Generation Idiot
I've been told by many, including my overachieving mother, that my problem is that I hold people to an unrealistically high standard. Yes, I think we all agree to that especially regarding my dating history. I mean what else would dating an alcoholic unemployed Russian, a trucker, a bouncer, a speed freak, and a dog walker reflect if it wasn't a continuing drive towards idealistic excellence?


This summer was continually complimented on my insight into the Aeneid which would have been a lot more gratifying if it wasn't for the fact that I was the only one who read it. Yesterday, L'Enfant Terrible was burbling on about her third book this year getting published when I interrupted her to inform the meeting about what Barbara Bush said about the improverished survivors of NOLA disaster. (I felt comfortable interrupting her as I had been hearing about her book for a week.) L' Enfant Terrible with a totally straight face said "Who is Barbara Bush?" We actually had to tell her who Barabara Bush was. Crickey she's about as well informed as that poor fool in the DHS who referred to Louisiana as a city. But at least we know that NONE of her books are about national politics.


Today L'Enfant Terrible sees me at the copier and says, "So what is Paradise Lost about?" "It's the retelling of the first three books of Genesis. Why?" "Well because I have to teach it. I am going to be spending a lot of time in your office." Right because why should a university hire somebody who actually, you know, reads what he/she expects the students to read when you hire someone to buy the cliff notes and use my intellectual prowess.


I think I should charge her 85 dollars an hour as a "consulting fee." And maybe an extra twenty for idiot tax.

A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action
I am not putting anything Russian in me ever ever again.


Honestly I've been boycotting Russian products for months now, which isn't such a big deal as it largely consists of switching from Stolichnaya to Grey Goose. Of course, Captain Hot was exempt from this rule. Until now. If he got on his lousy Russian knees and begged to give me oral pleasure for hours I would spurn him as I would spurn my Aunt Orca's roadkill surprise souffle.


Yesterday I was hanging out outside my favorite coffee place, the Lion's Den. I had been battling a summer cold, coughing and snorting, telling myself that I'm not really that sick. Of course, it's easy to believe that you're not really that sick when all you're doing is lying on the couch with a cat on your lap watching
Sin City over and over again. But I decided to test my hypothesis and went grocery shopping. Any idea I had about not being that sick was quashed when I attempted to navigate the store with a cart and started getting vertigo in the soup aisle. On my way home, I stopped at the Lion's Den to sit when my phone started ringing.


The Asshat with an Accent commented when he was breaking up with me that I have a talent for picking ringtones which capture the spirit of the person calling. Interestingly he nevered inquired about his own ringtone, Mozart's Fifth Symphony.


My phone started with Mozart's Fifth. "Who in the wide wide world of sports could be calling with that tone?" I thought to myself. After all I had erased AA's number months ago.


It was Captain Hot.


Mozart's Fifth was UDR's ringtone originally. When AA came along, I gave it to him. Now it is Captain Hot. I forgot it was the ringtone of the Designated Russian Boy Toy.


I picked up the phone and attempted to talk to him, but he didn't understand me (Yes, we have no bananas all over again.) So I switched to my pidgin Russian. I can't tell you how cool it makes me feel to take a call in a foreign language on the street. Truly I am a harlot for all countries.


In his pidgin English, Captain Hot asked me for a drink later. As I said before, this is not a man to whom I would say "nyet" even if pieces of my face were falling off. So I said yes, and he said he would call later.


Say it with me one time, won't you, every epically huge mistake I ever made in my life seemed like a great idea at the time.


The first thing I did was go home and decide on what bath products I was going to use. Should I use my "You Snap the Whip" bath melt, "Sex Bomb" bath bomb, or "Something Wicked This Way Comes" bubble bath? It was a difficult choice. But Captain Hot always complains when I use body glitter, so Wicked was right out. I decided to go with Sex Bomb coupled with Two Timing Tart bubble bath. It seemed appropriate. (OK right there is an English professor moment-when even your bath products are selected for symbolic interpretation you know you have become "A Scholar.")


Next was the clothes consult. Rabid suggested I wear "that green top which shows everything." "Which one? The one from my birthday?" "Yeah." "You really think so? I think that's a little too over the top." "What exactly constitutes 'over the top' for you? Seriously." "OK but I'm not wearing the light up bunny ears."


As my ex boyfriend Perfessor Multi-Geek used to say "I am a contracts person" which in my case means if you call me and ask for drinks, I expect drinks, not cookies and tea, not borsht and vodka, fucking drinks. Is that really such an odd assumption?


