Mother Tongue – an exhibition at Pushkin House, London

Mother Tongue (Родная речь) is a small exhibition at Pushkin House in Bloomsbury Square, London, mounted in collaboration with GRAD.  It consists of panels and photographs by Yevgeniy Fiks, a Moscow-born artist living in New York, exploring Russian gay argot.  This is a secret language dating to Soviet times, as can be seen by some of the expressions it contains.  The organisers liken it to Polari, a similar underground language in England, though Polari has a longer tradition and was spoken by a broader group than homosexuals.

Such language helps to establish a group identity, particularly important when under attack by the authorities, and provides an element of secrecy when one’s sexual preferences could be severely punished.  It is significant that use of Polari began to decline following its ‘outing’ by Julian and Sandy, accelerating after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in 1967, whereas the Russian equivalent lasted much longer.  That a form of it exists today is an index of continuing adversity for gay people there.

Remarkably, homosexuality was only decriminalised in Russia in 1993.  The exhibition information notes how for a couple of decades after legalisation there was slow but steady progress in the acceptance of gay rights, but the introduction of the Gay Propaganda Law in 2013 ushered in a new period of difficulty as the political and social climate once again became overtly homophobic.

Sadly the slang thus still performs a function, though since the fall of the Soviet Union it has undergone a process of internationalisation, with Anglo-American imports diluting the Soviet-era lexicon.  Fiks’s project is therefore one of nostalgic excavation, showing the language as it was, though in practice it has moved on.

The exhibition falls into three parts: a video, not operational during my visit; sheets of text listing words and phrases; and photographs of cruising spots, ‘pleshki’.  The text element includes translations, highlighting the wit and subversiveness of the coinages.  They are presented in an academic manner, as if in a classroom, a blackboard reinforcing the feeling of being in a learning environment.

An initial panel is devoted to grammatical constructions, presenting the slang as bearing the same linguistic significance as any other Russian vocabulary.  Terms are displayed alphabetically, the initial letter in the sort of oversized style that might be used to help small children remember them.  Underneath each in much smaller letters is a Russian slang expression beginning with that letter, plus English translation, and what it means, one sheet per letter of the alphabet (i.e. 33 sheets, 33 expressions).

Some terms are amusing (a ‘reader’ is someone who sits in a lavatory cubicle waiting for a partner) but there is bite here as well.  An ‘agentess’ is a gay person who betrays his or her people and, my favourite, sexual minorities are ‘Mensheviks’.  The unsnappy in English ‘kgboonchik’ is a ‘young provocateur who is sent to entrap gays.’  Weirdly an orgasm is a ‘grandfather clock’, while a penis is a ‘voice’.  Tellingly, homosexuality itself translates as ‘storminess’ and meeting places are ‘zoos’.  A gay person who hides his or her sexual orientation is an ‘undergrounder’, suggesting an affinity to others at odds with the regime.

The photographs are labelled with the dates between which the sites were used, often going back to the 1920s – the end dates presumably signifying when the authorities cracked down and meeting places moved elsewhere.  Many were also tourist spots, and without the extra information that they were employed as rendezvous points they would simply be record shots of parks, public buildings and lavatories.  No people are visible and Fiks chose overcast days, rendering them rather forlorn-looking places.  He must have talked to individuals with knowledge of these sites’ gay histories because it was unlikely to have been included in guidebooks, but the weakness of the exhibition is that it omits the first-hand experiences of those who used the language, and frequented the locations.

It is a small show occupying one large room, and really does not justify a long trip, but if in the vicinity of Pushkin House it is well worth taking a look.  The exhibition is free, with only donations requested, and runs from 9 March to 11 May.  An accompanying bilingual book by Fiks, with the same name as the exhibition, is available.

An Unsuccessful Lottery Experiment

There is a chap in Norfolk, Virginia, USA, by the name of Chris McDonald who predicts the results of American state lotteries.  He operates on Facebook and claims to have been extremely successful.  He offers two types of service, free and paid-for.  For the former, he throws out 3-digit numbers when people ask him about particular lotteries in the comments to his posts.  Curiously nobody seems to have replied thanking him for a win.

As well as providing the free 3-digit numbers, he has a private service predicting the better-paying 4- 5- and 6-number lotteries, for which he takes ‘donations’.  For this, people contact him on Facebook to ‘schedule’ ‘consultations’.  To someone wanting to make a ‘donation’ he replied by requesting they contact him privately and added ‘my fee is cheap’.  This method may result in lack of public feedback by any dissatisfied paying customers.

His psychic ability must be fairly recent because in July 2017 he ran a Gofundme effort to purchase an aeroplane ticket to start a new job in Washington DC which only raised $25.  Presumably that is why he is still in Virginia.  However, in preceding years he did win free pizzas in giveaway competitions so perhaps there was a psychic component to that.

In December 2018 he began a YouTube channel which he intended to update with weekly predictions starting in January 2019, but this has not taken off and only the initial video exists thus far.  In it he says he also predicts the outcomes of American football games, but there is no more information available on this aspect of his claimed abilities.

