We had some good times. I played them
through my head while I watched the lights pass by the taxi,
streaking in my eyes like a long exposure photograph. The Russian
techno beats playing as steady rhythm to my changing visions. I saw
us in the Czech Republic, exploring the dimly lit Sedlec Ossuary,
with its human bones hanging as a chandelier overhead and the great,
bone coat of arms hanging on the wall, in front of the pyramid of
skulls. I remembered us in Slovenia, wandering the streets in the
freezing night, backpacks loaded and me pulling my accordion around
behind me, looking for the couchsurfing group, I trying to make jokes
to lighten the load but Pavlos thinking I was simply complaining.
How Pavlos was teaching me to say, “Look at those knockers!” in
Greek, and I was sharing the same in Russian. There was the
couchsurfing accordion party Pavlos organized, where I played to an
audience of some thirty people at a bar in Zagreb, people dancing and
singing along to my music. And in Budapest, that night of complete
insanity where neither of us remember the end, but both of us
remember not keeping the contents of our stomachs. Then in Kiev,
where we were sitting in Alex and Katsia's living room, trying to
figure out how to play “Ophelia” by The Band on my accordion.
 |
| The good times... look at how we smile! |
There were good times, though in an effort not to sound too
much like Dickens, there were also bad times. We were arguing like
two lovers who were never meant for each other but stayed together
for the children. But in our case, there was no sex and there were
no children, our only intimacy in that we shared the road underneath
our feet and the packs on our backs. Pavlos, the fire Leo, always
seeking out new people to socialize with, as though he needed other
people to affirm his existence so that he didn't lose it. He was
constantly dragging me into new situations with new people, though my
strongly introverted nature didn't always care for the intention. He
seemed to think as though the problem were that I wasn't brave enough
to face women or uncomfortable situations when the truth of the
matter was that I simply wasn't interested in those things. I sought
to move with meaning and I seek relationships that have meaning –
even relationships that are found and lost in moments should have
something blowing in the sails. Pavlos, divorced with two kids in
Canada, was having a mid-life crisis, and needed – no thrived –
on changing where he was at and what he was like as he was involved
with a long distance struggle to maintain some connection with his
children, but at the same time figure out who he was in the aftermath
of this great cataclysmic life event. Maybe he was trying to live
life so furiously and quickly because he was trying to make up for
the time that he had lost. He was on travel mode, on vacation mode,
on a mode different than where he was at before, trying to
re-identify himself. But I already had an identity, firmly set on
the ground, a burning light in a fierce darkness. It wasn't seeking
to change or be changed. My traveling and movement was already who I
was. I wasn't on travel or vacation mode, but just simply living
mode, and my life on the road wasn't much different than my life
living in Bolnisi or in Denver. That, and I'm a real lone wolf type, so sticking with the same person for a long time can edge on me.
That's what I was thinking in the cab home from the party. Somewhere out there, I imagined, Pavlos was stumbling around like some sort of Greek lycanthrope, half-man half-goat, drunk and alone, howling curses at the bloodshot moon. I had called him on the cell phone, told him, “Get into the cab, you don't know the way home. Just get in the damned cab!” “No, I don't need your help. Fuck you!” and silence. The disconnection of the phone was the disconnection of our life line, the breath that had pushed away when I was lying on the floor earlier.
It started with an invitation to a party. I was talking to Tanya from couchsurfing. She had written an ad that she had a place to stay. If my Russian visa didn't go through – of which I would know on the following Monday – then I was looking to stay in Kiev for at least two months to work on my Russian language skills and my book. She invited me to a party that night, welcoming some Dutch people to Kiev. I naturally invited everyone I was sitting with at the time, which was Pavlos, Patrick and a French guy – two guys we had met at the Dream hostel – whom had all joined me at the coffee shop outside of St. Sophia's. We were doing a short walking tour of the churches in Kiev.
