w/ Coburn in St. Petersburg:
w/ one of The Switchblade Sisters (can't remember which one):
w/ Coburn (2nd from left) and The Switchblade Sisters in St. Petersburg:
Its a sad fact of capitalism that prostitutes and criminals grasp it far more instinctually than the educated or morally upright. Democracy may appeal to our higher nature; but capitalism and thuggery go together like peanut butter and jelly. Stay ahead of your neighbors. Defeat your competition. Always pursue profits.
How much profit?
As much as possible.
Underworld figures, crime syndicates, and sex exploiters get rich right away in capitalistic economies. The oldest professions. They don’t just get it (by which I mean capitalism); they take to it.
In Russia, the general population didn’t seem to get capitalism. It didn’t come naturally to them. I was there 6-7 years ago so perhaps they’re more with it now; but back then, if the 4 of us went out for a meal the waitress invariably brought-out one dish at a time from the kitchen. She might serve Rules, then five minutes later bring the Beauty Queen’s meal. Another five minutes later she’d serve Coburn, and so on. If you were ostentatious enough to request that the waitress bring-out all four dishes together, she’d roll her eyes and look at her co-workers with a dropped jaw. Can you believe these assholes?
In St. Petersburg I did a little gambling with the Switchblade Sisters. A young pair of degenerate Brooklyn gals that could have fit right into Russian, criminal society. The sisters and I played Blackjack at the dimly lit table, but we didn’t win a hand. Normally a casino will comp you some drinks or maybe just a bowl of pretzels--something for your amusement!--if you stick around and play; but we got nothing as our dealer dealt shitty cards and took our money with metronomic consistency.
“You now have 16, what you want?” he’d ask from behind heavy eyelids and slate-grey eyes.
“Hit me.”
“6,” he’d announce robotically for the table as we observed him flip the card, “that makes 22 which is too high. Now you have lost.”
And with that he’d slide our chips towards his side of the table and ask with a stone-cold countenance, “You will bet again?”
Believe it or not Igor, I’ll pass on your warm personality.
The cocktail girls in Moscow seemed to gamble a lot. There was a little bar in our hotel adjacent to the elevators where the gals displayed themselves. If they weren’t busy in a room or chatting up a foreigner, you’d see them at the slot machines. Each of the bar’s tables had its own machine and the same four girls would be seen hours on end, sipping beers and watching the slot-dials spin. Sometimes they’d be asleep, with their heads laid gently on the table-top and their long hair splayed out. The hotel obviously condoned their existence and had no fear of police. Why should they? That’s how things seemed to work out there. Worlds within worlds.
Despite my being with Rules and the Beauty Queen, each time I approached the elevators the cocktail girls would perk to attention. Raise or spin their heads like my dog Spiffy when she catches a scent. They were all rather beautiful and Eastern-exotic, but one in particular was a real knockout: with long, wavy hair; toned belly; soft, green eyes; belly-dancer’s hips. A Russian Ana Lucia Dominguez, even if they are from different worlds.
One evening I returned to the hotel early. Before the others since we’d all been fighting and went our separate ways. I wasn’t particularly anxious to go back to an empty hotel room, so I stopped in the bar for a beer. No sooner had my beer arrived than Ana Lucia sat down at my table.
“You buy for me? she asked with a smile as she pointed at my beer. Bottled beers were $7.00 a piece, but what the hell.
“You’re enjoying Moscow?” she asked after I’d ordered for her.
“Yeah, definitely” I answered, unable to unlock my eyes from hers.
“...And your friends too?” she asked almost conspiratorially. “Even the injured one?”
“I think he’s having fun, yeah. You’ve seen us?”
Anna rolled her eyes at the insincerity of my question.
“We see everyone. And they see us, that’s why we’re here,” she said, gesturing towards the bar area.
“Guess that makes sens...”
“You want to have sex?” she suddenly asked me.
“What?” I asked, surprised by her abruptness more than the content of her question.
“Sex,” she repeated blandly. “You bought me a beer so you must want sex.”
“I didn’t realize that’s what it meant.”
