Drunk in Moscow, Not Idaho

In 1994 after a month long limbo in Penang I traveled from Malaysia to Paris on Aeroflot thanks to money wired by my loving mother to the Citibank in Penang.

The Kuala Lumpur-Karachi-Dubai-Moscow-Paris flight time to Moscow totaled about 24 hours. None of them were comfortable in the flimsy chairs of the Soviet era jetliner. More like lawn chairs and a fog hung over the the celing from AC condensation. After the meal not a single member of the flight crew entered the cabin.

Disembarking at night in Moscow, I discovered that my connecting flight to Charles De Gaulle had been delayed until the following morning. A Norwegian couple with whom I had traveled from Kual Mumpur were in a similar predicament and I said, "It's 10PM. What are we going to do all night?"

"Drink wine." The husband pulled out two bottles of wine purchased at the Dubai duty-free. Their flight had also been cancelled until noon.

"I have two."

"And my wife has two."

We opened the bottles and sat on the floor surrounded by hundreds of stateless travelers trapped in the aeroport. Some looked as if they had been in this limbo for weeks, if not months. We finished the wine and a refugee from Afghanistan sold us a bottle of vodka.

"I here one month. Can no go back Kabul. No go to Paris. My brother live there. Now this my home." His name was Jameer.

The vodka was homemade. The liter lasted longer than the wine. Several other Afghans fleeing the civil war joined Jameer with other bottles. They spoke in dialects. Dari adn Pashto. After two bottles of the gut-burning samogon I spoke in tongues an finally lost consciousness from the overdose of hard spirits and lack of sleep.

I awoke.

A gray dawn.

Moscow.

"Russia.

Not Idaho.

"Your flight is now." The Norwegian husband shook me hard and yanked me to my feet.

"I don't care. I want to stay in the aeroport. Life simple here."

"You have to go." He and his wife escorted me to the plane.

"Bon Voyage." I saluted them at the door of the Airbus.

Stepping on board I rejoined civilization and I stumbled down the aisle to my seat. The expression on the other passengers' face gauged my drunkenness better than a breathalyzer. No one wanted me to sit next to them. I fell into an empty row and buckled up for take-off.

Several hours later a stewardess shook my shoulder.

"We are in Charles de Gaulle Aeroport in Paris."

"Already?" I was the last passenger on the plane.

"We've been on the ground for fifteen minutes."

"Great." I rose to my feet and trudged out into the terminal. The time was 8:30. It was Bastille Day or 'le Quartoze', another day of wine ahead.

In July of 1789 Paris seethed with anger against Louis XVI and the ancien regime of the nobility.

The prison's most infamous guest was the Marquis De Sade, who shouted from the ramparts on July 2, 1789, "They are killing the prisoners here!"

The unrepentant sodomist was transferred 'naked as a worm' to the insane asylum at Charenton, but the fire had been lit and the on July 14 hundreds of workers gathered in the neighboring Faubourg Saint-Antoine seeking to seize the gunpowder within the Bastille.

Mythically recounted in Dickens' THE TALE OF TWO CITIES a tumbril loaded with casks of wine axle an axle on the Rue de la Roquette and wine flow down the gutters to be consumed by impoverished Parisians. The shadow of the dreaded upper-class Bastille prison loomed over the narrow street and someone shouted, "A la Bastille."

The Swiss Guards within the fortress defended the battlements against the mob. Mutinous royal Bourbon troops armed with artillery. The commandant surrendered the prison an freed its seven captives.

When Louis XVI was told the news in Versailles, the king asked an aristocrat, "Is it a revolt?"

His friend replied, "Non, mon Roi. It is a revolution."

Within three years after the Storming of the Bastille Citoyen Louis was sentenced to death and guillotined in Place de la Concorde before thousands of revolutionies.

I emerged from the terminal and sped in a taxi from CDG Aeroport to Paris. Traffic was light into the City of Light. THe exit lanes were cramped with vehicles as they had been for decades carrying Paris to le Grande Vacannes ie 7/14 go 8/14.

Atop Montmatre rose Sacre-Couer.

After the 1870 Commune had been quelled the Catholic Church had erected the Temple of Repression to remind Parisians that the Church ruled the Hearts and Minds of France, not the call to the ramparts by a perverse Comte.

The new Bastille.

My friend Tristam from the Musellmen Fumants waite at his apartment.

I wasn't tired, only hung over. That afternoon we watched the military parade on the Champs-Elysees.

That night we partied with friends.

I drank to Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternitie.

Hundreds sang Le Marseilles.

I cried each time.

It was good to be out of Moscow.

People drink too much there, then again so do I.

A bas le Roi__

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Much more to come__

THE BEST FORM OF FLATTERY by Peter Nolan Smith

Written Sep 24, 2010

Midtown traffic was snarled by the security measures protecting foreign dignitaries from any harm during the annual UN General Assembly. Crosstown streets were closed east of 5th Avenue and the beeping tentacles of the congestion packed Madison Avenue. My bus took twenty minutes to cover ten blocks. I was late for a gallery opening on 78th Street and abandoned public transportation for the more ancient mode of walking. My pace was accelerated by two panicked calls from my landlord AP and Billy O. Our dinner guest, an Irish hedge fund banker, was on a 'craic'.