That's what I was thinking in the cab home from the party. Somewhere out there, I imagined, Pavlos was stumbling around like some sort of Greek lycanthrope, half-man half-goat, drunk and alone, howling curses at the bloodshot moon. I had called him on the cell phone, told him, “Get into the cab, you don't know the way home. Just get in the damned cab!” “No, I don't need your help. Fuck you!” and silence. The disconnection of the phone was the disconnection of our life line, the breath that had pushed away when I was lying on the floor earlier.
It started with an invitation to a party. I was talking to Tanya from couchsurfing. She had written an ad that she had a place to stay. If my Russian visa didn't go through – of which I would know on the following Monday – then I was looking to stay in Kiev for at least two months to work on my Russian language skills and my book. She invited me to a party that night, welcoming some Dutch people to Kiev. I naturally invited everyone I was sitting with at the time, which was Pavlos, Patrick and a French guy – two guys we had met at the Dream hostel – whom had all joined me at the coffee shop outside of St. Sophia's. We were doing a short walking tour of the churches in Kiev.
 |
| St. Sophia's at night |
“We're invited?” Pavlos said.
“Of course,” I said. “Just one rule please, don't hit on Tanya, my future possible roommate, okay?”
“Sure,” Pavlos said (you can read his version of the night here, where I'm a hater and he's awesome). Pavlos hit on every girl in the room, all the time, even if I was talking to her and trying to chat her up – even while I was trying to chat her up. He did it even without realizing it, the intense flirtation being a natural part of his Greek Mediterranean blood. To me though, it was degrading, not only that he'd attempt sleeping with girls whom I were talking to, but that with each additional girl he flirted with, he decreased the humanity of the other women – at least, that's how I saw it.
“You can try to sleep with any other girl, but just not her, okay?”
“I'm not that bad,” he protested.
“But you are!”
Patrick and the French guy couldn't join us. We had gone on with just us two to the party, which wasn't that far away from where we were. At the party, we were instantly mingling. We met girls and guys alike, conspiracy theory rattling journalists to Orthodox church activists to Anika, our Dutch host and celebrity of the night. Then there was my possible future roommate, Tanya. “Well, I was thinking about moving out,” she confessed to me, “because I wasn't able to find a roommate. But if you want to come and look at it, then maybe I'll stay another month or two.”
The night went on, we made our rounds, we danced. As I was dancing with one girl in the room, I saw outside, Pavlos had Tanya up against the wall, kissing at her neck. I grunted, but I tried to forget about it. He was on vacation mode, while I was trying to establish a life. Just enjoy the dance. The girl I was dancing with left the room to join the others in the kitchen. I sat down to enjoy the Gogol Bordello music pounding out the speakers, “Immigrant, immigrant, immigrant punk!” The song became like a theme song to me, since I hadn't known the life of a citizen in my home country for some time now. “Of course we immigrants wanna sing all night long,” Hutz sings, “don't you know that singing salves the troubled soul?”
Back in the kitchen, I found Pavlos kissing with the girl I had been dancing with. Tanya pulled her away and they made their exit. I sat down, talking to a big Ukrainian guy who was just about becoming as obsessed with kissing as most of the Georgian men I had met. He was flirting with the Anika before, but now he was intent on trying to get more kisses and hugs from me. I tried to stick with the German kid who was living there too, to keep my lips dry from the slobbery man-love of the big Ukrainian guy.
The night wound down further. Pavlos fell asleep on the couch. Anika expressed her desires to go to sleep, so she called us a cab. “Come on, Pavlos,” I siad, pinching his arm to wake him up. “We got to get going.”
“No, no, I'll stay right here,” he said, still dreary from sleep.
“You can't stay right here, this is Anika's bed.”
“That's okay, she can sleep with me. It will be nice.”
“I don't really want to sleep with you,” Anika said. “You've been trying to sleep with everyone.”
“We can't stay here, come on,” I kept repeating, coaxing him from the couch. We finally got him to the hallway when he changed his mind – either he was fully alert by this time or still in a dream mode, it didn't matter to me, but then he was headed back into the room. “No, you can't stay here, Pavlos. She doesn't want to sleep with you.”
“I never said I wanted to sleep with her,” he said.
