Ke$ha suits me right now: blond hair, dark roots, ready to pass out in a bathtub, etc. Politics, what politics? Election? What election? Do not speak to me of such things.

OK, fine, whatever, I did publish my take on Yanukovych’s win today. And taped some commentary for GRITtv (and looked fug while doing it, but I like to think I said at least a few smart things to counter-balance the fug). I do not know why I do these things. Well, aside from the small issue of it being part of my work and all.

Tik Tok – Ke$ha
Raspberry Beret – Prince
Bakersfield – Vic Chesnutt (RIP)
Driving Sideways – Aimee Mann
Ragged Wood – Fleet Foxes
Gurdjieff: Reading from Sacred Books – Cecil Lytle
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi – Radiohead
Zombie – the Cranberries
Babylon Correction – Deadbeat
Hiphopopotamus Vs. Rhymenoceros – Flight of the Conchords

Besides Ke$ha, my other choice of comfort food is Ray William Johnson:

God bless the Kyiv Post. Here we are, waiting for the election exit polls to start rolling in, the weather is sunny, but cold, the dogs that Pan Chernovetskiy has allowed to run unchecked all over this great city are having a ball outside, and most normal people are in bed with a hangover. So what to do with myself on this fine Sunday afternoon? Be amazed.

Now, what’s amazing here is not the fact that such dehumanizing attitudes toward women, any women, exist. What’s amazing is that they are propagated so strongly by women themselves. I bet Yuliya Popova just wants to be one of the guys. Implicit in her statements is the old “dudebros, I feel your pain.” Also implicit in her words is the insistence that she, of course, isn’t anything like the women she derides via the platform generously given to her by the Kyiv Post. “Isn’t it sad about all those cynical whores/unfeminine bitches too focused on their careers? I would cry for the poor men. But it might make my mascara run.”

Come on, Natalia, you are saying to yourself. You’re old enough to know that sexism would never be as widespread if it wasn’t both covertly and overtly supported by women. Why do you always expect better from women such as Popova? Isn’t that its own form of sexism?

Perhaps. Maybe I just can’t get over the fact that Kyiv’s “leading English-language newspaper” keeps “leading” us into deeper and deeper bullshit. Hey, I get their agenda. It gets them attention, it gets a bunch of douchebags to sagely bloviate in the comment section, drives up hits, and drives up hits some more when it gets passed around by people like me. This doesn’t mean that such content sucks any less though.

The eternal question of “but why can’t a nice expat man find an equally nice woman who sucks dick more than once a day and ruminates on Voltaire once she’s wiped the come from her mouth and makes lasagna and profiteroles and never asks for shopping money yet somehow manages to dress like Carla Bruni and is wise beyond her years but always knows her place (whether it be on her back or on top or bent over the washing machine she thoughtfully runs every day so that his shirts are always clean) and has a great education but never makes a man feel as if he is *gasp* not as smart as she is and wants babies but will never expect their father to change a single diaper in his lifetime, nor will inconvenience him by losing her waistline” is a pressing one, to be sure.

I toss and turn at night, trying to find a solution. I have lost weight, concerned as I am by this dilemma. People ask, “Natalia, why do you look like such crap today? And I go, “I’m trying, guys, to solve a problem that’s just a little more serious than national debt and corruption in the public education sector. Give me a break, you insensitive assholes.”

A woman’s greatest achievement is offering herself up to a man, of course. I don’t mean sexually (I’m not about to start knocking sex on this blog), but, to borrow Popova’s own phrase, as a “universal package.” A woman must give her body and her soul, and never forget that she is the lucky one, as opposed to the man, or, really, the demigod in question. If she doesn’t like it, too bad. Ten others will be more than willing to take her place on the trophy shelf tomorrow.

This is all beside the fact that men must choose women. Never the other way around. If you’re not picked out of the line-up, on account of your trashy short skirt or constantly ringing Blackberry or whatever, sorry, sister; resign yourself to bitterness, financial destitution, and banging gross guys you meet at bars in Hydropark until you’re too old even for them, at which point you will die, in some flat in Borschagovka, your feeble cries for help drowned out by the neighbours’ bad rap music.

