Some pictures from the English club, and, following that, the story I told you about yesterday.
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Not a Hero
Indigo is Obhiev’s sole dance club, and I was in it alone because all of the other trainees had been too tired to go. I sat down at an empty table with only one chair, and, after about fifteen minutes of watching the dance floor, one of the club’s employees said they needed the table. Three girls and a guy were standing beside her.
I wanted to meet some Ukrainians, so I introduced myself and asked to sit with them. The guy did not speak Ukrainian, only Russian, and didn’t seem to want me there until the girls asked where I was from. When I said America, his attitude changed and he smiled and shook my hand. I spent most of the next hour talking with two of the girls, Yulia and Oxana.
It was good to flex my Ukrainian muscles, and we talked about a lot: Ukraine, America, music, dancing. I found out that the guy was from Kazakhstan and the girl to his right was his girlfriend, Yulia’s sister. Yulia asked me if I had a girlfriend. The answer was no, but she said that yes, she had a boyfriend. He was currently working at his job as a bartender, she said. Yulia and I talked more over the course of the night. She was flirting with me, obviously flirting with me, and I was dumbstruck by it. The girl was gorgeous, simply gorgeous, and as she danced beside the table to the music, she was looking at me, dancing for my attention, which she got. Her tight tee-shirt stopped at her pierced, flat stomach and the clothing didn’t pick up again until the middle of her hips, only an inch of skin-tight denim above where her legs met. My desire was palpable.
When her boyfriend, or the guy I assume was her boyfriend, came in, she was dancing right beside me and I was watching her. I noticed him, and he stuck his hand out to shake mine. After we shook hands, though, he didnt sit down, instead standing back from the table.
Yulia tried talking to him and he seemed angry. My first thought was that it was over me. Maybe it wasnt, maybe it was. Yulia sat back down, but not in her seat beside me, in the one across from me, leaning slightly towards the guy from Kazakhstan as if for protection. The guy I took to be her boyfriend, still standing, pushed her slightly. He left the club, and, after a few minutes, she got something out of her purse: it was either money or a wad of something, put on her jacket and walked outside.
Her sister and the guy from Kazakhstan went back to watching the dance floor. After a mental debate, I decided that I could only make things worse by saying anything and swiveled my chair to watch the dance floor as well. I wondered if I should go dance, but they had switched to “Ice Ice Baby”. So I just watched.
I heard some yelling behind me, an argument, and I turned to see that Yulia was back, sitting beside her sister’s boyfriend. Then I saw the guy I took to be her boyfriend punch her in the face. She didn’t even put up her hands to defend herself, just took the punch with a twist of her head. I couldn’t even believe that it happened. And then I saw him punch her in the face twice more, close-fisted punched her in the face. The guy from Kazakhstan got involved, putting himself between them and pulling the boyfriend away from Yulia. The boyfriend reached out and grabbed Yulia's hair, trying to drag her with him. Finally, her sister got up and grabbed the boyfriend too, yelling at him until he let go of Yulia, until he was pulled by both her sister and the guz from Kazakstan out of the club. The whole incident took thirty seconds.
Everyone nearby was watching, but nobody had moved. Yulia was still sitting across from me, having never gotten out of her seat, having never moved, having simply taken the punches, staring into nothing, not looking at me, not looking at anything. I couldn’t think of anything to say or do, once again didn’t know if anything I said or did would just make things worse. After about twenty seconds a girl came up, said something to Yulia and led her away.
As I put on my jacket, people were already turned back to their tables. I was worried walking outside, but no one was out there. And I wondered, walking back, why I didn’t do anything. It happened quickly, yes, almost quicker than my thoughts could keep up with, but when it had happening, I had started moving, started getting up to stop him, but then I had stopped myself. I was alone in a bar in Ukraine and I was going to get the fuck beat out of me. Not just by this guy, but the guy that came back in with him from outside, the guy that was evidently his friend. So I didn't move, but I wish I had.
I’ve had those mental spun-out stories of winning bar brawls and coming to the rescue of some woman. But I didn’t come to anyone’s rescue. I just sat there and watched it happen. And I can rationalize it: I can also tell myself that if it had known her, had she been a friend or a girlfriend, I would have certainly done something, stepped in.
But I did know her. Her name is Yulia, and she’s 18 years old, and she studies hotel administration at an institute in Kiev, and she wants to learn English and one day live in America, and she got punched three times in the face in a club, and it might have been because of me, and I did nothing but watch. And maybe had I at least yelled “stop” he would have, or maybe we would have gotten in a fight and maybe I’d be bloodied or maybe I would have won or maybe I’d be on a plane right now to America for medical treatment and counseling because that’s what they do in Peace Corps after you get jumped. But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t even say something to her after she sat there in front of me in the aftermath. All I did was sit there in disbelief, my thoughts not even able to keep up with real-time events. And I’ll admit it, I was scared. Scared enough that I sacrificed her to stay safe.
And people will tell me there’s nothing I could have done, but there was plenty I could have done. And maybe I did exactly what I was supposed to do in that situation, but that doesn’t matter. Yulia’s a real person and she has this life that’s going to continue long after I’m gone and she may remember this American she met in this club once, and he did nothing but sit there as she was repeatedly punched in the face.
So I’m certainly not Yulia’s hero. I’m not a hero at all.