Ana began to look ‘round as though being watched.
“...All men want sex. You’ve bought me a beer, so it might be best for us to have sex now.”
I contemplated the idea for a few silent moments.
“You have concerns about your women?” she asked. “We can go to my room. I have a place they keep for me here in the hotel.”
“Your room, eh? Am I gonna walk out of there broke, looking like my friend?”
Ana laughed.
“If there’s one place in Moscow where nothing will happen to you, its my room.”
“You sure about that?”
Ana again rolled her eyes as she reached across the table and took my hand.
“Americans,” she said with a shake of her head, "can’t you see my boss runs everything here?” 
"Capitalism and thuggery go together like peanut butter and jelly."
*NOTE: All pics taken or owned by Lodo Grdak w/ the exception of the top-most and bottom-most pics (which were stolen off Google). All rights reseved on my pics.
St. Petersburg:
Rules in front of Peter the Great (or is it Christopher Columbus?):
w/ Coburn (center); and Rules (right) in Arbat District:
Worlds within worlds. That seemed to be Russia. And maybe that’s the way it is in other countries too. Police within the police. Everyday life imbibed with a kind of politics we see only in the most contentious election years here in the States.
In Moscow we saw fiery, Soviet-era statues displayed in the subways to remind us that the old days weren’t entirely gone. Rifles in hand, arms raised. We saw Lenin statues too. In St. Petersburg.
It was there I met a restaurant owner. Armenian. We sat together at a blackjack table inside the hotel’s casino. He had hairy arms and a Rolex watch. He said his restaurant was the best Armenian restaurant in St. Petersburg. Famous even. Everyone went there. Yet he had to pay bribes to keep the restaurant from being vandalized; and just two days before our conversation his brother had been badly beaten as he walked home. Car pulled over, two guys got out. Beat the shit out of him.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” The Armenian asked as he recounted the story.
“No reason,” I answered as we looked at each other. What’d the police say?”
“They were police. The guys who beat him up. You see how things are here?”
Course that was just his version, the guy may have his own agenda. Yet even before our visit we were constantly warned of ethnic intimidation and skinheads. You’d think Russia’s huge losses in WWII would result in a repudiation of anything that smacked of Naziism, but there are worlds within worlds. Tribes within nations.
A big economic summit was to take place in St. Petersburg the week after we left. We were told that was why Putin and the police were cracking down. To put a little fear into the populace to be on their best behavior. The Russians respect that kind of thing. Strong leaders. They remember when the Tsar emancipated the serfs and how soon thereafter the royal family was murdered. Can’t show weakness. The people expect a little oppression or surveillance as indicative of a leader’s power. They’ll accept it for political stability. "Putin--what do you expect?" our tour group leader asked us without apology. "He’s politician."
In Moscow we had a guest guide for a day. I can’t recall her name, but she was probably 40 years old. She wore a bright pink pant-suit that fit tight round her ass and smart red lipstick. Her stylish, wire-rimmed glasses bordered on being cat’s-eyes and her lips were constantly pursed when not speaking. For some reason she held a clipboard in the crook of her arm to which she never referred. She was attractive in a dirty-professor kind of way. Adriana I think her name was!
Adriana guided us thru the Arbat and the new Russia. The money Russia. Condominiums that were still being built (for people with connections of course) and a floating restaurant where “People spend as much money on one meal as others make in a whole month.”
Adriana dropped many such comments as our bus wended its way thru the Arbat District's tight streets. Initially it was hard to tell if her intent was to impress us with the frivolity of the expenditure the way a game show host will tantalize the audience with material goods; or if she meant to highlight a perceived gluttony. But as the tour continued her leanings became more evident:
“And here you can find what are now very expensive apartments. In the past these would have been for government officials. Or professors at university. People would spend decades in these apartments and raise their families. Pass them along to their children. But now they have been forced to move for the new people. The people who work for oil companies, or who used to work for Yeltsin. When Yeltsin de-valued the ruble (here Adriana took a deep breath), people lost everything. You thought you had money in the bank, but now it was nothing. Paper! Because of Yeltsin. Only his people did well. His people and the foreigners. They divided all the industry. Most of us didn’t understand Capitalism. We weren’t raised...”
