Issue #27/52, November 19 - December 2, 1998  

Hot-diggity damn, I am one lucky club reviewer. All in one weekend, I managed to witness first-hand the painful decline of Moscow's legendary nightlife scene, take home a total of four chicks (three of which didn't want to touch me), collect a death threat from the director of Moscow's shite-est club, discover one of Moscow's best-kept nest o' teething-dyevs, and then, yes, luck out with a certain Ira, whom I took home, fucked in the ass, and tossed out of my apartment just before dawn Monday morning--the coldest dawn in 800 years. Brrr, I betcha Irochka was shiverin' like a web in a wind tunnel when she felt that burst of Arctic air getting sucked into her aching bee-hind after a night with me.

But hey, that's just another weekend in the Big Canker, as I like to call Moscow.

It all began last Friday night, when Moscow's club scene was as dead a 58-year-old Russian male. Maybe it was all the snowfall, I dunno. Then again, the truth is that Moscow has gone from a raging Thursday through Sunday party to just one raging night a week--usually Saturday--because of this whole crisis thing. Friday's blizzard gave most penurious Russians and downsized eXholes a solid excuse for not going out to bars and sucking on one Baltika 3 all night long, worrying about whether they'd have to comp a dyev or not. [Note to Lynn Berry-reading eXpatellas: the crisis might be a serious windfall for you, as downsized male eXholes will be looking for self-supporting snapper in these lean times, meaning that U may finally have an edge over the dyev! Waytago!] Nearly everyone that night stayed at home--all except for me and Moscow's most famous gourmand/mamma's boy, Lionel Tannenbaum, practically the only two eXholes left in all of Moscow who still have regular day jobs.

Let me give you the quick and short of it. Svalka: dead as a 58-year-old Russian male; Plasma: dead as a 68-year-old Chukcha. In fact, Plasma is dead not just figuratively but literally. In spite of Kevin "Spider" O'Flynn's article in MT Out dissing our own Starvin' Ivan and misleading its readers into thinking that Ivan had mistakenly labeled Plasma closed, the truth is that the former denizen of Goa-cool has been transformed into flathead-hell. The plateau-head director of the club greeted us at the door in a wobbly cloud of vodka, and immediately threatened to zamochit' me if I wrote anything bad about his club; on the way out, he told Tannenbaum that "I'll chop off your hands" if our review was in any way negative. So here's the review of the club formerly known as Plasma. In spite of the fact that it was almost totally empty save for a few passed-out dorks, that the music sucked shite, and the club gave off as much energy as Jean MacKenzie's snapper, the new "Discotheque on Profsoyuznaya," as Plasma has been renamed, is E-ZiL-E the most kick-ass club east of London.

Only Papa John's, at 5:30am, didn't make us want to spray a bottle of Raid into our mouths. At 6am, PJ's closed down, so we switched to Plan B, waiting outside the door for some SS, or Street Snaking. PJ's is famous for its quality SS factor. Tannenbaum and I make a sly move on three aging dyevs. I convince them to come back to my place with us, but once we're in the light, I recoil. They're too wrinkly for the Chenster's taste. Probably all of 24 years old. Fug dat sheet. Don't let the door hit yo asses on the way out. Slam! Zzzzzzz.

Saturday. 10pm. Your humble Chenster wakes up, knocks back a liter of kefir and downhills the phen slalom course, then, abalone-hands shaking, makes a triumphant return to Svalka. 11pm. Svalka is alive. It's Saturday night, which means, in the post-Moscow Babylon era, that this is the one night for phun and par-tay-eeng. Tannenbaum and I stare at the packed dance floor, populated with quality 2nd-tier dyevs while the male competition is so weak that one flash of my passport and I'm in business. But I'm too wired to maintain. I There must be half a dozen dostupny dyevs, and here I am, unable to make a move!

2am. After a late-night run down the powder slopes, I make another move. Frenz & I jam over to Uncle Sam's. You may have seen it: the absurd provincial Russian attempt to imitate an "American"-style cafe just down the street from PJ's. On the recommendation of vid-guru Bobby Brown, we stake it out. And we wasn't robbed. The vulgar clash of cheesy discotheque, thick vinyl booths, Chinese-made Americana memorabilia and pinball machine made for the perfect bimbo-dyev magnet. Downstairs we found a dozen or so glum underage dyevs who either couldn't afford the cover to PJ's or Propaganda, or were too young to pass the face control, and about the same number of pot-bellied 40-year-old perverts from the local militsia otdeleniye. If this doesn't have "death porn" written all over it, then my name may as well be Lynn Berry. This wide disparity allowed me to slip through the gap and pounce on a pair of blond teens from the local Institute for Light Industrial Technology, which is another way of saying "Institute of Idiocy." O Masha and Nastya, it's too bad we couldn't get to know each other better. If we had got there a little earlier, the pickins would have been even better, so next weekend, expect to see me there at midnight sharp. Incidentally, Hippopatom's new dyev-friendly door policy has also made it a Saturday Night Special for hunters of teethin' dyevs.

Moving on, we cruised over to Propaganda, which was packed and jammin' even at 4am. The mood was high, the music pumpin', the crowd quality. However, I did object to the NONS (No One Night Stand) Factor, evident in the ironic opticals that seemed to be en vogue. Still, Propaganda is the most civilized and democratic of Moscow's clubs, plays consistently quality music, and remains the best all-around choice for most eXholes or even eXpatellas. I met a girl named Lena, a student with her hair in a bun who had been to America and "most of Europe." For some reason, I just couldn't pop a chubby over her after talking to her for a few minutes. She came back to my place with me, but I passed out on the couch, and that was that. Sorry, Lena.

The next day, I crashed hard. It would have been a failure of a weekend if an old flame of mine that I met one night at the Duck didn't pop by unexpectedly Sunday evening. We met on the condition that we exchange language lessons. I taught her one key line of Chenian English--"roll over"--and the follow up--"get out"--the latter of which needs some physical body language to get the point across. I tossed her out before the sun rose, and I remember thinking, as I scrubbed my unit clean with a dish rag, "You know, I'm starting to get used to this crisis thing--and all in all, it's OK!"