Last Sunday, my new Russian friend, Katya, who I met for the first time that Friday night, invited me to come with her to watch a concert in a bar. We were supposed to meet in a metro station but I, of course, showed up at the wrong station and got hopelessly lost and was wandering around trying to call her for half an hour. Eventually, by describing my surroundings and sending photos of my location, she and her friend, Lena, found me. To be fair, I think it was really poor planning to name two different stations "Arbatskaya". I mean, come on... I can't have been the first person to go to the wrong Arbatskaya. I'm still mad about it.
Once we got to the bar, resembling an Irish pub, Katya introduced me to her friend, Mira, who would be singing that evening. She looked effortlessly cool and beautiful in a cropped flannel shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. I feel like all the women here always look marvelous and pulled together, even when dressed casually. We then went to the bar to get drinks. I had to show my passport and the bartender raised his eyebrows when he saw I was from the US, looking around at my companions and then back at me and then back at my passport again, before slowly returning it. I said "thank you" and reached out to grab my passport, and I swear he kept holding on to it for a few seconds before letting go. Then, he walked away from the bar into another room. We were all confused because we had already paid and ordered.. But he returned a little while later, holding our drinks. He handed me mine last with the same sort-of confused expression on his face. I had no time to ponder his confusion, however, because the band was about to play and I finally had my vodka, so I didn't care as much anymore. (Mom, I'm KIDDING!!!!!!!) When Mira stepped onto the little stage, she paused, turning around to whisper something to her bandmates. The drummer and guitarist promptly disappeared then, and Mira warmed up her voice to a tune similar to that of "Jeoprady" as she awaited their return, building anticipation among the audience, most of whom were in love with her already. When I say "audience", I only mean about fifteen people, but it was a tiny pub and quite crowded still. Her bandmates returned a couple minutes later, bearing a stool and a small bust of Vladimir Lenin, which they handed to her. With an exaggerated flourish, she placed Lenin on the stool in front of the stage, so he resembled either another band member or the band's number one fan, depending upon your interpretation. Then, she stepped back and the band started playing. They played a set of American/British songs, and her voice was amazing. At the beginning of one song, Katya and Lena turned to me with big smiles on their faces, which I returned somewhat hesitatingly, until I recognized the lyrics of Greenday's "American Idiot". Then I laughed, and didn't feel bad about it because, honestly, I am both an American and an idiot.
After the set, everyone went outside for a smoke break, leaving me and Katya's boyfriend, Gleb, alone at a table in the nearly empty bar. (Sorry, I forgot to mention him until now.) Gleb and I met only very briefly on Friday night, and I didn't feel that we had hit it off. This could have been because, once I realized that Gleb rhymed with the Russian word for "bread" ("хлеб"), I kept repeating his name, followed by "bread", over and over again, and, while Katya thought it was funny, Gleb seemed less than amused. So, I turned away from him and faced the stage, upon which another band was getting set up. I looked around the bar, and at the colored lights beaming from the corner, and then at the stage again, basically anywhere but at Gleb, because I didn't really know what to say to him. Then, the band started playing. It was a really intense, loud, Russian rock song and the guy singing, probably around 30 with reddish hair and a beard, made equally intense eye contact with me. At a loss for where to look, because I had already spent more than an acceptable amount of time staring at the colored lights in the corner, I turned back to Gleb, feeling a bit caught between a rock and a hard place. He and I nodded at each other, then he asked me if I liked Russian rock music, to which I replied that it was ok, but he couldn't hear me because another song started again. So I turned around, somewhat grateful for the distraction, but was faced with the singer's direct eye contact again. At this point, it was just me, Gleb, the bartender, and the band, and the vibe was getting pretty weird. Feeling my cheeks redden from the singer's attention, I turned back towards Gleb, who had noticed the exchange, and imitated the singer's stare at me, improving upon it by adding vogue hands. This broke through the weird wall between Gleb and I, making us both crack up with laughter. He then gestured that we go outside and I nodded in relief, eager to get away from the eerily empty bar. As we walked up the stairs together, I turned to Gleb and said, "I didn't love it." He laughed and agreed. Gleb and I were friends after that. We even fist pumped goodbye later that evening. (Pictured below is Katya with Gleb)
After that, the whole group, including the band and a couple of Katya's other friends, went to a sushi restaurant. Katya, Gleb, and I ordered drinks and sushi to share. Lenin was passed around the table, and posed with for amusing photos. Someone joked that, if my friends in America see these, they'll assume all Russians always eat with a statue of Lenin on the table. Another person said I should tell my mom I found a new boyfriend, who has a flat in the center of Moscow.
Then, Katya's friend, Alya, asked me, in English, what Americans thought of Russians. I didn't know what to say. I thought about my friends at Dickinson, who, this past year, have joked, somewhat innocently, about the drunks and the unkindness I would encounter in Moscow. I thought about most Americans' responses when I told them I was studying Russian, and their questioning of what on earth I would be able to do with a Russian degree following university. (I've frequently wondered how different their responses would be had I said I was studying French, or Italian, or Spanish.) I thought of references to the cold, unsmiling Russian faces in articles and guidebooks, as well as the laughably bad portrayal of Russian accents in American movies. Finally, I thought of Leonid Gozman's visit to Dickinson, in which he presented a talk about "Russia after Crimea", discussing the differing liberal and authoritarian forces at work in Russian politics, and Putin's hold on public opinion. I remembered one community member's rather-haughtily posed question at the end, in which he wondered how Russians could ever be ready for democracy, or if they could handle the "responsibility" of democracy, or something along those lines. I thought about how terrible it was to assume an entire country of people, people who live in cities and in the countryside, people who work and learn in universities, people who speak multiple languages, who study diplomacy and international relations, who have families and friends, who drink coffee in the morning, who teach their kids how to ride bikes, who have dreams, and hopes, and ideas, and political opinions... how terrible and ignorant it is to assume that these people are so different from ourselves. When Americans think of Russians, they don't typically think of the students who surrounded me that night - many of whom were more talented, and thoughtful, and intelligent, and open-minded than I could ever hope to be. They don't think of Tatyana, my host mom, or her delicious plum pie, or her constant concern that I'm not eating enough. They don't think of Pushkin, or Bulgakov, or Dostoevsky. They think of Putin, the Soviet Union, communism, cold weather, and bad accents. When Alya asked me what Americans thought of Russians, I, as the representative of America at that table, felt sad and a little bit ashamed and, not for the first time in Moscow, I was at a loss for words.