CornFed Invades Moscow - CornFed (the beginning after the end read novel .txt) 📗

a “prude” when it comes to conversing with the opposite sex. But, there was another recurring theme tonight that was becoming the stream of consciousness every night in Moscow. I now know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what it is like to be a woman living in America.

One by one, they came. One by one, they talked to my Exchange Rate Friend and me. One by one I didn’t know what to say. One by one they laughed anyways. One by one I wondered what was their game. One by one they told me their name. One by one I asked what they were drinking. One by one they opened their hand for the giving. One by one I just sat there and listened. One by one they gave me their blessing.

Until the last one.

“Wanna go home with me for 200 bucks?”

Yeah, now I get it.

Back at the hotel, solo mind you, I found myself wondering if there was a juke joint where I could juke and not feel the pinch of sin. And then I remembered what Mr. Exchange Rate told me. He told me of a place where the English speaking of the world hang out, shoot pool, drink beer, watch big screen TV, and have a good old time. I didn’t remember the name exactly. It had the word Boar in it along with Doug.

I hailed a cab. I stuttered “Boar, Doug, Bar, Go”. He nodded and repeated back to me where the Universe intended for me to appear.

“Yuz wantz to go do ze Doug and ze Marty’s Boar House!”

And away we went.

4 men standing at a doorway to a bar with exposed machine guns and kevlar-padded gear isn’t exactly the kind of environment I was expecting. Best case, there would be a wild boar protruding from the walls of the building. Worse case, the word Boar really meant Whore. But this? Guns? Ammo? Guards? And so I entered, pistols drawn.

Doug and Marty, as I later found out, were 2 Canadians who decided it’d be nice to open a place in Moscow, put their name on it, throw in a loud word for the entity known as a “male pig with tusks”, and serve up a place where the locals of Moscow, the ones not born there, could hang out and enjoy the evening. Apparently, things happened along the way to require machine gun assistance, something which I heard is commonplace with business owners. You pay the bribe. You get the place. But don’t trust everyone you silly foreigner!

The Boar House reminded me of an Applebees but with a few minor modifications. Firstly, quadruble the size of the round bar sitting in the middle of the restaurant and increase the “interesting” level of the patrons by, say, a thousand percent. Next, space out the tables seated on all sides of the bar, except on the far back of the bar, remove all the tables and put down a couple of pool tables. Then you would just take all the television that were under, say 48 inches, and throw them on the street and replace them with something in the 200-inch range. For good measure, tape off enough dancing space for a prom party, make the tables and chairs more dingy looking, put in some very very unusual people who have lived away from home for about 30 years, and blast music over the speakers if there isn’t anything good on television. Lastly, remove the name Applebees from the sign and you have Doug and Marty’s Boar House.

I spent quite a bit of time on the pool tables after I first arrived, since pool was the only recreational sport I grew up on that didn’t require a gun. And there was no taking the guns from the gentlemen outside the bar, so I conceded. It was then and there that I found myself the unlikely victim of a game of hustle-your-money lady from Belarus. Come to find out, that was all she did in the evening...use her charming good looks and 6 foot stature to swindle little boys like me into a game of break-and-run-out-while-you-watch.

And, like most of Moscow, she wanted dollars, not the lowly ruble.

With my pride lying somewhere between the pool table and the bathroom, I wandered back up to the front where most of the patrons would sit down, drink, and talk about life in Moscow while watching a game or watching the women dance to the music. As I sat down, I noticed this older man leaned back into his chair at the back of the sitting/dining/drinking/watching/talking room. He looked like a less hairer version of Santa Claus and with the kind of stare that told me this man had really lived some kind of life to be sitting in a bar in Moscow in his 60’s, having been born probably in a manger somewhere in Nebraska.

The people I met that night were very friendly but edgy also. You don’t live in Moscow without having some kind of edge to you, whether it’s from jaded living somewhere else only to find redemption in Moscow or whether you’re just a nutty person who keeps getting forcefully removed from every country you try to take up residence in. The most interesting person I met had to be Tony.

Tony was, like my internet travel friend, born and raised in Chicago. He was in his 30’s and was a big exec making six figures a year. Tiring of working 60 hours a week, the dating-and-leaving-abruptly scene and carrying some broken heart issues, Tony had made his way to Moscow a few years ago for vacation. One month later, Tony returns to Chicago, quits his job, cashes in his retirement, kisses all family and loved ones a hearty good-bye, and moves into Moscow with no idea what to do next.

