xoxoANP!

I wake up and I think, “I should get started on my day straightaway, I’m only in Moscow for a little bit!”

And then, “I’m on vacation, and I like to sleep in, so why not lie in bed a little longer?”

“Well, maybe because this mattress is too soft, and it’s aggravating your back?”

“Yes, but the sheets are so fuzzy and flannel and soft!”

It’s no wonder I sleep in a lot and have never been a morning person. The thoughts inside my head are exhausting.

–

It’s a twenty or thirty minute walk to Red Square, so I don’t bother with the Metro and get friendly with my street map. I am delighted that I can find all the streets with relative ease. I look at the map, find out the next street that I am supposed to find, and sure enough, that street arrives.

Moscow is less dusty than Piter, and there is more of a cosmopolitan feeling in the air. Maybe I just feel that way because no one gives me a second glance – everyone is too busy and self-absorbed, just like NYC. Hooray! Like Piter, there are hardly any kids around – it’s too expensive to breed, and even if people wanted to, a lot of them are sterile thanks to STDs. ! En route to Krasnaya Ploshschad, I get asked for a donation by a hipster dude whose friend is playing guitar. When I reply “ya ne govoryu po-russki,” he says, in slow careful English, “Do you have one hundred Euros?” He is smiling wildly, aware of the lunacy of his request; I reply with, “ya Americanka” –

“Okay, one hundred dollars?” I laugh. “For your smile, I thank you & wish you the best day & beautiful sun!”

I like that I do not stand out as much here as in Piter. I even get asked for directions, twice! The first time, I was so stunned that I mangled my Russian – “I’m sorry, I are not Russian.” But all of this puts me in a good mood – I can quasi-communicate.

And then I happen upon my beloved Teremok, and I figure out how to order my ‘email’ bliny (70 r/ $2.50). I botch the Akva Minerale (27 r/ $0.96) – I get it with gas instead of flat. And the cash register isn’t visible from where I’m standing, so I have no idea how much I owe her – but she’s kind enough to write the numbers down for me without registering too much annoyance (phew!).

After making sweet tender masticating love to my mushroom n cheese bliny, I continue navigating my way to Krasnaya Ploshchad. I notice a huge sign for a store that I noticed in Piter. It so happens that the store’s name is the same as the man who has recently been calling me girlfriend. I consider snapping a self portrait, a pic of me next to his name in the possessive, but I decide against it.

I pop into a Bosco store that sells Russian Olympic gear. Some of the stuff is okay, but it’s tres pricey ($300 for a tennis dress whose seams don’t line up!!) and I really can’t figure out why I might need a sleeveless hooded bright red down parka. The store is empty and there are three trendy looking young people staffing it, dressed head to toe in Bosco gear. I wonder how on earth the store makes any money. How are the kids getting paid? What’s their white salary (the official salary that’s reported to the government and taxed) and their black salary (the bulk of your paycheck which is paid under the table)?

I follow an underground walkway to Red Square, and alas, Red Square is blocked by barricades. I consider asking someone to take a picture of me with St. Basil’s cathedral in the background, but then I remember

1. It’s not good to lend strangers expensive things like fancy cameras
2. I don’t know the word for “take” in Russian
3. I don’t know the word for “picture” in Russian
4. Why do I need a picture of myself in front of Red Square anyway?

So I decide to check out the big mall flanking Red Square. GUM has dudes in trench coats and fedoras manning its doors – they look like detectives out of the 1940s or something. GUM itself has a skylight and a bunch of nice stores; it reminds me of The Westchester in White Plains with its high-end stores. One thing I notice is the lack of a flagship – you know, the big name department store that anchors most American malls. No matter, I am transfixed by a lovely dress by an Italian designer and stare at it for quite some time. I am confident it’s entirely out of my price range and don’t even bother to head inside the store to look at the tag. Besides, I tell myself, I don’t even see the dress inside the store, just on the window display.

Maybe it’s this beautiful dress that has gotten me all worked up, but when I arrive at a store from the UK named Monsoon I am ready to work the plastic. I see the blue first – it’s an ivory dress with a delicate and nonfussy blue floral pattern, trimmed with a silver and royal blue belt at the waist. The sizes are in numbers I’m not accustomed to but, remembering my dismal experience trying things on in London in September, I guess at 42/14. On my way to the dressing room I see an elegant silvergrey silk shirtdress; it reminds me of a brown satin patterned shirtdress that I’d purchased at Zara to much fanfare from my friends.

