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# Burya polov
-> ![Буря полов!](https://i.ibb.co/P98VW7b/20240221-205822-2.png) <-
-> Or, an effeminate Russian boy's story <-
!!! note Copyleft 🄯 2024 David Klopić
    The author of this work voluntarily waives his right to copy, and allows anyone to copy, redistribute, and even resell this excerpt, with the only prerequisites being that the name of the author **must** be present, and the work, including derivatives, must be shared under the same terms as the original, per the [Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International license](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Some rights reserved.
!!! warning Warning
	This is a work in progress (W.I.P.), and is thus susceptible to change.

## Chapter Two: The calm before Dina
Zhenya had a vibrant flower garden right next to his window. It was by no means a botanical garden, but it contained the essentials: a lily, a carnation, an orchid, a tulip, a chrysanthemum, a lavender, and now he could add his saintpaulia, a kind of violet, to the collection. The fragrance of his room, as one may deduce from his little hobby, was self-explanatory.

After spending six hours in bed, Zhenya prepared and consumed a swift breakfast, namely a pack of instant noodles, an average university student’s meal, before he headed out, albeit not before he did his hair. There was a slight delay on metro line 9 because the Polyanka stop was undergoing some renovations, and the stops before and after it were busier than usual. At school, his only acquaintance was standing by, ready to lodge another complaint. He might have had a reason to. On that day, Zhenya wanted to lightly experiment with his appearance. He thought how hairpins were a small accessory, but regardless helped elevate one’s looks to a small degree. So, besides a chocolate bar, he had also purchased a blue (very important detail here) hairpin. To no surprise, Filat detected it straight away while the boy was making his way into the classroom.

“You truly insist on going your own way, don’t you, Zhena?”

“Hello to you as well, comrade Filat,” Zhenya greeted him and sat down.

The Russian language professor entered shortly after, forestalling another one of the burly man’s bursts of external monologue. For forty-five minutes, Zhenya’s class revised some aspects of Russian grammar before being taught a new lesson. The next class was that of Russian literature, taught by the very same professor. He announced this school year’s reading list. The focal point of ninth grade was twentieth century Russian literature, encompassing works such as The Master and Margarita, We, and Doctor Zhivago, among other, non-native works of art. Following Russian literature was Algebra. They had already had an Algebra class on Monday, but on that day, the professor did not feel like inspiring weariness in the class quite yet. That being said, Wednesday’s class had not been not too bad, either. The class was given a few mathematical tasks, and whoever solved them all received a plus in the professor’s personal planner.

At 10:25, it was lunchtime. Just as he halted in front of a moderate queue to order some food, he was briskly pulled by his ear and dragged into a secluded area underneath some stairs.

“Don’t you people have anything better to do?” Zhenya asked.

“We do,” the blue-haired girl said, bopping his nose; “but playing with you is so much more fun! Now, what were you doing before that cafeteria?”

“What do you think?” he asked. “I forgot to make lunch today.”

“Aww, that sucks! Give me your money.”

Zhenya deliberated for a moment before the girl had to issue her command anew.

“How much?”

“All of it,” she replied.

He thought himself lucky that he had two banknotes in his pocket, so he only took one out and offered it to her. She wheezed.

“Don’t tell me you ONLY got ₽200 in your pocket!”

“I generally don’t carry lots of money around,” mused Zhenya, “because it makes you a bigger target. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must…”

Go, he was supposed to, but one of the girl’s goons shoved him back into his initial position.

“Now, BOY, we’re not going anywhere! After all”—she looked at her opulent watch—“we only have fifteen minutes left! Be a good BOY and let us”—one of the goons interrupted her, and whispered something to her ear—“oh, you noticed something? Where? In his hair? To his left? Well, come here, BOY, and let’s have a look…”

She pressed her right hand to his hair and, surprisingly gently, unfastened his hairpin. She looked at it, in all its glory, before drawing her eyes back to Zhenya.

“What is this?” she asked.

“What do you think it is?” he replied.

“Oh, just answer my damn question!”

The tone of her voice just then was not the usual, playful kind, with just the right amount of malevolence.

“It’s… It’s a hairpin,” the boy uttered.

“And why, in God’s name, are you wearing a hairpin to school? Your hair isn’t even that long!”

