Gravity

Until two nights ago, which is when the incident I am about to describe took place, I had settled on a more positive view of this place, its people, and myself. I even was ready to concede that maybe Russians as a whole were superior to the expats who come here for a (hopefully) consequence-free rollercoaster ride of booze, whores, and easy money. I reasoned that Russians' dysfunction was at least explainable, a function of the bad times they had gone through, whereas the misbehavior of expats was just that.
I stand corrected, ashamed, and disgusted.
Two nights ago I was riding in the subway from the northwest of Moscow where I previously lived, to the southeast of Moscow, where I will be living for the next several months.
I entered the train at station Oktiabrskoe Pole, which is about four stations from the last stop. There were several free seats, and I took one, as is my habit, on the edge of the long bench, in order to not have to sit between people. There were no particularly interesting people in the train, apart from a fellow standing in the doorway next to me. He was thin and slightly jaundiced but strong, in his early twenties, and clothed in a long, narrow black leather jacket that hung in a shallow triangle down to his below his knees, a dark brown leather vest laced close to his body in the front and accompanied by a cobalt tie, and a pre-Revolution style leather cap with a short bill and embroidered leather band.
I took little note of him, although his clothing definitely separated him from the crowd. There was also a girl sitting either drugged or passed out, in any case nearly incapacitated, on the end of the another bench. She was wearing a very short, fuzzy hot pink skirt and blouse, and black nylons. Her hair had been died a not overly garish orange and her head was lolling about a bit.
At the next station, several young drunks entered. I was unsure what association they had with one another, but one of them, a heavyset fellow with old, deep, but not long razor knicks that could not logically have been self-inflicted, and wearing a puffy black plastic jacket and smurf-style black knit cap, greeted everyone in the wagon with a proud "Heil Hitler!". I felt an immediate disgust, which triggered the interest of the jaundiced fellow, who it turned out, was of the type who takes a keen interest in absolutely everything.
The Nazi, who bore more than a passing resemblance to a tyrannical music teacher whose lessons I suffered through in middle school, soon began serially hitting on every woman in sight. In Russia, one mark of sleaze is to approach a woman by saying, "slysh", which is the informal command form of "hear". It's about as low as snapping your fingers to get a woman's attention, then pointing proudly at your erection. The final result of his attempts was a bench devoid of women, apart from the incapacitated one in pink. He soon approached her, and sensing her incapacity to leave, got nice and close to her and began groping her. She pushed him away, but only half-heartedly. Understanding this as permission, he continued to chat her up.
He finally put his hands under her armpits and tested to see if she could stand on her own two feet. It turned out that she could, and soon enough he was edging her into the corner, leaning in close, kissing her cheeks, and leaning in very close to whisper God knows what in her ear.
Still incapable of reacting with a decisive no, and possibly hoping to appease the Nazi, she returned his hugs and laughed vapidly, but refused to be kissed on the lips. At one point the train stopped so that I could hear their conversation, and he was demanding that she go out drinking with them. She said she was getting out in one station, and seemed to have come to her senses somewhat.
By this time we had gone past my station, the Nazi was leaning in close, hips slowly rocking against her. I wondered if there was anything I could do, and stood up. The attentive jaundiced fellow, who turned out to have a type of bad breath I have never encountered, asked me in an official-sounding tone what had happened, and I explained as best I could.
He told me nothing could be done. "The police don't care, and we have no connection to them. We have no weapons, and cannot fight him." We both begain keenly observing as the tears streamed down her meticulously-made up face. On his face was painted arousal so tainted by malice that the latter stood in the foreground, shocking absolutely no one but me. We rode one more station. She tried to get away and he shook her hard, leaned in and whispered something in her ear. At the next station he took her arm and pulled her out. I went with them.
The jaundiced fellow followed and warned me not to intervene, saying that there "was no conflict". I interpreted his words, I think correctly, in a (faulty) legal sense: no one had been attacked. I reflected on the sum of cash in my pocket- I had to take my savings, which I had removed from the bank on word of a run-to-be, to my new place, and the cops are known for stealing. As we stood facing each other on the platform with our backs to the tracks, we looked at the two of them walking arm in arm towards the escalators, and he asked me what I was feeling at the moment. Struggling, I said that I was surrounded by shit. He agreed, saying he had grown up here, and that he from time to time associates with such people, to understand their ways. I said that when you touch such people, you begin to become like them. He did not disagree, and commented that "our society is constructed this way, and nothing can be done." By now, the Nazi and his prey were 100 meters away, and when the jaundiced fellow looked at me I could feel that he was prepared to do anything. He was an observer, and ready to participate to go along with whatever action I took. He was staring intently at my face, and I felt an absolute powerlessness and revulsion. I commented that I felt like vomiting, which he answered with a stare containing a practiced, highly exaggerated sense of detached curiosity.
Had we run ahead and summoned the police, we may have convinced them. Not all of them are bad, not by a long shot. We might have unexpectedly knocked him down the sharp-edged escalators, hopefully causing serious injury.
I did not, so we did not. The next train arrived. It was not my business. I got in, and the jaundiced fellow, for whom I felt a species of respect, continued staring at me. I nodded to him, and he, ever with the same expression, nodded back. Soon his face was obscured by a sign at head level, but I felt he was still looking at me.
Afterwards, I felt an incredible nausea about myself, the Nazi, the inaction of everyone around which I got caught up in. I like to think of myself as an individualist who thinks and does as he wishes and gets caught up neither in groupthink nor groupsloth. It turns out I was wrong.
I thought about capital punishment, pulling the trigger with pride. The guillotine. Cruel smile, fire ants and honey. Blunt club, too light to do the job right. Firing squad. Looking into his eyes as I end his life with not a quark of compunction. Feeling disgust for the fact that I felt no disgust at my own barbarity. All these thoughts of revenge are always in inverse proportion to one's perceived power to act, and come after one has wasted the opportunity to yank the spiral straight.
To repeat the jaundiced fellow's question, what am I feeling in this moment? That my best words describe the worst moments, and wondering what that means.

