Well, unless Collounsbury shows up we may only get the Russian Whorepart of the tale, as it evolved in this thread. Confident that I can reliably count upon other readers urging Collounsbury to drop by and share about the Japanese fuck chick and her camel master (looks like the camels have been deprived of their hump monopoly), I’ve included his salacious allusions in this thread’s title.
Coll, please think of the gigantic opportunity this represents for you to unload all of those pent up deviant sexual references you used to (ever so justifiably) sprinkle through out your posts of old. You’re here in the pit, relax, let go, let the perverse invective flow like it used to. We’re more than ready for it.
Come on folks, give Coll the confidence he needs to regale us with his Depraved Desert Dementia Declamation.
Eve Luna, trot out of the batter’s box and step up to the plate. It’s time for your languishing Leningrad Lady of the Evening Legend to be told.
Anyone else, if you have something even remotely related to the thread title, feel free to drop in and pad your post count with an account of it.
I keep getting spam advertising ‘Hot Young Russian Brides’. I, being a young woman with no particular desire for a bride (Russian or not), forwarded them to my boyfriend – I figure that he, being Russian, might be able to explain why I am such a Slavic chick magnet.
OK, sorry I’m late: had to take Mom out for dinner like the Dutiful Daughter I am on Mother’s Day (hey, I have to fake it at least once a year).
Leningrad 1989, November 7, the 72nd anniversary of the Great October Soviet Socialist Revolution. I am in the midst of a wild and wacky semester in Russia, and I’ve picked just the semester for it, as the East Bloc is crumbling all around us.
I’ve spent the day with some friends at the parade, where we were treated to the spectacle of balllistic missiles and tanks rolling through the center of town, past the Hermitage, Leningrad State University, and down the Neva River past some lovely but dilapidated 18th-century buildings. We had absolutely no control over where we went, as the crowd pretty much decided our movements for us, in conjunction with various 17-year-old soldiers with really big guns.
Later that night, a large, burly North Caucasian friend named Anzor decides he will show me and my friend Rachel how Soviets really party. Anzor has major hots for Rachel, and Rachel tries her best to tolerate him, with varying degrees of success, because he does always manage to take us to some interesting places. My large, burly North Caucasian boyfriend has gone home to Derbent for the holiday, and I am under strict orders from Anzor not to tell Nazim that he and I have been hanging out, especially with alcohol involved, because in spite of the hardcore macho North Caucasian honor code of not stealing your friend’s girlfriend, Nazim trusts Anzor not at all. (Soviets basically screw like bunny rabbits; Rachel and I had a long talk about this that weekend. Not that there was a shortage of casual dorm sex in the U.S., but in Russia it’s different; the parties barely acknowledge each other the next day. Rachel and I conclude that somehow in a place where you never know who you can trust, mindless flings are a way to be intimate without really being intimate. Combined with legendary shortages and poor quality of condoms, this makes for lots of abortions. But I digress.)
Anyway, we leave our dorm, which if oyu know Leningrad, is down the block frm the Pribaltiiskaya Hotel, a brand-new Soviet/Finnish joint venture Intourist hotel, and the only place in the damn city where one can get a decent cup of coffee. It was also the hangout for Finnish businessmen to pick up beautiful and sleazy Russian hookers, who would bribe the hotel security to let them into the building, although nobody was supposed to be allowed in unless you were a guest of the hotel. My fellow students and I frequently had to argue with security to get in, because it was also the only place one could legally exchange hard currency or cash a travleer’s check; once we were in, we would get a cup of coffe and engage in our favorite sport of Spot-the-Hooker.
Anyway, we leave the dorm and are walking to the party, which is in another dorm a mile or so away. My Russian was pretty fractured at the beginning of the semester, but is making rapid progress, albeit with a strong North Caucasian accent (the boyfriend and all; somehow, no matter where I am, I manage to find North Caucasians. I think I was one in a previous life or something). So I ask Anzor, just as we are walking by a rather drunk little old Russian lady, what I sound like when I speak Russian; I must have some kind of an accent, but it distinctively American, or is it maybe influenced by Spanish, which I learned first and which was my undergrad major?
