"What would you do if you woke up and there was a beautiful black woman sitting on your face?"

The following Wednesday, the same two bodybuilder students (see previous post) come back for their afternoon class.
"What did you guys do on the weekend?"
"Banya."
"Great. Tell me about it."
"We went to banya, we suggest to you good banya, beautiful women there."
"What do women have to do with the banya? Do you have sex in the banya?"
"Yes."
"But your heart- it could explode, you could die." I can never tell when anyone here is trying to fuck with my head.
"We are alive! Don't worry, you don't need to get girls, you just need..." Igor pulls out his palm pilot and starts typing... "Steam!"
"Right. What is nice about the banya?"
"Steam- good for skin. You steam and then you jump in cold pool. Then you steam again. You drink vodka. We will suggest good banya to you, we find address. You can to join us next time."
"Is it expensive?"
"800 rubles. 200 rubles for- venniki." He punches on his palm pilot again. "Switch. Pine switch, birch switch, oak switch," he continues, tapping away.
"What are they for?"
"You are in steam room, you lay and hit to you the back with... switches. Then you jump into cold pool."
"OK- we have some grammar to talk about today. Do you guys know the conditional?"
"Yes, yes, we talked about this in school. We want to know more."
I walk to the board. "OK, you know the conditional is used to talk about imaginary situations, not real situations." To keep them focused on grammar, I writing a boring sentence on the whiteboard: What would you do if you had a million dollars? " So- guys- let's divide the sentence in two. The first part ends at if, the second part starts after if. Vladimir- in the first part of the sentence, which verb tense do you see?"
He looks attentively- his English is a half-step higher than Igor's- and says, "Conditional."
"Right. Conditional means,  would + infinitive." It's an oversimplification, but a useful one. "Now, which verb tense is in the second part of the sentence- Igor?"
"Past simple."
"Great. Which part of the sentence is about cause, and which is about effect- Vladimir?"
"First part- cause. Second part- result."
"Good. Igor- can you do this?" I erase first part of the sentence and rewrite it at the end, resulting in - If you had a million dollars what would you do-.
"Yes."
"Good. Now- what would you do if the school replaced me with a black teacher?"
"If he is good teacher..."
"Please use the conditional."
"If he were a good teacher, we would accept him!" Igor tells me. There statements from the previous class felt parroted and maybe insincere. I am relieved.
"What would you do if you were blind," -I let Igor look up 'blind' on his palm pilot- "and discovered that your girlfriend of two years was black?"
"I would know!"
I feel my heart sink a little. "How?" I ask, anticipating a comment about facial structure.
"The smell!"
"What?"
"The smell!"
"Guys, I live in a country where a good proportion of the people are black. If there were a smell, I would know about it, or have heard something about at least. There is no smell. Do you ever go out and eat curry?"
"Yes, we love curry!"
"How do you smell the next day?"
"Terrible!" they burst out laughing.
"So- when Indians eat curry, do they smell, or does the garlic running down their armpits smell?"
"Garlic!"
"If a black person smells, do you think it is the person, or maybe something they're eating? And seriously, I would have heard something about this smell if it were true."
They seem surprised.
I can't really blame these guys- they are not stupid, but not drawn to anything intellectual, either, and probably are just repeating the few things they have heard about a topic they have nothing to do with. This discussion is all quanta and if a black guy walked into the room right now with some beer they would just drink with him like anyone else. This is the unsatisfying part of being an English teacher- we are action only to the extent that speech is an action.
I need to get the conversation going again. My boss is a serious rat, and I'm not sure if she is going to pay me next month. I can say whatever I want.
"Guys- what would you do if you woke up and there was a beautiful black woman sitting on your face?"
"I never sleep with black woman!"
"Igor- please remember- this is an imaginary situation. It's the conditional. Now please answer- Vladimir. What would you do?"
They break up laughing, and I spend the rest of class in a paid discussion about various sexual adventures.
I love this job.

