The Birthday Party
Lena my host, had a relative called Dima who lived out by the Ostankino television tower, the capital’s tallest landmark. It was his young daughter’s first birthday and he was therefore inviting a small group of friends over to celebrate. Lena suggested I go along.
She gave me some instructions as to which trolleybus would lead me to the apartment and at which stop to disembark and so I set off on a warm August evening clutching a box of chocolates and a soft toy I had bought in Children’s World, Moscow’s largest toy shop which sold toys costing ten times the average Russian monthly wage.
'YOU'RE CHEAPEST TOY PLEASE.'
I boarded the Soviet trolleybus heading northwards along Prospekt Peace, up past Riga railway station and on towards the VdNkh. On we rattled over the bumpy roads, the huge Ostankino television tower looming over us on the horizon. The trolleybus turned down some dug-up back streets and into the web of grey concrete Kruschevkas. Every time we stopped at a bus stop I would jump out to read the name of the stop before jumping back on before the doors closed. Eventually, long behind schedule, we pulled up at what was a just metal pole cemented into a bucket which displayed the name of the stop. Next to it in jeans and a Pink Floyd t-shirt stood Dima.
I JUST FOUND HIS EXACT FUCKING TSHIRT ON GOOGLE IMAGES!
"What took tou so long? We were worried you weren’t coming," he said as we stumbled over dug up streets which were the answer to the question he had asked.
At that time Moscow’s suburbs were a mess of construction works as decades of neglected roads and sidewalks had to finally be repaired. This resulted in trolleybus routes being re-orientated along unfamiliar routes that nobody understood.
SPENT TWO MONTHS RIDING THESE AROUND MOSCOW
Eventually we arrived at a Kruschevka building and climbed the staircase to the second floor. This was a relief since Kruschevka apartment buildings don’t have lifts. You always hoped whoever you were visiting didn’t live on the lactose pumping fifth floor. On entering the apartment it was obvious that this wasn’t the Moscow I had been accustomed to living in with my host family. This was an apartment of the new Russia. It was brightly decorated with a fully a fully carpeted floor. Expensive imported jackets hung on the coat rack. On the walls hung framed photographs instead of dusty carpets.
I removed my shoes and was led by Dima into a newly decorated bedroom which had a large television and VHS player. Two pretty women sat on the bed playing with a baby. They greeted me warmly and took the fluffy toy and chocolates which no longer rattled in the box but sloshed around due to the summer temperatures and the long journey.
MOSCOW CHIC
I was called into the kitchen where a young twenty-something couple sat drinking at the table. They had bright friendly faces and motioned for me to join them, pouring me a glass of wine as they did so. The girl wore a loose pink knitted sweater without a bra and through which I could see the nipples on her breasts. It took all my willpower not to stare at them.
The couple were both well tanned on account of having just returned from a trip to the Crimea where they had spent a fortnight camping on an empty beach. As I listened to this my mind drifted away to the Crimea and a deserted beach where instead of her boyfriend it was just me and her. And her tits…The shrill ring of the doorbell brought me back from the Black Sea.
LIKE THIS BUT WITH NIPPLES SHOWING
Another couple had arrived and entered the kitchen clutching presents and alcohol, this time a little older, in their 30s. After handing over their gifts, which I could not help notice were much more generous than mine, they joined us at the kitchen table with the hosts. The woman was a bright red head with a large pointed nose like you’d see on a witch but that was actually rather attractive on her. She also had an overtly sexual energy that her henpecked husband seemed resigned to not being able to control. They sat down opposite me at the table whilst pink sweater girl sat next to me which meant I could now not glance at her magnificent chest without making it obvious.
LIKE THIS BUT LESS LIKELY TO INFORM TO THE KGB
So there we were, myself, sweater girl and her boyfriend, redhead, her husband, and Masha and Dima who were our hosts and parents of the child whose birthday had brought us all together. We began tucking into the food as mayonnaise drowned dishes were passed up and down the table. Bottles were tipped into glasses and toasts were made.
RUSSIAN PERSON: 'OH JUST A SMALL GET PARTY, NOTHING SPECIAL'
The conversation quickly turned to the topic that everyone in Moscow was talking about in those days, namely US dollars and how to make some. Since I was from the capitalist west all the questions were aimed at me as though somehow I would be able to help them all achieve riches. In fact it soon became obvious that I’d been invited with the sole purpose of exploring business opportunities with Dima who was something of a wheeler-dealer. I was only 18 and knew nothing about making money but as I drank more Soviet champagne I grew more and more into my role as the man with the business knowledge and was soon promising all kinds of deals that I had no way of ever following through on.
HOW DIMA IMAGINED ME TO BE
"Let’s import a container load of umbrellas from New York," Dima said to me through glassy eyes. He had a kiosk somewhere in the suburbs and assured me of a good profit. "Could I fly to New York and find the contacts," he enquired?
"Of course I can, I think it is a splendid idea," I replied, not knowing the first thing about the umbrella business.
But that didn’t matter. With my black passport it seemed I had the power to change lives.
"So I will need the dimensions of the container and profit margin per umbrella piece. And what about paying our roof, who will take care of this?" I said, as though I was going to follow through on any of this.
MOSCOW SUMMERS. COULD HAVE MADE A FORTUNE
I don’t think I was completely bullshitting, I would have liked to have become an umbrella importer to Russia, I had no other options back home. But the real reason for my acquiescence was to impress sweater girl with my self importance. Surruptisously I was saying to her; leave your boyfriend and you can be part of the umbrella empire too. We will be rich together!