“Because I—”

“Wait! I know exactly why… It may not look like it, but this”—she stared at the pin—“is actually being used to spread homosexual propaganda among our pure students!”

She then stared again at Zhenya. “And did you know, BOY, that gay propaganda, or should I say, ‘material with the purpose of denying traditional values’, is strictly forbidden not just on school grounds, but in public at large? Yes, yes, you would be in serious trouble if you were found out! Buuuuut”—she approached the boy—“you’re just a small, little BOY, and can’t quite go to jail for it…”—she snapped the hairpin back into its initial position—“So why don’t we teach you a lesson so you won’t do it again? Why not take this bad boy, and put it somewhere where it doesn’t belong?”

“The trash?” Zhenya at last gained some courage.

“Normally, I would,” she replied, “but that wouldn’t get the message across, would it?”

She snapped her fingers again, and two of the goons held Zhenya in place. She was holding the hairpin firmly and drew near the boy. She poked the tip of his nose, then lightly tapped both his nostrils. He tried his best not to exhibit any apprehension to the current situation. Ordinarily, as long as no violence took place, Zhenya would use his eloquence to defend himself from these kinds of people, even if it was not always an effective weapon. But today, it was even less so. Today was a day of peer violence. In the first week, no less. He shut his anxious brown eyes and anticipated.

But he only had them closed for half a minute, and even less than that, and during that brief period he felt a gust of air, heard the sound of a small object, and, once he at last opened them again, saw another girl by his side, as well as his blue hairpin on the ground, where that sound had come from. The girl was slightly taller than him, had orange hair which had a mind of its own and was as bright as the sun, and her large red eyes, while pretty on their own, were also filled with some kind of manly determination.

“Who the hell are you!?” the girl, no longer holding the hairpin, spoke after a brief pause to regain her composure.

“My name’s none of your fucking business,” the other girl replied in a voice whose pitch was just high, but not as high as the other girl’s. It was music to Zhenya’s ears. He gazed at her so fixedly that he forgot about the bullies being there at all.

“Leave him alone,” the orange-haired girl continued. “Find someone your size to intimidate.”

“But that’s no fun! There are no boys like him!”

“What a fucking shame. Guess you should stop bullying. It’s a boring hobby, anyway.”

“Oh, shut up!” she shouted. “I have a valid reason for doing what I’m doing. He was trying to make all our freakin’ students gay!”—she pointed at the hairpin which had dropped to the floor earlier.

The other girl stared blankly at her.

“What!? What’re you looking at?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” the tall girl said, still staring; “but maybe you should leave him alone anyway? He seemed pretty content until you waltzed in.”

“And what if I don’t want to do that? What are you gonna do”—she briefly entered the other girl’s personal space—“punch me in the face!?”

“I gladly would,” the girl replied, “but since that’s against school rules, and I don’t want to get in trouble at the start of the school year…”

While addressing her, the girl reached for her blueish purse loosely hanging around her neck, unzipped it, and pulled out a long, thin, crimson-coloured cylindrical stick, whose cardboard she gave a good whiff, with a fuse of intermediate size.

“Let’s instead settle this matter like women.”

The bully scoffed at the tall girl.

“School rules! You’re the one to talk! Do you even know what you’re bringing to school!?”

“Of course I do. This”—she shook the object in her hand—“is a stick of dynamite.”

That last word sent a shiver down the spines of the three goons standing beside their “mistress”, and, without thinking twice, they bailed.

“Cowards, this bunch!” she clenched her teeth. “It’s only a stupid red stick, and I ain’t afraid of it!”

“Oh, sure you ain’t,” the tall girl responded, “but you will be if you don’t leave him the fuck alone.”

“You’re not fooling anyone with that prop!” the bully shouted.

“Prop or not, wanna find out?” the girl replied as she withdrew a lighter from her purse.

Zhenya, still very much the focus of this squabble, was standing alongside his saviour, shoulder to shoulder, and he was at peace even when she had insinuated that she was going to blow the perpetrator up (and potentially themselves). Alright, it was hardly an insinuation when the girl was as straight to the point as uncooked spaghetti.