"The black man can run"

My personality came about in a place where everything exciting was in my mind, which is why I'm a permanent rube who notices everything, no matter how much is going on. Among the ambient information in a city like Moscow, I till over especially print.
Early in my sojourn a fashionable young man with gelled hedgehog hair and aviator glasses tuned my mind to fascism by walking past in an anational camo tanktop with "Waffen SS Sports Club" written on it in Fraktur. All across the city, I started to read similar thoughts- the most frequent one smattered mens' and womens' chests with "Winners are not Judged... Winners are not Judged.... Winners are not Judged" in fonts different on every shirt I saw, which proved that this was a cultural exclamation shared by more than one factory owner.
I prolonged the conversation through my students, who I used as a survey group.
I went to my students at an international cosmetics company and asked them what they thought. Most of them were pretty cultivated people, and the first group of students, most of them over 30, was able to discuss immigrant labor as an accountancy question, but because of foreign business trips and French colleagues these Russians were diluted. One of them relieved me by exclaiming, "I do not understand this!" when I probed his group about the hate of blacks I often encountered.
Igor and Vladimir were bodybuilder telephone-salesmen in their early 30's who were treated to my classes by their benevolent boss. They didn't have complexes about suggesting their favorite whores to me, so I figured they would speak freely with me about my topic of interest, which they brought up themselves.
"Do you think black man can be president?" The 2008 election was still two years ahead and it seemed to me that McCain was most likely to win.
"I don't see why not."
"He is nigger. Can he get votes?" In Russian, the n-word is just another word, but I still wasn't sure if they wanted to ask if it a black man could win, or if he should win.
"You know that is a very hard word, don't you?"
"Can he get votes?" The way they don't even perceive my objection says a lot.
"Sure, why not?"
"White people vote black people?"
"Sure, if the black guy acts more or less white."
"Black people- it's people?" I want to correct him, but feel strange writing the correct version on the board.
"Yes, they are."
"People like us?"
"Who is us?"
"Why black people have no money? Why Africa has no money?"
My job is not to talk to my students, but rather to make them talk, but in this situation I feel obliged to make an exception, and go into a forty-minute explanation of the geographical and climatic situation that has led to a poor Africa. My explanation (actually Jared Diamond's) deepens- Africa is full of tropical illnesses and below the Sahara has no native draft animals, a key factor which prevented them from building more complex civilizations; Europeans had guns; they furrow their brows and begin to blink less- they must be listening closely. I am changing their minds. When I finish, class time is nearly over, but we continue because the conversation is so interesting for them, and I correct the grammar mistakes they've made in the course of the class. Finally they leave, and tell me with a laugh as they walk out, "We have expression in Russia." Even before they've spoken, I understand that my work has been in vain. "The black man can run, but the white man can shoot."
I have never like my own culture or any others, but the belief that other people are born less human than us is dangerous, and since I'm getting paid 20 dollars an hour anyway, I decide to use the time to enrich them, too.

A Russian Stranger's Generosity

That night

I have a full day of classes which finishes at 830, then a leisurely dinner at Il Patio. I wonder what will happen when I get home- will I be able to sleep? Will there be an angry discussion? I suppose he’ll just act like nothing happened, he’s too much a coward to face his problems.

When at 11pm I arrive at the ground floor of our building, it occurs to me that he may just not let me in. I ring the bell and there is no answer. I ring again. No answer. I take out my cellphone, which only has a few rubles on it, and call him. No answer. It is freezing cold outside and snow is falling, it’s maybe minus 30 Celsius. This is the suburbs- all the stores where I could load my phone are empty. The pizza joint closed a half hour ago. Virtually everyone is already home from work, so the chance of somebody coming or going and opening the door is low. Wait- the door opens! I run in and go up to our floor in the elevator. The hallway is warmer, maybe 14 degrees Celsius, and I enjoy the warmth, although the idea of spending the night on the floor is daunting- there are also harsh neon lights glowing overhead. I knock on our door, then begin pounding. I can hear music playing there behind the doors, and call him again. He goes to bed at midnight. Did he just go to sleep earlier? I phone again while alternately pounding on the door and ringing the doorbell. No answer. What to do? I have four rubles on my phone, and a fair amount of cash in my wallet.