“Adriana,” our tour guide suddenly interjected. The two women exchanged words in Russian. Words I didn’t understand since it was their world--not mine. But momentarily Adriana did an about-face and directed our attention out the bus windows:
"And to the right you can see the statue of Peter the Great. Some say its really Christopher Columbus--that the artist tricked us with an old statue. It is sometimes hard for us to know the truth even on simple matters. But they says it is Peter the Great and now (heavy sigh) it is ours. In a few moments, you will see another famous landmark...”
* NOTE: The photograph of Vladimir Putin seen at the top of this post was taken off Google Images. All rights reserved on the rest of the pics displayed.
Moscow:
The Dallas Beauty Queen (left) with Coburn (center/glasses). 1st day on the subway:
Coburn in Moscow:
Rules (left); Coburn (ctr.) and the Dallas Beauty Queen outside Hotel Cosmo (start of 1st night):
Coburn (on bed w/ ice-pack); and Rules (red shirt) at Hotel Cosmo. (End of 1st night):
I could write ten million posts about Russia. What’s stopping me? I was only there for (2) weeks, but flesh-out one idea or event properly and you can write a thousand pages. That trip was long enough ago now that I feel the memories as much as see them in my mind’s eye. I remember emotions. That first sense of aloneness when I’d arrived. So far from everyone that mattered to me. Days later, when my friends and I met-up with the tour group; we visited Novgorod. Coburn and I shared a beer at the bar. He had this distant look as he made mention of his mother. Or my mother now that I think of it. Was she still alive? Course he meant his own mother who’d recently died. You think about those things when you’re far away. I know I did.
I wasn’t used to international travel. I’d have been more than happy to go to Costa Rica. Or Puerto Rico. Or Greece. Or Prague. But they’d already been all those places. They’d been everywhere! And who else did I have to travel with? So that afternoon about 6 years ago I got a conference call at my office. It was Rules. By the tone of her voice I knew they’d made a decision on a destination.
Alright Lodo, you ready?
Ready.
“Moscow!”
“...Moscow?!”
“Yeahhh!”
“..Russia?”
“YEAH! YEAH! YEAH!”
“Uh,..okay.”
Russia. Are you kidding me? But once I bought into it I really went all in. Hell, I’m 100% Russian blood. My family’s supposedly from Minsk--not that I ever wanted to freaking go there. But now I was, so l read all kinds of books on Peter and Catherine the Great. About the assassination of Tsar Nicholas and the Communists. About World Wars I and II. Even some obscure pamphlets about the break-up of the State-owned industries under Boris Yeltsin. For a dumb-ass American, I had my shit down.
So much so that I think the Russians thought I was a spy. I’m not kidding. They asked some very odd questions on the visa application. What was my college major? Could I provide the name of one of my professors from Wayne State? What was my H.I.V. status?
When I arrived in Moscow I had a long wait to get thru Customs. I’ve since been told that they probably just wanted a bribe, but I’m not so sure. They seem to be a secretive people by nature. Introverted. Given to intrigue. And here I was: 40+ year old investigator, single guy, who arrived alone from New York. Sounds like the profile of someone up to no good. And I was up to no good! Or at least I was up for it. So we understood each other.
The first Customs Agent I spoke with was a woman; but she simply took my passport and told me to stand against the wall. I stood 5, 10,...20 minutes. In all that time I didn’t see that woman do a thing. No one approached her window and she just stared straight ahead. But eventually a 2nd agent--a man walked over to her window. They conversed a few moments as the man flipped thru my paperwork. Then he called me over with a wave of his hand.
“Mr. Grdzak, correct?,” he asked with a very stern, direct cadence.
The woman watched me answer from over his shoulder.
“Yes sir, that’s correct.”
“And what is the purpose of your visit to Moscow Mr Grdzak?” he asked with the same measured cadence.
“Just visiting,” I responded.
“...I see. And do you have people you plan to visit here?” he asked.
