Fidel

Fidel is a ‘student’ bar, which I realized only last night is a euphemism for unconnected, stingy, and/or unimaginative. I would add poor, but in reality no poor person would be willing to cough up 60 rubles (about $2.50) for a shot of vodka. What it really is is ’poor chic,' that style which compels trend-seeking American teenagers to pay $300 and up for a pair of pre-ripped jeans, or fill their wardrobes with ‘quirky’ clothes they found at a thrift store. To this crowd, Fidel Castro is less a complicated political figure, than that cool kid who lived down the hall in your dorm, the one who wore a scraggly beard, smoked, and thought big, beautiful, independent thoughts.

Sitting on a bench with my back to the wall opposite the bar, I had the sense that extremely cool and enticingly dangerous things were happening somewhere else. All the ‘New Russian’ kids, the ones who race around in brand-new BMWs (don’t I feel at home!) were going wild in a lavish nightclub with go-go dancers and trance music, dropping ‘e’ tablets like M&Ms and making-out with each-other in-between sips of fine champagne brought around by nude waitresses on roller-skates. And here I was, watching suspiciously aged women get their groove on with lanky men dancing like Bill Nye the Science Guy––pumping their bony appendages in rapid motion like the pistons of a horrible machine, or drunken peasants reenacting a furiously paced chicken-plucking ritual.

The only two remotely attractive Russian girls happened to be sitting to my left, and after about half-and-hour I brought them into the conversation my friends and I were having. Their English was excellent, which was unfortunate because we’d been talking about them for the last fifteen minutes. They assured us they hadn’t heard anything and the music was loud enough that I believed them. I told the blond one I thought Fidel sucked and she gave me a smile which said disagreed but wasn’t the type to argue. A few minutes later I asked her to dance; she moved like a dancer, and spun with the powerful, refined velocity of a lead bullet, practically knocking me over when she wrapped into me. Sadly, she must have found me less impressive; after one song she took my hand and lead me back to the table.

On the dance floor she’d tried to whisper something in my ear I couldn’t make sense of. I kept looking at her confoundedly, trying to communicate with a single expression that I was neither dumb nor deaf, and just as confused at my lack of understanding as she was. Back at the table I realized what the problem was. Along with a breathy little voice that was easily drowned out by the music, she had this classic ‘valley girl’ accent, meaning she inflected the end of every clause as if she was firing off countless glib questions. How the hell did she pick that up, I thought to myself. Nobody here talks like that.

By this point it was 11:50, time to catch the metro home. The girls had taken interest in another guy (they took him home, I found out later. Turns out they’d been angling for foreigners all night long––call it the forth type of Fidel-goers) and I had no desire to stay in this place anyways. I grabbed my coat, leapt from the bar, and sprinted through the streets like a criminal fleeing the scene. I’d forgotten how fast I could run, and now delighted my speed and agility––bounding over potholes and curbs, dodging cars, and skidding past pedestrians who threw me contemptuous or indifferent looks. In front of blue Peugeot I cut too fast and had to brace myself against the passenger side, causing the alarm to go off. Running away from its shrieking siren, I really did feel like a criminal.