His name is Rick Tahoma. We met when I had just moved to Seattle, at a party hosted by Alethea, whose room I was renting at the time.
“Hi, I just moved from Kyiv.”
“And I just got out of prison.”
We talked for the entire evening, and then he disappeared. The next time we met was a few months later on Harbor Steps. Tall, bearded, with a solid belly, he sipped vodka from a flask and carefully hid it under his coat. Rick was a bit shy about it but offered to join. A city becomes a home when you meet random friends on the streets, and I felt very cozy, though didn’t join.
I moved into a loft on Pioneer Square, and Rick would drop by every now and then. Sometimes alone, more often with some of his friends. We talked about the left, about the right, about Ukraine, and about Crimea. He slow down when he speaks to me, and always explains any fancy words if he happens to use them. Once, Rick came with two large plastic bags. One was full of books: something about the labor movement in America; something by Taleb; and a few more that I could not remember. The other was full of a giant bottle of "Absolut."
“This is what we call ‘booth’. I’ll leave it here so I don't waste your single malt next time.”
I started to go to parties with his people quite often. Rick is twenty years senior to me, and so around his friends, I feel like a complete kid. One evening, there was a birthday party for an artist who I haven’t met yet, and everyone gathered in his tiny workshop. Half the room was occupied by a bassist with his instrument, and there was also a guy with a saxophone. The artist turned out to be an elderly black man with a kind face and big lips. I didn’t have a birthday gift for him; instead, he gifted me a sketch of some female friend with beautiful boobs.
Rick said that we were in a former immigration prison building. Now it's an art space, but once it stored people who lacked the required paperwork. We go out for a smoke on a terrace no bigger than a basketball court. The terrace has no ceiling, three walls, and a view of downtown. People who were stored in the building would go for a daily stroll there. They looked at America and scribed on the walls. Those walls have every known language on them, but mostly Spanish. Inmates wrote all sorts of things, but mostly names of their hometowns. I find the large Cyrillic letters “МАГАДАН” near the far corner. What a cruel irony.
“Hey Rick, how do people end up in prison?”
“Hmm. That's a story for some other night.”
On Fridays, we hang out on Capitol Hill. There are clubs and there are bright people around us. We constantly run into his bodies and I fail to remember that many names. Rick used to live here, and I listen to his stories: here was a huge apartment, and this was my “Cafè Américain”. I've heard a lot about the café — it was a real speakeasy, with alcohol after 2 a.m. and poker tables all around. He met Brian at the café. They were friends for a couple of years until he turned out to be an undercover cop, but Rick doesn't like to tell that story.
I'm hungry, and I get myself a hot dog on the corner. Rick grew up in Oklahoma and was friends with a cow named Blackie on his granddad's ranch. One day, when he was thirteen, he visited the ranch. ”Grandpa, where's Blackie?” he asked, but neither Grandpa nor anyone else answered. They just grinned, until it turned out that Blackie was on the menu that night. They meant it to be a lesson. It was a lesson, though not of the kind they intended to give — he hasn’t eaten meat ever since.
Rick tries to introduce me to American parties, but clubs are noisy, and nobody can understand, or hear me. I prefer listening to his tales — about how they smuggled medicine to the rebelled Zapatistas; about the ¡Clung!, the band in which Rick was the frontman; about clashes with the police during the WTO protests. I envy his youth — mine is spent in immigration, where I understand nothing, and where a fight with the police would get me deported, maybe without going through an immigration prison if I’m lucky.
He takes a big, greasy slice of pizza. Crumbs get stuck in his beard, sauce on the corner of his mouth, and on his hands as well. "Let's go," he says and pats me on the shoulder. A large red stain is now on my white shirt. I get annoyed and say that now I need to change. Rick apologizes and says it's okay, that nobody cares, but I get all weird and upset and insist on going home.
Forty minutes later we are at the karaoke. There are his old friends and my new ones. Alethea sings Fever, Eric sings a song about the trial and the Wall by Pink Floyd. Rick has a deep baritone with a rasp, and he does a great job with Gogol Bordello. In his singing, there's less of the Romani carnival, but more depth and melancholy, so all their songs become songs about the vulnerability of a rugged man.
“Come on, you have to pick a song. Look, they even have something in Russian.”