“No sir. I’m meeting up with a tour group in about 2 or 3 days.”
“2 or 3 days? You’re not sure?” he asked with a challenging smile.
“3 days,” I answered.
“3 days. Okay. So what will you be doing ‘til then?” he asked.
“I don’t know. ...Fuck around I guess.”
Jesus people! Any other country would be like, Yeah--come in! Get boozed up. Spend money. Enjoy our great country. But these Russians just didn't get it. When I first checked into the hotel the gorgeous desk clerk with her cold Icelandic features refused to return my passport.
"Hey. Don’t I need that?’
“We’ll keep it here for you. It’ll be safer.”
“Safer from what?”
As soon as Coburn, Rules, and the Dallas Beauty Queen arrived, we went to the the hotel casino for drinks. We shared a round of vodka shots; after which the hotel comped us another round. Then the bartender bought us a round, which the girls gave to Coburn and me. We were pretty lit before we left the hotel. Before all the shit went down about which I’m sworn to secrecy. Or at least I say I’m sworn to secrecy. Fact is, none of us really has all the pieces of what went down that night. Maybe we were set-up. Or maybe it just feels like that in retrospect. You never could shake the feeling over there of being watched. Or followed. On the subway trains the people simply looked at the floor or read a book. No one listened to an Ipod or music player. Conversations were hushed; and certainly no one danced like they will in New York. The people seemed shocked to discover tourists.
“What? You don’t live here?”
“No, we’re Americans.”
“...And you came here?”
“Yeah!”
“...Why?!”
Our first real day in Moscow we visited a flea market. They had great Sheepskin jackets; nesting dolls; lacquered jewel boxes; old Soviet-era pins and classic propaganda T-shirts that my buddy Vintage would bust a nut over. Everything was super quality and dirt cheap; but the Russians limit how much you can take back to the States.
At one point Rules and I were looking at prints when this guy approached us. Totally on his own initiative with no prior contact whatsoever. Not a big guy so much as thick. Big paws. Round skull covered tight in fleshy skin.
“Hey you,” he called to me with a loud voice. “You’re Jewish?”
His wide hand was heavily calloused when I shook it, and I could see his nose had been broken in the past. I looked around at my surroundings since I’d heard about some serious anti-semitism in Russia; but we were the only ones around.
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” I answered.
“Okay,” he answered with a smile as he looked me up and down. I expected him to say he was Jewish too; or perhaps give me some shit about it; but instead he continued to look me up and down.
“...So, why’d you stop us?” I eventually asked.
“No reason,” he said. “Its just that you looked Jewish to me, so I figured I’d keep an eye out for you. ...Your friend. Looks like you had a rough night last night.”
“How do you know it was last night?” I asked as my heart began to race.
“Well, I just say last night. I don’t really know. How could I?” 
* NOTE: All rights reserved on all personal pics.
As an insurance investigator, I’ve dealt with a lot of edgy people. Especially when I performed Special Investigations.
I was never great at S.I.U. stuff, partly because I just didn’t care enough and partly because I didn’t fit into the culture of the unit (which may have been why I didn’t care). S.I.U. Departments are loaded with Criminal Justice majors and District Attorney’s clerks. I have nothing against any of those groups per se; but extended, personal conversation could become strained pretty fast.
What’d you do this weekend Lodo?
What’d I do? Oh, uh,...I mean. ...You know,...just the regular things that normal people do.
Uh, okay. Us too.
When I say S.I.U. investigations in an insurance sense, I mean investigations of claims in which a certain number of red flags have been triggered. Maybe the insured can’t produce any receipts for expensive items; or perhaps there’s no sign of forced entry to their apartment despite an alleged break-in. Whatever the case, if there’s enough red flags an insurance company will perform an investigation.
I was never a great investigator; but my success rate at documenting fraudulent claims was 88%. This was because there were already so many red flags before I even got a claim that it was just a matter of connecting the dots: A + B + C = What you talkin’ ‘bout Willis?! For all I know, 88% may have been a low success rate (I’m not sure--they never shared statistics with us where I worked).
