COLUMNISTS

Deidre Dare

"Is anal sex on the menu?" I asked my date, a Western guy in his 40s, one evening last week as we slowly crawled along in a gypsy cab down the Boulevard Ring.

He nodded as we made a right turn on Ulitsa Petrovka. "It's usually number two on the list."

It suddenly hit me that we were having what I would consider a bizarre conversation if I lived anywhere else but Moscow. We were discussing Russian prostitutes' web sites and the services offered thereon.

I'd gotten a sense that Russian girls are generally not into the pleasures of the back-door. Thus, my question. Interestingly enough, I noted that my date didn't seem at all shocked by my query.

We had a number of expat parties to attend that evening, and I remarked, as the evening wore on, that almost every conversation I was a party to was equally strange.

I'm certain that this must be a phenomenon of our crazy expat life in Moscow. Normal discourse is beyond us. Conversations between people had been on my mind anyway, because it is a particular affliction of the expatriated to be forced to maintain relationships with friends and family back home via e-mail. I find this to be more true living in Moscow than it had been in Sydney, London or Singapore.

For some reason people in the real world don't phone Russia very often.

Recently I received yet another angry e-mail from someone close to me who lives in the States. As I was reading her e-mail, it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't have to keep perusing it. Being attacked by e-mail is a full-frontal assault that leaves you helplessly defenceless. It's a lazy and cowardly way to communicate, particularly if one is pissed off.

What I used to do with these kinds of missives from people was hit "reply" and write "SEE MY RESPONSES IN CAPITAL LETTERS BELOW" and then comment on the various accusations or hit back with hostility of my own (e.g. "NO, IT IS YOU WHO ARE A FUCKING BITCH!").

Useless.

So I decided early last week that I was no longer carrying on with irate electronic correspondence. Neither the reading of it nor the writing of it.

The only e-mails I'll read from now on are love letters.

Because of all that, I was psyched  to get out into the autumnal night and actually talk to people face-to-face. Exchange ideas. Discuss thoughts. Share feelings.

But this is Moscow and I'd be hard-pressed to say any of the conversations I participated in that night were even remotely "normal".

First there was the conversation cited above.

Next, my date had an odd discussion with my girlfriend, who we'd met up with for a few drinks at a bar near Kuznetsky Most.

"Guess what I did last Tuesday night?" he asked her.

"What?" she asked, expecting him to say something like skydiving or going to the Bolshoi Ballet.

"Deidre," he answered, causing her to choke on a strawberry daiquiri.

Then there was the usual spattering of what I refer to as "self-aggrandising conversations".

These conversations entail some Westerner who is obviously of no importance whatsoever telling you that they are being followed by the FSB or about to be radiation-poisoned over tea when they travel to London.

A few of these exchanges made me choke on my strawberry daiquiri.

These guys want to think they are in some kind of jeopardy because then they can pretend to themselves that they are dangerous and important subversives, when all they really are is middle-aged dumpy guys who the FSB wouldn't look twice at.

During the course of the evening I also participated in talks about AK-47s (apparently 1 per cent of the population of the planet owns one), Sex & Submission (and how to do it properly), how men are the new women, how the best cure for a man is another man and how tasty strawberry daiquiris are for something that makes you that drunk that fast.

By the time I got home at 6 am, e-mail was looking pretty good and I decided to log on, telling myself I was only checking for love letters.

There was one. But there was also a diatribe from a friend in London.

At that point I wished I was one of the 1 per cent of humans who owned an AK-47 so that I could blow my computer to kingdom come.

Instead, I passed out on my couch.

xxoo, DD

Deidre Dare's novel "Expat" and "Moscow Moments" video reports can be viewed online at: www.deidredare.com