Russia, I found out a few years ago, never fails to disappoint! Moscow was much cleaner than my cold-war-tainted visions allowed me to imagine. The streets were swept clean; the high-end jewelry and clothing stores were bustling; the subways were scrubbed to a shimmering polish; and the Kremlin literally sparkled. I recall searching the structure in vain for a single flake of peeling paint or a rogue weed sprouting from some crack. Nothing!!! The damn place was solid as a rock and clean as a bourgeois fantasy.
I prowled the streets and back alleys looking for remnants of that crumbling monster of my youth—the kind of place where you could trade a few cans of Coca-Cola, an I Heart NY T-shirt, and an Eight Track of punk rock for a rusty used Lada and some plutonium. I sat for hours one afternoon near the Aleksandrovskiy Sad drinking cold Dutch beer from impeccably clean pint glasses as I waited for some sign of the bitter, downtrodden masses I was convinced Russia was overflowing with. Where were the starving, toothless old women fighting over moldy bread in the street? Where were the AIDs-infested prostitutes being kicked by pimps and police? Where’s the dictators, the rat soup, the crying children, the smoke, smog, and goose-stepping soldiers? Fuck, I thought, who do I have to bribe around here to see a little corruption?
And then I saw it. Groups of large heavily intoxicated men with casks of vodka under one arm and toothless whores under the other. Ahh-ha!!! Yes, I thought; here they were!! I knew the Russia of my imagination couldn’t have been that wrong.
And so I watched as the park filled with more and more of these groups. All the men were enormous, wearing white and blue striped long-sleeve shirts; and every last one of them was shitfaced, violently drunk. As more and more flooded into the park—hooting and hollering as they did—and as I continued to drink more and more beer, panic set in. Was this some vodka fueled revolution? Am I about to be swept away in a violent throng of Slavic testosterone? What would Dr. Zhivago do? Flee to the Urals?
I didn’t have to wait long before a group of the enormous blue and white striped death machines sat down at my table.
“What’s the occasion?” I politely asked.
“Special Forces day,” he shot back.
Hmmm, I was immediately intrigued. “Are you all in the Special Forces?” I probed further.
“OF COURSE,” he replied a little too emphatically.
“So what’s it like being in the Russian Special Forces these days?” I continued undeterred.
He eventually warmed up to me, and I let him lead the conversation. Our discussion shifted from killing people, to women, to shooting guns, to women, to killing women, to women. And, then it took a hard left turn I was completely unprepared for. He became quite critical of the US’s new imperial role in Afghanistan and Iraq; and he wanted to let me know about his frustration. He made a few wild accusations about US intentions, a few clumsy historical analyses, and some rather poignant speculation about where all this could lead. At one point I did interrupt him to remind him that Russia was in the process of trouncing the Chechens, but he ignored my comment and continued on. (a word of advice, when you’re surrounded by seven-foot-tall Russian soldiers drinking their weight in vodka, be prepared to show a little humility.)
This one speed bump out of the way, the night continued merrily on—a Commie and a Cajun just shootin’ the breeze. I bought him a beer, he gave me some vodka; I showed him my American Flag tattoo, he let me wear his Special Forces Beret; I offered to cook him some gumbo, he tried to sell me his wife. In the end, I stumbled back to my hotel with a new vision of Russia and Russians, one that will last, I hope, until the next traumatic disappointment.
As Moscow now reels from the social damage wrought by two successive terrorist attacks, I remember that evening even more fondly. I wonder if that guy is preparing to go off to start a few of those imperial adventures he was so critical of five years ago (or if he’s spending time in prison for selling his wife). I guess we’ll all find out.
Nice pic, dude. at least, you were in a shape back then. :p
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