The reasons why a person (or people) might attempt an insurance scam are varied, but some form of desperation is usually at the root: impending bankruptcy; a required medical procedure; a serious drug problem. That was a biggie.
I dealt with a lot of meth-heads in the early 90’s. When I’d visit their house (or trailer); invariably--male or female, I’d find their eyes darting ‘round in their head like that weasel from Ice Age. Fidgety fuckers with no attention span. Like Zab Judah in a prize fight, they’d breakdown halfway thru the recorded interview simply from the mental exhaustion of having to focus on my questions. Perhaps they’d been up for days. Formulating answers. Wringing their hands. Counting the money they already saw going up their nose.
Some could keep it together a little longer; until you touched on a certain inconsistency or oversight to which they hadn’t anticipated. Then a change would appear in their countenance. A slight flush of the face accompanied by rapid machinations behind the eyes. A specific expression indicative of unwanted exposure. Of their documented loss of self-control that could sometimes dissolve into near panic or even full-blown nervous breakdown if I didn’t handle myself correctly.
“...Tell you what, why don’t I just shut this tape recorder off and we can really talk.”
When you’re a real detective--like for the F.B.I. or a police force; they train you to study body language to help gauge honesty. How to analyze handwriting. How to inspect photographs for clues and to determine relationships.
I never received that training, but I’m a bit of a psychology enthusiast. Particularly body language and animal behavior. In photographs of two or more people I ask myself: Who’s initiating the contact? What are the facial expressions of the subjects? What are the circumstances of the photo? What’s the relationship of the photographer to the subjects?
I don’t know who took this picture of me in St. Petersburg (below), but my expression isn't that far removed from the subjects I'd see on one of my S.I.U. investigations. If you were across the table from me I might advise you to turn off the recorder. The rigid body position. The tightness behind the eyes and mouth. I’d been drunk on vodka for (2) weeks straight--we all were! 20 hours of Russian sunshine a day. The same (3) shirts I always wore. None of us got along. And of course that first night and Coburn's injury, about which we all swore ourselves to secrecy. Like the Dallas Beauty Queen said, “just so tired.”
You can sort of see some of that same expression in this picture of Rules at The Hermitage (below). Not as far gone as the meth-heads yet. Still together. But something distant behind the eyes. Detached. Not dreamy so much as...foggy. Another week at this pace and she’ll be ready to be re-programmed by The Moonies.
Anyway, for what its worth, here’s a few more pics from Russia* (*double-click on 'em for full view). Doubt they need or deserve the kind of analysis discussed above; but in these days of my long intermission, I’ve got plenty of time to indulge myself.
at Tsarko Selo:
St. Basil's (Moscow):
450 years old as of July 12, 2011.
Church of Spilled Blood (St. Petersburg):
The Dallas Beauty Queen (left) w/ Rules (right) at Tsarko Selo:
Coburn (left); D.B.Q. (ctr.); Rules (right) at Red Square:
The legendary Amber Room:
See you in a few days y’all. And thanks for reading!!
*NOTE: All rights reserved on all personal pics. I'm sure all the pics and images at the top of this post are copyrighted by their owners.
Novgorod:
Coburn:
Rules (left) w/ The Dallas Beauty Queen (right):
We arrived late into Novgorod, but there was still sunlight since that part of Russia stays light close to 20 hours a day in summer. We danced a traditional Russian dance, then sat-thru a performance of Kalinka before dinner; after which Coburn and I shared a drink at the hotel bar.
There was another tour group at the hotel in addition to ours. Italians. Coburn and I inspected their women as we talked.
“...Listen man,” I said to him. “Maybe we can try and locate a doctor thru the hotel.”
Coburn looked out toward the lounge of people as though squinting into the sun. As though he sought something far out in the distance.
“...Naw Lodo. Maybe back in Moscow, but not now. ...Now I don’t care.”
“You don’t?,” I asked. “...It looks a lot better. Like maybe the swelling’s gone down.”
Coburn nodded silently in agreement as he traced the swollen band of black and blue that encircled his eyes like a raccoon's mask. He didn’t need to look in a mirror; he could feel the contours of its boundary within his own skin.