“Why do you insist on protecting this BOY, anyway? Shouldn’t HE be the one doing the protecting? It’s in his blood, just like we girls—”

“Ever thought that he might not be like most boys?” she interrupted.

“Yes, he’s an outlier that has no suitable mate!”

“His life is none of your concern. Now scram.”

“Make me, bitch!”

The tall girl, ultimately fed up with the never-ending discourse, set the stick ablaze, and watched as the other girl’s face lost all colour.

“Did you say something?” she smiled, and held the dynamite stick as if conducting an interview with her.

Screaming, “You know what, you can keep your effeminate boyfriend! I choose life!” the female bully scurried away up the staircase under which she held Zhenya hostage. The other girl swung her arm and cast off the explosive towards the escapee, who shrieked harder and fled even faster. Then, lifting up Zhenya’s blue hairpin, the girl grabbed his hand, and they ran in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, the stick of dynamite was about to detonate. However, instead of bringing the stairway down, it emitted a honking sound, the stick evaporated into thin smoke, and a tiny sheet of paper gradually fell upon a stair. The bully, having regained her breath, picked it up and read:

 -> *April Fools!* <-

Her teeth were clenched again.

“It’s not even April! Why, you little…”

But before she could finish her sentence, she noticed that the two had, quite obviously, disappeared. She scoffed and swore never again to fall for tricks of girls whose hair embodied a literal explosion.

***

Zhenya and the orange-haired girl entered an empty classroom, and she urged him to sit down somewhere and breathe easy.

“You’re safe here,” she said in a calming voice upon closing the door behind her.

After breathing in and out, Zhenya made eye contact with the girl, and grinned.

“Thank you… ma’am.”

“Ma’am!?” she was caught off-guard. “But I’m only sixteen years old!”

“Sixteen?” he appeared surprised at her statement.

“Well, yeah… How old do I look?”

“Nineteen, at least,” he replied.

The girl laughed.

“You wouldn’t have seen me anywhere in school if that were the case! How old are you, though?”

“Fifteen.”

“And what’s your class?”

“9 ‘B’.”

The girl was in class 9 “D”, she stated, and added furthermore that there was no need for honorifics because of that fact.

“Anyway,” she continued, “did those guys hurt you in any way?”

He shook his head, but they both seemed aware that he was on thin ice. While the girl sat down at the bench where Zhenya was seated, asking what had happened, he explained to her how the bullies had tried to extort money from him and had almost gone through with poking his nose with the hairpin he was wearing before the girl showed up. All he wanted was to be pretty that day, he complained—nothing more, nothing less.

“Well, they’re jealous of your beauty,” she said after Zhenya ceased his chatter, “and they’re trying to make you feel bad about it! But I know for a fact that you will stand your ground regardless of the pressure, isn’t that right… krasivy malchik[1]?”

Zhenya paused for a moment as he suddenly became a flustered mess. That was the first time he had been actually called “pretty”. He felt that it would not be the last, either. At last, his skincare routine was paying off! 

“What’s your name?” she then asked.

“M-me? I’m Yevgeniy.”

“Got any nicknames, Yevgeniy?”

“Let’s see… My father calls me Zhenya… my classmates call me Zhena… aaaaand…”

A pause.

“That’s it?” she said.

He nodded.

“So why the nickname ‘Zhena’?”

“They often tease me about not being manly,” he responded, “and because of it I got that nickname. Nevertheless, it’s a nickname that I learned to wear with pride.”

“And what did you say was your other nickname?”

“Zhenya,” he reiterated, “with ’ya’ instead of ‘a’.”

“Zhenya… Yes, I like that one more… Good to meet ya! My name’s Dina Ipatyeva”—she smiled—“I may have what other people call an ‘explosive personality’, but I can assure you that I don’t mean any harm! Well”—she looked away—“so long as you don’t get on my bad side…”

He enjoyed listening to her voice. He could tell that she was indeed a girl, but also unlike any of the girls in his class. “Don’t get on my bad side.” How cool did that sound coming from her! His heart was racing. It never crossed his mind that there were women like Dina. Well, he knew who to blame—multiple people, in fact—for implanting in his head the belief that her kind did not exist.

“Oh yeah, about this hairpin,” Dina asked, “where exactly did you put it?”

He placed his left hand towards his left ear.

