Some famous American writer - much too famous to be mentioned here, lest the too-cool-for-their-own-good editors of eXile decide to crucify me - once noticed that in GI slang ass meant soul and shit - circumstances. A few years ago, that remark proved useful to me. It helped me be tolerated in a Harlem bar in the West 140’s, since the black patrons figured that a Frenchman drinking Scotch along with them gave that damn watering hole a little cachet. They invariably greeted me with, “How’s your ass doing?” which I chose to understand in the aforementioned meaning of the word. Cachet is cachet, blatt! And it is certainly flattering to hear a sultry big-boobed bartending mama (not to mention number runners, gangsta rappers and various other hustlers) worrying about your soul.

Ever the quintessential Frog, I elaborated on the matter. It’s an age-old indulgence of ours that I suspect E.U. regulations will soon put an end to, for fear it could spread mad cow disease - soul being a dairy product, derived from mother’s milk.

But let’s not get sidetracked. I meant to raise a few questions about soul: Is kielbasa soul food? Is Pougatcheva the godmother of soul? How soulful are dead souls? (Let’s make it perfectly clear: I’m neither talking about elections, nor dead presidents). To clarify matters still further: not long after leaving that hellhole in NY, I happened to set foot somewhere in the boondocks of the Russian Federation and there, along with moonshine, I was treated with long drawn-out lectures about soul, by men and women alike. They called it dusha, and sprinkled it like pepper on any given dish. As though this 160 proof kerosene they were pouring so generously was the hotline (or should I say the mainline) to this damn soul. Which is pretty much what these goddamn... African-Americans said Uptown, when they offered me rum from the Caribbean Islands, a drink every bit as potent and deadly-hangover-inducing as samagon itself. In Harlem I seldom indulged, sticking to Johnny Walker black, not trusting myself with the voodoo drink of choice.

Well, in the derevnie, refusing to swig moonshine would be tantamount to admitting that I was soulless, lacking any dusha, and a class enemy as well - God forbid (God, along with single mothers, is another staple of soul). So I downed the manly drink with the natives. As the first child of a middle class Parisian family, I was already a suspicious character (soulful people will always subject you to the third degree at first sight; that rule applied in Harlem as well). To escape being branded a class enemy, I had to break into my own sweet version of the kazachok, perfected while watching numerous Hollywood cossack movies.

Actually, I had pulled this very stunt in Harlem, too. Whenever Curtis Mayfield or some other soul-master came on the juke-box, the goddamn African-Americans told me: “Froggy, you can’t dance, you be too uptight! Let go! Move yo’ ass! Get a soul!” Infuriated by the constant jibes, or maybe just inebriated enough, one night I stopped trying to emulate James Brown and started on the kazachok. The shock registering on the face of the 6’4” gang banger standing next to me, all decked out in a shiny white track suit, complete with gold chains and bandanna, is something I’m not likely to forget anytime soon. The hip-hop sultry bartender herself showed me her appreciation later that night: call it a reward for creativity.

In the derevnie, it worked just as well on the rebyata (who, by the way, favored the same flashy tracksuits, male-bonding, and babas in miniskirts... but let’s not get ahead of ourselves). My French unwillingness to make a complete fool of myself, having been at first mistaken for arrogance, melted right away with the help of spirits.

After my little folk number all I had to do to justify my claim as the righteous owner of a dusha was to sing La Marseillaise.

From what I learned in uptown Manhattan, to make a decent soul you had to blend high-octane foods (primarily fat and sugar), red-hot sexy mamas, lust-driven studs, booze and substance abuse, a high degree of flashiness in the dress code and - to be fair - an uncanny grace in style and behavior from time to time. You should add crime-ridden streets, run-down neighborhoods, and the greed of the destitute to the mix, since soul is unlikely to arise in a tame environment. As I adjusted to the derevnie, I failed to see in the dusha any distinctive trait differing from the essence of soul:

Babas (mamas) trashing their own men with gusto and frequency, which erects a wall of distrust between genders as thick as the subsequent lust with which they throw themselves at each other, when the time is right

Absolute dedication of the rebyata (brothers) to his passions - verging on suicidal

Eagerness to self-medicate with various poisons, mainly booze

Complete faith in some abstract community values, signified by style (fake Versace, shaved heads, crowns on the dashboard, mobile phones)

Pervasive, dysfunctional, ever-present over-extended family.

Being the naive Frog that I am, willing to share his own etats d’ame (my native version of dusha, albeit fairly dusty now) with everybody and his brother, I once expressed my views on the subject in the derevnie. To compound the big blunder, I took out pictures of me in that Harlem bar drinking my soul’s content with a bunch of African-Americans. I showed these kindred souls to the rebyata.

Their rather cold response brought an abrupt end to my fairy-tale vision of soul and dusha flying hand in hand to the dreamland of Redemption. Metaphysically, it turned out to be a sobering experience.

In other words, drunk as I was, I still managed to cover my ass.