When I was in my first year of school our teacher (we had a single teacher for every class in elementary school) tried to explain to us the concept of April Fools’:

“You are supposed to do silly things on April Fools. Make some pranks, be goofy, be weird. Maybe next time all the boys will come in wearing girls' clothes and all the girls will be wearing boys’ clothes? Things like that, you know.”

And so I came home that day and told my parents that I need to dress like a girl to school tomorrow. My parents asked no further questions at all. My mother was still bigger than me back then, so she had to look fairly hard, but eventually, she fetched a cute tiny little white dress that she used to wear as a teenager:

“Here, try this” — she said.

And so I did. She looked at me critically for a bit:

“A-huh, I know what’s missing!”

She got her summer straw hat and put it on my head:

“Here it is! Now it’s perfect!”

The next morning instead of my usual tedious routine of buttoning up and getting m

His name is Rick Tahoma. We met when I had just moved to Seattle, at a party hosted by Alethea, whose room I was renting at the time.

“Hi, I just moved from Kyiv.”

“And I just got out of prison.”

We talked for the entire evening, and then he disappeared. The next time we met was a few months later on Harbor Steps. Tall, bearded, with a solid belly, he sipped vodka from a flask and carefully hid it under his coat. Rick was a bit shy about it but offered to join. A city becomes a home when you meet random friends on the streets, and I felt very cozy, though didn’t join.

I moved into a loft on Pioneer Square, and Rick would drop by every now and then. Sometimes alone, more often with some of his friends. We talked about the left, about the right, about Ukraine, and about Crimea. He slow down when he speaks to me, and always explains any fancy words if he happens to use them. Once, Rick came with two large plastic bags. One was full of books: something about the labor movement in America;