The Coldest New Year
By Mark Grueter
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I turned to the drink as soon as I arrived in Russia. And a very good thing too, for the bottle bailed me out of many a situation. Three months into my two-year stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was gargling vodka to entertain the masses. Most Americans confronted the whole ‘drinking thing’ with alarm and despondency: “How can I politely say no?” was the question the neo-prohibitionists taught us to answer during training. I, on the other hand, was eager to embrace the booze-soaked culture of the Russian Far East, with reckless abandon, and to overturn the popular national conception that American males are effeminate lightweights.
In fact, the other dipso volunteers and I stuck it out for the whole two years, while most of the teetotalers and decidedly light drinkers went home to Ma. A heavy and regular diet of vodka, brandy, beer, vodka, moonshine and sweet wine and vodka enabled me to cope with, among other things, the language barrier, being stolen from, bad food, 36 hour train rides and karaoke. I fought off fear and irritation by smiling at all of the absurd and sometimes sinister obstacles one faces in those parts by pretending they existed expressly for my own entertainment. It was all fantasy to me. And I, quite simply, would not have been able to make it through my first New Year’s Eve in Russia without streams of the vodka rotgut.
I coasted through the first five months, high on excitement and booze, living the first two months in the anarchic port city of Vladivostok and the last three in a smaller city which borders China, called Blagoveschensk. But then the formidable Russian winter set in, the newness of the experience began to wear off and darker, more impure thoughts started emerging. For a variety of reasons, I became depressed and homesick for the first time.
I had been hanging out with a character named Greg, another volunteer who lived in the same town as I; we bonded over booze, billiards and blondes. Anyway, Greg had plans to attend a New Years party some 34 hours away via train in a small village town. It was a sort of getaway party designed and intended for certain members of our Peace Corps group, in order to conglomerate and swap war stories. He was going only out of a sense of obligation to an already doomed relationship. And he asked me to go too, as backup. The host and the other guests didn’t particularly like me, and under normal, American circumstances, I probably would’ve been blocked at the door. But out of the spirit of rallying ‘round each other in a time of need, I was permitted to attend.
Another volunteer named Lindsay hosted the party, eager for company being the only American in her town. She advertised plenty of heat and plenty of space. I sallied forth on December 27th, spending the first night, as it were, twisted on moonshine with my cabin mate. I don’t recall the comrade’s name but he was awfully generous. I was so bent I ended up urinating in between two of the moving cars because the bathroom was full. It was one of those acts where, if I had been caught, I might’ve wound up in a concentration camp.
On the second night, my tale begins. We were scheduled to reach my destination at 3:30am on December 29th. That evening I managed to stay soberish while explaining my predicament to a new cabin mate: I was inadequately prepared to locate Lindsay’s apartment, I said, it was the middle of the night, it was minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit outside, and we were in the middle of the boonies, and my language skills suck, etc. So the guy offered to put me up in his place for the rest of the night (he was heading for the same town), and promised to help me find her in the morning.
That sounded reasonable but I was still unsure - the guy seemed shady. Either way, mortal peril lurked. I could freeze to death, be tarred and feathered by hooligans, or be molested or burglarized by my new friend. As we got off the train, I decided to go my own way because the guy really did look like a vagabond, even by Russian standards. And when I initially turned him down, he pleaded, almost with tears in his eyes, for me to go home with him. (To this day, I’m not sure if he was genuinely concerned for my safety or if he was just looking to rob me senseless.)
So after about 45 minutes of racing around, Swiss army blade in hand, I found a sort of makeshift town hall. One telephone operator and one policeman greeted me with baffled, incredulous looks. It’s unlikely either had ever spoken to an American (or any other foreigner for that matter) before me. I might as well have been from a distant solar system, and what the hell was I doing walking around in the middle of the night anyway? After about an hour and a half of pure confusion (first they had to try to understand me, then they had to learn to trust me, then they had to check my documents five times), they finally escorted me to Lindsay’s.
I arrived at her door at around 6 am, shagged and fagged, frozen to the bone, anxious for sleep.
“Mark, I have bad news. I don’t have any heat. It went out yesterday.”
In fact, she lost everything. No running water or electricity either, and no sign of when or if these modern day wonders might return. No electricity meant we couldn’t even use her “space heater” the Peace Corps had so graciously lent us. (They called it a space heater but it was more like an old-fashioned, grated heater - on wheels. More cumbersome than a real space heater, without taking the trouble to be half as powerful). Cognizant of the weather and the fact that I’d be gone several days, I packed a ton of clothes. Before turning in that night, I put on most of them in a desperate attempt to acquire some shut-eye. I unfurled myself on Lindsay’s couch and shivered for the next few hours, the apartment not being insulated. The five pairs of socks I wore did not prove sufficient.