HOW I IMAGINED MY LIFE WITH PINK SWEATER GIRL
However that wasn’t the dynamic that was talking place in the room. Instead of sweater girl becoming enamoured with me, the redhead married woman opposite was purring seductively with almost audible moans of pleasure every time I said something about umbrellas. Added to that, under the table her leg was rubbing up and down on mine. I did not know what to do. Dima may have thought I was some kind of businessman but in reality I was still the painfully shy teenager from England.
ME IN 1993
I looked around nervously to see if anyone else noticed what was going on below the plates of salads. It seemed they didn’t or at least they pretended not to. But how could they not? Red headed woman was staring at me seductively as she placed her foot between my legs and used her toes to massage my crotch. The thing was that to do this she had to slink lower and lower in her chair so that her foot could reach. My cheeks which were now flushed crimson just seemed to inspire redhead to massage my crotch even more.
POV
Sweater girl and her boyfriend headed out to the landing to smoke, I used the opportunity to escape.
"What’s the deal with the other couple?" I asked, hoping for an explanation as to why the red head woman was acting so sexually in front of her husband.
"What do you mean?" Sweater girl replied as though nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
I didn’t bother explaining. ‘New Russians,’ I thought to myself.
NEW RUSSIANS. AN ODD BUNCH
The three of us stood smoking on the landing.
“What music do you like?’ the boyfriend asked me.
“I’m into Prince.”
“I didn’t think much of Sign O’the times,” he said, taking a drag on his fag.
Suddenly the apartment door burst open and out stumbled red head.
She climbed the staircase to the window sill where we sat smoking.
The other two stubbed out their cigarettes and I was left alone with her.
“You’re a very charismatic man,” she said to me. Obviously I had overplayed the umbrella talk.
She took the cigarette from my mouth and took a drag on it seductively before placing it back between my lips.
She stood close to me, our faces almost touching as she exhaled smoke through her long nose.
“Let’s go somewhere quiet together,” she said fingering the button on my denim shirt.
Just then Dima appeared.
“We are blowing out the candles, come back inside.”
I had been saved.
THE PURPLE ONE
We descended the steps but as we entered the apartment vestibule redhead opened the door to the toilet and tried to pull me in. I struggled to free my arm and escape to the safety of the kitchen where everyone was waiting for us but our struggle had caused some coats to fall off the coat rack and the umbrella stand to topple over. The irony!
I eventually freed myself from her grip and appeared in the kitchen where everyone sat staring at me and my halfway opened denim shirt, no doubt wondering what the fuck was going on. A few seconds later redhead appeared smirking.
HOW SHE CAME OUT OF THE TOILET
The birthday girl, one of Russia’s newest citizens, no longer a Soviet, the future of the nation, a different one than her parents were born into, blew out the candles with the help of her mother. We clapped and as we raised our glasses and toasted the child’s health and the parents, and the future umbrella business the windows of the apartment that looked out over the edge of the city suddenly rattled, followed seconds later by loud bangs somewhere in the darkness.
MOSCOW EVENINGS
Most probably fireworks Dima said, but these were ominous times. Russia was in a state of flux. The old guard were colliding with new Russia and it was releasing a violent energy in the former empire. I had witnessed protests at the White House in the centre of Moscow over the previous weeks and listened to impromptu speeches given by Russian politicians such as Khasbulatov and Rutskoi who wanted to impeach president Boris Yeltsin. Russia was at a crossroads where its future was to be decided. Autocratic or democratic...
THAT SHIRT AND TIE COMBINATION THOUGH
The atmosphere in the apartment suddenly changed, all except for redhead who was by now worse for wear and not making much pretence of what she was trying to do to me under the table. Her husband had finally had enough, grabbed her by the arm and led her out into the night from where we heard the sound of what seemed like gunfire.
TOOK ME AGES TO WRITE THIS STORY. BUY MY BLOODY BOOK
The party was over. I bid my farewells in the doorway and reassured everyone that the umbrella business would be a success and that I was capable of finding my own way back home. The streets were eerily empty and I waited for the old trolleybus with a strange sensation rising inside of me although I didn’t know why. Something just didn’t feel right. In the distance the night sky was red over in the direction of the Ostankino television tower and the sound of what sounded like gunfire rumbled in the distance. When I eventually reached home at around midnight Lena was waiting up for me.
MOSCOW IN 1993. MORE EXCITING THAN BENIDORM
"Thank god you made it home," she said, with genuine concern as she hurriedly locked the apartment door behind me. "There is fighting at the television tower. People have been killed! Come look at the news!"
The television screen was filled with chaotic images of military vehicles storming the television tower and bodies being carried away.
OSTANKINO TOWER ATTACK 1993
I lay in bed that night with rising unease. Even Vilka the dog who lay at the end of my bed seemed subdued. At some point in the middle of the night I was woken by the doorbell ringing. I lay there terrified of who was on the other side of the door. Many of the speeches I had heard on the streets recently were anti-western in the their rhetoric and in the darkness of the night I pictured a group of Russians on the other side of the door who had come to exact revenge for all of new Russia’s problems on a foreigner. Fortunately Lena did not open the door but my time in Moscow was not going to be so carefree from now on...
NO MORE STORIES UNTIL I HAVE SOLD FIFTEEN COPIES OF MY BOOK