Three Easy Pieces

I submit for your consideration three separate pieces, three separate years, three Valentine's Dayses.

First, this anecdote I found in my journal from February 14, 2009 (I spent Valentine's Day finishing chapter 1 of the thesis).

I just went to get a coffee, still in a rage. Walked into Zeke's.

Andrew to himself: "Fuck Valentine's Day. If I see Cupid, I will slap him square in the penis."

Cashier lady: Happy Valentine's Day!

Andrew: [momentarily flabbergasted. Can he say 'slap him in the penis' to a cashier?] Thanks...you...too?"

The proceeding are excerpts from the journal entry dating to Valentine's Day, when I nursed a champagne hangover in Prime Star in Kitai-gorod, Moscow. It explains why:

Thursday (2/12) Briullov and I went to Arte-Grim to get masks. I got a demure and typical Zorro mask of black velvet, and a plasticky green flat-top Savannah hat. Briullov got into a fight with the saleswoman, who had told him the mask he wanted was, "Of course, a woman's mask." Not the right thing to say to Briullov, obviously. He, then, not even looking at it, said: "I'll take it!" He ended up with a different one, but the dynamics of the exchange were amazing: the saleswoman, trying to help this 'boy without taste,' was caught between professional duty (what should be a position of power) and the male-female dynamic (where, in the stereotypic context, she would not have as much bargaining influence).

...Like any situation, we almost didn't even get to our destination [on Friday, the 13th, a multinational Carnival hosted at an embassy], because the employee at the security checkpoint wouldn't check our names against her list, although we all had passports and could tell her precisely which number was ours: the physical tickets were inside, at the party. Finally a Stalin look-alike (played by a German) came over. He and Briullov's Realtor spoke to each other through triple-paned glass in accented English.

Let the awkward drinking begin. I never lost myself, but it hurts my organism to think back on the party itself because there was no point where I stopped drinking. I would finish champagne if I wanted to get on the dance floor, run away from an awkward situation by going to help myself to another drink...

The other day I said 'autoportrait' to Sasha. There's actually something logical about that mistake even on top of it being an Anglicism of the Russian. We have autobiography, after all. Autopilot.

...There were a lot of great costumes (Briullov discusses the gendered implications of who was wearing what kind of costume here), including cowboys and Arabs (never by US citizens; apparently the new cowboys and Indians), a man who looked like a bondage star, a Hitler's Youth Organization candidate who unintentionally dressed as BFlow, a Merman king, a mouse in a trap, a cat, a bird, a Viking, three tigers, and a queen.

Ugh, my head. Thousands of dead juice bottles strew the floor around me, and I still feel light-headed.

Valentine's Day 2011, and The Animus gets into town the 16th.