I went drinking with Ukrainians last night. This is something my American friend Sarah had been imploring me to do since before I left the states. As someone who has drank less than ten times in 26 years, I did not think Ukraine would not the best place to start. Still, I had decided that I would drink as social conventions dictated. And social conventions had dictated…
In celebration of New Year’s Day, my host brothers and their friends took me to a local club. The door guard had an AK-47, but other than that, it seemed normal.
The rectangular dance floor was flanked on either side by round tables. At one end was a stage with two poles, and on the other was the door that led out to the bar. There was already two bottles of vodka at our assigned table when we arrived, as well as a bottle of juice.
The waitress brought two plates of sliced fruit and we began. About every ten minutes, Pasha would theatrically point at the bottle with both index fingers, then rotate his wrists down to his shot glass. That would be Sergei’s cue to pour a round. We’d raise our glasses, no one could hear the toast over the thumping beat, we’d clink our glasses together, and then everyone would throw the alcohol to the back of their throats, sip some juice and then eat some fruit. Sometimes this involved standing up to drink, but I’m not entirely sure why.
One should never try to keep up with Ukrainians when they are drinking vodka.
There is no way to describe what drinking is to Ukrainian culture. I read that Prince Yaroslav the Wise, who converted the entire country to Christianity (and shepherded--at sword point--the entire citizenry of Kiev into a freezing Deniper river to be baptized), had his pick of religions. He contemplated Islam for a time, and especially liked how this would help him ally with the Turks. He finally decided, though, that the Islamic prohibition against drinking was too much for any Slav to take.
I had a theoretical notion of how important drinking was to Ukrainians, but no real understanding that drinking can be like breathing, to be done at any hour on any day for the simple sake of survival. Drinking vodka with breakfast is common. Teachers toasting and getting toasted in the lounge before their next class is common. And twelve toasts at a Ukrainian club in quick succession is certainly common.
Social convention dictated I better have a glass to raise for every single toast, and that alcohol must be in that glass. I did two full shots the first two times, then I moved to half shots, and then I prayed the bottle would run out before I did. It was with joy that the last drop of the second bottle disappeared down someone’s gullet, and I was proud to have made it that far.
But then two more bottles were ordered.
I had already gone straight through buzzed to drunk. Alcohol is a depressant, and this is the effect it has on me. I do not become crazier the drunker I get, although I do become more uncoordinated. Drunk for me, sadly, is sitting with my eyes half-lidded, contemplating the world through a haze, knowing that getting up may be a bad idea.
As more toasts were done, I clinked my glass and then sipped at the vodka in it, valiantly to stay in a state that would let me walk home. Every sip was still sinking me deeper into that purple haze, though, me looking around the room with an idiot smile on my face.
A lurching trip to the bathroom revealed Turkish toilets, which are common in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Turkish toilets are basically porcelain around a hole in the floor. To use them, you squat over the hole. This is not easy to do when you are drunk, and I don’t understand the logic of why every club in Ukraine has them.
Back in the main room, the dancers cleared off the floor at midnight, and a stage show started. These are common at Ukrainian clubs, possibly to give the dancers time to rest and consume more alcohol. This one had a lounge singer, two choreographed dances by four very beautiful Ukrainian girls wearing thongs and a lot of lace, a trio of male break dancers, and a stripper. The strippers are pretty common, too. This one made skilful use of both poles, finally dancing before us in a red thong and nothing else. I was appreciative.
Well, mostly, because the gyrating, beautiful, naked woman simply reinforced a common emotion of late: loneliness. The emotion was further intensified when our table, fully inebriated, made its way to the dance floor after the show. The floor was thronged with very beautiful women wearing very little clothing, but I couldn’t have picked one up if I wanted to. Ukrainians do not go to discos to meet members of the opposite sex. In fact, any single girl on the floor probably has a Mafioso-looking boyfriend who hates dancing and is watching her from the shadows. I’m told the clubs in Kiev are becoming more Americanized and more the place to meet girls, but in Zhytomyr tradition was still enforced and so was my singlehood.
Those Ukrainian men that do dance in clubs do so very poorly. The only reason they are on the floor in the first place is because the alcohol put them there, and it is also telling their limbs to shake spasmodically to the music. In this manner, I fit right in. My usual style of dancing was out of the question, so I mostly bounced up and down and waved my hands around to the beat. Often times it did not feel like I had arms. This was a pleasant sensation. Sergei told me to show them how Americans danced, but this was not to be done. I started, but it felt like someone had poured concrete into my legs, and so I stopped, and went back to waving my hands in the air. We did this for about an hour, sweat pouring off of us and my host brother Karil, bless his heart, moving about the floor like an epileptic dolphin, and then we went home.
So at least I can say I have gone drinking with Ukrainians, something regarded as an art form the world over. Sarah would be proud.