Before he can answer me, the little old lady walks right up to me, drooling and spitting cheap vodka fumes, and tells me “What the fuck are you talking about? You don’t have any accent; you’re one of our girls!” I tell her that this is impossible, Russian is my 4th language and I know I have a long way to go before I feel comfortable in it, but I’m trying really hard. Anzor is busting a gut laughing. The lady continues to yell at me and wag her finger; she obviously thinks I’ve done somethign wrong, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what. Is she making fun of my Russian or something?
(I should explain about little old Russian ladies. Don’t be deceived by their appearance; they are really not frail at all. The ones who survived the WWII siege of Leningrad are especially tought. I have had the misfortune to wait in grocery lines for them for some then-scarce item, like, say, oranges in midwinter. If they think you’re trying to cut in line, they WILL break your ribs.)
I keep asking the lady for clarifications, and it’s very difficult to understand her, as she is quite drunk, drooling, spitting, and reeking of bathtub vodka, so I don’t want to get too close. (Russian moonshine is called *samogon, * which literally means “self-fire,” and with good reason. It was also the main reasoning behind the sugar rationing of that period, as people would brew booze with whatever they could lay their hands on in order to avoid state-set shortages and high prices for vodka.) Anzor is still laughing so hard I think he’s going to bust his bladder, and I’m getting nowhere with this lady, and she keeps insisting that I have no accent in Russian, which I know is impossible, and she keeps telling me to stop faking and putting on airs. Finally she wanders off, drooling and mumbling to her breath about Russian girls who want to be something other than what they are, and why isn’t being Soviet good enough for them?
Anzor picks himself up out of the snow, and we start walking again. I ask him what the hell just happened? and he explains that our drunken Soviet interlocutor has apparently mistaken me for one of the fine young Soviet working girls who ply their trade in the Pribaltiiskaya, but thinks that I’ve tried to add a touch of sophistication and thereby increase my market value by putting on a foreign accent.
For such a wondrous tale of misanthropic interlocutory madness I would recode the entire Active Index of my recipe thread (not really). By setting such a sterling (as in Tanqueray Sterling vodka, that is) example, we can only hope to prod, shame, goad or otherwise humiliate Coll into spilling his intestinal-like objects about the desert oasis humpfest.
Again, any of you with similar tales of misplaced sexual or psychotic woe, please check in with the front desk for processing.
Awwww, **Collounsbury,[/] c’mon! Exercise your literary aspirations!
I promise, if you do, I’ll come up with some other wacky Soviet or post-Soviet tale. Maybe the one about how I almost ended up being named Eva Lavrentieva Ramazanova. Or maybe the one about the attempts of the Kabardino-Balkarian wresling team to spirit me away from Helsinki to Atlanta for the weekend.
I’m not in a literary frame right now, the bare bones revolve around one of the Japanese tourists taking a liking to one of the Sanhaja camel masters and exploring the desert sensuality.
Given we were 100s of km from anything, in dead silence of the Sahara (ex camel grunting a most unlovely sound if I may say so myself) and given the young Japanese lady was of an exhuberent turn, we were all most aware of their activities. Oddly she chose to express herself in English, I suppose the common tongue between them, and in some fairly entertaining turns of phrase.
However, this went on rather a long time, and me being something of an impatient person, I finally decided to express my displeasure with her expressing herself. Not that it was not initially amusing (although I wonder if she realized to what degree sound carried, tents being just tents after all. I won’t bother to translate what I said, insofar as it won’t make any sense in translation, but I was very rude to the camel guy. Mind you this was only after several rounds, I support international relations on reasonable terms you know, but I needed to get sleep for the trek, and her bleating was beginning to get on my nerves, although come to think of it, it might have been the sheer stupidity of it more than the volume. It’s been a while.
12 posts - 700 views. The title of the thread is definitely a winner.
I have never seen Coll so laconic. One thinks maybe there is some resentment that the Japanese fuck chick would choose to fuck a camel herder over a sophisticated world traveler.
Sound does carry over open spaces, but only when you don’t want it. Countless times I have dropped anchor in some scenic spot only to have one or more boats drop anchor nearby and then, even though they may be 100 yards away, you can hear them like they are in the same room. Of course, it does not work the same way if you actually want to be heard. The bow is a mere 30 feet from where I am but no matter how loud I shout the person there will not hear or understand what I am saying (which then leads to acrimonious arguments where every word is heard and remembered for ever).