“Here,” he said quietly.

“Hm… I have a better idea,” she said as she attached his hairpin above the bangs which covered his left eye, then pulled up her phone and opened the camera application. “Take a look!”

He gazed into Dina’s phone where he saw his reflection clearly. The hairpin was a lot perceptible now. Was that a good thing, though? Would it not make the blue-haired bully bully him that much harder? Dina’s smile, however, was diminishing that cerebration.

“It doesn’t look weird, does it?” still, he asked.

“Not one bit! It fits you quite well! But…”

“B-but!?”

Dina took off his hairpin again, and was about to suggest something to him when then the school bell rang. The clock had just struck 10:45 AM. End of lunch time. At the same time, Zhenya’s stomach let out a growl. Although it was subtle, Dina noticed it straight away, and offered him a chocolate cereal bar from her handbag.

“Oh, it’s fine! I can buy a snack myself,” he said before Dina pulled out three more chocolate bars from the bag.

“No, please, I insist! You see, uh, I accidentally bought one bar too many, so you can have the excess. Besides, you can’t follow lectures on an empty stomach.”

She winked at him, and Zhenya’s cheeks turned crimson.

“Thank you so much!” he replied, taking the snack from her hands. “I owe you one!”

“You’re alright, krasivy malchik. Just be yourself.”

Once again, not the last time he would be called that.

Prior to leaving, Zhenya asked if he would see her once classes were over, and Dina assured him that he would, and proposed that they meet right after school, namely at two in the afternoon. While humming Avtorskoe kino[2], Zhenya entered the computer room where his class was going to have computer science class.

“Oh, you’ve changed the position of your hairpin,” Filat greeted.

“How observant of you,” joked Zhenya as he sat down next to him.

“What took you so long?” Filat found himself asking. “You’re usually back before the school bell.”

“Would’ve come if I hadn’t bumped into someone during lunch…”

“Who exactly?”

“Some blue-haired girl whom I’ve met three times this week, and today she almost pricked my nose with my hairpin,” he explained.

“Well, serves you right for wearing it in the… wait”—he scratched his nose—“you said her hair was blue? Did she happen to wear a skull pin as well?”

Zhenya nodded after a little deliberation.

“Huh!? You don’t know her!? That’s Valeriya! She recently broke up with an effeminate boy, just like you, after finding out that he’d been cheating on her. Looks like she’s already found her prey…”

“A prey?” Zhenya wondered.

“You,” Filat revealed.

Zhenya shrugged his shoulders, saying, “Well, a ‘predator’, although that’s a bit harsh, wouldn’t be afraid of some fake dynamite.”

“Uh-huh… Did you say dynamite?”

“Fake. Important detail here. So anyway… a girl came to my rescue and shooed the other girl off with it. Let me just tell you, the way she spoke”—he tried to imitate Dina—“‘Let’s settle this matter like two women…’ Or, ‘you can’t follow lectures on an empty stomach!’ She was so cool! You said such women didn’t exist!”

“What? Women who spout cliché lines from cheesy films? They are a dime a dozen.”

“No, I meant—”

But Filat was sort of right.

“Never mind… In any case, she and I agreed to meet later after school.”

“Is that so…”

“…”

“…Wait, come again?”

“I said, I’m meeting my new friend once classes are over…”

“A friend!?” Filat jumped. “Since when!?”

“A minute or two ago.”

“That other girl? I thought they all hated boys like you!”

“Come on, Filat, don’t I deserve to have a friend too?” he shut him up for a few seconds, but before Filat was able to form a response, their class professor, who also taught them CS class after lunchtime on Wednesdays, walked into the computer room. But Filat did not need to move seats—his was already beside Zhenya’s. Soon they would be told to switch on their computers.

Class 9 “B” would have three more classes after this, in the following order: History, Chemistry, and English, out of which the final one was Zhenya’s favourite. The English professor was slightly strict, but entertaining at the same time, often carrying external materials to school like dictionaries, thesauri, handouts, self-printed images, and at one point some Japanese comics… Translated into English, of course. That day, she brought a book called “No Fear Shakespeare” which introduced the class to the English language of the sixteenth century.