In this light, Popova’s column is really more akin to a public service announcement: Girls, do something with yourselves before the expat men all move on to raping child prostitutes in Thailand and the local men develop gout and ED just to spite you!

Men can choose to be single, after all. A single man of advancing years is a freedom-loving bachelor. We’d never feel sorry for, say, Jean-Luc Picard, for staying single. A single woman of advancing years, on the other hand, is a dismal hag, who ought to be performing harakiri on Independence Square, as opposed to knitting or babysitting her neighbours’ kids or working or doing whatever it is that single women do when they are no longer out there looking for a man to please. And if young Ukrainian women inspire lust as well as disgust, older Ukrainian women inspire outright disdain, particularly in the expats. Why are they crowding the buses and streets with their no-longer-fuckable bodies? Don’t they know that they are taking up valuable room?

If there is any wisdom that is to be derived from this morass, I think it is the following: everything in life has its price. When I say that, I don’t mean monetary value. I mean the shocking idea that life, in general, is not quite perfect, for anyone. When we are single, we complain about missing intimacy. When we are with someone, we complain about making sacrifices on their behalf.

We say that your typical chauvinist expat man moves to a poorer country to experience a “sexual fantasy,” but the fantasy, I believe, is bigger than that. The fantasy is the idea, the hope, even, that somewhere out there, life doesn’t run according to the rules: that it will be kinder, better, more accommodating. That in this new, exciting world, they will finally be owed. That they will get what they deserve, and nothing less. It is the same fantasy that men of any background, fairly insulated by their superior social position, can afford to entertain about women in general.

“Who are we to break their dream?” Popova seems to be asking. Well, fellow human beings, maybe?

No way, right? No way.

It’s odd for me to hear Letterman ask if Jordan was “foreboding.” I keep forgetting that many Americans view the Middle East as a generally horrifying place. It’s really unfortunate, particularly in the case of a country like Jordan, because it’s so beautiful. And yes, it was tough as hell on me, I didn’t like living there, I didn’t like the kind of negative attention I got as a foreign woman, and I did run away, far away, but for a male visitor in particular, Jordan is anything but “foreboding,” I think.

In other news, that is one hell of a deserved Academy Award nomination right there.

Intense “28 Weeks”-era Jeremy Renner agrees. Speaking of intense, this guy has never been in a romantic comedy, I don’t think. Let’s hope he never will be in a romantic comedy. (Not that romantic comedies are bad on principle, but come on, the last good one I saw was “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” I didn’t even have a driving license back then.)

Also, my favourite modern playwright called me a playwright in my own right this week. I don’t think my life is complete or anything – it certainly feels changed, though.

I can’t sleep. First of all, “LOST” is coming back, for the last time (what in the hell am I going to do with my life once “LOST” is over? Get a hobby?). Second of all, the return of “Lost” has somehow managed to coincide with what is probably going to go down in history as The Day Natalia Came Close To Chewing Through Her Watch Strap In A Frenzy, or, perhaps, even as The Day Natalia Chewed Through Her Watch Strap In A Frenzy. Details will emerge whenever it is I am able to talk about them in a coherent manner. Let’s just say that I was stupid enough to write a play. And am now dealing with the consequences of this act.

So here’s the music I am listening to while picturing all of the different things that may or may not go wrong tomorrow, pertaining to the play, and also pertaining to “LOST” and acts of God in general:

Sexy Boy – Air
College Town Boy – Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele
Sex Me Up – Datarock
Stand By Me (acoustic version) – Oasis
General Midi vs. Rusty 4eyes – Adventure Time
And I Was a Boy from School – Hot Chip
Dear Prudence – the Beatles
The Ice & The Storm – My Brightest Diamond
Hot Hot Hot!!! – the Cure
Jig of Life – Kate Bush

From my favourite “LOST” episode of all time:

The dudes in the van remind me of some of the crazier road trips I’ve taken. It’s beautiful, that moment, and a little sad as well. The image of Sawyer having beer in the end is the perfect conclusion to “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” but it’s also a pretty good metaphor for dealing with life in general. Sometimes you just tilt your head a little, and then have a drink, and then get on with things.

