Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Being Lucky
The Lucky Strikes was like a second home or a second office. It was a club, a disco, a billiard hall (until Uzbekistan outlawed billiards) and I spent a fair amount of time there. I’d go there Friday nights, Saturday nights and sometimes even on Thursday and Sunday nights, when it would be quiet and it could just be me and the bartender talking. And, if the occasion was right and company was to be had, then I didn't rule out Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On the weekends, I’d stay out until 4 or 5 in the morning, to watch the beginning of the Tashkent dawn as I rode home alone in a taxi. The place seemed to have the allure and promise that one day I might not leave alone.
It reminded me a bit of that TV show Cheers, where everybody knows your name they're glad you came. I'd drink with my buddies who I'd arrive with, or with whomever happened to be sitting at the barstool next to me, everyone was friendly, everyone was open to making a little small talk. At first, I’d start out with the beers, but over time, I moved on to vodka shots for the faster buzz and what I sometimes believed was an easier hangover. Also, for the first time in my life I began to love to dance. I would dance to Russian pop hits, disco, Turkish music, even heavy metal, whatever the DJ put on.
Much like the other guys there, often of indeterminate sexual orientation, I would flirt with the girls there. These girls were beautiful Europeanized girls; they were not the omni-present Tashkent prostitutes, but what is called “honest givers” in Russian. They came from good families, were well educated, had jobs, and often looked like models. They were in their 20’s and usually unmarried – which was culturally not the norm and likely the result of Western influence, as they, like much of Lucky’s clientele, spoke some English, and some had even traveled abroad. This was where many foreign men came trying to pick up a local women, not the women that you just fucked, but the women you dated and eventually married and more often than not, they succeeded.
However, you rarely saw a pairing of a foreign woman with a local man. Local men didn’t care much for emancipated American women. Too fat. Didn’t dress sexually in their shapeless blue jeans, T-shirts, Birkenstocks, unlike the svelte, nubile, almost sluttish young Natashas, Svetlanas, Tatianas. And who needed emancipated women in this part of the world that had a long tradition of women serving their men very well. My friend Henrietta was quite exceptional in that she was an American woman with an Uzbek man. However exceptional it was, being a girlfriend was one thing, but being a wife was another, and problematic at that. Now that they were married, they rarely accompanied me out to Lucky’s.
I learned how to drink, never having drunk before. In the quiet salon/bar up front, where the beer and vodka and conversation flowed, we discussed the great cultural and political debates of the day, of course, of this small world that was Uzbekistan. It was like that sculpture globe on Independence square, in which Uzbekistan’s size was expanded to nearly the size of a continent.
In reality, we lived in a small, insular world, but we would spend the night discussing a conservatory student’s new rap based on the poems of Omar Hayyam, or whether Uzbekistan’s policy of gradual economic transition to market economy was sounder than Russia’s shock therapy. Mind you, the patrons of Lucky Strikes were those who could afford the door fee, which was around $5. This meant that only foreigners in business, humanitarian assistance, embassies, the children of the elite, cultural superstars and others who could afford to get in, with their bags full of bricks of Uzbek money.
These were not ordinary Uzbeks; they were only the “golden children.” And often I was struck by how the discussions in the salon while interesting and intelligent, were so far off from the reality of a country that was so poor and in which people were seriously concerned with issues, such as the cost of bread. They were perhaps having these conversations in their kitchens, but concerned about whether there would be bread on the table the next day. Today, they had beer and vodka – it was cheap enough and accessible to all, but likely they drowned out their sorrows in it to bring them to a sweet state of forgetfulness. And Sundays, it seemed that the bazaars were filled with hung-over masses. But where they drank the previous night very much would show that Tashkent was a city of extremes in every way. And I suppose I was lucky that I was on the side of good fortune. ¶ 9:45 PM
The Lucky Strikes was like a second home or a second office. It was a club, a disco, a billiard hall (until Uzbekistan outlawed billiards) and I spent a fair amount of time there. I’d go there Friday nights, Saturday nights and sometimes even on Thursday and Sunday nights, when it would be quiet and it could just be me and the bartender talking. And, if the occasion was right and company was to be had, then I didn't rule out Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. On the weekends, I’d stay out until 4 or 5 in the morning, to watch the beginning of the Tashkent dawn as I rode home alone in a taxi. The place seemed to have the allure and promise that one day I might not leave alone.
It reminded me a bit of that TV show Cheers, where everybody knows your name they're glad you came. I'd drink with my buddies who I'd arrive with, or with whomever happened to be sitting at the barstool next to me, everyone was friendly, everyone was open to making a little small talk. At first, I’d start out with the beers, but over time, I moved on to vodka shots for the faster buzz and what I sometimes believed was an easier hangover. Also, for the first time in my life I began to love to dance. I would dance to Russian pop hits, disco, Turkish music, even heavy metal, whatever the DJ put on.
Much like the other guys there, often of indeterminate sexual orientation, I would flirt with the girls there. These girls were beautiful Europeanized girls; they were not the omni-present Tashkent prostitutes, but what is called “honest givers” in Russian. They came from good families, were well educated, had jobs, and often looked like models. They were in their 20’s and usually unmarried – which was culturally not the norm and likely the result of Western influence, as they, like much of Lucky’s clientele, spoke some English, and some had even traveled abroad. This was where many foreign men came trying to pick up a local women, not the women that you just fucked, but the women you dated and eventually married and more often than not, they succeeded.
However, you rarely saw a pairing of a foreign woman with a local man. Local men didn’t care much for emancipated American women. Too fat. Didn’t dress sexually in their shapeless blue jeans, T-shirts, Birkenstocks, unlike the svelte, nubile, almost sluttish young Natashas, Svetlanas, Tatianas. And who needed emancipated women in this part of the world that had a long tradition of women serving their men very well. My friend Henrietta was quite exceptional in that she was an American woman with an Uzbek man. However exceptional it was, being a girlfriend was one thing, but being a wife was another, and problematic at that. Now that they were married, they rarely accompanied me out to Lucky’s.
I learned how to drink, never having drunk before. In the quiet salon/bar up front, where the beer and vodka and conversation flowed, we discussed the great cultural and political debates of the day, of course, of this small world that was Uzbekistan. It was like that sculpture globe on Independence square, in which Uzbekistan’s size was expanded to nearly the size of a continent.
In reality, we lived in a small, insular world, but we would spend the night discussing a conservatory student’s new rap based on the poems of Omar Hayyam, or whether Uzbekistan’s policy of gradual economic transition to market economy was sounder than Russia’s shock therapy. Mind you, the patrons of Lucky Strikes were those who could afford the door fee, which was around $5. This meant that only foreigners in business, humanitarian assistance, embassies, the children of the elite, cultural superstars and others who could afford to get in, with their bags full of bricks of Uzbek money. These were not ordinary Uzbeks; they were only the “golden children.” And often I was struck by how the discussions in the salon while interesting and intelligent, were so far off from the reality of a country that was so poor and in which people were seriously concerned with issues, such as the cost of bread. They were perhaps having these conversations in their kitchens, but concerned about whether there would be bread on the table the next day. Today, they had beer and vodka – it was cheap enough and accessible to all, but likely they drowned out their sorrows in it to bring them to a sweet state of forgetfulness. And Sundays, it seemed that the bazaars were filled with hung-over masses. But where they drank the previous night very much would show that Tashkent was a city of extremes in every way. And I suppose I was lucky that I was on the side of good fortune. ¶ 9:45 PM
