It was the C.I.A. that despatched me to Russia. Not that I’d deliberate it that manner. However after finding out Russian language and tradition for 3 years on the College of Miami, my craving to go to the good Slavic motherland was impractical for one idiotic cause: no cash. So I took a job within the college library’s Slavic Assortment.
The one irony was that this magnanimously endowed library of uncommon Russian books and obscene journals, which might have been priceless to me throughout my research, was one thing I by no means knew existed. The one individuals who appeared to understand it was there have been these very straight and hard-boiled guys, no flies on them, who’d are available on quiet days (whereas I’d be smoking grass among the many stacks and studying Crocodil, the Russian humor journal) and request the newest subject of, say Soviet Navy Month-to-month, or a Kremlin report on Chilean youth teams. Just a few weeks later I’d learn within the newspapers concerning the sudden unrest amongst Chilean youth. My boss, a jovial Pole, confirmed that lots of our guests had been certainly C.I.A., and he implied that the Slavic assortment was C.I.A. property. Anyway, I labored there till I saved sufficient cash to go to Russia.
Quickly I used to be airborne with the opposite members of the business constitution tour that might take us to Moscow for 3 weeks and Leningrad identical. The whole prospect loomed earlier than me seductive, enigmatic, attractive, however I hated the considered going six weeks with out getting excessive, and mentioned as a lot to “Texas Jeannie,” a buxom Southern belle who’d taken the tour a 12 months earlier than.
“Don’t fear,” she drawled. “Them Ruskies obtained a few of the greatest danged shit east of the Pecos, or west of it, relying how y’all see it.” Though I used to be barely puzzled by her avowal of Russian excessive instances, my fears had been additional allayed by an incident in Poland, the place we stopped over to alter planes and go to beloved Chopin’s birthplace. “Y’all oughta see what’s rising within the again yard,” mentioned Jeannie. At first I took this to be an invite of a perversely lubricious nature, however I caught on after we went in again of the good composer’s birthplace and located a patch of marijuana rising up stout and agency. From this second forth my understanding of detente went by way of cartwheels or reconsideration.
On our second evening in Moscow, I wandered the streets, and returned from sightseeing to discover a word from Jeannie on my lodge door. After I obtained to her room, I discovered her and 5 different vacationers sitting round on the ground, their heads obscured by a cloud of familiar-smelling smoke. At Jeannie’s welcome bidding, I fell to my knees and was handed a pipeful of darkish inexperienced flakes of kaif, which smells like cannabis however tasted like grass. It had come from the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia—identical to Stalin—and it was simply as highly effective.
Jeannie had traded considered one of her many pair of blue denims to a Russian head for the kaif we had been smoking. She defined that the starvation of Russian youth for issues American, like denims, rock and jazz albums, psychedelic posters, and what have you ever, is so nice that they’ll barter samovars, balalaikas, maybe army secrets and techniques, and naturally kaif in probably the most promiscuous style to get their arms on the trimmings of decadent Amerikan youth tradition. The belief that my outdated Moby Grape albums had been the equal of cigarettes and stockings in a Saigon black market introduced residence to me the ineffable karmic worth of by no means throwing away something, regardless of how faddy or ephemeral it might appear to jaded American hippies.
Throughout my final week in Moscow, I used to be with a few of my new Russian pals in search of a spot to celebration. This can be a nice downside in Russia due to the acute housing scarcity, which forces the Russians to stay in reasonably shut quarters. I used to be reminded of the acquainted highschool scene again residence, the place massive components of our youth are spent scouting places to make out in.
Russians discover it odd that Individuals all have their very own flats, vehicles, meals, cigarettes, orgasms: within the Soviet Union, these items are collectivized. Young and old should share their dwelling rooms, their likes and dislikes, their cutlery and crockery, their vodka and ideologies, that are “monolithic” solely of their mutual antagonism.
In brief, the possibilities of our discovering an orgy website appeared slim, when my buddy Volodya struck up a dialog with slightly man sporting a black goatee and heavy horn-rim glasses thick as range lids. He turned out to be a form of Russian bohemian, and in minutes had invited us to his residence in a tottering outdated housing undertaking. He advised us we might use his little two-room “flet”, even his mattress, whereas he socialized with us and shared our wine and kaif.