Once the final class drew to a close, Zhenya stayed behind to wipe the blackboard, flip all chairs upside down, and take out the trash, which took around five minutes of his time. He then gently closed the door behind him and eagerly ran to the exit where he stood in place, occasionally checking his phone and gazing around. Before him came Filat.

“You still haven’t gone home, Zhena?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’m waiting for Dina.”

“Oh, yes…”

Filat was too curious to leave Zhenya be. So they waited for Dina together. Many girls passed by: both tall and short, crass and sophisticated, beautiful and otherwise, but the dynamite-wielding woman was not any of them. They were stood for five minutes before this realisation hit both of the boys. Filat was the first to leave. He blurted out that Zhenya was a fraud, a friendless boy, that he had no future. The black-haired boy left a minute later, feeling down that the girl did not come. Maybe she had already left the premises? Had she been a busy bee despite it only being the first week of school? Or had she been full of remorse for interacting with him? That had to be it! Filat absolutely had a point—women favoured assertive, potent men over meek and fragile boys. It was almost a universal sentiment. Even if Dina were personally strong, there was a greater chance she would still seek out a man who could overpower her. Still, Zhenya opted not to wallow in this misery for long. He had to change just a little. He had to become strong enough so that he could at least physically defend himself, if not Dina. But, he thought on, a gym membership was pricey, and he was not interested in becoming ripped; that would contradict his own nature. But at least his arms could use a little workout, for right now, they were as thin as toothpicks. He had some ideas: he could visit a grocery store and purchase two water drums holding five litres of liquid to use as weights. He could also exercise using a heavy box filled with lots of his personal items, and do squats while holding it. Or…

Zhenya was looking at the sky while listing ideas in his head when an explosion occurred somewhere in the distance. What was it? Had it been some kind of drone? And what was up with his country going to war all of a sudden? A useless conflict of the governments which had carried on for nearly two years! Zhenya felt bad for both sides, even more so their enemies’. But he could not say that out loud. He moved ahead, thinking of cheering himself up with a scoop of ice cream, but what stopped him in his tracks was a piece of paper lying on the ground. He read it quietly:

“Looking for just the right amount of strength? Tired of being treated like dirt? Then, purchase the items on the back, and meet me at the lone bush by which the students gather.”

Items? What items? When he flipped the paper on its back, he realised that he was holding a shopping list.

“A pair of clothes, a pair of shoes… a star pendant of any material, preferably gold, and a… broomstick? What for?”

Having observed his surroundings, ensuring he was not gazed at, Zhenya folded the shopping list in four and slipped it into his pocket, and subsequently went away. He stopped by an ice cream stand not far from school and ordered a cone with one strawberry and one vanilla scoop. It seemed to have cheered him up quite nicely, but before he went his way, he heard someone exclaim:

“Halt, Yevgeniy Dmitrievich!”

Who called out to him so formally? He turned about to see: another girl. Her hair was blonde, and was practically the same height as him. Same short hair, but properly brushed. Her chest was far more accentuated than Dina’s—it did not help that she was wearing a tight-fitting shirt. And it was white. Well, almost white.

“Y-yes,” he greeted back, “you got the right boy.”

“Of course I did. Dinka told me all about you. And I’ll just say,” she added, “that you look nothing like I imagined. Now, stay still, will you?”

The girl took off her beige backpack and withdrew a few items from it. First, a measuring tape to calculate his height. 170 cm. Then, his waist. A hundred digits less. She muttered that she had forgotten her scale. Why did she need a scale? Was he joining the military? Had Statesman declared martial law or something? The girl walked a few steps away from him, and she gestured him to come. He was in no hurry, and his steps reflected that. Meanwhile, the girl was writing something on paper attached to a pretty pink clipboard. Once he stood in front of her, she took out an egg carton. A single egg peeked from it. She held it between three fingers and cracked it atop Zhenya’s head. She smeared its contents all over his luscious black hair, where she even traced his hairpin, but asked no questions about it. Zhenya himself did not flinch neither before nor after the egg cracked. She wrote something down again after spraying her hands with some disinfectant.

“Thanks for your cooperation,” the girl said. “I’ll have your results by tomorrow morning. Come see me at class 9 ‘D’.”

“Results?” he asked. “What for?”

“It’s a secret… for now.”

