Men in Russia are forward. Not just Russian men, but men in general.

Attraction isn’t something Russians are ashamed of. It’s natural, like shitting, pissing, and fucking. How pathetic in comparison is the “sophisticated” New Yorker, chatting up an unimpressed girl, hoping that nonchalant blabber about his great job, great car, and great apartment will distract her from his enormous hard-on. In Moscow, however, men have cultural license to make sexual impulses explicit.

It always starts with the look-the glazed, goggled eyes, slightly slackened jaw. (Or maybe I just get that.) Then comes the oral assault of tender, unctuous flattery: “Oh, Mona, you’re the most beautiful girl in the room, the club, all of Moscow... Such beautiful eyes, such smooth skin... Where does such a beauty come from?”

I’m not sure if most American girls really believe these comments or not. (God knows most of them shouldn’t.) Regardless, they’re invariably offended or left blushing, frozen with embarrassment. If a man thinks I have pretty eyes or great tits, he might as well say so. Why should he feign interest in my dull job when the intrigue of my sex is so much more compelling? At the very least, it’s flattering, and he’s the one who should be embarrassed-not me-when I reject him.

Westerners who were sexually tentative at home soon rise this notion of Russian forwardness, although American men, especially, aren’t much for verbosity. Here, there’s no real need anyway. A favorable exchange rate and overwhelming supplies of cheap vodka and securable snatch do amazing things for a man’s ego, and men do things that might never have done at home. It’s almost refreshing; insecurity is such a turn off.

John is Canadian. He is the second of three children, spent five years in college, worked some in his father’s business. His crowning achievement in life so far has been entering a middle-tier law school at age 25, two years ago. During the academic year, he is supposedly an assiduous student, the type who prefers hitting the books to banging broads. He spends the summers in Moscow because he eventually wants to practice corporate law in Moscow.

I don’t, of course, know any of this the night I meet him. I’m drinking with friends, and my friend, Martin, wants to go to the Hungry Duck, since his Russian wife is at her parents’ this weekend. The rest are tired or drunk to contentment, but I want to go out.

Then John shows up. He gives me the look.

EDITOR’S NOTE: THE OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS COLUMN ARE NOT THOSE OF THE EXILE. WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE VIEWS OF THIS REMARKABLY UNPLEASANT WRITER. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Now, John is not unattractive-too short for my taste, his features too boyish-but he’s cute, from an objective perspective. Martin leaves the room to get ready, the lights are suddenly off, and John is kissing me. I’m pretty blitzed, so I don’t really care.

People say that American girls are easy. (Even John himself later explained this to me.) But it seems to me that they’re just embarrassed and don’t know how to react, so they don’t react at all-part of a more general problem of being self-conscious and indecisive. If you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all, and one wouldn’t want to hurt her aggressor’s feelings. Or maybe women deep down like being sluts, and not saying ‘no’ is as close as sexual conservatism lets them get to giving in.

But why should I care about being easy? If I want to fuck a guy, I fuck him. If he’s too scrawny, too flabby, too brazen, too timid or has a small penis, I don’t. Why bother when I can go home to my vibrator and get off three times in 12 minutes? I admit, though, that sometimes vodka slows my calculations weighing the costs, benefits, and risks of the one-night stand. When my judgement is especially slurred, I try to give a guy the benefit of the doubt; I can always blame it on drunkenness in the morning.

So, I’m giving John a chance, working out the details of my sexual utilitarianism in the cab. I’m really turned on, so a quickie in the bathroom would be dirty, sexy, and very satisfying. There was the complication of mutual friends, and his likely behavior afterwards, on a scale from embarrassing denial to infatuated obsession, was an unknown. I was still trying to factor in the standard risks-impotence, venereal disease, etc.-when we get to the club.

Upon entrance, Martin disappears. John drops me off in one of the booths and goes to get us beer. (As potential poon-tang, at this point I’m still getting free drinks.) He returns and picks up where he left off when Martin interrupted him the first time-somewhere on my neck.

It’s at times like this that I sympathize with American girls’ ambivalence. The slut/prude dilemma is an obnoxious reality; the last thing a girl wants to be is damaged goods, but if I push him away, I’ll not only be the prude, but I’ll have a lousy time. I’m horny and anxious, but I don’t necessarily want to have sex with him, but then again, we’re already at the club. A quick reality check, I realize that Martin’s noticeable absence put extra pressure on the situation; if I rejected John, he’d be chasing hookers with Martin, and I’d be left fending off the drunken advances of smelly, incoherent-and by 3am, desperate-men.

But I really didn’t want to fuck him.

“John, wait.” I push his head away, fearing the humiliating way in which he’d make his exit.

A sudden impulse reminds me that nothing is worse than getting left behind for a whore.

“John, you’re really attractive, but I’m just not attracted to you. You see, I’m a lesbian.”

He dives back into my neck, indifferent to my confession, obviously not believing a word I’d said. I let him continue, running his hands up my shirt.

“No, really, I’m a lesbian.” He looks at me vaguely confused. “I’m sorry, John.”

As soon as I sense him acknowledging defeat, I take his hand and guide it towards my crotch. I’m not wearing any panties.

“Does it turn you on that I like fucking other girls?” (John is definitely the type of guy to be skeptical about the ability of one girl to fuck another, but he didn’t seem concerned with in semantics at the moment.)

I pulled his head close, saying roughly into his ear, “Isn’t that girl in the white sexy?” I nod towards a scrawny Russian chick dancing provocatively on the bar.

“That girl is so sexy. She’s turning me on so much.” In fact, John’s fingers circling my clit were doing a fine job wetting my cunt.

So maybe I was leading him on in a technical sense, but he was no doubt getting off on this almost as much I as was. As much as he had been attracted to me when he first gave me that look, I became even more desirable when he realized I was someone he shouldn’t be able to have. And the only thing better than one aroused twat is two. He had a night of anticipation and hot fantasy-me and him and that Russian girl dancing on the bar.

I catch the girl’s attention, and motion her over to me and John with a quick flicker of my tongue. I’m sitting on the table, and when she approaches the booth, I pull her head towards mine with one hand, kissing her slowly, and with the other, guide her hand to John’s crotch. We both stroke his bulging cock, then I unzip his pants, then force her hand back to my own pussy. I lie back on the table, pushing her head under my skirt, between my legs, so that she’s bent over the table, her ass, barely covered by a short skirt lifted towards John. He rips aside her panties, sticking two fingers inside her slippery cunt. Removing them slowly, he drags the sticky residue across her skin, then spanks her ass. She whimpers sharply when he pushes into her tight asshole.

Of all the possible outcomes of the evening, this was one of the least likely. And yet it was almost tangible for John, as he fingered me, getting me off again and again.

When we left the Duck around 5:30, the sun had already risen, and the situation was sobered. We walked to the main road, waiting to catch a ride home.

“Mona, are you really a lesbian?”

“What, you think all dikes are butch?”