Because it turned out, he fancied himself a painter and his residence was crowded with terrible day-glo canvasses of canines pissing into area, lampposts taking pictures darts at kids, and an image of a person spreading his arsecheeks to disclose a peep on the infinite cosmos by way of his gap. Our host was a kind of real Mad Russians you hear about. Twelve of us packed boisterously into the tiny place, puffing pipes of kaif and taking turns balling on the mattress; the little man obtained wilder and wilder, ingesting greater than half of our wine. We performed a few of my rock albums—Hendrix and Pink Floyd—on his file participant. I requested him if he had any examples of Russian rock music, and he replied, “You wish to see instance of Russian rock, da?” “Da,” I mentioned. He went to a shelf and took down a paperjacketed album. He positioned the file on the turntable, we listened for no various seconds, after which he heaved the file out the window. “That’s Russian music,” he mentioned.
“I knew Nicholas earlier than he was a celebrity,” he raved, reminiscing about his household. “My mother-in-law boy, is she fats! I took her to the Mayday parade and a C.I.A. Man supplied to purchase my missile secrets and techniques. . . . No, actually, she’s very proficient. She’s being despatched to America on the cultural trade program. In trade, we’re getting Texas, Brooklyn, and Raquel Welch!” He started to roar out his life story, which grew to become increasingly more horrible. Lastly he dropped his trousers to indicate a protracted ugly scar left by Stalin’s torturers. At one level, I used to be bedding a younger Muscovite honey when the Mad Russian ran in, brandishing a small scimitar. My pals dragged him away, and shortly we left him sleeping on the ground, his snores and nightmarish outcries mingling with the laughter, sobs, arguments, and songs that poured into the widespread courtyard from each residence. Someway, the entire episode appeared to epitomize Moscow.
Leningrad is nearer to the West than Moscow in additional methods than one. Throughout the centuries of Tsarist rule, the town mirrored the Romanovs’ imitation of Western European tradition. Even now that custom persists. Strolling down the Nevsky Prospect for the primary time, I really felt comfortable among the many youthful, long-haired, extra stylishly attired communists, a few of whom had been really promenading in tie-dyed shirts.
The children are hip and kaif is plentiful. With three younger Komsomoltsy (members of the Lenin Youth Group) I dropped in a single night to an area disco known as the “Molotok” to listen to the highest native rock band. Their music, consisting of loud fancy guitar chords, plenty of showy drum licks, and [an] virtually funky bass line, was surprisingly collectively, and harking back to the highschool bands that performed in garages again residence. On an impulse, I requested the drummer if I might sit in for one quantity. “Konyeshno!” he cried, smiling. The chief then introduced that an American rock and curler was going to play, and that introduced down the home.
I might barely hear myself by way of their applause and shouts. For the following a number of days I used to be adopted round by a number of “groupskies” who believed I used to be a giant rock star, and I did nothing to disillusion them.
Quickly I met my first Russian dope vendor. His title was Misha, and he was as freaky as any Russian might hope to be. He was tall, swarthy, and bearded. He lived in his black market Levis and cowboy jacket. A signpainter by career, he spent his time with overseas vacationers and offered them dope, and had, in reality, served 5 years in a focus camp for this exercise. In a bastardized argot of hip Russian and Leningrad avenue slang, he invited us to his residence to smoke some gashgish.
Gashgish is the individuals’s hash, imported from the Uzbekistan, a central Asian Soviet Republic close to Afghanistan. He shared his residence with a comely Lenin youth named Natasha. Our first time there, Misha emptied a papirosa (cigarette), and combined the bitter Russian tobacco with some hash from a small leather-based pouch, then poured the combination adroitly into the cigarette. I discovered it a bit harsh, however what the hell.
Later I gave Misha an American pipe and a few screens and he was so impressed (and stoned) that he vowed by no means to smoke hash in cigarettes once more, however Natasha swore, in her revisionist manner, to go on smoking good Soviet papirosas. She did, nonetheless, take to “shotgunning” her reefers fairly hungrily.
Misha’s scene was fairly unfastened, so in the future I requested him what the neighbors thought.
“They assume I’m loopy,” he mentioned. “And have you learnt, they’re proper? Each time they see me coming, the outdated one-leg and the ugly witch, they run into their rooms and slam the doorways.” I regaled him with just a few Florida redneck tales.
The final time I noticed Misha, we obtained greater than Yuri Gagarin. Dostoeyevsky, that darkish Russian, who as soon as mentioned, “consciousness is a illness,” would have been happy with us. Our minds met in cosmic detente, and Misha and I grew to become more and more mystic. A really Russian factor to be. I advised him of my long-time dream of getting stoned with a real Russian. He advised me about his dream of getting stoned with an actual American.
“Est lavatory!” he cried excitedly, “there’s a god!”
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