I have a long, warm coat to keep me comfortable for when I am outside. When I get inside, and take off that coat, half the time, I am no longer wearing pants. That’s right. I have begun pairing long tank-tops and tights. I wonder what took me so long, to be honest.

This is something I would never get away with in the States, which makes the experience all the more meaningful. It’s like, “so what if the ice hasn’t been cleaned off the street in a month? So what if I was having a cigarette outside the theater today, and someone set a pile of trash on fire in broad daylight? So what if the Mayor doesn’t even give a crap about the stray dogs overrunning the city? AT LEAST I DON’T NEED TO WEAR PANTS.”

It looks good with a pair of boots, but most importantly, nobody cares. And if they do care, they do so in an appreciative way. I can enjoy a pants-free existence at the movies, I can enjoy a pants-free existence while buying cold medication. I went and lit candles in church today, pants-free beneath my trusty coat.

Suck on that, Western Civilization.

One of the benefits of being single is going on bad dates, and then telling people about them. OK, maybe that’s not actually a “benefit” to most normal people, but if you’re a weirdo like me, in love with a good story above all things, it’s definitely a welcome side-effect. “This might suck right in this particular moment,” you think to yourself. “But imagine the vicious laughter it will elicit in some pub later.”

We’ll call our hero Dimon. This is a high-minded, cultured individual we’ll be talking about, and “Dimon,” a street-slang variation of the name Dmitriy, is surely a name that he would hate.

Dimon is an older guy I met on the bus. Or, rather, the bus stop. I hopped off at my destination, he hopped off after me, and offered me his arm to help me walk through the ice. As previously mentioned, the damn streets are not getting cleaned up (because that would make life too easy, causing everyone to forget their stern Slavic heritage), so it was a tempting offer. Plus, he didn’t look like a serial killer. He didn’t even look bad. Scratch that, he looked kinda good. As an irrevocably shallow sort of person, I wasn’t going to overlook that.

We laughed many, many times as he walked me home, talking about frivolous things like the weather, and I came close to falling many, many times, and each time he managed to keep me upright, and we laughed some more.

He called me a few times, and we agreed to meet up for drinks one night. It was freezing outside, and he brought me pretty roses, which I hid from the cold in an oversize bag. I’m not really used to men giving me flowers, even Ukrainian men, so I did express surprise, but it was delighted surprise. Flowers are an old-fashioned gesture, but it’s still fairly common in Kiev, and I think it’s one of the perks of being here, to be honest.

It did, therefore, make me a little sad to contemplate said flowers in a crystal vase much later in the evening. I like people with good taste. When it turns out that they are, in fact, miserable gnomes, it bothers me. See? I’m bothered enough to write an entire blog post about it.

…

As we made our way to his bar of choice, he asked me about the countries I’ve already lived in. I answered: Ukraine, United States, United Arab Emirates, and, breaking with the “U” tradition, Jordan. This seemed to displease him, for some reason.

“Oh.” He said. “Well-traveled, are we?”

“Hey, you went to grad school in Holland,” I pointed out (we had established this fact previously, along with the fact that he paints, and works in advertising). “We are not that different.”

Alas.

If you know me, you know that I like to blather on about literature. In this instance, I tried to abstain, I really did. He got me on the subject of Vonnegut, though, which meant that I was eager to discuss Slaughterhouse-Five. Trouble was, I forgot how to say “Slaughterhouse-Five” in Russian. It happens, sometimes. Sometimes, my brain jams. It happens when I’m speaking English too. I’ll want to say “trampoline,” for example, and all I can manage is the Russian word for it; “batut, batut, batut” keeps going through my head, until I want to scream.