In the dressing room, I fall in love with both dresses. They make me feel uber-feminine. In the silver dress, I am a woman – the silk glides over my body in such a flattering way and my skin tone pops against the sheen of the fabric. It is elegance incarnate, I imagine myself sauntering into a highbrow restaurant and fitting in, belonging.

(The night that I break her in, a rainy June Friday night in NYC, I do just that – take myself to the fancy pants Annisa in the West Village, treating myself to their signature appetizers at the bar, feeling dazzling and beautiful and adult and woman, enjoying my solitude and celebrating me and appreciating how wonderful it feels to wear such an elegant dress.)

The dress with the violet blue and the silver accents makes me feel impossibly girly.

I think of a seventh grade dance at Urey Middle School, where Brent H——— notices me walking towards him with horror during the U93 DJ’s “Girls Ask Guys” song, eyes wide and looking nervously for an escape route. After the inevitable rejection, I fumble awkwardly away, heat rising in my throat, forehead perspiring, while thinking to myself that of course he would say no, it’s the girls ask guys song, and I’m not really a girl. I am ugly.

But this time, I have the dress, and I know how to wear girl-shoes and I don’t have to wear over-sized glasses and my teeth fit my face just fine. I don’t need to grow into anything, and I certainly don’t need to grow into a training bra insultingly sized with three As. This time, Brent says yes.

I admire my reflection in the mirror as my fingers trace the delicate textures of the ribbon and I cannot hear the white noise of the women in the adjoining dressing rooms babbling away in Russian. There are no lyrics to escape into; my Shuffle is buried in my messenger bag and Monsoon, like many of the stores in the small town en route to Leiden in The Netherlands, is not playing music overhead. I cannot escape into the conversations of others, I cannot escape my thoughts, myself. I hear my unhappy voice in my head:

You are not a woman.
Look how big your feet are.
You are ugly and awkward and too big.
Everything about you is too big.
You are a tomboy.
Look how small your breasts are.
You are ugly.
You have a moustache.
No man will ever want you.
You might be able to trick one into liking you for a little while but they’ll figure you out and they’ll leave.
Who do you think you are, wanting to buy a dress?
A dress is for girls and you’re a tomboy.
You’re such an embarrassment.
No one wants you.
Everyone is laughing at you, everyone will laugh at you, you’re a fucking fool.
Do you think you’re some sort of girl?!

I straighten up, take myself in, look at myself clearly, remind myself that I am beautiful and graceful and woman and all I need is a pair of tweezers and just because I am good at sports does not mean I cannot be elegant, too.

(I’ll break in my blue fluttery dress a few weeks later at a tea party in Brooklyn. During my mother’s day phone call, I share the story of the tea party and my dress with my mother, who sarcastically asks, “Oh, I guess you think you are some sort of girly girl now, huh?” followed by peals of derisive laughter. Furious storm clouds form in my head, and suddenly I am thrust up against the direct source of so much of my awkwardness in my fumblings towards femininity. There it is. The unhappy voice never belonged to me, it was hers all along, and she can have it back as her mother’s day present, thank you very much!)

9,800 rubles charged to my PremierPass later, my overactive imagination and I are the proud owners of two new fancy girly dresses, each imbued with magical powers.

Prancing in the skylight-filtered sunlight of GUM’s upper levels, I find a store of beauty implements where I get myself some tweezers (bad voice be damned). I also see places to buy underwear, as I am desperately in need of a fresh, but I can’t interpret the sizes on them and decide that my own inside-out dirty underwear will be safer than unwashed-from-the-factory undaroos in a size I’m unsure of. Besides, the matronly woman working in the store is eyeing me with suspicion and she scares me out of the store with the penetration of her gaze.

I leave GUM, one long last yearning look at the fancy pants dress whose store I don’t dare enter, and head down the road to a Kafe Haooz. There’s an open table right in the late afternoon sunshine, and I settle in. They are friendly here, staffed by energetic, likely caffeinated youngsters with no memory of Communism, and I order the same thing I’d had in Piter with Marc & Miriam. The sunlight is warm on my face, I turn to it and close my eyes, let it wash over me. Beautiful sun. I open them moments later to investigate the source of an unpleasant odor. A man in a suit has walked by. It seems he has not bathed in a while.

