Along the way, we took turns hitting the driver with birch twigs, ostensibly to improve his circulation, but in reality because it is impossible to end an evening in Russia without assaulting someone. “Now I feel as if we’re in an old-fashioned hansom cab,” said Valentin, “and we’re hitting the driver for going too slow…Faster, driver! Faster!”
“Please, sir,” pleaded Mamudov, “it is already difficult to drive on these roads, even without being whipped.”
“No one has ever called me ‘sir’ before,” Valentin spoke in wonderment. “Opa, you scoundrel!” he screamed, flailing the driver once more.
I took them around my apartment, a gorgeous art nouveau lair built in 1913 (generally acknowledged as the last good year in Russia’s history), rife with pale ceramic tile and prized oriel windows that captured and teased what remained of the evening light. With each passing room, Valentin and the whores would experience a mild seizure, the young monarchist Web designer whispering, “So this is how it is…So this is how they live.”
I parked them in my library, the bookshelves creaking with my dead papa’s books, the collected texts of the great rabbis, the Cayman Islands Banking Regulations, Annotated in Three Volumes, and the ever-popular A Hundred and One Tax Holidays. Servants appeared with carafes of vodka. Elizaveta Ivanovna was threatening to play the accordion for us, and Valentin was inciting the daughter to quote at will from the major philosophers, but by the time an accordion was finally produced and a copy of Voltaire cracked open, my guests had fallen asleep on top of each other. Valentin had stuck his big potato nose inside Lyudmila Petrovna’s substantial cleavage and placed his arms around her hips as if they were dancing a nocturnal waltz.
I had never seen a man cry in his sleep before.
10
porkyrussianlover@heartache.com
I left my guests and entered the dimly lit replica of Dr. Levine’s office, fished my laptop out from under my Mies van der Rohe daybed, and fired Rouenna an electronic message across the ether:
hi pretty baby. its misha. wondering why u haven’t written back 2 me 4 so long. tonite chillin with some russian homies (remember how we used to chill?). you’d like 2 of these girlz, they real ghetto. remember how u used to roll up our socks at the laundromat. i miss u.
much luv (4 real)
misha aka snack dad aka porky russian lover
p.s. hope u r doing good in school. anybody special in yr life? lemme know
p.p.s. maybe you can come to p-burg 4 xmas break. maybe u+i can chill?!
I was about to enjoy my nightly single malt fired up with 2.5 milligrams of Ativan when an incoming message pinged across the screen. I let out a happy little yelp when I saw the overseas sender: rsales@hunter.cuny.edu. I thought of saving the message until the next day, knowing I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep with Rouenna’s words lodged like dum-dum bullets in my brain.
Rouenna’s missive was as shocking in style as in content. Gone were the hip-hop numeric abbreviations that we used to “conversate” with each other. Rouenna was trying to write like an educated young American woman, although her spelling and grammar were as arbitrary as anything on the corner of 173rd Street and Vyse.
Dear Misha,
First off, I’m really sorry it took me so long to answer your sweet, sweet letters to me. Your a good Boyfriend and I owe you everything, my hunter education, my dentalwork, all my Hopes and Dreams. I want you to know that I love you and I will never take you for granite. Second off, I’m sorry to be writing this letter right after your tragety with your father. I know it really effected you mentally. Who wouldnt feel Sad when someone so close to you gets killed like a dog.
Misha, I’ve been seeing Proffessor Shteynfarb. Please dont get mad at me. I now you dont like him, but he’s been a big help to me, not just “a shoulder to cry on” but an Inspiration. He works so hard, always writing and teaching and going to conferences in miami and holding office hours really late because some students have work in the day or babies. Proffessor Shteynfarb had a hard life being an immigrant so he knows about hard work. All the students like him because he take us serious. And no offense but you never really worked hard or did anything because your so rich and thats ONE BIG DIFERENCE between us.
Proffessor Shteynfarb says I have self as-steam issues because no one in my family ever encouraged me to show my intelligence and all they think about is how to get by and stay out of trouble and take care of there babies. I tell him you did, that you told me to get my GED and go to hunter and that you told my mother and grandmothers and brothers and sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts not to yell at me or talk about all the Mistakes I’d done in the past, like working at that tity bar.
He says yes thats true but that you always veiwed me from the Position of a Colonialist Oppresor. You always secretly look down at me. I tried to talk to you so many times about my Writing when I was in russia but you never seemed to listen. Its always you you you. Your ignoring me just like my family and thats going to hurt my self as-steam. Also Proffessor Shteynfarb said its wrong when you throw your shoe at your servant (I’m sorry, but I think thats true). Also he says its wrong when you an your friend alosha try to do your rapping and pretend your from the ghetto because thats also being a Colonialist. He gave me a book by Edward Said, which is super hard, but its worth it.
Proffessor Shteynfarb is making an Anthology of immigrant writing and he says my story about how they burnt our house down in morrisania is going to be the pizza resistance of the whole book. I love you so much, Misha. I dont want to hurt you. I always dream of your arms around me and your weird kui in my mouth. (I said ‘kui’ to Proffessor Shteynfarb and he said that russian women dont ever use such bad words, and that I was real naughty, ha ha ha!) But lets face it, your in russia and I’m in America and their never going to let you out, so for all intensive purposes were not really together. If you want to stop paying my hunter tuition I would understand, although I would have to go back to work in the tity bar. But I hope you still love me and want to do right by me and not hurt my self as-steam anymore.
Loves & Hugs & Big Wet Kisses,
P.S. I just want you to know that the thing with Proffessor Shteynfarb was mutual and that he wasnt trying to kick it to me or to any of the girls in class. He says he feels bad about being in a position of authritarity over me but that were equal in a sense because I grew up impovrished and he’s a big immigrant.
I carefully closed the laptop, waited for a beat, then threw it across the room, shattering a replica of one of Dr. Levine’s wigwam photographs. I put a pillow around my face because I didn’t want to see and then covered my ears with the flaps of my arms because I didn’t want to hear. But there was nothing to see or hear—the room was static and silent except for the whirring of my insulted laptop. I ambulated past the library where the artist Valentin and the hookers were splayed out over one another, empty vodka carafes lazing by their feet. “I am the most generous man in the world,” I said aloud as I looked at the sleeping Russians, their stomachs filled with the expensive food I had bought them. “And anyone who doesn’t understand that is a stupid, ungrateful bitch.”