Before returning to New York, I engaged in an all-night Lviv finale that concluded about 75 minutes before my flight to Kiev. I was feeling more than a little battled and bruised as I arrived into Kiev on no sleep at all save for what I was able to steal on my 80 minute flight. It was Friday morning when I landed. It was going to be a long weekend.Upon touchdown, the first order of business is sleep. Unfortunately it’s only 9:30am and I can’t check into my hostel until 11am. Awesome timing. To kill time I schlep my weary ass into a wireless net café and order some awful excuse for a salad (until this point, I had no idea how badly a house salad could be fucked up) that consisted of nothing more than a few feta cubes, even fewer olives, and some decayed lettuce. Cost = 33 UAH (almost $7). Clearly I am far from the familiar and fiscal comforts I’d become accustomed to in Lviv. And just as clearly, this dish is not going to provide me with nearly the necessary nutrients it will take to sustain me for another 85 minutes.
Know what will, though? Beer.
The waitress shoots me a completely justified curious glance as my one open eye gives her just barely enough assurance that I won’t fall asleep somewhere in her section. Shortly thereafter, a tall half-liter Chernivitsky glistens in front of me in all of it's invigorating splendor, while my salad retreats to the back of my table like a frightened rattlesnake: It is actually more scared of me than I am of it.
I go to the bathroom a handful of times, alternatively to dry-heave and keep my blood moving to remain awake. Time elapsed: not enough.
Finally I check into my hostel and promptly pass out until 5:30 that afternoon. Feeling about half as refreshed as I’m feeling filthy and cracked-out, I start putting together my plans for the evening while I fend for the good Ukrainian people against the bigoted owner of the hostel.
He’s a beady-eyed short, balding man with cropped, graying hair, who’s wearing a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants. He’s got a midsection as bloated as his pregnant Ukrainian wife, and a voice like Speedy Gonzales, if Speedy spoke English with a Norwegian accent.
He’s pontificating endlessly about the Ukrainian work ethic and how dumb and worthless they all are. I repeat: they ALL are. When challenged, he won’t relent that there may be even one Ukrainian in the entire country of above-average intelligence. One wonders why a guy like this would A) run a business here, B) marry a Ukrainian woman, and C) knock her up. Wouldn’t his child then have to be half Ukrainian? Thus making him/her half stupid and half asshole? Who wants to raise Keanu Reeves, anyway?
Feeling inspired, if only by the knowledge that I could never be that ignorant, I step out for a night of fine dining on good Ukrainian beef. In a restaurant called SoHo Steak. Which reminds me; does everything have to have a New York theme? I’m shocked with the prevailing New Yorkness of anything that encourages someone to spend money. Mind you, this New Yorkness is always in name only.
This gives me an idea. From now on, I’m going to give pet names to any girl I date. Like Tânia, Larissa, Gabriela, or Leila. They’re the top four Brazilian girl names of 1986. In other words, the cover is the only part of the book worth reading, as far as I'm concerned.
The steak was average steakhouse fare, the price definitely above average, and the ambience was something a dead person might call sleepy. Hardly the jump-start I was looking for. In a restaurant that probably seats around 300 at capacity, I was one of five people dining that night. The other four were all cougars perched at the table across from me, who would intermittently turn around and giggle in my direction. Flattering? Maybe. Though definitely not enough to induce an erection.
Let me just interject for a moment and say that I am writing this from a fucking frigid “hotel room” in Aleppo, Syria. And let me also say that I’ve never used the term “hotel room” quite so liberally. Pictures wouldn’t even do this justice. I say this at this moment (during a Kiev story) because my thoughts are having a hard time straying from my numbing appendages. If I could read Arabic, I’d be staying in the hotel I actually booked. Instead however, I was worn and weary from an arduous day of bus travel (five in all), four hours spent waiting for my visa at the border, followed by easily the most harrowing taxi ride I’ve ever had in my life. And that includes the tuk tuks in Bangkok. And all that led to me dropping into this shitbox for the night. And all it really amounts to is a moment of fucking amusement for you cunts. Which gets me exactly nothing but maybe a mild case of frostbite on my cock. I hope you’re all happy.
Moving along, it was snowing/sleeting/annoying outside in Kiev after dinner, as I decided to walk in some direction towards what I thought was Center while working off some of the kilo of red meat in my gut and texting a few people I thought could give me some decent advice for nightspots. I finally land at a place called Arena, which was aptly named given its four floors of sports pub, casino, nightclub, and strip club. I opt for the pub downstairs to log my first fistful of vodka, as at least then I’ll have the TVs to keep me busy till the club gets going upstairs.
