August – September, 2000 – Desolationgrad, Russia
I was taking a piss in the bushes when the cops came up behind me.
Desolationgrad’s embankment on Saturday evenings was pretty much a seething sea of drunks, and the bushes were pretty much full of people pissing, so I didn’t have any qualms about joining them. There was in fact a public toilet, but it had a line and it was a smelly mess anyway. Much nicer to pee in nature, under the stars.
I’d been in Russia maybe three weeks, and I spoke almost no Russian. But it wasn’t too hard to figure out what the cops were saying. “Assume the position, scumbag,” or the equivalent.
I used some of the few words that I knew in Russian. “I’m a teacher. I don’t speak Russian.” That surprised them but didn’t seem to impress them much. I was frisked quickly. It was easy enough to understand what they meant when they barked “documents”, too.
I tried to explain that my passport and visa were at the school. They were; and in fact, not even in Desolationgrad, but in the city of Vodkaberg, nearby. Grossly illegal, I’m sure.
(Of course, the real names of these cities are not Vodkaberg or Desolationgrad. But for various reasons I'm not going to tell you what they really are.)
One of the cops was middle-aged and short; the other skinny and youngish. Not sure if they were giving me the good-cop, bad-cop routine, or if in fact one really was bad tempered and the other was not. The middle-aged one barked at me what I’m sure were terrifying threats, while the other one sort of laughed and made what I’m sure were blisteringly sarcastic jokes.
Finally they told me to get lost. I couldn’t even remember how to say “thank you” in Russian, and I think I even was so flustered I extended them a Thai wai, the bow made with the palms pressed together.
Naturally they’d stolen all the money in my pocket. Fortunately only 150 rubles. About $5 or so at the time. I’d been warned about carrying too much money with me.
Pockets empty, I began making the one-hour walk home.
Desolationgrad hadn’t become any more attractive to me with a few weeks of exposure.
I’d met a girl though. An 18-year-old blonde named Svyeta. She lived down the street from me, near the tiny windowless office of the “school” I worked at. She lived with her family, which consisted of a single mother, a brother and a new-born baby sister. Father had left them years ago. Her mother worked at a factory, and Svyeta worked at an outdoor market selling shoes and underwear.
She spoke no English and didn’t seem much inclined to try. We communicated by sign language, gestures, a Russian phrase book I had and a dictionary. In a way, not sharing a language gives you a lot to talk about. We never seemed uncomfortable with it. We’d walk around the shabby littered streets in the evening, her telling me the names of things in Russian. Occasionally we’d stop to get barbecue at an outdoor cafe. She didn’t drink, and was surprisingly chaste. She didn’t allow me to kiss her until our eighth date. Of course a few moments after that first kiss we were humping like rabid puppies naked on my sofa, but never mind.
Truthfully, that’s been one of my better relationships here in Russia.
She worked every day from like 8 in the morning until 8 at night, however, so I couldn’t see too much of her. I think I was teaching about 12 hours a week or something, not much at all really, so I spent most of my free time just sort of wandering around, especially in the forested areas by the river.
I didn’t dislike my classes, but I wasn’t really hitting it off with them in a social sense as they were all Level One and couldn’t speak much English. There was one girl who was on my jock though, and I eventually accepted her invitation to go out to a nightclub with a couple of other students and the worn, hideously made-up secretary of the school.
It was a nice enough deal – you paid something like $6 in rubles, and you got all the vodka you wanted plus a cold buffet of the mayonnaise-glopped salads Russians seem to love, some rice dishes and some salted fish and assorted lunch meats. The crowd was sparse, about twenty people. A typical expensive Russian nightclub crowd – everyone expensively but tastelessly dressed, the men sitting and sneering and drinking while their girlfriends gyrated around to Europop.
We tried to communicate with dictionaries and sign language, and the vodka helped. Things were going well enough until the husband of the hideously made-up secretary showed up, a drunk little bampot who worked as a driver and bodyguard for factory executives. He had checked his two pistols at the door, fortunately, but still managed to entice me to dance with him. I was drunk enough to do so. He praised my ability to drink straight vodka. It’s funny – Russians think they’re the only ones stupid enough to be able to pour raw alcohol endlessly down their gullets.
At the end of the evening, he invited me down to the gym to spar with the factory security guards. I told him I’d be sure and do that. I’m sure it would have been fun. For them.
Then I went home and puked.
When they asked me out again, I made feeble excuses.
About four weeks after I started, I was requested to come to Vodkaberg and meet with the owner of the school. He wouldn’t tell me what it was about. I assumed it was probably confirmation of the transfer to the school in St. Petersberg I’d been promised. August was drawing to a close, and I wanted the hell out of Desolationgrad.
Getting into Vodkaberg and walking towards the schools main office, I began to fume with anger. The winding streets of Vodkaberg were lined with quaint historic buildings, leafy trees, smiling old women selling fruit and vegetables, beautiful young university students waiting at bus stops. The streets of Desolationgrad were lined with drunk skinheads. What the fuck was I doing in an industrial shithole like Desolationgrad? I’d never agreed to work there in the first place. I should have turned around and gotten on the train when they pulled that bait-and-switch act.