I waited for Coburn to say something as I stared at his profile, but he remained quiet and aloof. I began to wonder if his silence was indicative of anger or disappointment with me; and I began to feel ashamed at not having done more back in Moscow.
I ordered a drink nervously. Turned to ask Coburn what he wanted, but before I could speak he cut me off with an absent detachment.
“Is your mom still alive?” he asked me, completely out of context. Like his mind had been away on some kind of intermission and returned to the performance at the wrong spot.
“What?” I asked. “My mom?”
“...Yeah,” Coburn asked again as he turned in his barstool to face me. “Is your mom still alive?”
“Last time I checked, yeah.”
“That’s good, man.”
No more was said on the subject. Coburn and I proceeded to get shit-faced drunk, and when I eventually hit my bed I should have passed out in no time.
But for some reason I was restless. We’d been on the bus all day with no exercise; and despite the late hour the sun had only gone down an hour or so before. I was still wired, and Coburn snored terribly!! I mean, really loud. With gasps of air that rocked his body with spasms. I figured the violence of the tremors would eventually wake him; but he just slept right thru.
In fact, Coburn slept like like a baby. I was the one left to deal with the uncomfortable bolt of anxiety that shot thru my spine with each snort or unanticipated gurgle of nasal passages and compressed air cavities. A feeling similar to the sensation created by nails on a chalkboard, until I eventually I had to leave the room.
Staying with Rules and The Dallas Beauty Queen was out of the question (that was made quite clear!). In fact, Rules and I weren’t even talking at this time.
So I took my pillow and blanket down to the lobby area adjacent to where Coburn and I had been drinking. By this time the lounge was cleared out, and the only one still present was the bartender. He still wore his hotel uniform as he sat on the customer’s side of the bar--on a stool, where he ate his late dinner with fork and knife.
It took me a long time to get to sleep as my life went on that intermission known as insomnia. Now and again my attention would turn toward the bartender who stared at one of several TV’s installed overhead. They displayed stylized pornography set to industrial dance music. The volume was down, but the bartender watched the robotic, hardcore images pass overhead as though there were a plot to be followed. A real story to watch as he forked the last of his potatoes and dipped it in his gravy. A country imbecile who slowly chewed his food. Or maybe he just wanted to stretch that peaceful respite between work and the commute home as long as he could. Before having to deal with the wife. Or the kids.
Or maybe there was no wife at all. Only loneliness and vodka. And sunlight.
When I finally fell asleep I was awoken almost immediately by a kick to my ottoman. It was the Dallas Beauty Queen.
“Lodo, wake up.”
“Oh hey,” I mumbled as I rubbed my eyes.
“Hey,” she answered with a soft smile. “You should eat. We’ve gotta be on road.”
Novgorod proved to be little more than a gift from our tour group sponsors to the city itself. Tourist dollars and a short intermission for our driver between Moscow and St. Petersburg. The city’s alleged significance is its history, but the ancient church we briefly visited was dark and dank, and did nothing to raise my level of spirituality whatsoever. In fact, to steal a line from Homer Simpson, it appeared to be more of a cage for God than a home.
The doors to the old church are allegedly the oldest and heaviest in all of Russia. The investigator in me has some skepticism about such an odd claim (heaviest?), but I didn’t challenge our guide. In fact, those doors were pretty cool. Covered in mysterious hieroglyphs etched in what appeared to be brass. They captured my dazed, hung-over attention for a long time.
“Hey,” I said to the Dallas Beauty Queen, “stand in front of these doors. I want a picture.”
“Oh no Lodo. I look terrible!”
“It doesn’t matter. Its just about the moment.”
The Beauty Queen posed, but then collapsed into me with a laugh.
“Oh my God Lodo--what is with that sun?!”
“What d’ya mean?” I asked.
“I mean it never goes down!,” she laughed almost feverishly as she held my forearm and stumbled along the brick-laid street. “My God, between the sun, the vodka. The jet-lag. That first night with Coburn. I’m just so...tired.”
“I know. We can all use a break.” 