I am afraid my refined tastes do not run to rich Japanese fuck chicks, under almost any circumstances. It is actually one of my favorite tales to tale, in bars and the like, but I just did not have the time to craft the proper telling. I am sure Scylla could do better with the same material although my memory fades as to her actual turns of phrase. They were, in any case, unique, and I fully supported one the brothers getting some, given the god foresaken job of herding spoiled idjits round dunes and the like, (although the popularity of Nordic travellers in the region seems partly connected with the reputed willingness of Nordics to tip in a very physical sort of way.)
But **Collounsbury, ** isn’t creative writing much more fun than arguing with/about december? Maybe you’re more ornery than I thought. Given the sketchy camel facts above, I don’t see how embellishing the story would undermine your image; quite the opposite. Just what kind of image do you think you have, anyway?
Well, I always deliver what I promise, so here is another random and surreal post-Soviet tale, and further evidence that no matter where I go, I always manage to end up with North Caucasians…maybe it will inspire others to share, too.
August 1995, on a Finnair flight, the Helsinki to New York leg of a much longer journey home from Siberia. I’ve just spent the past ten weeks in sleep-deprived Russian dorm hell; thanks to the generosity of a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, I’ve just completed a summer grad program in Russian for the social sciences, held at lovely Novosibirsk State University. If I ever express interest in going to Russia on an organized academic program again, please handcuff me until I change my mind. In spite of the promise of high-level academic training in analysis of technical literature, most of the group has 1-2 years of college Russian, plus they are mostly 19-year-old undergrads who take full advantage of the availability of cheap alcohol, get drunk, and keep me up all night. Plus most of the actual Russians were gone for the summer, and so although it was nice to be in Akademgorodok, the university campus an hour bus ride outside of Novosibirsk (Novosibirsk is a vile and filthy Soviet-era military industrial city, so if you never get there, you aren’t missing much), it wasn’t much of a cultural experience that time around. In an attempt to house us somewhere where the plumbing actually worked, they put us in a building that is normally used as a sanatorium for tubercular children. Plus there was one telephone for the 40 of us, and since I was one of the few who spoke halfway functional Russian, they put it in my room. With the 11-hour time difference to the East Coast, people would call to talk to their kids whenever they could, so it was extremely rare that I got more than 3-4 hours of sleep at a time.
Anyway, I love Russia, but by the time we left I was a) feeling stupid that I hadn’t taken my ex-boyfriend up on an offer to set me up an informal internship at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow instead of doing this stupid program, even if it was fully funded; and b) really, really glad to go home and sleep in an actual bed. There is only 1 flight a day from Novosibirsk to Moscow, and the morons who organize the program have arranged an itinerary which involves leaving the dorm at 4:00 in the morning and arriving in Moscow noonish at on airport at the same time we are all supposed to be on the other side of town at the other airport boarding an international flight (you try getting 40 American college students and all their luggage through Moscow traffic instantaneously). After a hair-raising bus ride, we arrive at the other airport to discover that there is a 2-3 hour line to go through Customs (in Russia you have to go through Customs on the way out as well as on the way in, to make sure you aren’t removing art treasures or uranium or something). I argue with the Customs agent for a minute, as he can’t understand why I have an entire suitcase filled with 30 kg of books (books are cheap in Russia, and hey, I was a graduate student), and finally we board the plane, 2 hours late. It’s a short flight to Helsinki, but as I get up to use the bathroom, I end up being trapped behind the Finnish flight attendant as she serves lunch. She comes to a row of Turkish businessmen who are quite concerned about the possible pork content of lunch, and as she speaks only Finnish and English, and they speak only Turkish and Russian, I end up interpreting, which is challenging as a) their Russian is rather bizarre, and b) the flight attendant doesn’t understand the pork issue. All I want to do is sleep, but it seems this is not to be.