I go to the end of the hallway where the reception is better and text Julia. She immediately calls back and I explain the situation. She says her cousin Maxim, who I have never heard of, lives thirty kilometers away and that he can come help. Ten minutes later she calls back and says he will be on the way as soon as I send my address. I remember it, and she says he should be here in an hour or so. I wait for the first forty minutes inside, and then go outside- it could be extremely difficult for Maxim to find the right address in the driving snow. I immediately realize this is a mistake when the bitter cold of the pavement goes right through the soles of my shoes and my legs start to freeze. A car drives past and stops for me, but it’s just a taxi; this happens four times and two entire hours of painful cold before Maxim arrives. It is burning hot in the car. He looks a little tired, but completely calm, and I begin to thank him profusely. We make a loop onto a highway, then onto a paved but unlit forest road that leads to a region of one and two-story wooden and brick houses. After about forty minutes, we are home- at a two-story wooden boarding home with sizeable gaps between the panels. We enter, go up some creaky stairs to the second floor and enter his family’s apartment. It’s dark, but the first thing I notice is that his family had brought their entire library of classic Russian literature up from the Caucasus, which they had fled several months earlier to get away from the possibility of another war there and make a new life in Moscow as immigrants in their own country. I hear a quiet voice from the corner- it’s Maxim’s 90-year old grandmother, who is laying in bed in the corner. She tells me to come to her, and when I go to her bed, she says she will be my grandmother tonight, sits up in bed and gives me big hug. I don’t have my toothbrush with me so they give me some chewing gum and I crash on the sofa for three hours. Maxim and I get up to find his mother already preparing tea for us. She acts like they have done nothing for me and just quietly waves good bye when we leave together.

I have a full day of classes, and don’t know where I’ll sleep tonight. Throughout the day I call Charlemagne, but his phone has been turned off, so I call the director of our school, who offers to have my things moved by a hired car from his apartment, but until Charlemagne picks up the phone or drops by the school, no one can make anything happen. All my books are there, along with a good part of my clothing. I have given enough lessons that I have whole chapters of material memorized, but what worries me is the clothes. What am I going to do, and what will I wear? Christian is out of Moscow. Teabag is MIA in Kursk with his wife and kid. This leaves Andrei and Julia. Again. They agree, and Andrei tells me I can even borrow some of his clothes. They are good people, and I am lucky to have them as friends. I wish I could pay them back somehow.

Things Get Worse

I arrive home at 10 after a long day, spend some money at the pizza joint on the groundfloor of a neighboring building, and go home. Charlemagne opens the door and lets me in. He’s already got a pot of hot water waiting for me so we can drink coffee together. I don’t want to drink coffee at this hour, and don’t want to talk, either. I’ll be polite, though.

“How was your day?”

“Oh, nothing special. Things are moving along with my girlfriend. I need to find a place to stay with her, though before anything happens. We thought about getting a hotel but…”

He gasps. “A hotel! What a slut! Did she ask you or did you ask her?”

“She asked me.”

“What a whore, how did she do it, by SMS so you could jerk off? Did you make any special requests? You know you can’t bring her back here, that is for SURE. I CANNOT BEAR the smell of VAGINA.”

“Don’t worry, Charlemagne, she’s clean. Anyways, how’s work going?”

“Awesome. My students just love me, they can’t get enough of me. I have a new group of women and they all want me on top of them, but I can’t do that, I love MEN.”

“I was wondering- what did you do in the US before you came here?”

“I never liked the United States.”

“What did you do there?”

“I worked in finance.”

“Where?”

“In [a major US bank].”

“Really? How did you get the job there?”

“I had an inside man, he was SUCH a good lover, those were the best times up in that tower. Afterwards we started taking over the world, I hired my lovers and we started taking over, the sex was so GOOD.” He rolls his eyes. “Then they understood what was happening and they fired us, they just couldn’t bear to have fags taking over, they stopped us but you know it’s just a matter of time before we have EVERYTHING.”