Around my twenty-fifth deciliter of vodka, some old drunk German spills his beer down my back and then looks at me as if my prolonged stasis somehow provoked him. I tell him to “fuck off” in English, then Spanish (my default language when English fails), then some other language that I made up on the spot that incorporated a lot of German-sounding cha’s and eich’s. After about ten minutes of this, his friend (a tall, late-20s Dutch guy) drags him away and buys me a beer. Ten minutes after that, the drunk German cunt takes off, and Dutch Guy and I are devising a plan of how to attack the club upstairs. After of course, my shirt dries. My purpose in reminding him of this is to elicit not only guilt, but more free drinks. Goal: achieved.
When we get inside the club, we are immediately dazed by the sheer unbridled energy inside. Not only are there lasers and all kinds of other euro-gimmicks, but there are an obscene amount of gyrating women on the dance floor, and gawking Ukrainian men leaning on anything out of the mirror ball’s reach.
Dutch Guy and I quickly decode the forlorn glance from any woman loitering near the bar without a drink as being an invitation to buy them a Blue Balls Breezer (Dutch Guy loved that one, which got me another free drink -- finally my humor is paying dividends). Eventually, we retreat to the bullpen, aka the same place all the other guys are.
Any time one of us goes to get a drink, we are each aggressively approached by women. For about an hour, we are amazed at how forward and confident they all are. And by “they” I mean prostitutes.
But these aren’t just ordinary prostitutes. These are expert conversationalists and genuine salespeople. It starts with light conversation about why I’m in Kiev, and they seem honestly surprised when I show off some of my Sesame Street Ukrainian. Typically, this would make me think I was just being my normal charming self. In this case however, I was feeling a bit like a guy walking into a Thai massage parlor with a hard dick and a fistful of fifties. In other words, I’m feeling like a mark, despite my flimsy cock and flaccid wallet.
It made me wonder how it was that I stood out in a crowd of Ukrainians. For one thing, I’m half Belarussian and half other white-bred European (I think it’s a German/Welsh/Scottish/Belgian mi,x or something like that). So, by looks alone, my complexion isn’t at all what is giving me away. Then I remembered the fact that Ukrainian men dress like castoffs from Staten Survivor Island. For the first time in my life, I’m seeing the value in dressing in Dolce & Gabbana. Even if it’s real. At least it would have thrown the sharks off the scent.
Dutch Guy suggests we hit the dance floor if only to avoid the onslaught of temptation. Good plan. As we approach, I realize immediately that we soon will be the only men out from under the cover of darkness. If you’re a believer in peacock theory (sorry, could not find a decent link), then this would be a move in the right direction. Besides, our confidence was collectively lubricated with a minimum of one liter of vodka coursing through our veins, so what could go wrong?
I’ll fucking tell you what can go wrong. Dutch Guy got tired of being rejected by “nice girls” and bailed for a freelancer who’d hooked him earlier. Meanwhile, I was left on the dance floor with a bleeding thump in my brain that had nothing at all to do with the “Comfortably Numb” remix I was listening to for the 2,786,311th time within Ukraine’s borders.
See, typically if I’m at a club by myself, I’ll take it a little easy on the booze so I can remain somewhat cogent in the event I find myself in a situation with some hair on it. However, I let my guard down as Dutch Guy was pumping tall Nemiroffs into my hand as they’d quickly snake down my gullet moments later. At this point, I was seriously considering calling my married friend Olga (from Lviv who was in Kiev for her brother’s birthday) if only to extricate myself from a dizzying array of stimuli.
Quick side story: Olga is in love with me. Yes, she’s married (with a two-year old daughter, whose birthday party I attended along with nothing but family and only two other friends of theirs), and yes, I’m also good friends with her husband. Olga is strikingly beautiful and extremely sexual. It’s a trap a mile deep, quite frankly (in times of crisis, I revert back to the customary system). But for the sake of making this story much more entertaining, let’s say she’s a fat chick with oodles of acne. So, maintain that image as we proceed…
She’d told me only a few hours before I left to get my flight to Kiev that she was in love with me; this after about two months of purely platonic friendship. Her husband is quite influential in Lviv, and is not someone to piss off, given his connections to what I can only assume is a bevy of contract killers and body smugglers. Any late-night phone call is a cry out loud for a certain beat-down.
