20:18 GMT+3 — Tallinn, Harju County, Estonia
Sunday, June 23 — Midsummer’s Eve (Jaanipäev in Estonian)
There he is.
Cropped hair — the perfect dishwater blond. A jacket, vaguely resembling a trash bag, and a midnight-blue fanny pack. 5’9 and slight, like a strong gust of wind might whisk him off his feet.
Simeon, my Muscovite prince.
I look him up and down a second time. I guess you could say he isn’t quite the way I imagined him. In all fairness, the two grainy photos on his Tinder profile — plus the five, maybe six images of the back of his head on Instagram — didn’t give me much to work with. I had to fill in the gaps. But the image I conjured in my mind was all wrong, like a portrait done without looking down at the canvas or a police mock-up, based on the account of a visually impaired witness.
No – in real life, Simeon has a certain otherworldly radiance about him — something I couldn’t imagine and something I can’t describe. He looks like a medieval court jester plotting against the king. Like a sparrow who might try to steal your food. Like a nymph from the deep wood. Like a mysterious waiter at the Olive Garden in your hometown. His face has a vague familiarity about it. He’s a friend of a friend, an Instagram mutual, the guy across from you on the bus back home. You recognize him — maybe from a dream, maybe from before you were born.
Our acquaintance began five days ago, when we matched on Tinder. After three long days on the app, I was bored. My phone lit up with messages from my matches — a never-ending slew of horrible pickup lines and vague, uninteresting questions.
“If you were a skittle, you’d be a red one.” (Thanks, I guess?)
“You look so charismatic.” (How does one look charismatic?)
“Hi, you looks beautiful.” (How does one looks beautiful?)
“Meow!?” (This one speaks for itself.)
Until, one summer morning about 37 hours ago, I saw him.Simeon, 20
hey there im using whatsapp!! 📂🚇🥈🤿
journalist at journal
Bisexual
English, Estonian, Russian Xhosa, Yoruba
I told myself I downloaded Tinder for fun. It’s summer, I don’t know anyone here, and I only have Russian class for three hours a day — what else am I going to do? But now, after ignoring about 50 perfectly nice Estonian men named Rasmus or Gregor who’d love to take me out tonight, I’m starting to think fun isn’t exactly what I’m after.
What I want is mystery, intrigue, a puzzle to unravel. In Simeon, I think I may have found exactly that.
Four seldom-used and seemingly unrelated emojis —might they represent some kind of ancient rune or encrypted message?
File, metro, silver, scuba, I say to myself, but the words remain meaningless.
And what does it mean to be a journalist at “journal”? What is “journal”? Where is “journal”?
Where on Earth did a Russian living in Estonia learn the African languages of Xhosa and Yoruba? Does he need it for his work at Journal?
Perhaps I’ll get my answers now. On Midsummer’s Eve, the Estonian holiday of Jaanipäev and the longest night of the year, the city is full of energy. This far north, the sun doesn’t set on the solstice. For thousands of years, Estonians have celebrated this occasion with a sleepless night of bonfires, traditional song and dance, and general revelry. All around us, people hurry this way and that, their eyes shining with anticipation. It occurs to me that there’s a special kind of magic about this evening. Anything could happen.
21:03 GMT+3 — A Tale of Three Grocery Stores
On the bus ride here from my homestay, I thought of some interesting topics to bring up if the conversation lulled. While I was getting ready, I rehearsed my casual laughter and nonchalant smile. I reminded myself of all the usual conventions of The First Date. As I walked to our meeting spot, I took one deep breath after another. Be normal, I had said to myself.
“How are you?” I asked him. That’s a normal question.
“Okay…you know, this morning I cut my dad’s hair. It turned out okay, I think,” he answered. That’s decidedly not a normal response.
In those few, seemingly inconsequential words, Simeon moved this excursion out of the bounds of defined social ritual and into the open, leaving me woefully unprepared.
Simeon walks ahead, leading the way. I trail behind, desperately trying to come up with something to say. Every so often he turns back, raises a quizzical eyebrow, shakes his head, and turns in the other direction. He reminds me of a lost dog. If he had a tail (which is a possibility I haven’t entirely ruled out), it would probably be wavering between his legs in embarrassment.
