Asylum

Katya looked around at the office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service; she liked the officer who was assigned to interview her. Behind him was an official seal of the United States. She wanted asylum from her native country, Russia. She had been in Los Angeles for about two and a half years, but her interview had finally arrived; this was her chance to become a citizen.

Her friends had convinced her to pretend she was gay, and put, on her application, the fact that she had been persecuted back in Russia. This strategy had been working for Russians, they said. They had found people who knew how to fill out the application, knew what kinds of stories worked, knew what to say. They had helped her with the application. She tried to concentrate on the stories that they had put in there together, involving being persecuted for her sexual orientation. She couldn't go back to Moscow, she would say, because it was known there that she was gay, and they would persecute her.

The problem was, she wasn’t gay. She had come to LA originally to be with Ivan, a guy she had met back in Moscow. She liked the place, liked the lifestyle, and the beach, and the nightlife; however, the relationship with Ivan hadn't worked out. Some of her friends had advised her to simply fall in love with an American guy, get married, go that route. She had her eye on a few American men, and a few Russian guys too, but nothing serious had materialized. Actually, she hadn't thought much about being straight vs. being gay; LA was surely different from Moscow in that regard, but until today it hadn't been her concern. Now, ironically, her ability to stay here depended on it.

Her interviewer was a friendly young guy named Anders, but he set about asking questions in a businesslike way, and asked her to tell about her life in LA, her job, her apartment, her friends, her future. She remembered the story that she had put on the application and tried to stick to it. He asked questions quickly, trying to trip her up or find signs of a memorized story or scripted answer. He wanted to make sure that she genuinely needed asylum for reasons of persecution in her home country; if she was merely here because she liked it, that wasn't a good enough reason to let her in.

The afternoon sun set through the window behind him and she could see the haze of the city, and hear city noises out the window. Why did she want to stay? She had work, and friends, and it was light and warm all the time, unlike Moscow, which was dark and bitterly cold.

Moscow wasn't completely dark, of course; she thought about the warm glow in the butcher's shop and the colors of her aunt's kitchen. There were parts of it she missed, like the food, the seasons, the television; she even missed the snow, sometimes. But when she got to LA she'd noticed how the beach and the sun made it lively all the time, and she didn't miss Moscow's long winters that turned into long springs and just kept everyone inside and miserable for months on end. In LA everyone was out there, out there all the time, running to the beach, shopping, texting, going outside, and it went on 24 hours a day. No time to get depressed. Perfect for Katya.

And then there was the dream. Lots of people, herself included, had come to LA with the dream of "making it" in television, or movies, or whatever. Looking at Anders, she was sure he was familiar with the dream, but she wouldn't mention it to him, didn't want him to think it was part of her reason. To her, it was a small thing, maybe; she was pretty sure, by now, she wouldn't be discovered, and might not know what to do if she were. But the dream, she thought, put everyone on their best behavior. A friend of hers had made a disparaging comment about the dream, a broken dream, a nightmare, but she tried not to think about it. She tried to focus on the situation at hand.

Anders started asking questions about her sex life, romance, that kind of thing, and now she became more uncomfortable and had to work harder to hide her discomfort. She didn't like talking about this stuff anyway, and it got worse when she was pretending to be gay. She tried blushing and just apologizing for not wanting to give away details. But he kept on. He wanted proof that she really was gay.

As the pressure in the room rose quickly, images flashed through her mind, of friends here in LA, of the butcher in Moscow, of romantic encounters in both places. She tried to concentrate on her story of being gay, but couldn't. Finally she exploded. "I'm not gay," she said, "I don't even like gay people." Anders was shocked, but he had his answer here; the interview was over. He reminded her gently that she should, in a general way, begin packing her bags to go back to Moscow.

She stood up, looked around, and again saw the sun, and haze, out the window. A wave of emotion came over her. She'd told the truth, and, as a result, lost LA, lost the dream, lost everything. It no longer mattered, though. She was on her way home, finally.