Russians... so gay.

My first job out of college i worked for gay.com, doing ad sales. I was hired in part because i speak Russian. On my first day of work, i realize there is no nice or underogatory way to say gay in Russian, besides GAY. There are though 3354 ways to say "cute." There are also 4,342 ways of selling out a relative to secret police. Surprisingly, there are also 352 different ways to say the word "drink" and 250 to say "I don't know how how that body ended up there." That's Russian culture. Language is sculpted by it.

Russians also have this thing that I have commonly come against. Open windows. You can't leave them open ever. "Don't open vindow, you'll catch cold." It could be 110 degrees outside, "don't open vindow, you catch cold!" I grew up in Southern California, with a father who refused to use air-conditioning for this reason too. He was okay though, driving with closed windows and chain-smoking his Benson Ultra-lights. God forbid if I wanted to open a window though. I guess emphysema is a part of growing up? If anyone has an idea for this joke, please tell me. :)

When I was really little, my grandmother lived in this Russian apartment building, in Hollywood. It was one that little old ladies lived in in between visiting a park across the street, Plumber park. This was where they would go to fix each other's grand kids up and medal into other people's personal business gossiping, while fighting over who has the most ailments. It's the Russian-Jewish lady way. One thing I remember clearly about this place was my grandmother's apartment. He walls were covered with puzzles she had put together instead of pictures of relatives. She has waxed fruit on every table which I learned the hard way and old candy in an ash tray she kept near her phone which she was on fairly often. In her building, every day at around 2pm sharp there would be this change. Every old lady in the building would turn on their t.v. sets and watch these Russian stories. I hated watching this shit because well it was boring and took the attention off of what was more important which was helping me eat my way to love. Whenever the "stories" were on, i would try to talk to my grandmother, she would tell me that I needed to be quiet and behave, "because you never know who's listening and they can make people go away." She said this of course in Russian while taking her shaky old hand to some old hard candy that she would then offer me. Even at a young age, I assumed this was an early onset of dementia, schizophrenia or simply a part of her sick sense of humor, which I could dick. I was 10 when I realized that she was serious and that the KGB really had existed. Granted, we were in an old building, mid-hollywood, where the only people listening were the other old ladies just so they had something to talk shit to each other about.



(more to come soon)