“So they fired you? How long did you work there? I mean, I seem to remember you mentioning that you lived in seven or eight different cities in the US. How long was this career in Citibank?”

“I can tell you that it was not long enough. They couldn’t fire us so they gave me a severance package so I would shut up, I keep their secrets and they keep mine.”

“How much money is it?”

“2000 dollars per month.”

“That’s pretty generous. Why are you working, actually?”

“Because I love Russia, and I love Russian men, and I need to be here forever. I love being GAY and RICH in Russia.”

“I still don’t get what you see in Russian men.”

“The same thing you see in Russian vaginas,” he reasons. “Fair hair, light eyes, clear skin, high cheekbones, beautiful hips.”

He’s pretty predictable, actually. I need to throw a wrench into the conversation. “Charlemagne, what do you think of when you think of Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan? Would you have liked to have gone and fought alongside them? It was the 80’s, you know.”

“I think the same thing when I see our baby boys fighting sand niggers and towel heads. It makes me so ANGRY to see Americans who think their country is so great, we go and steal oil and then we complain about how every country in the world acts, I HATE IT when people complain about Russia. They’re such hypocrites! It’s good to know sand niggers are being killed. I got attacked by one today at the train station, he was asking me for money, I showed him my boxcutter, I REALLY put him in his place. Those people need to be stopped…”

“From doing what?”

“Making babies, they’re populating the whole world, they don’t know how to use birth control,” he says, rocking his hips at me.

“But the overall Muslim birthrate is not that high. Iran has a birthrate comparable to that of the US. Iraq has a high birthrate but it’s offset by war losses. Egypt I think is an exception, the Magreb as a whole I am not sure about, but I don’t think it’s five kids per family.” It takes me so long to understand other people aren’t rational.

“You’re just saying that because you’re Catholic! You want to defend anyone who makes babies.”

“I’m not Catholic. And actually, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, they all have at best a flat birthrate. I can’t speak about South America, but the key factor is economics, not religion.”

“And what about Ireland? Haven’t you seen Monty Python? Every sperm is sacred, all Catholics do is fuck, fuck, fuck, ignorant bunnies, they couldn’t figure out what condoms are for.”

“Charlemagne- as my father said- you’re talking like a… man with a paper mache ass.” The original expression is “a fat man with a paper mache ass”, which I censored at the last second.

“Your father is a Catholic who trucks sheet rock around rural counties for other rednecks who pay for it with welfare checks…”

“Don’t talk about my family.”

“You can FUCK your family, and you are my GUEST and will throw you out in the COLD and you will tell me what I WANT to hear and not what you THINK. And don’t you ever talk about my ass. Fags have given the world all its art and culture and money and what has heterosexuality ever given us? I’ll TELL you! An ABORTION DOCTOR and a TAMPON SALESMAN and a VAGINA SALESWOMAN selling herself for the price of a MAN’S HOUSE and BABYCLOTHES and JARS OF BABYFOOD and a TRICYCLE.”

“I’ve thought of it that way, too, but it’s time for me to go to bed.” It’s true- I’ve heard priests conceding with a mournful asterisk that at least homosexuality doesn’t lead to abortion. I get up and get ready for bed. He’s still awake, and I don’t want him to hear the sounds of me packing my bags tonight, so I decide to do it early the next morning, taking everything essential with me. I get in the sleeping bag on the floor and try to sleep, but there is too much to think about- where will I sleep now? There still is a seven-day gap before the apartment at Oktiabrskoe Pole opens up. What is going to happen here? Clearly, he will not give me my money back, and grappling with a 180-kilo gay man is just too much effort for the 2500 rubles he owes me. My eyes ache with exhaustion but sleep doesn’t come until 230. At 4 I wake up to the sound of burps coming from the toilet- after last night’s talk he is vomiting out his ass- and go back to sleep, waking up at 6:15. I understand that I won’t have enough time to gather my things and secretly move out. I brush my teeth, put on my dirty clothes, and try to drink two coffees but only manage to get down part of one before it’s time to go. I don’t even have most of my books with me when we walk out together to the marshrutkas.