Anyway, we fly over a lovely Finnish evergreen forest and into Helsinki, and after an hour layover board the next flight leg, Helsinki-NYC. I am practically hallucinating by this point from exhaustion, but as I stow my carryon under the seat, I notice a HUUUUUGE guy in the seat in front of me unloading what seems to be crates of food into the overhead compartment. He is about 8 feet wide at the shoulders, all muscle, and is unloading bottles of Dagestani cognac (scary stuff; you could degrease an engine with it), whole sausages and roasted chickens, loaves of bread…since I doubt U.S. Customs will let him bring in Russian sausages, I am wondering what exactly he is planning to do with all this stuff over the 8-hour flight to NY. The nice elderly Jewish couple from Brooklyn is also quite fascinated by this spectacle, and he notices them watching him, and as soon as we take off he tries with hand gestures to offer them a shot of cognac. Of course they don’t have a language in common either, so I offer to translate. Noticing his accent, I ask him where he’s from…of course, it’s the North Caucasus, Vladikavkaz specifically. He is a nationally ranked wrestler, on his way to a tournament in Atlanta, and the entire rest of the Kabardino-Balkarian wrestling team is in the smoking section in the back of the plane. (He is quite annoyed that there is no room for him there, since he wants to smoke, but he accepts his fate for the moment, figuring he’ll go stand in the aisle with his teammates later to smoke.)
Some other wrestlers come up and engage the nice Jewish couple from Brooklyn in conversation, and the first wrestler guy tears each chicken apart limb from limb and shoves it into his mouth. The team is impressed by my ability to interpret while sleep-deprived, and things are getting interesting as the nice Jewish guy from Brooklyn really doesn’t hold his liquor well. The wrestlers are amazed that an American has ever heard of Kabardino-Balkaria, and offer me a job interpreting for them in Atlanta; when I initially refuse, they drag me back to the smoking section for further negotiations. I am asthmatic, so this is sheer hell, plus I am not at all convinced that the job opportunity they are offering me is vertical rather than horizontal. Plus my dad is waiting for me at JFK (he lives in Queens), and I have no idea how I would explain to him that his impressionable daughter, the 5’1” geeky grad student, is running off to Atlanta for a week with the very large and imposing North Caucasian wrestling team. And I really am quite sleep-deprived and want to go home, since I’m at this point at about 36 hours awake and three asleep.
Finally I extricate myself from the smoking section and go back to my seat, just as the plane starts its descent into NY. The coach gives me his business card (which I still probably have somewhere); of course, he’s also in the import-export business. It was an adventure, but I’ve never been so glad to see the international terminal at JFK.
Silly me, and here I was thinking it was the camel drivers giving who were providing the tips.
I can safely say that, for once, we have seen an aspect of brevity in Coll’s writing which rarely surfaces elsewhere at these boards.
Viewing Eve Luna’s lengthy and numerous contributions, I suppose its up to me for some sort of continuation in this pervus maximus vein.
[Bonzo Dog Doh Dah Band]
I want to get you in my tent, tent, tent, tent …
so we can experiment, ment, ment, ment, ment …
'Cause you know I’m very bent, bent, bent, bent …
Let’s do the tango in my tent!
[/Bonzo Dog Doh Dah Band]
This reminds me very little of a delightful young lady with whom I spent several years in my youth. We had recently met for the first time and to my great consternation, she had relatively little camping experience. My friends had planned an outing in Yosemite National Park and since she had not been there for some years, I figured it would be the exact ticket for reintroducing her back into the wilds (as it were). A date was set with the gang for a month or two later which I promptly filed and forgot about.
A Sunday or two thereafter an advertisement in the entertainment section of the San Francisco Chronicle caught my eye. The Dave Grisman Quintet was going to open for Stephan Grappelli, the master jazz violinist. The show was going to be at one of San Francisco’s most intimate venues, The Great American Music Hall. It’s illustrious history nearly dates back to the Great 1906 earthquake. Here are some details about it:
Grappelli was a veritable legend from the days of his work with Django Reinhardt and Grisman’s group was rocketing up the charts along with the popularity of their ‘dawg’ style newgrass music. I figured it would be a splendid first concert for us to go see together (fear not, this all connects up eventually). It promised to be a fabulous Friday night in Moscow by the Bay.
Tickets were purchased and several weeks passed until the impending date drew near. I mentioned to my friends how we were attending the concert and told them they might want to purchase tickets too. To my consternation they quietly pointed out how it was the exact same weekend as the Yosemite camp out.