“Yes, you did, just five minutes ago!”
“No, I didn't. I'll just sleep on the couch.”
“The couch is her bed! We have to go, there's a cab waiting for us.”
“No, I can stay here.”
I pushed Pavlos against the wall. “Listen to me, we have to go,” I told him.
“Get your hands off of me.”
“Will you just listen to me? We have to go. She doesn't want to sleep with you.”
“If you don't get your hands off of me at the count of three, I'm going to do something bad.”
“Just listen to me!” I yelled. I grabbed his jacket tighter and pushed him harder against the wall. “Would you for once just listen to me?”
“One,” he said calmly, ice in his tone.
“For the love of God, just listen. You can't stay here. Every single fucking time we go out, it's the same damned thing. Every fucking woman man!”
“Two.”
I grabbed his hand, knowing that I was in the weaker position. The hallway was narrow and he had leverage from the wall. I couldn't think of where to go. I had one last appeal, “Just listen for once!”
“Three!” Pavlos lurched into me, taking me down using a standard wrestling knockdown, slamming his shoulder into my stomach. I fell back, landing right on my laptop which was slung across my shoulder in my bag. We struggled for a moment, each of us trying to get to the top, but he was able to climb with ease to have his legs pinning me down. He raised up his fist, ready to slam it back down. “I told you to fucking let go of me!”
The other guys in the apartment were at Pavlos in an instant, both of them pulling his arm back and peeling him off of me. “What the fuck man!” I said. “I'm trying to tell you to go. You just want to sleep with every fucking woman around, don't you? It clouds your senses. She doesn't want to sleep with you. Get over it. Not everyone appreciates that treatment, it's demeaning man. Grow the fuck up and start treating people like people.”
“Fuck you, you miserable waste. I don't need your help.”
“You know what, ass hole? You can find your own damn way home.” I left. But then, I felt guilty for losing my cool as I neared the bottom of the stairs. I had to at least see him home. I went back up. People were in the apartment shouting and putting Pavlos's things into his hands. He was still insisting that he could stay. I went back in and yelled, “You can't fucking stay! Have some fucking respect for someone, man! Every fucking time!”
Finally, he left. He went back down into the night. I followed him down after a few moments, taking a few breaths to renew my cool. I saw the cab, waiting outside, and I looked in. “Did you see my friend come out?”
“No,” the cabdriver said.
I looked around the building. No sign of Pavlos. I got into the car and told him to go. That's when I picked up my phone to call Pavlos that one last time.
“Of course,” I said. “Just one rule please, don't hit on Tanya, my future possible roommate, okay?”
“Sure,” Pavlos said (you can read his version of the night here, where I'm a hater and he's awesome). Pavlos hit on every girl in the room, all the time, even if I was talking to her and trying to chat her up – even while I was trying to chat her up. He did it even without realizing it, the intense flirtation being a natural part of his Greek Mediterranean blood. To me though, it was degrading, not only that he'd attempt sleeping with girls whom I were talking to, but that with each additional girl he flirted with, he decreased the humanity of the other women – at least, that's how I saw it.
“You can try to sleep with any other girl, but just not her, okay?”
“I'm not that bad,” he protested.
“But you are!”
Patrick and the French guy couldn't join us. We had gone on with just us two to the party, which wasn't that far away from where we were. At the party, we were instantly mingling. We met girls and guys alike, conspiracy theory rattling journalists to Orthodox church activists to Anika, our Dutch host and celebrity of the night. Then there was my possible future roommate, Tanya. “Well, I was thinking about moving out,” she confessed to me, “because I wasn't able to find a roommate. But if you want to come and look at it, then maybe I'll stay another month or two.”
The night went on, we made our rounds, we danced. As I was dancing with one girl in the room, I saw outside, Pavlos had Tanya up against the wall, kissing at her neck. I grunted, but I tried to forget about it. He was on vacation mode, while I was trying to establish a life. Just enjoy the dance. The girl I was dancing with left the room to join the others in the kitchen. I sat down to enjoy the Gogol Bordello music pounding out the speakers, “Immigrant, immigrant, immigrant punk!” The song became like a theme song to me, since I hadn't known the life of a citizen in my home country for some time now. “Of course we immigrants wanna sing all night long,” Hutz sings, “don't you know that singing salves the troubled soul?”