When we get in, I smell vodka on the breath of one of the passengers and decide to pique Charlemagne’s sensitivity about Russophobia.

“Charlemagne, man you smell that? This early in the morning. It’s a good thing this is a non-smoking marshrutka, can you imagine what would happen if he smoked after that much spirit? He would ignite and his guts would bust out, it’d look like calamari hanging down over his belt, can you imagine it, they’d be flash-frozen in the wind from the steppe, he could walk around like that for hours before anything bad happened, it would only thaw in time for the business lunch at obenihana, he could flop them up on the steel desk with his dick and fry himself himself. You have to admit, that would be a healthy lunch!”

Charlemagne laughs a little nervously. I wonder if he’s smart enough to know he’s being mocked.

Charlemagne

Worry

All day I have been worried about Charlemagne's upcoming kissing party. The idea of a bunch of writhing and slurping men is bad enough, but what if it leads to sex? I just don’t want to be there. I tell Tamara what’s up, and she texts me back:

Don’t go there! Friend!

I ring the doorbell downstairs to be let in. When I knock on the door the apartment, he opens and is standing there in his shorts and t-shirt holding a martini. His eyes are bloodshot.

“Hey, Charlemagne.”

He stands in the doorway leering at me and then lets me past. No one else is around. This is not good. I walk straight to the bathroom and he follows me in. There is no toilet in the bathroom proper, which is a relief, because being followed into a room with a toilet is definitely worse than being followed into one without. I start to brush my teeth while Charlemagne stands next to me, far enough that he won’t feel like a creep to himself.

“I don’t even like American boys!” I can see in my peripheral vision that his face is distorted with anger and has changed color.

“Neither do I,” I say through toothpaste foam, quickly withdrawing the brush from my mouth.

“We can never be together!” He makes a fist, raises it above his head and slams it full force on the washing machine.

“You’re right.” I spit out the toothpaste and striding out of the bathroom tell him, “I’m pretty beat, man, I’m gonna hit the hay.”

I let a safe amount of time elapse and crack my bedroom door open. I have a straight view down the hall to the front half of his bed. He’s laying there with the lights all on, the TV on with the sound off, awkwardly on his side with his neck and head drooping down onto his shoulder. It has to be terrible for his back. Come to think of it, he also carries all his books in a duffle bag that he carries with one arm.

I’m not afraid, but that doesn’t mean I’ll sleep tonight.

Xenophobia.

Gays in Moscow Part 5

After work- in Charlemagne's kitchen

“How did you end up in Moscow, Charlemagne?”

“You know, I was in Poland for several years. The men were very beautiful but they really hate Russians. I hate Russophobia.”

“You fear Russophobes so you came to Russia? This is where a Russophobe’s dreams come true.”

“I hear all these people here complaining about Russians and how bad Russians are and I think they should just go home to their own country if it’s so much better.”

“True enough. But this is not an easy place to live. The key is to carve out your own comfortable space and not leave it. Where are you from?”

“Georgia.”

“What about your parents? Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No, I only had my mother and she died awhile ago. I hate Americans who come here and complain about how corrupt it is here. If they could see how my mother died! The hospital kept her alive as long as we kept paying, then there was Medicaid, then it ran out and they knew it wasn’t worth their time so they killed her. I will never go back to the US.”

“Don’t you have friends there?”

“I have friends everywhere. I’m here to find the man of my dreams and play house with him for the rest of our lives.”

“But this is Russia. The men are a wreck.”

“I have always loved Slavic men, and especially Russians. I love their hair and their eyes, so much variety, I love their pouty lips!”

“The men are a wreck. Look at them. And the people are generally dishonest, you have to admit that. We could explain the causes all day, but the results are clear. You can’t trust.”

“You are SO right! They’re like white Gypsies!”