Claptrap

I haven't written in over a month. That's in large part due to my now ex-roommate whom I will refer to as Claptrap, thereby continuing my tradition of protecting the guilty with pseudonyms, and at the same time naming his twin predilections for endless drunken rambling, and V.D.
I first met Claptrap many months ago at a school function. I noted that as soon as the official portion of the meeting was over and we were free to drink, Claptrap took a can before anyone else, and stopped after everyone else. That was in April, tax season for Americans, and he graciously offered the use of his computerized tax program, inviting me to his residence, shared by his now ex-girlfriend. In order to compensate Claptrap for his help, I compensated him with a few bottles of medovuha. I don't think the behavior of drunks is really worth reporting on, but let me summarize by saying that I had the distinct feeling that Claptrap had homosexual tendencies which fortunately he never tried to act on, perhaps because he is a born-again Christian.
Afterwards, I did not associate with Claptrap because he just talks too much, even when sober. He occasionally would call me on the telephone, though, letting me know the cost of oral sex (from a woman), or complaining that the women in his Russian smut mags were all down with V.D., or to let me know how to avoid paying taxes.
Many months later, after returning from a trip in France, I was living alone in a two-room flat, and needed a second person to pay the rent. Because the other choice was a long-term friend of a very typical expat- a runaway debtor- I chose the devil I knew.
He was soon blessing my life with 36-hour non-stop bouts of alcoholism set to the tune of Alan Jackson and Waylon Jennings; at the end of the day, he could be found passed out on the fourth-floor windowsill, with the window open. Once he got so drunk he knocked over the bathroom sink, shattering it. I even severely cut my foot on the porcelain fragments laying on the floor, resulting in a trip to the hospital. His alcoholism, round-the-clock garrulousness, deep voice and globe-spanning circle of acquaintances led him to frequently talk at all hours.
He also brought home two women he supposed were whores, one of whom was 17 years old. Prostitution is very common in Russia, and the fact that people do that doesn't bother me except on a very abstract level. Prostitution in Russia is frequently connected to other types of crime, especially robbery. The scam works like this: the woman decides she wants you to be her client, and possibly slips something in your drink, then goes home with you, possibly with an armed, muscular male following close behind. You go into your apartment with her and begin to amuse one another- until Igor or Vladimir arrives with a baseball bat, knife, or gun, ties or beats you and leaves you on the floor for dead while rifling through your belongings to find cash, passports, credit cards, or jewelry. Electronics are also fair game for theft.
So when Claptrap brought home his jewel of a woman a few weeks ago, I was prepared for the worst, and took all the sharpest knives out of the kitchen and slept with them under the pillow. When they were porking, I could have easily imagined from her voice that he was making love to a chainsmoking chicken- had I not earlier seen him with a sag-eyed hawk-nosed whore 45 before her time. Afterwards, Claptrap revealed to me that he had not even used a condom, and fully expected me to sympathise with him when he complained that he might be HIV-positive.
Anyways, I threw him out a few days ago. When he was still drunk, ashamed and depressed, I wheedled 200 dollars of compensation out of him, and used the money to pay half a month's rent at another place on the other side of town.
Who knows how long I will be able to live at the new place before that arrangement blows up, too?