McDonald is not promising correct numbers for specific lottery draws.  He will make a series of predictions for the next few days that might apply either to daytime or nighttime draws.  Thus following his tips will require some outlay as one of a selection of numbers supplied might be predicted to come up in one of say six games, two per day over three days.

As to how I know of McDonald’s existence, he contacted me on the Society for Psychical Research’s Facebook page to tell me about his ability.  Over the years have handled a number of approaches to the SPR claiming abilities of various kinds such as telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition, though fewer recently than used to be the case.  I was quite happy to see if McDonald could predict lottery numbers accurately, or at least enough to come out ahead financially.

Often there is an assumption that success would result in an endorsement by the Society.  When I have explained that as the SPR does not hold corporate views it cannot as an organisation endorse a psychic claim as true, claimants often fade away, the demonstration being of secondary importance to the desire for validation they can use for promotional purposes.

Some stay and say they would like to demonstrate the ability anyway.  I have done a variety of simple tests that would not in themselves provide strong evidence of psi, but might perhaps throw up possibilities warranting more rigorous examination.  To date I have not had any successes, and when this happens I try to be kind.  I will say the result might be due to the test not accurately reflecting their ability, it was an artificial situation so perhaps did not generate the required motivation, such abilities cannot be summoned on tap, or perhaps I was not the right person to conduct the test.

I never say the ability does not exist because I would not want to hurt their feelings, and who knows, perhaps one of those reasons was correct.  The person invariably takes the result with good grace, I suspect mostly concluding they do have the ability but it works best in spontaneous circumstances, and we part amicably.

McDonald, however, was to prove far from amicable.  He got in touch via Facebook Messenger on Monday 4 March to tell me he can predict lottery numbers ‘accurately’.  He had called his local radio station last July when they asked for ‘psychic stuff’ and given them numbers live on air.  He stated he had correctly called numbers for a $100,000 win, plus a correct ‘mega ball’ number.

He said that for proof I should check the show’s archive or call the station.  Doing so would not have proved anything because all lottery games are won by somebody getting the numbers right (leaving aside rollovers).  Assuming McDonald had called the numbers correctly, and I have no reason to doubt him, it could have been by chance.  In any case, if his ability was as strong as he led me to believe I hoped to be able to see for myself.

I replied by congratulating him and wondering if he could maintain that success rate.  He then assured me he had been keeping records of his predictions, amounting in October 2018 to the incredible total of about $534,435,000, since when he has been predicting all 50 US state lotteries.  He implied he had been placing bets when he said ‘do you see how serious this is?? ~ or ~ do i need show you my bank acct. for proof??’

He told me he wanted to be studied and gave me more anecdotes of impressive guesses, though not ones he had put cash on.  Already I was getting conflicting messages of a great talent but not one backed by consistently placing bets.  Still, it seemed worth pursuing further as from what I could deduce reading his rambling messages he claimed a hit rate of about 50% from making predictions for ‘Facebook psychic groups’.

So I asked him if he would make predictions for me, stating the lottery the prediction related to and when it would be drawn, to allow me to make my own check.  At the same time I asked why he did not always place a bet to back his guesses.  Strangely he told me to forget the financial part and asked me if I wanted to be the first to believe him – which was curious if he was giving numbers to strangers on Facebook.  Wouldn’t they believe him when they were successful, and keep coming back for more?

I stressed that I needed the predictions in advance because anecdotes of past glories were irrelevant to a controlled test.  After asking me if I was in North Carolina (no), he chose the Virginia Pick 4, which is called twice daily.  He gave me five 4-digit numbers and said one should come up in the next three days; a generous latitude, but at this stage I was happy to set the bar low.  Conditions could be tightened after an initial success.

Sadly, his numbers did not come up so I was glad I had not placed bets on his recommendations.  While not a promising start, I was happy to give it another go.  When I sent the results I mentioned that he had said he could demonstrate his success by showing me his bank balance, and I asked how often he actually put money down.  I was thinking of the point sometimes made that psi employed for one’s own financial gain will fail, whereas when used with a humanitarian motive it is more likely to succeed.  What I got back surprised me, as I had not realised I must have touched a nerve:

‘You idiot...call the radio station I gave 100,000 dollar win numbers to and again the Mega ball number on air live...you do that or explain as mathematical probability?? Go fuck yourself’

Once again I pointed out that, while suggestive, claiming hits retrospectively cannot be compared to conducting a controlled test.  He did not have to be able to succeed every time, but he needed to be able to at a rate significantly greater than chance.  In return he reiterated his successful past results as I tried in vain to explain the scientific method.  After further rudeness from McDonald our correspondence petered out.

My concern is that people may actually be giving him money for shaky predictions, leaving them out of pocket.  Naturally, as always in such cases, one wonders why somebody successful at making predictions would want to take a few dollars from Facebook acquaintances if the lottery itself is a potential cash cow providing free money.  More to the point, why isn’t McDonald now a multi-millionaire?