That day, the 30th, I realized the only way I’d ever get any sleep on this death trip was to get drunk and pass out. I was beyond caring about the theory that alcohol lowers your body temperature. I didn’t openly reveal my plans to Lindsay either; I just went down to the store and loaded up on beer. The other guests weren’t scheduled to arrive until the next day, but she and I actually had a nice time together, bonding in a way we were never able to during training. Water trucks were shuttled in from nearby Vladivostok, so we were at least able to “flush” the toilet. And the stores were open so we could buy bread and cheese to gnaw on.
I don’t recall what time I cracked my first beer but remember both of us hitting it pretty hard that night. She drank about five 18-ounce bottles of fairly dark beer, which for her was probably a record. I had about nine of the same, which isn’t much in absolute terms for a young alcoholic starting out in life, but when you’re on no sleep for two days, it is. Lindsay and I had a wonderful conversation too, about what I have no idea.
The morning of New Year’s Eve came too quickly, but by then we noticed the electricity had been resurrected. Still no heat or water but at least we could turn the fucking would-be space heater on now. Lindsay and I hunkered down by that thing until the other guests arrived in the afternoon. I didn’t quite realize it at the time but she felt awful about inviting over a bunch of people under such dire circumstances, as if she could’ve anticipated the calamitous conditions and called ahead of time to warn them (she couldn’t have). But she still sort of blamed herself for it, while I blamed the government and blew it off as an unfortunate sucker punch where nothing can be done except complain, get hammered and fall over. But I learned later that much of my sarcastic, running commentary concerning the matter offended her personally.
When everyone arrived – there ended up being six of us – we were all just glad to be together, comfortable with the familiar, even if we really didn’t like each other. The fact that Lindsay’s apartment was now doubling as an icebox was not immediately acknowledged. The girls (Lindsay, Liz, Samantha) giddily used our newfound electricity to cook a meal on the stovetop (vegetarian of course, this being Peace Corps). After eating, the electricity went out again, so the guys (Greg, Nate, the narrator) went to the store to procure as much alcohol as could be carried off in a wheelbarrow. It was still only about 25 degrees Fahrenheit inside the apartment.
The night began, as so many nights begin, innocuously enough. We clustered together for warmth and shared some experiences. We had a battery powered CD player so we listened to music. Greg and I played about fifteen minutes of Scrabble before he threw the chips down and declared himself “too intelligent” for the game, much to my relief. I knew what he meant. After a few more mindless card and board games, the real drinking and real discussions/debates began. We hit upon religion, politics and sex - the three topics one should never avoid in social settings.
At one point, I played a Ween CD, not looking to start a fight. But when the song “Spinal Meningitis” came on, one of the girls arbitrarily popped the disc out. I was told that the track was offensive. It features a faux baby’s voice asking, “Am I gonna die? It really hurts mommy. Please don’t let me die.” And then the chorus, “Spinal Meningitis has got me down…” I just couldn’t understand how anyone could take the lyrics seriously and actually be offended by them – these were supposed to liberal intellectuals after all.
The next thing I knew it was midnight and we’re toasting cheap champagne. But like most New Year's Eves, the night didn’t begin until after midnight. Although most of what I report from here on out is secondhand, I do remember Greg going mad at about 12:10 am, sprinting to the window to shout obscenities at all the other assholes shouting obscenities and shooting off fireworks. It was quite a spectacle; creatures of the night winging fireworks at each other; Greg being restrained and rebuked by the girls. A collective sense of insanity, the result of sleep deprivation, the lack of heat and water (the Russians couldn’t even fall back on a space heater), and booze, began taking shape. This bucked me up.
The girls - who hadn’t been drinking much, that was their fundamental mistake - were fed up by this point, so they kicked us out of the living room and confined us to Lindsay’s bedroom. I think the electricity was back on by this point and they kept the space heater, but we didn’t give a shit anymore. We had the music and the liquor. We stayed warm by wrestling. I don’t exactly know how or why this happened, I just know there was nothing homoerotic about it, and that we turned that room into a steel cage match and nearly knocked down the walls - walls through which Greg’s girlfriend could literally hear him talking smack about her. That must have been awkward for them.
It was a mess. I fell asleep standing up. I awoke to an unsettling vision of Nate being dragged off to the toilet. Apparently, he had pulled his pants down with a fuzzy idea to piss in the corner of Lindsay’s room. Liz caught him just in the nick of time to make sure he tinkled in the right spot. At another point in the evening, I was observed sleeping on the floor with big old Nate piled on top of my head. They checked my pulse to make sure I wasn’t dead.
The girls were scarred. I doubt they had ever witnessed such rampant mania and drunkenness. I returned home the next day, defeated and unwashed, but not without a sense of satisfaction.
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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted at grueter@methree.net.
©
2004 Me Three