“No, I can't. Not today. I've never sung karaoke before, I'm not ready.” “Come on, when will there be a better moment for the first time than now, among friends who love you?”
“Not today.”
One day, the three of us were eating shrooms at my place. Rick and Eric got out that bottle of Absolut. They poured vodka into wide glasses with ice and had it in small sips. I disapproved and refused to join, but eventually, I took away their glasses and got out three shots. The vodka went down faster with shots. Rick tells me his prison story for the first time. When he first got there (and he spent there three years), he had an Elvisy haircut, and one of the jokers nicknamed him Rock-a-Doodle, like a character from a silly childish cartoon. Eventually, the long "Rock-a-Doodle" turned into the short "Rock”, and most everyone who knew the story got released, so none of the newcomers could figure out how the fuck he got such a cool name. I tell him what the word rooster means in our prison slang:
“So, if you ever end up in a post-Soviet prison, you might not want to tell this story!”
In prison, he had to fight, and once had to stab someone's eye with a fork. When he talks about it, his voice trembles and his eyes get watery. We talk about suppressed aggression and decide that we absolutely should fight each other, but instead, we go to a bar. We sit on a long bench. A couple to my right, a husband and wife, a group of guys to Rick's left, and Eric is in between us. I introduce myself to the couple, they're from Georgia. I say they don't look like Georgians, that Georgians have big noses, dark hair, and funny accent. She laughs and says they are from a southern state, not a country. We seem to be flirting, and when the barman brought a glass of cider, I take it for myself. The husband warns me that it wasn't brought for me, that it is for his wife and I look him straight in the eyes and slowly take a big sip. Now Rick is already picking another fight with the guys on his left. Eric, the brightest among us, assessed the situation, threw a few 20s on the table, and led us outside ASAP.
I woke up in my bed to the sound of the door opening. A frightened Rick rushed in:
“Thank God, you're alive! I thought I killed you!”
His face heavily scratched, with a small bruise under his eye.
“Jesus, who did this to you?”
“Don't you remember? We decided that we should have a fight. I woke up and thought I killed you! Thank God, you're alive!”
It's hard for me to believe that I could have inflicted any damage on Rick, who is at least twice my size, but here we go. I look in the mirror and see a bruise covering half of my face. Damn, I have to go to work tomorrow, I need to buy some makeup.
I've long since moved to LA and no longer wear white shirts. Rick returned to Oklahoma to take care of his mom and spends weeks on end at home, not answering calls and not going outside. We haven't seen each other for several years. Today he called me to tell me about his dream:
“You and I arrived at some important conference, and you were supposed to give a presentation on "The Impact of the Third Law of Thermodynamics on Our Perception of God." It’s a big deal, several thousand people in the hall, all very earnest, an educated audience. I talk to you before you go on stage, we quickly go through the text, and you seem very ready. Then you get announced, lights on, the stage, the whole thing. You drink the water that was given to you and you begin your talk, calm and confident, but after a few minutes, you get lost and go off track. You start walking in circles, then go backstage, and stare at the ceiling for a long time. There's a whisper in the hall, what's happening, what's wrong with Andjan? Suddenly you go down into the hall and run through the aisles, me following you. You climb up to some window near the ceiling, and I try to stop you because it's too high outside, but there's a pool, and I realize here we go, I'll have to swim after you. I grab you by the shoulders, look at you, and see your pupils the size of quarters. You're high as fuck. When did you have time? Then we all realize that somebody dosed you. The light focuses on two guys in the front row, they shrug as if to say, "Yeah, we dosed him, so what?"
I laugh. Rick shows me several stacks, a couple of dozen books – everything he read last month. He tells me about Timur, and I can hear the excitement in his voice. I can easily imagine Rick in Timur’s army, riding through the steppes and living from battle to battle.
Today, our friend Maya invited Alina and me to her birthday party. We ride buses for an hour and a half to get to the "Cafe Brass Monkey Karaoke" in K-Town. There are a bunch of people who I don’t know at the table. They are all in their early twenties, and around them, I feel very mature. They laugh a lot and drink cocktails. While I order my beer and a shot, it's my turn. I grab the microphone and I start to sing:
“Start wearing purple, wearing purple! Start wearing purple for me now…”