“Okay, but… may I at least know your name?”

The girl had already turned her back on him, but regardless had to have heard his minor request.

“Just call me Natalya,” she answered before running off.

What an interesting girl, Zhenya pondered after she disappeared. His hair was sticky from that egg, and had nowhere he could rinse it off. On the bright side, did that article, which he had read the other day, not suggest that eggs were a great substitute for shampoo?

It was not until he had come home that he was able to wash his hair. His father was stuck to the television screen again. The news programme had just ended.

“Did you hear?” his father said. “The news just talked about a shopping list floating about Moscow’s streets.”

A shopping list! Getting decent media coverage!

“Really?” he answered. “I know nothing of it.”

“Figured you might not… Kids these days hardly follow television news…”—he said this part quietly—“But if you see a list of any kind, do not pick it up,” his father then advised, “and under no circumstances should you go shopping for any of the items on it! You got that?”

“Yes, dad…”

What do you know—his father also knew of the shopping list, and going through with obtaining all of the items from it might in the end be a huge deal. But how much would any of these even cost? Clothes were priced straightforwardly, a broomstick even more so, but one could not say the same for the pendant. Surely there had to be cheaper material than gold…

Zhenya booted his computer up and, instead of doing his homework, of which there was actually little, began scouring the world wide web. His search queries once again brought up the infamous shopping list, with news sites urging any spotters not to engage with it, or to set it on fire if possible, somewhere safe, of course. Suddenly, he remembered his Chemistry teacher saying that there was a specific alloy that looked just like gold but was ten times cheaper. What was its name? Was it latex… Maybe lattice… No, it was not latakia… Lat… lat…

“Brass!” he shouted.

“What?” his father yelled from the living room.

“Um,” he replied on a whim, “I meant Latin… I’m doing a language quiz!”

Somehow, that answer got him off scot-free. But the questions now were: who to ask to cast him some brass in the shape of a star? And what apparel would make him stand out? And would a mop instead of a broom suffice? And most importantly: would his father easily find out what he might be getting up to?

Standing up from his desk, Zhenya opened his wallet which sat on top of a shelf above his bed. Generally, his family was not known for having deep pockets. His father has been working as a clerk at an appliance store on the opposite end of Moscow, and his late mother was a traffic policewoman. Despite his mother’s income having been higher than his father’s, the discrepancy in their pay had still been quite marginal. Peeking into the wallet, he let out a relieved sigh—he had enough money to spend on at least an outfit from his beloved thrift shop and a mop from a retail mall close to his home. Friday would be an optimal day to do just that. As for the pendant, however, he had to think outside of the box (and potentially Moscow) to find a metalworker willing to cast it for him. Ideally, the metalworker should have as little exposure to state propaganda as possible, or at least someone who took state-endorsed news with a grain of salt. Either way, this was going to be a challenge, Zhenya mused.

Swiftly, he moved on from researching cheap alloys to completing his English language homework, succeeded by that of Algebra, all whilst the thought of Dina ran through his head. Did she work out? What was the secret behind her healthy hair? Or rather, her height? Did she harbour any real dynamite? Would he see her again after that day? He tried to imagine how their first encounter then had played out: while he had been helplessly awaiting his punishment for daring to wear such a feminine accessory, Dina leapt from the stairs, raised one of her legs and kicked the hairpin out of Valeriya’s hands. The goons, conscious of the sheer strength Dina possessed, conceded and released him. And when he opened his eyes, there she was. Would he ever be able to send an item flying with a drop-kick like that? It was hard to say. But one thing remained certain. Dina was so cool that he blushed. He would not be able to protect her, for she seemed to be perfectly capable of protecting herself. And that was OK. But that did not mean he would stay passive, in Filat’s own words. As a matter of fact, his confrontation with Dina only further reinforced the fact that as a man, he ought to gain just a little bit of strength. Hopefully this would not mean he had to sacrifice his other, tenderer nature. He could be strong and pretty at the same time, right?

-> END OF CHAPTER ->

Footnotes:
> [1] Красивый мальчик, meaning “beautiful boy”.
> [2] «Авторское кино» (lit. Independent Film), a song by Leonid Agutin and his wife Anzhelika Varum. Link to song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47ERYLJ5oik