Banging Hookers

Well, all the results of my graduate school and Fulbright application are in. For those interested, I'll probably be staying on my Fulbright in Russia for another year. For those more interested in my continuing adventures in Ryazan', this means that I can finally talk about the filthy shit I've been doing the last half year. It also means I can swear.

Actually, and unfortunately, nothing too debauched has happened, but I will qualify my actions in the next story. I've made vague references to people living in the stairwell of my building. In principle, I have a lot of sympathy for the homeless. From childhood, I hadn't a whole lot of experience with the homeless, but I had watched a lot of TV and I knew that they were good, kind people whose lives had gone wrong, like in Home Alone and Home Alone II.

The reality of living this lady everyday for three months of winter was really unpleasant, from the bags of trash in the stairwell to the cat she kept which peed everywhere. A couple days after we put in the new lock she was back again. As I noted in a previous post, the combination is not hard to figure out if you're desperate or have time. I couldn't quite figure out what was so attractive about this location in particular, nor could I figure out why no one was doing anything.

In Russian the verb "to pee" sounds a lot like the verb "to write," and the infinitive is the same with a different stress (PIsat' vs. piSAT'). This is a very common mistake for foreigners. I stepped in a puddle one day coming home so I gave the homeless lady a talking to about controlling her cat. Then I ran into my next door neighbor who owns his apartment and has lived there forever. I also had heard him in the stairwell alternately yelling and talking very congenially to this lady. So I said, "That cat pees everywhere.... You heard me. Pees. Tsssssss."

About two weeks ago I found out why my neighbor had mixed feelings toward her. I was fed up with the lady living on the steps, in particular because winter had basically ended, so went to tell her that I was going to call the police if she didn't find a new place. She turned around and said, "I'm going to call mom!" I said, "My mom?" She said, "No, mine. MOM! MOM!" She looks like she's about 55 years old, although I wouldn't be surprised if she was 10-15 years younger. At this point I was convinced she was crazy. I called the police who came surprisingly quickly. She told them her mom lived in apt 29. The lady in 29 vouched for her. The mother said that she won't let the lady on the steps live in the apartment because she doesn't have a job and she drinks but that she feeds her all the same. The police said they couldn't do anything because she technically lives in this building. Now she's gone. As my laundry lady said, "When spring comes, behind every bush lies a bed." Maybe she just went to her dacha for the summer.