Esoteric vitamins: Disgust

Moving to Novosibirsk was tough. I was 16 and moved away from my parents for the first time, and the conditions in the student dormitory were even harder than in my home in Barnaul. Four guys, two double beds in a room of 20 square meters. One toilet at the end of the floor and a common shower in the basement of the slowly decaying building, and a prominent crack sliding through from sixth to the ninth floor. They even sent a security commission once in the third year to check if that typically depressingly looking gray building brought to life by nothing but the gulag’s forced prison laborers still could host around a thousand students of my proud alma mater Novosibirsk state technical university. They put an adhesive tape on the crack in the ninth floor and said if those rip within the next year, the building can’t be used anymore. They ripped the next day. The building is still there nowadays and is very much still used.

I remember the day I came there the first time very well. Knowing not much of the physical comfort in my life before, I was still astonished that I will have to live in the shithole for the next five years. After some neurotic wandering around the campus and drawing up the papers, I’ve finally had the key to my room. I open up the door, get in and see the following picture: a half-empty space, cold and unwelcoming, worn out painted floor, dirty walls and two metal net beds, taken by the residents who already checked in before. One sporty guy with modest clothing was lying on the left bed with his body turned to the wall. He was sleeping. Another wall was taken by a guy and a woman with quite unidentifiable age. I was shaken to realize that apparently I’ve a got a room with older students, which was notoriously known to be the way of constantly getting in trouble in the dorm.

We introduced each other, Dmitri and Pavel were two first years and the woman was Pavel’s mother. I realized immediately that Pavel and I won’t be friends. He had this typical gopnik energy, gopnik is a collective term for everything associated with a thug culture that was thriving in Russia in the late nineties. In the days after, he proved my estimations.

On the first night I stayed there, right in the middle of the night we heard someone heavily knocking at the door. I opened anxiously and saw a group of the elder students standing outside, and they forcefully entered our room. They started bulling us into giving them money, and Dmitri gave up quickly. I had nothing spare to my name, but the thousand rubles I had for the food for the entire month, so when they haven’t received anything from me, they beat me up. They came and beat me up at least once a week for the next six months because Pavel made friends with them and delivered the news every time Dmitri received money from his parents.

We could not go to the police because they would take one of them at best, so the rest remaining will make sure our life would turn to hell. The university administration had no interest in such small matters, as they saw their “security service” for students in charge of that. We called them GeBeRy, short for group of quick response in Russian, they were nothing but a jailer, who were made from the very same material as those who came up every Saturday to collect their share. Logically, they were all good friends, and so GeBeRy never had any troubles with them traversing their victims drunk and under the influence of esoteric vitamins.

The most popular vitamin was, of course, the vitamin W. Mostly laced with acetone or other neurologically toxic substances, it made the gopniks very agitated and aggressive. Today I wonder how exactly they managed to do it, to me, the only explanation is that their vileness and viciousness was only amplified by it.

One of the evenings we slept already and the thumbing on the door started. To this point, I had a traumatic response to it and my heart fell. They were hitting the door more and more and finally broke it and entered. Those were no students but young men in their thirties, who obviously were friends with the gentlemen we had to deal with before. The red and wild glance in their eyes told me they were not only drunk. They quickly got into the room and started their ritual of pushing out money from us. But this time it was different, as one of them started threatening me with a knife.

Somehow, my future roommate Nikolai found out what was going on and decided to help us out. He entered the room and started talking to our guests. The guy who was threatening me with the knife, switched to him and put the knife to his throat. They bullied and insulted us and would not go before they would get they came for. Eventually, Dmitri cracked up and gave them what they wanted. One more contact with esoteric vitamins was imprinted in my skull forever.

The next week, a policeman came and tried to push us to report them, but we refused. We had four and a half years to live in this place, full of those bloodthirsty orcs. Our very lives were at stake. No one could protect us, especially not that young policeman, who was truly interested in helping us. A decent policeman in Russia is as improbable as any kind of social justice in general.

Towards the summer of the first year, they stopped coming so often, until one day a large group of fifth years showed up at our stairs again. All the same drill, but this time they were dedicated to beating the money out of every single of us and would not let go. They took me in the corridor and proceeded there when one of them pushed me towards the window and broke the glass with my head. One of the GeBeRs came in to see what was happening, looked at the scene of them around and me lying on the floor, and logically decided not to participate.

I told myself I will never give up and through all the superior 55 kilograms that I had to hurt at least one of them. I was moderately successful: the main thug got a shiner from me, fuck yeah.

This little act of bravery somehow convinced them of my, what, resilience? When they realized I had nothing for them, they turned around and went away. One of them said shortly on the way out that no one will ever come again and bother me. And they somehow didn't.