I resist the urge. Remarkably. Truth is, I have a rather super-human ability to resist the drunk-dial. Some people are good at sports, and some people can fart really quietly. This is my gift, I suppose. For some reason, no matter how drunk I am, I understand its utter uselessness. Especially when the girl is a fat cow like Olga. However, this is not to say it never happens, but I’m just saying it happens very seldom, and I’m usually conscious of it’s (usually unfortunate) outcome. This skill served me very well in this case.
Just as I’m heading to the bar for what I’m predetermining is my last drink of the night, I get scooped up by a random girl and her friend in a conversation about where I’m from. I realize once more that I really need to pick up some D&G gear if I’m going to retain any level of anonymity in this environment.
Feeling a bit more comfortable in the fact that hoes don’t normally work in pairs, I entertain their conversation and give the 2,700th wide-eyed response to the “Do You Know ‘Sex In The City’” question. Idle conversation leads to an invitation back to the dance floor, which I reluctantly agree to after the punishing last bite of my Nemiroff (no drinks on the dance floor, asshole!!!).
After some time, one of the friends flakes off, and I’m left in the clutches of a gorgeous Ukrainian, and yada yada yada, she ends up quoting me what would normally be considered an extraordinary value for my U.S. dollar. I opt instead to drop $200 on black on the roulette wheel on my way out, lose, curse the Dutch Guy to a life of eternal damnation as I pass a church nearby, and go to bed.
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Next night, I am invited to Olga’s brother’s birthday party. And of course I go. Like a damn fool.
Unlike other times I’ve hung out with Olga, the last time I saw her, she was not with her husband, and so she was really open about a lot of things. Such as what she thought I’d be like as a husband, what she thought I’d be like in bed, and what she thought I’d be like as a partner for “the whole of her life.” Her English is so formal it almost makes me reticent that it’s my first language. Except for the fact that it’s the language of the rich, and Ukrainians don’t have shit.
Knowing what I know from two nights earlier, I walk into a party with all of Olga’s friends and family. It’s a closed party, and thus, no place to hide. It’s a new restaurant, in a brightly lit room, with a long U-shaped table arrangement lining all walls, with the fourth wall being a dance floor area. She is dancing with her daughter and her husband Sergei (Olga and Sergei, it’s almost TOO fucking cliché, isn’t it?) calls me over to a chair near him as he’s already pouring us shots of vodka. For fuck’s sake, I’m drunk already, and this is how he’s going to kick off my arrival?
Sergei and I don’t move for about two hours while we pound away at what amounts to nearly an entire bottle of vodka. We’re having a great time, and now I’m shitfaced. Unfortunately, I don’t slur when I’m drunk, so usually it’s only me who can tell how drunk I am. On this occasion I’m afraid, I’m wearing my inebriation like an iron veil. Olga can smell it, and I’m fucking terrified.
Olga sits down on my side, and I notice quickly that she and Sergei aren’t talking. Each time he gets up, she touches me under the table or makes some other overt advance that I’m REALLY not comfortable with. When he’s around, they don’t even acknowledge one another. I mention this, and she tells me they have “no more passion.” For fuck's sake!! Just what I need. She’s obviously someone who seeks an inordinate amount of passion (not to mention food, with a caboose as wide as Shevchenko Avenue), and Sergei ain’t delivering. I’m genuinely fearing for my life.
More than once her brother catches Olga holding my hand (I can only pull away so often in a weakened mental state such as the one Sergei himself put me in), or at least reaching for it. I turn down her offer to dance more than once, and at some point Sergei invites me to his 30th birthday party next year (I’d already been to his 29th in October). I’d recently (finally) watched all three of The Godfather movies, and the line “keep your friends close and your enemies closer” is echoing in my vacant head. I’m going to die.
Finally, Olga makes a casual pass at me while we are smoking a cigarette (I can’t remember it now, but it probably had something to do with smoking my cock), which I reject with a smile and a joke (the only way I can deal with any uncomfortable situation), and Sergei joins us as Olga leaves without looking at him. Seeing this as my best escape route, I tell Sergei I’m going to hail a cab and he wishes me well. Two days later, I was on a flight to New York, so I think I’m going to live. At least long enough to entertain you fucks a bit longer.
Since then, I’ve gotten a fair share of forlorn emails from each Olga and Sergei (they both miss me immensely, or so they say…). I’m not sure though, that a return to Ukraine is in the best interest of my well being, however.
