We spent the morning running errands for items that had been exhausted over the weeks. We also began making phone calls trying to arrange our next story. We came here hoping to do a story on gay life in Siberia.

We met a young man named Sergei who had friends active in Novosibirsk's small gay community. He told us he would be going to a concert this evening with some of his friends and agreed to ask if any of them would be willing to talk to us about gay life in Russia. We agreed to meet him outside the theater after the concert.

We arrived at the theater a little early and Lisa sweet-talked the manager into letting us check out the last half hour of the show. And what a show it was. As we entered, singer Valery Leontiev, a 50-year-old man with long flowing hair and clad in leather hot pants and army boots, was gyrating around the stage surrounded by a group of awkward young dancers. The act (and physical resemblance) was a cross between Madonna and Tom Jones gone terribly wrong.

The crowd loved the show. I only wish I could have taken pictures. But they wouldn't let me near the stage with my camera. Unfortunately, Leontiev was only in Novosibirsk for one night. He would have made a great story.

After the show we found Sergei waiting in the lobby. He disappeared into the crowd for a minute and returned with a quiet, well dressed man he introduced as Grisha. We all stood around a few awkward moments in the entryway not knowing exactly where to begin. Then Grisha invited us back to his apartment to talk. He spoke very openly about his life and the gay community in Novosibirsk. We explained our project and told him we were looking for a person or couple to center our story around. We asked if he would be interested. He hesitated at first, but by the end of the evening he seemed fairly comfortable with the idea.