More about Alexei

Ok. Since someone was dying to know more about Alexei, why he was grim, what he was doing in Uzbekistan, how well I got to know him, here are the details.

Alexei spoke slowly, deadpan andin a monotone, punctuated by sighs. In his utterances, there was no levity, no wit. He was ordinary looking, slim, with blow-dried hair that was thinning at the top, pouty lips, forever in a frown. He generally struck me as rather sad character. I found out a bit more later why -- I suspect it had to do with a lack of kielbasa.



Alexei was part of that official 8% of non Sunni Muslims in the population – that is Russian, Tatar, Ukrainian, German or Jewish; the part of the population people commonly call “European.” They were part of displaced populations that came to Uzbekistan during the Soviet Union – perhaps offered good jobs, good pay, military postings, others were forcibly displaced there by Stalin, such as the Tatars or the Volga Germans. But today, they are the unlucky ones stuck in Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

I was lead to believe that these “Europeans,” as they weren’t Muslim were more liberal and progressive than the Uzbeks. Maybe there's some truth to it. For one, they tended to be more tied in with Russia and the outside world, as that was where their friends and relatives who got out of Uzbekistan after the fall of the USSR were. And they communicated with their friends and even visited them. So, they weren't living in complete isolation from the world.

Alexei was 30. He was originally from the Ukraine. His parents relocated the family from Kyiv to Uzbekistan when he was 15 to take on positions at the tractor factory in Tashkent. His father passed away several years back. His mother continued to work at the factory as a bookkeeper.

I called Alexei on his mobile phone -- I didn't have one yet at that time. And he invited me for dinner. My Russian was so poor, especially on the phone. We agreed to meet at the metro station at the end of the line. He said he’d meet me there and take me to his home from there. It was far, he told me, so I should be prepared to come over “nanoch.” I had no idea what that meant – I later learned that it meant to spend the night – though not necessarily implying sex, well, not in most cases. He lived in the TTZ district – which is near the tractor factory and where all of its employees lived. It was actually quite far from the end of the metro line, we had to take a 30 minute marshrutka – which is like a little mini-bus - to get to his apartment block.

Alexei shared a small two room apartment with his mother. This is how people really lived. Crammed into small apartments. People did not have their own rooms. They slept on pull out sofas, or on cushions that they rolled out onto the floor. I felt a little guilty because I lived alone in an apartment larger than this, with many rooms.

I asked if his mother knew about his being gay. Of course she knew. She wasn't thrilled about it, but she knew. It must be hard to have a personal life when you live with your mother, I mused. His mother was out of the country on business, he told me. She often was. He began cooking a chicken for dinner and put on a video that he shot in St. Petersburg of his trip there earlier in the summer. He spoke animatedly about the sites, about Catherine the Great. I understood very little, actually. But felt that I gradually began to understand more as we downed shots of vodka. There was always that illusion that language comprehension goes up with alcohol.

He loved St. Petersburg and said that he would move there eventually, that all his friends had left Uzbekistan and moved there because Uzbekistan sucked.

Why does Uzbekistan suck?


Well, in the end, it seemed that it all came down to kielbasa – the sausage that was sold in the stores. He gave the example of kielbasa in the stores. In Uzbekistan there wasn’t much of a variety. But, in St. Petersburg, there were hundreds of varieties in the store.

Was kielbasa so important? I didn’t eat it, so perhaps I didn’t understand it well enough of it to realize its value. But over time, I grew to understand that lots of people would leave Uzbekistan for Russia or anywhere for better kielbasa and the greater selection of kielbasa. People didn’t see much choice, hope or much of a future in Uzbekistan, not in kielbasa, and not in a lot of aspects of their lives.

The penis shaped meat was actually of tremendous symbolic value to people who lived here. It was a way of measuring the economy or democracy. Either people were strapped for money to buy kielbasa, or they didn’t find much of it in the stores, or they couldn't find the kind they wanted. In fact, I was always amazed by supermarkets in general -- particularly in the provinces – big buildings with shelves only with condiments, vodka, and cottonseed oil.

After we ate the chicken Alexei prepared, and drank some more vodka, we walked around his neighborhood – one that was well known to have been very much preserving its old Soviet flavor. Actually, I was stumbling. The people were mostly Russian, the night seemed lively, with people out on the streets, walking around, drinking beer. Big boxy apartment blocks, all of which looked identical to me. We picked up some beer at the corner kiosk as he showed me around the neighborhood as we drank. It felt so liberating here to be able to drink while walking in the street. No policeman would stop you for that. We walked a few apartment blocks over – we were going to his sister’s house, he had some gifts to bring over for his nephew – some sneakers a knapsack, made in china, as the boy was just going to start school. By the time we got to his sister’s, my memory gets a little fuzzy. I had this powerful buzz from the beer (Baltica 9 -- 40% proof), the alcohol. And I remembered that she opened up a bottle of Sovetskaya champagne which I drank a bit of.

Finally, we went back to his place and by this point, I could barely stand anymore. I only remember he popped a porn movie into the VCR and I sat down on his sofa and could barely sit up, move, speak. The room was spinning around me pretty fast, my body felt like jelly, Alexei tried to kiss me. Though I didn’t find Alexei attractive in the least, after over a year of having absolutely no sex at all, he had a really great chance to have his way with me, were I not too drunk. But he didn't. It was impossible for him or me to get my clothes off, and after a little effort of trying, he stopped and then I passed out. I got up the next morning lying on his sofa, drenched in my sweaty clothes with a collossal throbbing headache. He offered me some tea and aspirin which I took and sheepishly left his place, catching a taxi to get back home.

I felt kind of awkward after the whole incident and didn't call him after even to thank him. I know that he felt bad. Henrietta had gone in to get her hair done a few weeks later and Alexei asked her why her friend (meaning me)never called...  ¶ 8:32 PM