St. Pete's

Having been in the military had afforded me the opportunity to travel to far-flung lands, meet interesting people, and vomit in exotic locales. Even still, when my friend Rick informed me that we were headed to St. Petersburg, Russia, to research the patriotic possibility of outsourcing all our IT work to hard-up, borscht-chomping Russian programmers, I was giddy as Courtney Love with a stack of blank prescriptions. I mean, holy shit – RUSSIA, dude! This is where you can supposedly trade Levi’s for bricks of gold; where Ivan Drago and Rocky Balboa beat the snot out of each other; and, wasn’t a butt-ton of people systematically slaughtered there too, or was that Germany?

Frankly, I had no idea what to expect when I arrived in St. Petersburg last Tuesday, except for strong assumption that, whatever adventure lay in store for me, it would be played out with my balls shriveled to the size of cashews -- little did I know how much I would require the services of my frozen nutty buddies.

The rest of my office was weary of hearing this, I’m sure, but they’ll get to hear it one more time: St. Petersburg is the greatest goddamn city in the world.

I’m having a difficult time putting into words my love for this city, so, instead, I’ll simply regale you with stories and let the conclusions come as they may.

Story One: I leave Rick at the hotel and venture off with a friend to a club called Magrib. I was excited about this club, because a hooker had advised me earlier that it was quite a swinging little joint, and because I thought it was pronounced “McRib”. After purchasing a pack of Lucky Strikes for roughly $0.50 USD, I arrive at the club and settle onto my perch at the bar. Looking around, I’m struck by the observation that the club patrons are at least 75% women, of which about 80% are stunningly gorgeous. This wasn’t the booze talking, folks – the girls in St. Petersburg are, by and large, the most consistently beautiful women I’ve ever seen in one city. There were no crinkly, hunched-over, Soviet babushka monsters as I had expected.

So, I proceed to down a shameful amount of vodka and Jagermeister, dance poorly to the obligatory Eurodanceboomboom techno beat, and, at about 4 AM, hop in a car with two random dudes who claim to be going to a whorehouse. This, as many wizened Russian travelers will tell you, is known as a “fucking retarded idea”. A drunken American hitching a ride in Russia may not be as dangerous as, say, using a coupon in a Palestinian grocery store, but it’s still not the smoothest of moves – unless your travel budget allows for ransom payments.

Luckily, the two guys turned out to be honest, upstanding hooker connoisseurs like myself, and I arrived at the Palais de Poontang unscathed. The madam then herded in a gaggle of hot, be-thonged Ladies of the Evening. The other two guys argued in Russian with the Madam about, well, I don’t know what the hell they were talking about, but I was growing anxious to get in-out, in-out, in-out, and, finally, out of there, so I yelled at her in Russian-accented broken English, “How much for the fucking and the sucking?”

“500 roubles,” she replied. “500 roubles, one hour, one pretty lady.”

For those not familiar with the current exchange rate, 500 roubles is less than $20. For one girl. For one hour. And they were all hot. A tragic, gory cash hemorrhage was imminent. The other two guys kept haggling the price with her, but even my cheap-ass side was shouting, “Twenty bucks? What a bargain!” So, I slapped a couple hundred bucks on the table, grabbed four girls, and made with the lovin’.

I suppose I’ll skip most the sexual details of the next 3 hours. My mom reads this site, and that could get a little uncomfortable at next Christmas. I will, however, note that I finally played “Chopsticks” with the four hookers. You figure it out.

More memorable than the sex, however, was the hour I spent doing nothing but cracking jokes with these girls. None of them spoke English, and I don’t speak Russian – plus, I was naked -- so this was definitely the toughest audience my comedy bone has ever faced, but, ladies and gentlemen, I’m proud to say that I brought down the house. I killed. These four whores were literally doubled-over, clutching their stomachs in fits of laughter while I slap-sticked around the room. It was the single greatest comedic moment of my life, and it only cost twenty clams per clam. God bless Mother Russia.

I’ve got more stories to tell, but I’ll space them out over the next few weeks. Besides, there will be plenty more wacky hooker stories in the near future, as I’m moving to St. Petersburg in April. Oh, yeah.