Firefighter, stripper show different sides of men on holiday
Oleksiy Romanenko shows one of fire trucks at the department of emergency situations in Irpin.
(Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Early in the morning, when Oleksiy Romanenko wakes up to put his fire-retardant trousers on, Semen Harmash takes his silk briefs off to go to bed.
When the first man hurries up to start a 24-hour shift as chief of firefighters brigade in the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, the second man is fast asleep after a night out in a club, where he takes of his clothes for paying customers.
What the stripper and firefighter share is respect for Defender of the Fatherland Day, once known as the Soviet Army day, celebrated on Feb. 23.
This day celebrates the male gender, whose members like to have it on the calendar to balance the March 8, the traditional Women’s Day.
For people like Romanenko, who served in the army, the day is colored with army associations. He always greets his former colleagues from the military on this date.
Harmash, who has not served in the army, says he prefers to call it The Day of Men. This year, he is scheduled to perform a strip show in a gay club on this day, and then get together with other male strippers and get drunk, “like all normal blokes do.”
Apart from their passion for Men’s Day, these two Ukrainians are as different as can be.
Romanenko, 28, rescued a young man, by carrying him, scared and suffocating, out of a burning flat. “It is a pleasure when you do something good for someone,” he says modestly about the highlight of his 11-year career as a firefighter.
The four red polished fire trucks of his fire brigade are standing ready in the big garage, next to uniforms and helmets, for more rescuing. But Romanenko is shy about being photographed in his work gear.
Harmash, 22, has no such reservations about getting attention. He craves it. He says he once considered giving up his striptease job, but then “I realized that I would miss the sound of applause when the show ends.”
Despite five years of dancing, he still feels shivers of excitement every time he’s on stage.
Harmash welcomes the Kyiv Post in a small darkened room with several small sofas arranged in front of a heart-shaped podium with a pole in the center.
Semen Harmash strikes a pose at XS Kyiv strip club (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
He is happy to pose ahead of a rehearsal with two other colleagues for an upcoming gay club performance.
But most of his work is dancing for ladies in nightclubs, at corporate parties and birthday bashes.
“Women aged from 16 to 60 come to see my show,” he says proudly. “They often shout, scratch my back till they draw blood, or try to strip off my briefs.”
But Romanenko faces life-and-death risks on his job. While fighting a fire once, a wall next to him suddenly collapsed. No one died, because the crew was already moving away from the wall to get water resupplies.
“You don’t usually think about danger when you work. It’s only when it’s over that you can grasp the degree of risk,” he says.
A firefighter usually gets three days off after a shift, but this month Romanenko spent most of his free days working at a warming-up center set up by the government for the homeless and the needy to survive the heavy frost.
Romanenko was serving tea and says he was relieved that no seriously frostbitten people came to his center. His most vivid memory is that of a man who had a fight with his wife and didn’t want to go home.
Harmash’s work hours are erratic, too. While the greatest demand for his strip shows is typically on on weekends, he occasionally gets extra work during weekdays by walking on podiums, filming commercials as a model.
You don’t usually think about danger when you work. It’s only when it’s over that you can grasp the degree of risk.
– Oleksiy Romanenko, chief of firefighters brigade
But it was misfortunate that brought Harmash to show business.
He dreamed of a football career all his childhood, and trained for 10 years in his native Zaporizhya to achieve the goal.
But an injury killed the dream.
He was 17 then, and he had an idea that his well shaped body can be used in other ways.
“I walked into the nearest nightclub and told the art director about my plans to become a strip dancer,” he says. The idea was well received, and for the next two months he studied choreography while a dressmaker was cutting a suit for his show.
At first, Harmash earned Hr 40 for each show. But as years went by, he was able to make Hr 500 for a single five-minute dance around the pole.
It takes Romanenko a month to earn what Harmash makes in five dances. “It’s not easy to feed a wife and a little son with this money,” he confesses.
Romanenko, too, dreamed of another career, the one that has more relevance to Men’s Day. He wanted to stay in the army as a contract soldier, but as his father fell ill, he had to go back to his hometown of Irpin, where a school friend encouraged him to get a job with the Emergencies Ministry.
Despite his tight salary, he plans to stay put until retirement, unlike Harmash, who hopes to change career after a few more years of dancing.
“I heard in China there is a big need for actors from Europe,” he says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at grytsenko@kyivpost.com