“Was it a mid-life crisis at 30?”

I asked him

“More like a who-stole-my-life crisis at 30”

he replied.

He explained to me how he threw himself into the Russian culture and social life and has been living, laughing, and loving ever since. His life here was in no way similar to his life in Chicago since his dollar went so far and his retirement savings was full of dollars, he gets to pretty much work doing that which he chooses and loves to do versus what he must do.

“Right now, I only want to meet people, see the rest of Russia, and date these beautiful women, maybe even settle down.”

Women were a recurring theme here among the people I met, many of them coming into find a bride, some here to start a new life and then realizing what they had been missing since they lost their hair, and others found a bride and came here to “rescue” her only to fall in love with the country.

Then there are people like Tony who just wanted a different culture, a different place to set his feet.

And that was when he introduced me to the Santa Claus looking man. I forget his name, I want to say it was something very generic like Dave or Pat, but his simple name was nothing similar to his life and personality. I didn’t count the time, but when I looked up at the clock, I had been listening and talking to this man for well over 3 hours. He was like a father figure here in Moscow. There was hardly a regular who didn’t come by to speak with him and give him a hug or shake his hand. He had that warm endearing quality about him. And then when the women started showing up and giving him kisses, I saw that he had, well, err, another quality. I guess when you get in your 60’s, you still have testosterone. I cannot wait to tell my dad it apparently gets better after 50.

I don’t have enough paper to list the stories this man told me and I’d be doing him an injustice trying to put his personality and life on paper. Let’s just say, this man decided regular life “as we in America” didn’t fit him so well and he’s been sitting his fanny in European and South American countries all his life, with Moscow being his “possible final destination.”

I walked out of the doors and it was nearly daylight.

Who stole the time?

And it was on this night that I learned the word “police corruption”. On the cab ride home, with the sun peaking over the littered landscape, as we were crossing some kind of long bridge/overpass, the car behind us turned on it’s blue lights. I always figured that the Russian police would have some kind of loud speak system to shout funny words along with spot lights and a hood mounted machine gun to invoke more terror in a suspect. Really though, I thought it was a pretty funny sight to see 3 tall Russian men get out of police car the size of a shoe box.

I must confess, the alcohol was dense enough in my blood stream to not really care what was going on. I was in a happy mood and everything was funny to me. The cab driver, in an apparent act of kindness and hospitality, offered to translate between me and the 3 Russian policemen standing outside our own shoebox sized car.

“They want to see your passport and visa.”

the cab driver says to me

Yeah, there’s a problem here. I had given it to the hotel for safe keeping.

“Tell them I don’t have it. It’s at the hotel. Tell them to call the front desk and have them fax it over. They do have fax machines in their car don’t they?”

I lost the cab driver at the word “fax machine” and I was laughing way too hard to even consider the implications of what was occurring. That was until I saw the pistols along with the rifles. All of a sudden it wasn’t so funny.

I take that back, yes it was.

“They want 300 rubles each so they won’t take you to jail”

says the cab driver

I did the math in my head and 300 rubles was about 10 dollars each. I had heard enough from the last two days to know that I was paying these men the equivalent of 2 weeks salary just to let me go.

“Tell them I’ll pay them 300 rubles but they will have to divide it amongst themselves”

said the McGyver and John Wayne within me

I don’t know if it was out of sheer boredom or tiredness that these 3 rogue policeman of the night accepted my offer, but I arrived at my hotel 30 minutes later 300 rubles shorter, 6 feet taller, and I never even had to step out of the car. If only I could use this kind of social skill tactic in America, I would be set for life.

The next morning, I mean the next afternoon, when I woke up it occurred to me that I am lucky not to be in a jail cell. Of course, in keeping with the tradition of being 6 feet taller, I emailed all my friends back home and let them know exactly what happened. Except, in my fantasy land email, I actually got out of the car, stood man-o-e-man-o with each of them, threw the 300 rubles down the street, and screamed “Go fetch it you Commie bastards or I will chase you down with a lead pipe!”

Any moment Reagan should call.

Alas, no phone call