Title: Breakfast Buddies
Author: Ildar Daminov
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 11/01/2022
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 23900
Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, college students, self-discovery, first love, cultural differences, writing
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Description
We humans are spectacularly bad at understanding our own emotions.
A socially conservative Asian young man makes a life-changing decision—he moves to an international metropolis in the very heart of Europe to start his first year as a student at a prestigious academic institution. During one of the very first breakfasts at his new residence he meets a senior student, Jürgen B., to whom he takes an instant liking. As their friendship progresses, these small breakfast sessions become more and more meaningful to the young man, who starts to question both his own identity and his values as he discovers the depth of his confusing feelings about Jürgen.
His struggles to figure out what Jürgen means to him are made even worse by his fears about opening up, especially to his own family. In his desperation, he turns to the only method at hand—reflecting on his diary records, which he makes every day. That is how his first academic year in Europe becomes an exercise in understanding and accepting himself and his own feelings. As the summer approaches, Jürgen, who is completely oblivious of his friend’s dilemma, is about to graduate and leave the academy for good. In the meantime, his friend is still torn between confessing his feelings and doing what others seeming to want from him.
Breakfast Buddies
Ildar Daminov © 2022
All Rights Reserved
The suitcases were already unpacked in my room, so I woke in a chaos of clothes, books, and household appliances scattered all over the place. Stretching and yawning, I observed for a while this small domestic pandemonium of mine as my brain slowly booted up. The screen on my phone lit up, and the white numbers showed 6:55 a.m. I was not in the mood to put all my things in their proper place, having moved into the dormitory just the day before. After a refreshing shower, I realized how hungry I felt and decided to go have breakfast.
As I ran down the stairs, my steps echoed loudly in the building. Its acoustics were truly wonderful. A marvelous piece of baroque architecture from the outside, the academy had a very simple interior: snow-white walls, high ceilings, wide staircases, and empty corridors. Without anyone around, the place felt like a well-kept ghost house. I only managed to catch a quick glimpse of a cleaning lady before she disappeared, entering the director’s reception room and closing the door after herself. Countless portraits of former students and professors were watching me closely as I passed through the last corridor leading to the kitchen.
I had arrived at the academy to devote myself to an advanced degree, having finished my studies in Russia. The journey was long and complicated—not only geographically, but also professionally. The program I had applied for was extremely competitive, and the academy was considered one of the best European institutions of its kind. I remember how nervous I was when I had to wait for the results in the last months of spring. The offer of admission, which I eventually received in the summer, made me absolutely jubilant. When September came, I was excited and nervous at the same time. Moving from Asia to Europe had been unimaginable several years ago, so even when I boarded my transit flight in Moscow, I still could not believe all of it was real. At the same time, being so young and inexperienced, I had very romantic and somewhat unrealistic expectations for my future—perhaps that it would be some sort of never-ending European fairy tale.
The reality turned out to be both a bit more prosaic and way more complicated. Although some time had passed since my arrival, I still felt awkward and a bit out of place. Immersing myself in that international environment full of people whom I had never met before was a mind-blowing experience for someone who originally came from a homogenous town of 100,000 people in the heart of Eurasia. Of course, my experience studying in Russia was helpful, but only to a limited extent.
Unlike in Russia, we had a very diverse student body of more than one hundred people from all over the world. One had to be culturally aware and adapt accordingly. I had to get used to people’s habits and mindsets, which was challenging at first. I was ignorant and narrow-minded. In particular, Western Europeans and Americans seemed the weirdest and most bizarre to me. Many of them were polite and nice at first, always asking about how I was doing or starting small talk in the elevator. This, I soon discovered, did not mean that all of them seriously cared about me or my well-being. In most cases, this thin veneer of politeness did not mean much. In other cases, especially with some particularly well-off students, it was merely a façade for diplomatic pomposity. They really liked to show off whenever they got a chance. I remember how discovering this utterly appalled me at first. I thought our culture to be more straightforward.
One of my very first acquaintances at the academy was a rather peculiar fellow named K., who was a living embodiment of that utterly confusing Western behavior. K. was from Britain and had a posh Southern English accent. He would always greet me and try to start a conversation. At first, I thought he was trying to befriend me. He called out to me all the time in the dormitory corridors. Yet my opinion changed after our first proper conversation. I had barely managed to respond to his question about where I studied, when he interrupted me and began to brag about his aristocratic family origin, his fancy Oxbridge degree, and his personal yacht. I did not interrupt him, politely nodding all the way through the conversation and thinking: What was his deal anyway? It was definitely not that he was interested in me, but for some reason, he would not stop babbling about how awesome his life was. I did not care much for his family’s wealth, even though I did feel somewhat envious about his educational background. Studying at a prestigious university had always been somewhat of an obsession for me. When we parted after our first proper conversation, I could not help but wonder how on earth the University of Cambridge accepted such self-obsessed people. Later, I discovered that Cambridge was apparently full of such types. Since our academy was so reputable, we had quite a number of people like K., coming from high-ranking schools to study there (fortunately, not all of them so arrogant, rich, and egocentric). The aforementioned honorable gentleman, however, was certainly a textbook example of a diplobrat. I heard many unpleasant things about him after we had that first conversation. Apparently, he was also implicated in multiple sexual and drug scandals—so much for being aristocratic.
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Ildar Daminov is a Tatar Kazakhstani social scientist and a modern-day nomad who resides in and travels across Europe. In his free time, he writes short stories in English and Russian and does a podcast on North Korea. If you like this story, you can contact him via his email or on Facebook.