Being young and dumb and full of … erm … plums, yes … plums! I felt it was within our scope to make both events. The concert date arrived and we scurried up the peninsula early to fit in a delectable dinner at the Tadich Grill. My lover said her Uncle had known the Buich brothers while he ran a bar in the Sunset District and always recommended The Tadich highly. We were not disappointed in the least. She had her first grilled swordfish ever and I ordered the fresh water baby salmon. Please imagine a whole salmon, less than one foot long, grilled to perfection and served up piping hot on your plate. This is what a trout dreams of being on a good night.
Our degustation and imbibing complete, we made tracks for the music hall. Grisman opened the show with a bang. At that time his group included Mark O’Conner, the rising young prodigy on violin. I’ll give you an idea of his skill level. Fiddler’s Green is the annual bluegrass competition. The legend went that O’Connor had won it so many times in a row that they purposely changed the rules to prevent him from winning once again. We were not to be disappointed in the least. This rising young star blew the roof of the place and jet propelled Grisman’s mandolin madness with his furious bowing. At times it seemed as if he was going to saw the instrument right in half on stage before us.
After a few numbers, they introduced a touring compatriot named Tiny. This guy was anything but tiny. A towering 300 pound hulk, the mandolin looked like a miniature toy in his gargantuan hands. He proceeded to light up the joint with astonishingly virtuoso work and Grisman’s crew brought down the house with “Ricochet” and other big hits of the time. After some rousing encores they closed the opening set and the lights went down.
Finally, it was time for the master to take the stage. One touch of his bow upon the strings and the entire hall knew that magic was in the air. Grappelli made it excruciatingly clear who held the reins as king of the fiddlers. He was in top form and steered his group on a careening course through swing, jazz and all points in between. To the audience’s great surprise and equal pleasure, it was Stephan’s birthday. We were presented with a spectacular gift to celebrate it with. While his band took a well deserved break, Grappelli sauntered across the stage and took a seat at the resident grand piano. He then proceeded to regale us all with a fantastic workout on the old ivories.
As if that were not enough, his band assumed their places once more with a new addition to the group. Mark O’Connor came out on stage and stood elbow to elbow with Stephan in the footlights. In a scene reminiscent of the ‘book people’ from Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” Grappelli began with a passage and O’Connor would repeat it with embellishment. One could almost see the torch being passed to a new generation. As the musical ball crossed back and forth over the staves, both master and prodigy would ‘English’ each passage with even more melodic topspin. Finally, as the theme was beginning to consist entirely of sixty-fourth notes, the two of them coalesced into a stunning duet while rosin smoke from their bows drifted up into the rafters. It was a show of shows and one for the books.
The midnight hour was approaching as we two young lovers staggered out to the car. Already loaded (the car, not us) with camping equipment we headed east into the starlit night. Four hours later, the moon was down as we finally pulled up to our group’s campground in Yosemite. While she shook out the sleeping bags I set up my trusty Sierra Designs glacier tent in complete darkness. We both collapsed into each other’s arms and a near comatose slumber.
A few hours later, brilliant sunlight was pouring through the pine trees and songbirds were heralding the new morning’s arrival with a rollicking chorus of chirps and twitters. Slowly awakening in each other’s arms, there came the dawning realization that we had neglected to make love the night before. We immediately set about to remedy this dire oversight for fear of any blemish upon our spotless track record of furious and passionate dalliance.
Little known to us as we had pitched the tent earlier that night, our location was a mere stone’s throw from the center of camp. We emerged from my trusty tent and sought out mugs of hot coffee Kioki being mixed at the picnic table. Slowly but surely my friends began hinting at how they had rather forcibly restrained themselves from applauding when us two had (evidently, rather noisily) hit the finish line inside my tent. As we scoffed down omelets and pan fried sausages my girlfriend looked over to me and enthusiastically stated just how much she liked camping out. It was merely the start of many exciting tent adventures to follow.
[fade out to Bonzo Dog Doh Dah Band]
I want to get you in my tent, tent, tent, tent …
so we can experiment, ment, ment, ment, ment …
'Cause you know I’m very bent, bent, bent, bent …
Let’s do the tango in my tent!
