Uzbekistan Blues
Monday, August 14, 2006
 
Yulia

Whenever I walked through the door to the Lucky Strikes bar, my heart always skipped a beat; who knows whom or what awaited inside. But this time, it was a disappointingly slow night. The place was quiet, with no one sitting at the bar in the front, and in the back, you could pretty much see small groups of people at tables or at the bar around the dark dance floor. I bought myself a 100 gram shot of vodka which I quickly shot down and washed away with a Baltika #9 and stood at the entry to the dance floor, scanning the room, looking for a familiar face in the darkness and finding none.

Then Oleg appeared. Oleg was Kirill’s cousin who I had met in the park that very first time I met Kirill. He was a quiet type without much to say and he sort of just loomed there after greeting me, looking at me, expecting me to speak. I had nothing to say to him and I began to wonder if it was perhaps better if I had just stayed home and gone to bed early. But I still hoped that maybe the evening would pick up. And then my eyes fell upon this very attractive blonde girl standing at the bar.

I didn’t know her, didn’t know her name, though I’d seen her so many times before around Tashkent, I felt as though I knew her. I’d seen her at the theater, in the club, and probably some other places I couldn’t exactly recall, but she always stood out to me among the very lovely women that you could see all over Tashkent. She wasn’t as tall as the others, or rail thin, or ever dressed in anything more extravagant than blue jeans, but there was something in those big blue eyes that I saw across rooms or streets when our paths had crossed, that always seemed to draw me in.

She stood at the bar smoking with her dark haired friend, who she seemed to be talking with or maybe she had been talking with, but at this point it seemed like they were just smoking and looking out, perhaps with that same sense of boredom as I had, the way she puffed on her ciggarette and lew out a perfect smoke ring that she poked at with her finger. How many times did I do that, out of boredom, late into the evening by the kitchen window.

Then I got the sense that she was staring right at me. I looked right back at her, rolled my eyes and gestured as if to say, “I’m bored too,” and “how do I get rid of this guy standing next to me?”

Emboldened by the alcohol, and wishing to extricate myself from Oleg’s lackluster presence, I walked right up to her and said in a rather impolite Russian way, “what are you staring at?”

“Is that your boyfriend?” She asked with a brazen glance.

“Are you kidding?” I said taken aback and actually a bit amazed that she had the audacity to call my number like that. “Can I join you?”

She softened immediately after and put out her small and delicate hand which I shook. “I’m Yulia.”

“I’ve seen you around before,” I said

“I know,” she said.

“I mean, I’ve really noticed you,” I said drunkenly.

“Who is that guy you were talking to,” she asked.

“I don’t know him really. I met his cousin once. Does it matter?”

I turned to the bar to get another Baltika. “Can I get you anything?” She nodded no, and we stood there a little while and chatted, mostly about how bored we were and what a boring evening it was and that it was sad that there was no one there that evening, that there was hardly anyone even dancing.

Then the music changed to the slow Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song “Californiacation.” Couples came from the woodwork to slow dance to this oddly inappropriate song, I listened to the lyrics “It’s the edge of the world/And all of western civilization/The sun may rise in the East/At least it settles in the final location.” I asked Yulia to dance with me and I held her close.

No longer did she have that tough-talking chain smoking attitude; everything about her softened, from her soft arms and ample breasts pressing against me, the soft cashmere of her sweater, her small delicate chin resting on my shoulder. She smelled fresh. I wondered how she managed to smell so nice when she seemed to chain smoke and drink beer. I thought of the amazing contrast to be dancing with this very beautiful woman when earlier in the evening, I’d been in a seedy bathhouse with seedy guys.

All that now seemed light years earlier, so distant and forgotten. And yet, with Yulia so close to me, it frightened me to be so close to someone, even today, when all day I had felt so alone. My mind started to run like a video player on fast-forward into the future, in which I saw myself getting closer and closer to Yulia, and I would have to pull away. Maybe I would tell her I was gay, though it seemed that she already knew or suspected, though I had brushed off her brash question when I first approached her and continued to flirt with her. I didn’t want to tell her I was gay for so many reasons, among them that it was uncomfortable and that I just didn’t want to. She fascinated me and I wanted her, even though I was frightened a bit by this want.

At the end of the dance, Yulia looked up at me with bedroom eyes and the club seemed to be clearing out. At the bar, there was her dark haired friend, Lena, and several Turkish men who she introduced me to, all very warm and welcoming. I told Yulia that I was tired and was going to go home. I’d had too much to drink. I had been drinking almost the entire day. We exchanged phone numbers. She would be having a birthday party for herself on the 24th and she asked me if I would come. I told her that, of course, I would come…but inside, I thought that I probably would not. And as I walked out of the club and this time, with money to hail a taxi, I decided that I needed to run home through the quiet streets.
 
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Dispatches from Tashkent

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