I write in my journal, read the words weeks later and am brought back:

“I really want to do my nails & pluck my lip fur and I am out of underwear… I’m sitting in a window seat at Kafe Haooz and the afternoon (ish!) sun a few blocks from Red Square is hitting me just so. It’s nice, this seat, in any country.”

–

I attempt to walk to the Kremlin through Red Square but it’s now been entirely blocked off. I learn later that the military is practicing for the upcoming Victory Parade on May 9th. My younger sister, upon my return to the States, is shocked to hear that I was able to get some photographs of the military lounging around; during her visit to Moscow in January ’05 her professor advised the class that photographs of the military were strictly forbidden.

I manage to worm my way back to the front of the Kremlin and walk around through the park-like area flanking its red brick walls. I cannot actually visit it because, as stated clearly in my Rough Guide, the Kremlin is closed on Thursdays. Oops. No matter. The trees are delightful.

There is a man in front me muttering to himself, carrying a brief case, slightly disheveled. He does not smell bad, his stride seems perfectly ‘normal’, but something is off. I think of the movie ‘A Beautiful Mind’. My heart goes out to this man. I wonder if there are social services in Russia. I wonder what his world his like, who he is talking to, what his voices might be saying.

You are not ugly.

–

Marc had advised me against wasting my time by going to the Arbat, but since the ticket office of Tretyakov Gallery closes at 4:30, I have little other choice. He’d described it as a poor attempt to recreate bohemian Europe, little more than a tourist trap. My Rough Guide writes, “the Arbat once stood for Bohemian Moscow in the way that Carnaby Street represented swinging London.” Walking down the Arbat and vendor after vendor of nesting dolls, I am reminded of St. Mark’s Place. I can see how at one time it was edgy and vaguely bohemian, but now it’s a place where the uninitiated flock to feel edgy and bohemian. And, perhaps, buy some cheap souvenirs.

I get a picture of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a Stalin skyscraper, and have a hard time finding an angle that doesn’t involve the building being obscured by one ad or another. I remember some ads affixed onto the cobblestones on the Arbat, and imagine Red Square drenched in capitalism, a giant can of paint pouring over its surface and coating every inch with pent-up demand for produktiy.

It’s getting cold now, and I decide to cross the Moskva River in order to eat at a Thai restaurant. I walk for a bit, try & orient myself, but after half an hour I must face reality.

I am lost.

I cannot find the street that I need to. I’m on to the other side of my Moscow map now, where the streets are less detailed as I am out of the city center. The wind from the river is increasingly strong, the sun is going bye bye, and I am cold. And hungry. My back aches from the weight of my camera and my guide books and my purchases. I want Thai food. I can sense I am out of the tourist area and I am scared.

I want to go home.

When I spot a Metro station I fold, I head back to Sukharevskaya. I had been worried en route to Moscow that I wouldn’t be able to figure out Metro stops, hence my detailed bulleted lists regarding which stops came before the stop in question. But as it turns out, the Metro is incredibly well-labeled. The signs are large and easy to read as you hurtle towards them on the high-speed escalators. The arrows are clear for which train is heading which direction; each and every stop is listed on the large visible signage. By the time I leave the country I have the word for EXIT memorized, so familiar with its shape I’ve become (vuihod).

There is a McDonald’s atop my station and I run to it, desperate for the familiar. I can figure out the menu fairly well, but have no idea what the cashier is asking me — vishnaya? Yabloki? What is she talking about?

“Prostite, ya ne zhnao po-russki, ya ne ponimayu.”

A young woman behind me saves me. “Cherry or apple?” I am relieved. Cherry.

It is the most delicious Big Mac and cherry pie I have ever had in my entire life. I relish every bite, chew slowly to savor the taste. As is the norm in Russia, I leave my tray at my seat when I leave the packed McDonald’s.

My belly is full. I am comforted.

–

In the overheat of my Soviet flat, I look through my day’s catch of photographs. It has been frustrating in Russia; the types of shots I prefer (close-up on foreground; blurred background) are difficult to capture given the enormity of the scale. I sometimes feel as if I’d need a camera eight feet tall – Russian sized! Perhaps it is not so terrible to be forced to capture things in a new manner, look at the world without such zoom-lens distortion.

I pluck my moustache and plan my Friday, hoping for another good day with “beautiful sun.”

Post updated on 6/12/2006 to include prices of food purchased at Teremok.