By seven, I was beginning to get nervous. The Captain is not the most reliable guy by his own admission. For example, when he was married in Russia he would go out for five minutes and not come back for three days, which is the most gosh darnedest cigarette run I ever heard of. I mean you vanish on my ass for three days you better have a rip snorter of a narrative. It better involve international intrigue, alien abduction, and illegal uses of Pez dispensers and in that order.


My phone rings. It's Mata Hari.


Mata Hari is a lovely Asian woman who dances at my ballroom studio. It is impossible to hate her and lord knows I've tried. She is just one of those always sweet, always gracious, always thoughtful people who also happens to be almost fifty look like she's twelve and still fits into a size two. Again the urge to puke hot blood from my eyeballs.


She is calling from Jones Beach where she is with the Captain and Liev, another dance student who is also Russian. I control the disappointment in my voice. She is at the beach with the Captain, she is seeing him not only with his shirt off but sweaty and salty and oily and...ok let's just stop there.


"We're going to pick you up and take you downtown for borsht," Mata Hari says. So now it's not only that I got left out of the beach, but it's mouseketeer role call and NO DRINKS.


I call Rabid and give her the rundown. "You still gonna take a bath?" "Fuck that. I'm not wasting good bath product on group activities." Instead I take a shower and throw on Flying Fox shower gel and with a slathering of Fever perfume afterwards. Oh yeah, can you feel the temperature rising?



How To Have Borsht

First find two attractive Russian men. Don't ask me how, maybe put an ad on Craig's List or stumble around the sidewalks saying "Privet Komrade."


Next get one American woman. You're gonna need her alliance to get through the evening without stabbing someone in the head with a fork. Be sure to select a friend with a good tolerance for vodka.


Before you rendez-vous with any of these people pour yourself a double stoli nicely chilled. If you can't drink vodka straight, abort the whole evening right now. The vodka here isn't optional, it is your only hope of surviving the evening with anything vaguely ressembling sanity.


Head your asses down to the Olive Tree, on Macdougal in between West Third and Bleeker. It's above the Comedy Cellar and often frequent by Colin Quinn, which for members of my generation actually means something, and for the rest of you primitive screwheads has absolutely no meaning so don't worry about it. (Freakin' Muppet Baby watching generation doesn't know what it is missing.)


Order the Russian Borsht NOT the Jewish Borsht. Be sure to ask for the garlic on the side. Also order the shwarma.


According to Liev, Russians do not eat like other people. "We do not eat like the French or the Spanish" he explains. "We do not have appetizers and a main course. We have three things: borsht, then a meat course, then tea." Soup, main course, and tea doesn't sound too original to me, but what the hell, let 'em think they patented the idea.


Slather the pumpernickle bread with butter. "This is like tequila shot" the Captain says. He demonstrates by taking a bite of the bread with half a clove of garlic and then taking a spoon full of borsht. For me I always of borsht as a kind of fuscia cold soup, but Russian borsht, particularly done in the this way, is delicious. Go with me on this one. Just don't take a date there.

Don't Love Me That Much


In the cab ride to meet the Captain downtown, I regale Mata Hari and Liev with my stories of the Captain (ie banana eating english). I tell them how after a lesson, one of his students turned to me and said "You know, he really loves you."


I don't know what kind of sadistic mating rituals they have in Russia, but in the future no one is allowed to love me that much.


Liev and Mata sit on one side of the table and I sit on the other, with the Captain. He spreads himself out. He's a lot of man-a whole platter of hummus he is that Captain. He's the cuddly kind of muscular that makes me want to curl up in his lap and take a nap. Still I'm wishing he wasn't pressed up against me since he isn't interested.


The conversation between us wavers and I wonder, what did we have to say to each other that night we had drinks. We talked for four freakin' hours. Yet here I can only smile and nod. He's annoyed with me I can tell, but what can I do, the guy can't even understand English well enough for me to tell him I have no plans over the phone. What kind of conversation is he expecting?


Still he tests my Russian. He says something quickly to me and sees how much I understand. "What about my ass?" I ask him. "You eat only borsht, you're ass will get big and broad. Have some meat." Apparently this is some sort of Kaspian Sea diet. I have two forkfuls of meat. He watches me eat the borsht. I stop. "No keep eating. You need to eat more." Suddenly I am not sitting next to my improbably hot dance teacher in the Village, I'm sitting in Miami with my Grandmother. "Eat. Eat more-you're so thin."


