LOCAL

By Deidre Dare

A few things I've decided after my Firing Party the other night: first, I will never again have a party mingling expats and Russians. Second, I will never again have a party no one comes to. And last, I will never again have sex on my iron coffee table.

Let's take them in order.

The King of Spades and I resolved the next morning that we aren't going to go out with both our groups of friends at the same time anymore. It just doesn't work. In fact, it is excruciatingly painful.

The scene was once again Shop & Bar. The players included expat lawyers from different corners of the Earth, Western journalists, a Russian television producer, a Russian entrepreneur and his bodyguard, us and a smuggler (who we affectionately call "The Smuggler").

Sounds like an exciting mix, right? You are imagining heated political debate, perhaps? Or erudite discussions regarding the Krizis and its effects on different sectors of Russian economic life? Or, in an absolute emergency, comments upon the weather?

 Nope. No one could find a thing to talk about. Not. One. Thing.

I hate uncomfortable silences at Shop & Bar, because you're stuck gazing at a gigantic mural of an ultra-violent rape scene that somehow manages to turn you on, which somehow manages to make you wonder if you aren't really a sick little freak after all ...

The next morning in bed, my back aching from the above-mentioned coffee table incident, curled up comfortably next to the KoS, I said a bit peevishly after we'd made our resolution, "But it works so well between us - why can't they talk to each other, just like we do?"

"Baby," the King of Spades said, "we're not expats and Russians."

But of course, we are an expat and a Russian, so his point was subtle. Quite subtle.

But at least those people had shown up the night before. And they get a lot of credit for that. Because out of the 120 or so who were invited, only this handful came. And they thought they were brave for doing so. I literally mean: people were afraid to come to my Firing Party.

Yes, I've taken on the English establishment in a David/Goliath kind of way (or, rather, a Dasha/Goliath kind of way), but they remain, despite the world's and history's best efforts, English. And the chances of any English institution hiring a posse of machine gun-toting thugs to come and blow us all away at Shop & Bar are, well, let's say: slim.

So I assumed that's not what my potential guests had been afraid of.  I came to the conclusion, after due inquiry, that they were afraid of being associated with me. Because I am now an outcast.  I have been very publicly outcast by The Powers That Be simply for writing a sexy little adventure story. In Russia, someone explained to me last night, the state of outcast-ness is considered contagious. And nobody wanted to buck the system and risk catching it by attending my party.

Are the Russians really that easily cowed by authority? And, if so, maybe that explains some things that are going on around here?

When very, very drunk, I can get Messianic delusions (it used to happen to Carl Jung too, right before he went completely crazy) and I am pretty drunk now.

To tell you the truth: I don't think I got fired for writing Expat, I think I got fired because I fell in love with a Russian man. And my love is non-exploitive, despite what a lot of Russians may think of us Americans.

I never understood, during movie trailers, what the corny phrase "Theirs was a forbidden love....." meant. And now I do. It was always okay for male slave owners to sleep with their slaves, but it was never okay for white women to do the same.

Think about it.

At any rate, it's something I intend to change.

As for the iron coffee-table, I suppose you can figure that one out all by yourselves. Let's just say: I really am a sick little freak, after all.

xxoo, DD

Deidre Dare's novel "Expat" can be read online at: www.deidredare.com