Unable to articulate what I wanted to say, I said the words “Slaughterhouse-Five” in English.

“It translates very simply to Russian,” he said. And he said it in Russian.

“I know, I just forgot. Happens sometimes. Brain jams.”

“Or else you’re just trying to show that you’re an authentic American.”

At this point, I was like:

I mean, it’s not like I was especially reticent about having spent most of my life in God’s Country. But, hey, whatever, right? Maybe it was just an awkward joke on his part.

The date continued. Mulled wine was drunk. We talked about art and how people assume that artists must survive on a combination of rose petals and inspiration, when this isn’t actually the case. A group of loud French people sitting next to us inspired me to remark that I don’t think I’m in love with the French language like the rest of the world is. I prefer German. Stoic, harsh German. He was surprised by this.

“It served me really well,” I chattered, as I rubbed the wine stains off my bare arms (it was hot in the bar, and I was attempting to drink the mulled wine through a bendy straw, and it was getting everywhere). “Freshman year, when we were reading Chaucer, I said, ‘wow, thank you, German language.’ I would have had a harder time without it. Middle English…”

“I HAVE LINGUISTS IN MY FAMILY!” He interrupted suddenly, in the kind of tone someone would normally use to denounce a child-molester. “I *KNOW* THAT ENGLISH IS A GERMANIC LANGUAGE!!!”

At this point, I was more like:

Seriously? Lose your temper at me while I was excitedly telling you about my hot love affair with the German language? NOT a way to get into my pants, dude.

How the hell am I supposed to know about the linguists in your family? And even if I did know, who says you ever have conversations with them, huh? For all I know, you despise the linguists in your family. For all I know, you smile indulgently as they babble about linguist-y things, all the while imagining yourself to be elsewhere and not really paying attention at all.

You know, I have musicians in my family, many of them, and they’re always talking about Haydn and Phillip Glass and Natalka Poltavka and whatnot, but if you were to come along and start telling me something about Phillip Glass, I wouldn’t go all “I HAVE MUSICIANS IN MY FAMILY! I *KNOW* HE DID THE SCORE FOR ‘THE HOURS’!!!” on you. Why? Oh I don’t know. Probably because I’m not a jackass? Just a thought.

As you can imagine, I was pretty irritated with our friend Dimon by the time we left the bar, and the worst part was, we lived in the same neighbourhood, which meant having to travel home together. I would have much rather plugged my ears up with some accusatory hip hop about motherfuckers who need to get back because they don’t know me like that, but I am too polite of a girl.

My good manners will be my downfall one of these days, because I was shortly thereafter treated to the following monologue, after we somehow managed to get on the subject of the military:

“You know, my grandfather was in the military. Ah, yes. He taught me how to have a commanding voice. A commanding voice, he said, works really well on women. Yes, when I am yelling at a woman, I use my commanding voice. And you know what? It really works. The women do as they are told.”

OK, now, here, I was just like:

“Funny,” I said. “My grandfather was a Major General in the Soviet Army. And he respected women.”

“A Major General? A real one?”

“No, dude, a CARDBOARD one.”

I started telling him about how my grandfather was a great man (which he was), whose main purpose as a grandfather was to teach me to be excellent, and to believe in me, and how lucky I was to have had someone like this in my life, someone who gave me a lot of drive and purpose, and a bit of a competitive spirit, which has served me well. I knew that this would irritate him, and I wanted to irritate him.

“A competitive spirit,” he noted importantly, “does not serve a writer well.”

“Yeah, but if it’s your profession, you inevitably end up comparing yourself to other people and wondering if…”

“Hey! I’m in a creative profession too, I think I know what I’m talking about!”

“Well, I respect that, but I’ve been doing this full-time for a few years, and I have found that…”

“BUT YOU DON’T HAVE ACCLAIM!!!”

I have never before been in a situation where some guy who is ostensibly attracted to me, or was ostensibly attracted to be before he discovered my “authentic Americanness” and love of Chaucer, said that to me. It’s like telling someone “BUT YOU WEREN’T ELECTED PRESIDENT!!!” because they expressed a political opinion.