Liev and the Captain embark on a conversation about how us Americans fuck everything up with ice. "You put way too much ice in drinks" Liev explains "The ice melts and what is it? Water. You have all this water in your drink." As if that had somehow escaped my attention the whole ice water relationship. For me. the whole melting is part of the how not to get too smashed drinking Grey Goose on the rocks equation. I count on that water. I smile now having been humbled by the superior russian anti ice rhetoric.


The Captain has now degenerated to treating me like a younger sister. He sticks toothpicks in his mouth like fangs and starts stabbing my shoulder with them. Then he tries to engage me in a toothpick sword fight. "This is what you get for having dinner with Cossacks" my father would have said. "First the french and now this. Jesus what the hell did I teach you?"


What he taught me is that I am perfectly happy as an only child, and I do not wish to have a huge Russian older brother.


Afterwards all of us walk through the park watching the rats skitter in their heroin enduced paranoia. I notice Liev and Mata Hari are holding hands.


Now I've gone from sexy drinks companion, to mouseketeer, to little sister, and now I realize my real purpose here, I am supposed to babysit the Captian so that Liev and Mata Hari can get it on.


The Captain starts on about how homesick he is and I feel that borsht threatening to spew out my eyes, but I manage to control myself. Liev has is arm around Mata Hari. I try to remind myself that this is all really a good thing. Really. A good thing. Yep.


Eventually we pack the Captain off to his actual home and the rest of us head uptown for a bevvy. I haul them to Snapper Creek as it is my familiar. The usual crowd of miscreants is there-Sean the diabetic bartender, Brian the sexually deranged Cronenberg Effect loving optometrist, the Big Aryan Guy who hangs out with the Amazon, and Justin the boy band-esque bartender from Boston.


"You're like famous here" Liev says. "Oh hey I'm just noticeable. Everywhere I go people notice me is all." Famous at Snapper, that's a thought I am not ready for.


Mata and Liev don't stay long, I won't miss them, I am secretly beginning to find ways of hating Mata and I don't want that to happen. She hugs me long before she leaves, so long I am almost disturbed by its intensity. "I'm so glad you came out." I wish I could say the same. I lie.


I end up engaging the Amazon's Big Aryan friend in conversation. Turns out he really is a big Aryan. His great aunt was actually in the German army nusing Nazis back to health. I am actually have drinks with the descendents of Nazis. I've never been so glad my father was already in my life.


But Big Aryan is also gay. We have a long conversation about the evening and so forth. "But you know" he says "you're not like other girls. You don't just say what people want to hear. You're honest. It's what I like about you. You're just who you are." I love it when someone who talks to you for fifteen minutes suddenly thinks they have the secret to your personality. But I humor him because I like the analysis, fallacious though it may be.


We trade crazy relative in PA stories. He is enthralled by my tribute to Hunter S Thompson pictures. He talks about being gay. I talk about hating men and then hating myself. "You know what you need?" he asks. I have a list. "More gay men in your life." This is what not on the list. I'm not sure how having more men I can't have is supposed to be a solution to any problem, but I suppose it's worth a shot. The Big Aryan decides we need to put music on the jukebox. We play Elvis "A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action" and the Smiths "Girlfriend in a Coma."


It's last call. I'm thinking of quittng dance class. Really all that time and money I could be spending on working on my writing and or getting into grad school and for what? The Big Aryan tells me what I hear from everyone sooner or later "I've never told anyone this story in my life but.." I realize my talent in this life is engendering trust-not love or lust but trust.


Fuck.


I used to be a sex object. I swear people. Eight years ago, I was hot. I got the man of my dreams (Vampire Hunter D) without even trying. What the fuck happened? When did I turn into the bar stenographer?


The Big Aryan and I say our good-byes. I burble home. In the morning I wake up furious dreaming about burying an axe so far in the Captain's head I make brain frappe or failing that quitting dance. It reminds me of a quotation from the lovely Bakerina's most recent post. "The greatest glory to you, cock, when you have lost your testicles, for then you are pleasing to sleep, to the stomach , to Venus, to Cybele." As opposed to being disappointing to short little disabled girls who need an ego boost.

The good news is that apparently large amounts of vodka coupled with borsht does cure a summer cold. But honestly, I'd rather still have the cold.






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