"This is polite society up here." Billy O was looking for clients. He was a real estate broker in the East End. Most people living above 72nd Street had money, especially in between Park and 5th Avenues. "I'm afraid that he's going to shag an old heiress."

"Would be the worst thing to happen to her? When I was living down in Palm Beach, I dreamed about seducing a wealthy octogenarian with three weeks to live."

"You would have given her the best two weeks of her life." Billy O and I went back to the 80s.

"At least." I was never stingy with love or lust given the right circumstances, however my time on Palm Beach had been off-season. Secondly those crones with money knew the game. Men fought over them at the Leopard Lounge. I was too proud to enter that arena.

Except for once.

"Hurry up." Billy O sounded desperate. "He's offering the owner a line of blow."

"Ten minutes."

I made it in 15. The police had blockaded 72nd Street for the passage of POTUS. This evening Obama was speaking at the UN. High-level conversations were scheduled between the Israelis, Palestinians, and our leader. Peace initiative # 257. The presidential cavalcade passed at 65 mph. A fast-moving target. I waved to what I guess was his car. My support for change remained strong.

After disembarking from the bus I hurried the final six blocks to the gallery. It was located in a small townhouse. The crowd was gentile. The artist hailed from the Hamptons. Some of his paintings had crows in them. Two women complained about the crows on their property.

"They're bad eating and worse as pets." A tall man in a Versace suit slurred from his slouch. It was Irish Johnny. His accent was pure Hollyfield drenched by the slobber of art wine.

The two middle-aged women in matching Chanel summer drag glanced over their sloped shoulders at the intruders. Their noses wrinkled with disdain. They had the expression down pat and clattered away from Irish Johnny in spiky stilettos. Popular footwear this season.

Irish Johnny staggered to the bar and grabbed two glasses of Chablis. The first one lasted a second. The second balanced his careen through the gallery. His trousers were rolled to mid-calf and his sneakers were unlaced. He was drunk enough not to recognize me. We had drank at a bar in Easthampton a year ago. I didn't say hello, but nodded to Billy O and my landlord. They signaled to keep an eye on Irish Johnny. The banker was difficult work after closing time on the NYSE. I engaged him in a long conversation on John Kelly, Ireland's premier DJ, and drinking at the Shelbourne Hotel Bar. Irish Johnny couldn't have been happy and neither could the gallery owner.

The dead drunk was with the living drunk.

Billie O and AP schmoozzed the rich. A hard crowd to work, but the two had been laboring in the Hamptons for years. AP spoke to a prospective new client. He owned a football team. His girlfriend was an old friend. The connections were snaking together. It was time to leave. Irish Johnny was hitting on a painting.

"How much you want for one night?"

Billy O took charge. Irish Johnny was his boy. They proposed dinner at Danielle's. A posey place. I begged off that future. Billy O and AP said, "Come."

"Veni, vidi, ibam."

"I came, I saw, I went." Johnny Irish was a Latin Scholar too.

I waved my goodbyes and walked to the 77th Street Subway. Lex Line to Bleecker Street. D train to Atlantic Avenue. Key in the front door at 8:23. I climbed the stairs to my apartment and wrote about Hoegaarten Beer. My wine-weakened fingers were slow on the keyboard.

A knock on my door.

AP.

He wanted to smoke some pot.

"Dinner was fantastic, but you were so right to go. He never broke open the bag of cocaine."

"Better to have a $20 bag with a friend than an 8-ball with a fiend." The lack of an 'r' made a big difference.

AP and I smoke some weed. We drank some wine. We listened to garage rock. Our favorite genre of music, although he loved the Beatles and I hated them as pop poseurs. At least we agreed that WORKING CLASS HERO by John Lennon was brilliant.

"You know I really love having you live here." AP considered me a NY legend.

"Thanks." I loved living here too.

"No one in New York is like you now and no one writes like you, but I have to say one thing and that's you have been plundering old writing and putting it on your website as if it was new."

"So you noticed."

"I'm one of your most faithful readers."

I had been adding stories to gain girth on treads of interest. Not lazy, just that I don't have much time in the day to write with my boss asking me what I'm doing every two minutes. No much of a defense for AP.

"You should be writing all the time."

"Agreed." I love writing on the 4th floor of his brownstone. My view of the downtown Brooklyn skyline. The changes of the sunset. His kids sleeping on the lower floor. Their falling asleep to the MC5. "I'll try to be more original."

"No one is more original than you in these days of mediocre." AP truly was a fan. "All I want to see is more new."

"Oof." More work.

A sign of the times.

"I promise to not rob the grave, unless it makes a nice flow."

We smoked more weed and drank the rest of his Hoegaarten.

They were good and we were safe from Irish Johnny.