“Sure, I don’t have acclaim,” I said.

He actually chuckled with satisfaction. I half-expected him to twirl his mustache.

“But I’m happy with what I’m doing. I’ve got friends I respect who give me enough positive feedback to make me feel like I’m moving in the right direction. That counts for something, no?”

Dead silence. The shuffle of feet. We were walking up toward my building, but we still had a way to go.

“… And I guess, it doesn’t really matter if I get acclaim, no? I’d like to be able to say that I tried to be successful. With my book, or with my play, or with something else. I don’t want to sit in a nursing home at 90, contemplating the ‘what ifs.’ I’d rather try, and fail. Success matters, but trying matters too. No?”

Dead silence.

When we reached the front door of my building, he told me he wouldn’t call me until the deadline to turn in my play had come and gone.

“You’re not going off to Ireland any time soon, are you?” He asked (I had mentioned that I’d like to go this year).

“Who knows, who knows,” I said, giving him what I can only hope was a smile-so-tight-it’s-not-really-a-smile. “Be safe walking home. Don’t fall on the ice.”

When I got home, I contemplated why it was that he had made me feel like such shit. I sent him a polite text message, thanking him for the flowers again, and he sent me a polite text message back, but that only made me feel worse. He weirded me out like nothing else, and made me feel downright shitty, by the end.

And then it dawned on me, slowly.

When he met me, initially, he was expecting something completely different. He met a woman who was very blond, about a decade younger, wearing a fluffy coat and pretty boots and a fair bit of make-up, and helplessly skidding along on the ice. She was bubbly and talkative, and appreciative of having someone there to walk her home.

But then he discovered that she read books and shit. She lived in different places, she had opinions on things like the merits of German vs. the merits of French. And that was a problem, somehow. That was a reason to get mean with her.

She was a great disappointment, not having lived up to her somewhat ditzy image. Well, shit. She needed to be punished, just a little:

There’s a dude I know, who lives in a crappy khrushchevka in a crappy town. He has no college education. He drives to work in a car that most closely resembles a rusting aluminum can. His father is a drunk.

He doesn’t have linguists in his family, but hey, whatever, we have fun when we hang out. He makes me laugh until my jaw starts hurting, and he takes stupid pictures of me with his phone camera. He puts me over his shoulder and carries me around when I get tired on our walks. He doesn’t give a shit if I’m an “authentic American” or whether or not my grandfather was a “real Major General.” He just digs me.

He likes to listen to me go on about literature, I like to listen to him go on about the best way to make shashlik. I complain to him about men, he complains to me about women. We compare notes. We decide that love is most likely a crock of shit. We have more wine.

My friend is one of the reasons why I absolutely refuse to believe that guys like Dimon Douchenozzle have any legitimate right to be “defensive” around chicks like me. I’m sorry, but no. That’s not how it works. It comes down to whether or not you’re a sad sack of shit, in the end.

I’m not going to dumb myself down so that the Dimons of the world can feel better about themselves in my presence. I feel the pressure to do it all the time – even my cousin Yaroslava used to say that “men like kittens, Natalia, and you’re more of a lion” – but fuck that noise. There are certain feminists who say that people have the right to judge those of us who “perform femininity,” and perhaps they would say that Dimon Dickface had every right to pre-judge me based on my appearance and behaviour, and then decide to get testy when the product didn’t live up to the wrapping, but I could care less. I like Kurt Vonnegut and sparkly eyeliner, and if that means that I won’t be getting more pretty rose bouquets because of that, then it is a noble sacrifice that I will gladly make.

I can always just take the revolutionary step of buying roses for myself, you know.

* – Douchecanoe is my favourite new insult.