“They are also very homophobic. That you can’t deny. I can’t see how that works for you.”

“They are until I just take them. They are always ready, just like me. Sometimes in the train these Soviet babushkas see me coming onto men, they see our penises get so hard when we look at each others’ crotches and faces and bodies and they growl at us” –he growls libidinously- “and they get so jealous of the fags in the wagon because they know I’ll never fuck a babushka. I want to find a middle class man and live together with him for the rest of our lives. I also like to have some fun. Tomorrow night I’m going to have a kissing party, I just invite over a bunch of my fag friends and we start drinking cocktails and lay on the couch and just kiss each other, anyone can take anyone from anyone.”

“How old are these men?”

“Like me, or a little younger. I am the one who wears the pants. I do NOT take it in the ass, that’s the bottom’s job and I am NOT into that,” he says as he washes my coffee cup for me.

The idea that this man could get laid had not occurred to me. I don’t know if that’s a plus or minus for the remaining time I’ll spend here- his getting porked by other men could be a release of energy he might have in store for me, or it could be the occasion for an invitation I don’t want. In any case it means unwelcome noise- if these lovers are not just all in his head. I have seen him in the office before, completely flushed in the way a man can be only when he has a lover, so it can’t be complete fiction. I can’t go back to either Elena’s or Andrei and Julia’s, and am too cheap to stay in a hotel, so I will just have to be careful tomorrow.

I get it- Charlemagne sniffs out repressed, self-hating middle-aged homosexuals and impetuously embraces them. Since they’ve never been touched by another man, they become terribly aroused and fall for him. They’re elated. For the next three weeks things are good- then they understand through associating with him that there is a hidden gay world in Moscow and that they can be with a man who talks and weighs less.

Incident

I wake up the next day at 4 to snapping reports from the toilet being muffled by the man sitting on it. I try to go back to sleep, but again I can hear him murmuring in the shower. I want to know what he’s saying, so I get up and creep out as slowly and quietly as possible towards the bathtub. Remaining absolutely motionless by the door, I hear him saying, “Nigger, you wanna wash my feet? Come on nigger, you gonna wash my feet? That’s right, nigger, you ain’t got the right to wash my feet. You ain’t got the right to kiss my feet.” It’s a strain to stay so motionless. 

The floor creaks. Charlemagne gasps. “Who’s there?”

I feign a groggy voice. “Just me, man, going to the can, man.”

Gays in Moscow Part 4

First Morning at Charlemagne’s

At four AM, I hear an 800-ruble eructation coming from the toilet right next to my door. I went to bed at a decent hour, about 11, but slept poorly. I wait for him to flush, hoping it all went down, get out of my bag, put on some shorts and a shirt, and go to the toilet myself. Charlemagne, already chipper and alert, is spooning soft cat food into a bowl for Juju. The twenty-one bowls of dry food are just for show! I go back to my sleeping bag, but can hear him murmuring to himself while he takes a bath and I lay with aching eyes until 530. By 615 we’re both outside in the freezing cold. The bus stops are all vacant- instead there are clumps of people walking on the sidewalks towards the marshrutkas so they can get in slightly before the others and not have to ride in a full bus. As a result of everyone moving though, it’s a zero-sum game.

As we’re riding, traffic is already picking up and sometimes the driver zooms onto the edge of the road to get past a bottleneck. When we arrive at metro Vyhino, there is a huge clod of humanity marching lockstep through the doors on the platform in a pace forced by everyone else at the same time. When the first train arrives, everyone surges forward as much as it is possible to; we wait for the second train so we have a place to sit, and when the doors open me and Charlemagne are shoulder to shoulder with a third passenger, creating an immobile plug in the doorway. The people behind us create tremendous pressure, though, until abruptly we break forward into the wagon, staggering and laughing, and snatch up our seats. I arrive one hour early for work, as predicted. Charlemagne has another forty minutes to ride- our school has a monopoly on his time, and even though makes them a huge profit and accepts a lower salary, they give him the worst schedule. It’s his fault for accepting it.