Back in the kitchen, I found Pavlos kissing with the girl I had been dancing with. Tanya pulled her away and they made their exit. I sat down, talking to a big Ukrainian guy who was just about becoming as obsessed with kissing as most of the Georgian men I had met. He was flirting with the Anika before, but now he was intent on trying to get more kisses and hugs from me. I tried to stick with the German kid who was living there too, to keep my lips dry from the slobbery man-love of the big Ukrainian guy.
The night wound down further. Pavlos fell asleep on the couch. Anika expressed her desires to go to sleep, so she called us a cab. “Come on, Pavlos,” I siad, pinching his arm to wake him up. “We got to get going.”
“No, no, I'll stay right here,” he said, still dreary from sleep.
“You can't stay right here, this is Anika's bed.”
“That's okay, she can sleep with me. It will be nice.”
“I don't really want to sleep with you,” Anika said. “You've been trying to sleep with everyone.”
“We can't stay here, come on,” I kept repeating, coaxing him from the couch. We finally got him to the hallway when he changed his mind – either he was fully alert by this time or still in a dream mode, it didn't matter to me, but then he was headed back into the room. “No, you can't stay here, Pavlos. She doesn't want to sleep with you.”
“I never said I wanted to sleep with her,” he said.
“Yes, you did, just five minutes ago!”
“No, I didn't. I'll just sleep on the couch.”
“The couch is her bed! We have to go, there's a cab waiting for us.”
“No, I can stay here.”
I pushed Pavlos against the wall. “Listen to me, we have to go,” I told him.
“Get your hands off of me.”
“Will you just listen to me? We have to go. She doesn't want to sleep with you.”
“If you don't get your hands off of me at the count of three, I'm going to do something bad.”
“Just listen to me!” I yelled. I grabbed his jacket tighter and pushed him harder against the wall. “Would you for once just listen to me?”
“One,” he said calmly, ice in his tone.
“For the love of God, just listen. You can't stay here. Every single fucking time we go out, it's the same damned thing. Every fucking woman man!”
“Two.”
I grabbed his hand, knowing that I was in the weaker position. The hallway was narrow and he had leverage from the wall. I couldn't think of where to go. I had one last appeal, “Just listen for once!”
“Three!” Pavlos lurched into me, taking me down using a standard wrestling knockdown, slamming his shoulder into my stomach. I fell back, landing right on my laptop which was slung across my shoulder in my bag. We struggled for a moment, each of us trying to get to the top, but he was able to climb with ease to have his legs pinning me down. He raised up his fist, ready to slam it back down. “I told you to fucking let go of me!”
The other guys in the apartment were at Pavlos in an instant, both of them pulling his arm back and peeling him off of me. “What the fuck man!” I said. “I'm trying to tell you to go. You just want to sleep with every fucking woman around, don't you? It clouds your senses. She doesn't want to sleep with you. Get over it. Not everyone appreciates that treatment, it's demeaning man. Grow the fuck up and start treating people like people.”
“Fuck you, you miserable waste. I don't need your help.”
“You know what, ass hole? You can find your own damn way home.” I left. But then, I felt guilty for losing my cool as I neared the bottom of the stairs. I had to at least see him home. I went back up. People were in the apartment shouting and putting Pavlos's things into his hands. He was still insisting that he could stay. I went back in and yelled, “You can't fucking stay! Have some fucking respect for someone, man! Every fucking time!”
Finally, he left. He went back down into the night. I followed him down after a few moments, taking a few breaths to renew my cool. I saw the cab, waiting outside, and I looked in. “Did you see my friend come out?”
“No,” the cabdriver said.
I looked around the building. No sign of Pavlos. I got into the car and told him to go. That's when I picked up my phone to call Pavlos that one last time.
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