“Well, Jim, I’ve got some bad news…”

**

“Not to shit on anyone’s riff here, but let me just see if I grasp this concept, ok? You’re suggesting that we take some fucking parking shuttles, and reinforce them with some aluminum siding, and then just head on over to the gun store and watch our good friend Andy play some cowboy movie jump-on-the-covered-wagon bullshit. Then, we’re gonna drive across a ruined city, through a welcome committee of a few hundred thousand dead cannibals, all so that we can sail off into the sunset on this fucking asshole’s boat?”

***

“I’m in love with a zombie, can’t keep his hands off me. I think he’s looking at me, but he’s looking right through me. You think you’re so cool, boy. Blood rushing through my veins now. Do you want me for body? Do you want me for my brain?”

Zombie – Natalia Kills
Fuel – Metallica
Run Out – Memory Tapes
Hard Times – Patrick Wolf
Starlings – Elbow
Moonshake – Can
Shh – Frou Frou
This is Hardcore – Pulp
Let Your Soul Guide Your Heart – Rodney Hunter featuring Diana Lueger
Let’s Escape Together – Beat Crusaders

Yes. I KNOW there are crucial differences between the Infected and Zombies. If you have prepared an irritated lecture for me, save it for another day.

For Dad. Happy Birthday.

The ice outside looks like whale blubber. Nobody is cleaning it up, because that’s something that people in civilized countries do, and it’s not like we can have anyone forgetting where it is they live. It would be vastly unpatriotic, etc. I don’t have any ambitions to prevent myself from falling again, I just hope I’ll avoid breaking any bones this winter. I have written, and rewritten, a play that, much like Paula from “40 Year Old Virgin,” haunts my dreams. I have murdered many shots. I need a break, you guys. And so do you.

Lady Gaga, because you know shit just got real when the lady looks even better without a ton of dramatic make-up on:

Viggo Mortensen, because he is part of our “becoming”:

Elizabeth Wurtzel, because she is hot and cold at the same time:

Lee Pace, because he’s got pathos:

Oksana Akinshina, because she has moved on from playing one of the most disturbing roles of all time, and moved on so well:

Kenan Çoban, because Safiya has good taste:

Zoe Saldana, because she is perfect, and made one of the best films of 2009 even more perfect, and I have good memories of seeing that film in London, and good memories keep you warm:

Cillian Murphy, because he looks like he’ll kill you – and make you like it:

Beyoncé, because you can only avoid stating the obvious for so long:

Alexander Skarsgård, because Eric Northman makes you feel all funny:

Sarah Jaffe, because I love showing off the hot people I work with (be jealous of me, please):

David Tennant, because of flames to dust, lovers to friends (but that doesn’t mean that the good things that come to an end can’t make us happy anymore):

Olga Ostroumova, because she’s the first great beauty who made me cry (in “The Dawns Here Are Quiet,” in case you’re wondering):

Jeremy Renner, because he always had it, even before “The Hurt Locker,” he had it, but I’m glad more people realize this crucial fact now. And here’s the thing, I do not normally like a lot of muscle on men. He just happens to wear it beautifully (it’s all about the forearms, with him), besides being one of my favourite actors. And Anthony Mackie, of course, because he does pissed off like nothing else:

Kathryn Bigelow, because I love smart, beautiful women (and “Hurt Locker” was better than “Avatar,” and I say that as a huge James Cameron stan):

Orlando Bloom, because this really is a trip down memory lane (and, you know, OF COURSE he filmed in Durham when I had already left Durham, but it’s not like I would have been hoping to run into him around town, totally not, I am way more mature than that, you know it, shut up, stop laughing):

And my parents, because you can turn up “Halo,” look at this picture, and have a moment:

“You’re everything I need and more
It’s written all over your face
Baby I can feel your halo
Pray it won’t fade away”

They’re going to say it faded away and was replaced by one of those shitty neon visors American tourists wear whenever they want to embarrass their great nation abroad, but every once in a while I catch them smiling at each other, like I did today, and I know that naw, ya’ll, it did not.

So now I’m all sentimental, and embarrassed for being sentimental. Hope everyone is satisfied.

The title of this post ought to say it all.

Also, please see Mor on abortion in Ireland.