories, and everywhere the skeletons of cars belonging to scrap-recycling companies.
“And over there is the punk club Fish Workshop,” I point into the distance. “It’s in a former fish-processing plant. I go there sometimes.”
“This way,” ██████ says, pointing to a path beside a fence where the remaining functioning part of the industrial zone begins. A bag of garbage stands beside the path. “That’s mine. I clean up around here. Didn’t have the strength to carry it all the way out last time.”
We follow a narrow trail through thickets of willow, birch, tall grass, nettles, raspberries, and currants. ██████ points at nearly every bush and, in a slightly drunken but deeply proud tone, tells me about them.
“I even found morels here once!”
“I thought they didn’t grow around here.”
“Last year they did! I froze them, but then people at work told me, ‘Don’t eat them, you’ll die,’ so I ended up throwing them away. I cut back the nettles here, clear sticks off the trail. Really, I ought to get hold of a chainsaw.”
We emerge at the Northern Dvina. There’s a stretch of sandy beach with charred wooden stumps, remains of a nineteenth-century pier, and chunks of concrete mixed with red brick, arranged into two low walls by ██████. The river has also washed ashore several huge pieces of carpeting, plastic sheeting, and other fabrics.
This spot lies right beside a layered, patchwork fence made of concrete, rusted metal covered in graffiti, driftwood, planks, plastic, slate, rebar, barbed wire, cables of various thicknesses, and bushes. Cranes are visible beyond it.
██████ notices a plastic bottle on the shore and tosses it farther into the bushes.
“I made a table here,” he says, pointing to half a log balanced on stumps.
He sits on another large log some distance away, takes off his backpack, and pulls out the ingredients for a cocktail mixed inside the body itself: the cheapest flask of vodka, the cheapest lemonade, and an apple.
“Want some?”
Wordlessly, I accept, impressed by the fact that a place like this has its own caretaker.
“This is my section, up to that tree.”
“And beyond that?”
“That’s where the younger crowd usually hangs out. They drink beer, swim. Sometimes they climb over the fence, though.”
Instantly, a map forms in my mind, resembling the layout of fishing grounds and netting stations used by different Pomor fishing cooperatives along the White Sea coast.
“Do you want to?”
“I do,” I answer, having already spent some time inching closer and closer along the log until I’m sitting at an increasingly intimate distance from ██████.
After a while, having had a few drinks and gotten to know each other a little, we head into the undergrowth.
“There’s a camera on that pole by the fence,” he says.
Understanding, I follow wherever the caretaker leads.
A gentle blowjob, accompanied by confessions of pleasure and compliments, seasoned with the fear of picking up a tick.
“Will you show me what’s farther down there?”
“Let’s go.”