I ask him how long he’s lived in Tallinn — a small city that I, after two weeks here, am able to navigate with some degree of confidence. He tells me it’s been four years.
I give Simeon a quick up and down. Yes, there’s definitely something not quite right about him.
“Right so, here’s the uh…”
He gestures weakly toward the PRISMA, a grocery store on the other side of the street, and heads toward the ATM outside. The place we’re headed — some kind of outdoor music venue with a vague name that could either be an acronym or onomatopoeia, like SKAT or SLAM or RULL — charges a ten euro cash cover.
I wander inside the store while he types in his pin. I’ve always said that the best way to really get to know a place while traveling is to go to the local grocery stores. Their clientele, prices, and products are an intimate portrait of the populations they serve. I note the flashy display of “Creamy Forest Mushroom” potato chips to my left.
In the past hour, we’ve been to three grocery stores — though we have little to show for it. We bought beer from the first store and dinner from the second: a pastry and some raspberries for me, and an 8-pack of string cheese for Simeon. He ate them whole, instead of peeling off strings from the center.
21:30 GMT+3 — Daddy’s Little Film Student
Upon entering SKRUM (or maybe it was RUNG? TROFF?), Simeon immediately identifies a familiar face — a man of about thirty or thirty-five in a leopard print tracksuit. He’s in a group of other people around his age, dressed in similarly over-the-top neon unitards and booty shorts, who are having a merry time as they grill hot dogs and burgers on the public griddle. Simeon walks over to the group, exchanging some complicated-looking secret handshake with the tracksuit man.
“That’s my coworker,” he says, as if that explains any of what I just witnessed.
I discover that Simeon works as a TV journalist, not at journal but at real, legitimate, respected news agency. I try to picture him on a TV screen, droning on about the evening news, predicting the perpetually cloudy weather, presenting a feature on the latest and greatest Estonian Tech startup. But it’s all wrong, like a monkey in a suit or a kid in a judge’s robe. I can’t picture him anywhere but here, leading me aimlessly from place to place on Midsummer’s Eve.
I look back to Simeon’s coworker, who’s laughing jovially with a woman in a bright-pink bikini top, who appears to be on roller skates. They’re flipping various meats on the grill, using their intertwined hands in lieu of any sort of utensil. Maybe “journalist” is some kind of euphemism? For what, I’m not sure. Perhaps an absurdist theater troupe, or Simeon’s very own band of merry pranksters.
When he’s not a journalist, he studies film.
“I just figured I’d follow the family profession” — his dad is an unemployed theater director who recently moved out of the apartment he used to share with Simeon, and his mom, an actress, is still living in Russia.
I stop to consider this for a moment. A family of artists. Maybe that’s the source of Simeon’s eccentricity. People get weird when they’re raised by creatives. While the rest of us clamor for stability and direction in the furthest corners of the world (case in point — I’m here, studying Russian in Estonia), they twiddle their thumbs and wait for a talent that sometimes doesn’t arrive, a passion that hovers just out of reach. They’re lost.
Simeon stuffs a cool mint Zyn under his top lip. Is he lost?
I ask him what his favorite movie is.
“Anything Woody Allen.”
23:30 GMT+3 — The Stranger
Despite the hour, it seems our night is far from over. We’re on the way to our next stop — a gay club where Simeon thinks we can get in for free, because he knows a guy. Actually, by “on the way to our next stop,” I mean we’re outside the aforementioned guy’s house.
Before I realize what’s happening, Simeon leans toward me and whispers, “This guy is interesting…he’s super gay and I think he really likes me.”
Simeon’s hot breath on my ear. Shock, confusion, intrigue. My heartbeat, loud in my throat. My furrowed brows, trying to communicate a message that Simeon could not be more impervious to. A figure rapidly descending the stairs, a blur of long, shimmering blonde hair.
The stranger is somewhere between Greek God, lumberjack, and woodland creature. He looks like Daenerys Targaryen with a curly-Q mustache.
I look at him. He looks at me. We look at Simeon.
Simeon looks up at the sky and smiles to himself. He opens his mouth to speak. The air is tense, as if too is waiting with anxious anticipation for Simeon’s next comment.