But, but, I had little money, I spoke no Russian, I knew nobody, it was a Russia still recovering from the crash of ’98 and not exactly heaving with jobs for foreigners. I’d agreed to stay until October, when I would supposedly be transferred to St. Petersberg.
Yeah right.
I went into a delapidated building, into the shabby office of the school’s main Vodkaberg branch. There were a group of three or four foreign teachers in the office, but they were all sitting sullenly not speaking and greeted me only perfunctorily. The manager and co-owner of the school, smiling like he had a mouthful of piss, invited me into a side room with the DOS, a weaselly old English guy.
“We’ve been getting some complaints,” he said. He handed me a sheet of paper saying I was being given an official warning about the quality of my teaching. Among its charges were that I was unfriendly, uninterested in the students progress and that I failed to correct their mistakes promptly.
I was dumbfounded. I lost my shit. “ARE YOU EXPECTING ME TO DEFEND MYSELF TO KEEP A JOB I NEVER WANTED IN THE FIRST PLACE?” I yelled. “I can think of a very easy way to solve this problem – I’ll resign. Consider this two week’s notice, or would you like me to leave sooner?” That’s what the contract required, meaningless as contracts are in this job.
God knows I hadn’t exactly been overwhelmingly enthusiastic in class. Under the circumstances, that wasn’t especially surprising, though. Unless you happen to be the kind of person who likes being tricked into living and working in an industrial slum.
They wheedled and cajoled at me. “Don’t run off half-cocked,” said the old English bastard. “Russia is not a place to do that.” I assured him I was at full cock.
I was so flustered and generally confused I retreated back to Desolationgrad to think about it. My god, the third job I’d been let go from in under 12 months. Was I too worthless even to be an English teacher? Good fucking Christ! The only further down I could go was crack whore.
The next day the owner of the school came to visit me in my flat. He said he was withdrawing the warning, after speaking on the telephone to a former employer, who had assured him I was an excellent teacher. (Pure luck of the draw that he had chosen one who thought so. . .) He urged me to stay a while longer.
“What about St. Petersberg?”
“Ah, well, honestly, we’re having some difficulties. It might be longer than October. Maybe December.”
Christ. The beginning of winter in Desolationgrad. Sounded horrific.
I told him I would stay at least for one more month, and think about staying longer. Mostly because I needed the money. I’d received my first month’s salary -- $550, not bad -- and I had a total of about $700 to my name. Not much of a safety net. I didn’t know if that would be enough to set myself up in a different city, especially if I had to pay for an apartment.
The next day I emailed the DOS, the weasally old English bastard. He encouraged me to leave, as I was clearly unhappy. I emailed a few schools in Moscow and St. Petersberg, but there didn’t seem to be a lot of ready openings.
A few days later I went into the musty little cubicle that served as the school’s office and was handed a note by the badly-made up secretary. “We cancel your contract. You will leave your flat on Friday.” Two days. I was flabbergasted. I asked why, and she could simply say “Students say you bad teacher.”
I stayed up drinking all night and went into the office the next day dressed all in black, clutching a bottle of beer. Since no one in the office spoke any English, I had to communicate with them via a translation program on the computer. I angrily pounded out a message saying that I would make absolutely sure this school never had the opportunity to do this to a teacher again. The manager pounded out some messages to the effect that I was a very bad teacher and a rude person. I asked her why, if she knew so much about what constituted a bad teacher of English, she couldn’t speak a word of the language. I lambasted them for being both dishonest and incompetent, the worst possible combination.
Then I emailed a few of the schools I’d been in contact with, saying I would be available a little sooner than I had originally stated. I was terrified. Two days to find a new job. If I had to stay in a hotel my money would disappear quickly. My mom would help me out if I needed it, but I really hated asking for handouts. I was supposed to be an adult. Thirty-one fucking years old.
The owner of the school tried to call me and speak to me a few times, but I refused. The podgy manager let me know they would let me stay in an apartment in Vodkaberg for a few days if I needed to. Fuck if I’d take their charity, though. The internet not working in the office, I ran back and forth to a nearby Internet café.
Salvation came in the form of a call from a Moscow representative of a large English school chain. After speaking for a while, he told me that there was a position available in Vodkaberg and they would be happy to offer me a position there starting as soon as I wanted.
Baby.
I spoke on the telephone to some representatives of this new school in Vodkaberg and they were pleasant and helpful and spoke English. They even offered me $50 a month more than the other school.
Glorious. I took a couple of bottles of beer into the office and toasted the staff goodbye. I’d changed from all black to shorts and a Hawaiian shirt.
My new employers picked me up from my apartment the next morning and delivered me from the industrial hell into the historic and vital town of Vodkaberg. They put me in a pleasant, centrally located apartment, and even sent me a pizza on my first evening.
One of the first things I did after I got settled was to go to an Internet café and begin smearing my former employers in every English teaching web forum I could find. Ah, technology.
I did that in nearly every bit of free time I could find until a lawyer arrived a few months later and offered me the choice of receiving $100 or having a lawsuit filed against me.
I took the $100. Hey, no sense bearing grudges, eh?
