Artem (25): Millennials, The Godfather, and Weird Dates

One-night stands

I feel like this kind of arrangement is more than relevant for Russians due to the nature of our lifestyle: we work more than Europeans and Americans, and even more than people in some Asian countries. I’m not talking about South Korea and China here, of course. The average Russian person works a lot and doesn’t have much free time for any personal life arrangements. And in some way, we all crave adventure to release stress. So, I feel like meeting up just for fun and hooking up are appropriate for us. Much better than destructive ways of stress relief, anyway.
 

Millennials don’t like sex?

Millennials are dating less than any other generation in general. On the one hand, my generation is sex-positive for the most part and sex is widely available, especially in Moscow. On the other hand, our society is still somewhat conservative and people are living by outdated principles. There is a lack of understanding of what sex is. When someone my age mentions that HIV can be transmitted through shaking hands or a small papercut — that is a bad sign. Sex education is severely lacking in our country. 

In general, I would say, our sex views don’t necessarily have much to do with age or generation: it’s more of an issue of smaller towns and big cities. That’s where the biggest difference can be seen. Ekaterina Shulman (politician, activist) talked about this. Imagine this: you’re in the USSR in the 70s. Your main goals in life are getting a higher education, starting a family, choosing a specialty, and then working in that area for the rest of your life. That’s it — task completed. Simply because you’re terrified skipping one of the steps, as that puts you at risk of a total collapse of everything, even losing your place in society. Nowadays, things are way less complicated. Higher education is widely available, people are free to walk their own path, and both Europeans and Russians can dive into self-search with no end date if they wish to. Today there’s a lot of people in their thirties still searching for their place in the world. The question here is: how long will the process take? That’s what scares me a little bit.
 

“I think you dropped something”

Awkward situation story. I met up with this girl, we were having a chat at a café. I couldn’t help thinking like she was slightly cross-eyed. At one point during our conversation, she bent over to get something, and… her eye fell out. I was shocked. She’s like “oh, no worries, that happens”. 

It turned out they picked the wrong eye prosthetic size for her. She told me she was born blind in one eye, and at one point, doctors had to remove it and give her an artificial one.  

The date went well, actually. We talked a lot, the conversation was great, she told me about her plans for the future. She was thinking about getting rid of the prosthetic and opting for a black eye instead because she felt it would complement her uniqueness, and wouldn’t give her that cross-eyed look. She was so confident in herself — I was truly amazed by her. We went out a few more times but then turned out to be quite, um, politically incompatible.