“You guys are both my Tinder matches, so you have something in common,” he says, like nothing in the world could be more natural.
I look back at him — did he just say what I think I said? The profile, the grocery stores, the string cheese, the mysterious coworker — all of that was bizarre. But this? How on Earth am I to interpret this? What kind of person invites another Tinder match to their Tinder date? Are they courting me for some kind of sacrifice, or do Estonians celebrate Midsummer Eve with threesomes?
I think back to earlier this evening, when I was rehearsing conversation starters and typical first-date chit-chat. Everything that has left Simeon’s mouth has been completely off-script, and this particular turn of events was certainly not on my list of probable outcomes.
The blond enchantress himself, amazingly, has no reaction to this revelation. He chuckles faintly and keeps walking. He and Simeon walk almost at the same pace. They have a jaunty, light-footed gait, as if less affected by the constraints of gravity. Simeon, and everyone in his orbit, seem to exist on an entirely different plane of being, one I am hopelessly unable to tap into.
01:08 GMT+3, June 24, 2024, Midsummer Day — Love and War
“Let’s go to back to my place. It’s by the water, it’s so pretty this time of night,” Simeon said to me, after twenty minutes in the gay bar with his former lover. I should’ve said no, that I needed to catch the last bus back to my homestay. I should’ve thanked him for a lovely evening and taken my leave. On any other night, I would have. But something in me wanted to stay. I needed to understand — to solve the mystery of Simeon once and for all. Who was he? Why was I here with him? Why was I still here with him?
Through the open window, the Baltic undulates under the still-light sky.
“You can see Finland from here,” Simeon says, absent-mindedly gesturing toward the horizon.
I wonder if Midsummer feels the same there as it does here — if everything’s faint, blurred around the edges, not quite real; if there are people over there doing things they wouldn’t normally do, chasing some eternal enigma; if there are absurd, dream-like creatures wandering the streets of Helsinki with poor, unsuspecting American girls. I wonder if there’s someone over there, looking out at Estonia and wondering about me.
Maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m seeing things, but I swear Simeon’s eyes are sparkling. His pale skin is illuminated by the dull glow from outside. He looks like an angel, and maybe he is. Maybe that’s the explanation I’ve been looking for.
Only an otherworldly being could so blatantly disregard every social convention; so easily transcend the boundaries of acceptability and effortlessly flit between infuriating, charming, and completely confusing.
I met Simeon today with a million words in my head, a thousand ready-made phrases, and hundreds of interesting anecdotes. Now, staring out the window in his apartment, I’m at an utter loss for words. None of them seem to apply anymore.
Simeon lives on the fifth floor of a Soviet Style complex. But it’s dark, and I can hear the waves crashing outside and the breeze against my skin. There’s barely anything in the apartment, save for a threadbare rug, a small sofa, and a few articles of clothing strewn about. A biting cold emanates from the floor, despite the balmy weather. We could be in a cave, on a cliffside by the shore, and I wouldn’t know the difference.
He asks if I want to watch a movie, and I say sure. There’s no TV, so he pulls out his laptop and sits cross-legged on the couch. When he switches his computer on, it opens to a strange-looking website which, he explains, is for buying land. He’s looking to buy an island off the coast of Estonia.
What on Earth does he need an island for? Sex cult? Anarchist filmmaker collective? Just…to have? On Simeon’s island, would every night be like this one? Would the sun ever set? Would time ever pass?
Not long after starting what he assures me is Woody Allen’s magnum opus, “Love and Death,” Simeon starts to nod off, and I know our night is drawing to a close. The sun will re-emerge in full force soon, and this strange, surrealist nightmare will be over. I stand up gingerly, trying not to wake Simeon, who softly whispers to himself in Russian as he sleeps. The soft wind of his breath flutters through his eyelashes. His chest rises and falls, like the sea outside his window. He is completely at one here, on this Midsummer night. But tomorrow morning? I can’t help but feel like he’d shrivel in the sun. I’d like to imagine that he’ll keep sleeping, his breath in time with the swell of water and his heart beating to the rhythm of the waves against the shore. He’ll sleep here for a year, like in a fairy tale. Next Midsummer’s Eve, he’ll rise again, open Tinder, and change someone else’s life.