“Dear Sweaty, I must say that it was refreshing – if that’s not an inappropriate word to use here under the circumstances – to read the latest edition of your column “Just a Fookin Minute” on the behavior of Ukrainians sitting in neighboring toilet stalls when one is using the facilities. You have once again laid bare the total lack of civility too often displayed in public by the citizens of Kyiv.
“Indeed, I found your experience of being ‘smoked out’ of the men’s room by some most inconsiderate locals highly regrettable… but unfortunately all too believable. Where was the management of the establishment in question when you found yourself helplessly enveloped in a cloud of noxious fumes? How about the security? Is there really no fire code in this town?
“And, if you’ll forgive me for reopening a surely painful chapter in what I understood to be your otherwise pleasant and fruitful existence in this newly independent nation, did you really end up, pants bunched up at your ankles, groping along the seedy walls of the inhospitable eatery in search of a barely accessible exit? Good heaven’s man! Consider yourself fortunate to have gotten out at all! Being as you did, I can only now express my heartfelt gratitude for warning me and other unsuspecting Westerners of the trials that potentially await them if nature calls beyond the comfort zone of their apartment or hotel room.
Sincerely, Cecil Pauls.”
Reclining into one of the green plastic lawn chairs that comprise the outdoor seating of The Gilded Gate Pub, Sweaty sets aside his freshly printed copy of What’s Off magazine, which he publishes for a weekly audience of self-indulgent expatriates, primarily from the North Atlantic.
“It’s yoor toorn to buy the next fookin round, Sweaty” says the mop-topped slob across the table from him in a lumpy kilt and stained white knee stockings. His flabby thighs lie flat and wide open on the seat.
Sweaty makes a muffled belch and then sullenly reviews his companions for this evening as if seeing them for the first time.
There’s Clint, a thin and carefully dressed Englishman, whom Sweaty secretly suspects of overcharging him on printing costs but never told him.
And Raj, who proudly introduces himself to Ukrainians and others as ‘English’. And he always wears a monogrammed blue sports jacket over flimsy jeans clearly made somewhere on the Asian subcontinent.
“Dear Sweaty,” reads the second letter to the editor, which Sweaty is now back into after seeing to it that another round of lagers has been ordered, although he really isn’t convinced that it’s his turn, after all.
“… So you don’t like the way Ukrainians push all the buttons on the elevator, instead of just choosing ‘up’ or ‘down’. May I enquire as to precisely what about this seemingly harmless behavior irks you so much? You see, whether you are aware of it or not, most ‘modern elevators’, as you refer to them, are already designed to take the actions of nervous and unthinking passengers (Ukrainians included) into account.
“That is to say that whether one pushes the ‘up’ button from the top floor, or the ‘down’ button from the basement level, the lift will run the same trajectory that it always does, with no loss of time or convenience for those passengers waiting somewhere in between. The same principle is installed with respect to the ‘close door’ button, which frankly I’m surprised that you didn’t take the time to discuss in your gruff and capital-letter-sprinkled missive. But for your further edification and that of your esteemed readership, I will touch upon this subject – space in your time-honored periodical permitting, of course.
“To be blunt, one can press the ‘close door’ button in a lift until he goes blue in the face, but the elevator will remain open and unmoving for exactly as long as its engineers had programmed it to. Were you aware of that fact, Mr. Tank Top?
“If so, then please allow me to enlighten you on one last point, which, again, I hope will be equally instructional to your subscribers. I must say that I feel that it was insensitive of you and thoroughly misplaced to refer to Ukrainian lifts as ‘dumb’. You see, Senor Sweaty, my building, admittedly located in the centre of this fair city, is equipped with what I can only call a charming elevator that probably dates back to the early 20th century. Forged of sturdy cast iron with open grating and bathed in a thin layer of baby-blue paint, it provides me with pleasurable as well as reliable transport within my building of residence. To describe it as ‘dumb’ is tantamount to calling the double-decker red buses used on the streets of London stupid (!), Sir.
Regrettably, Carlos Dastardly”
Sweaty raises his now bright pink face up and out of the glossy pages of the local entertainment weekly, but this time not so fast. And it takes a little while for his eyes to get properly focused.
When they do, though, they’re exposed to a scene of the mop-topped Highlander wannabe flapping his plaid skirt in Morse-code regularity in full view of two nearby seated female patrons who grimace in what looks like a discrete but nevertheless desperate attempt on their part to invoke intervention from one of the wait staff.
Raj, looking like a chocolate rabbit, tries to suppress a guffaw by holding his hand over his mouth, but it just makes his eyes bulge bigger. Clint makes a dry quip and then flicks the cinders from his fag to one side.
“What the fook are you bloody doing?” Sweaty tries to blurt out, but can say nothing. He then tries to get out of his plastic seat but for some reason cannot manage to straighten up. Horrified at his predicament, he can only look on as the fat lump of pale flesh in a tartan skirt whom he sometimes calls a friend continues to expose himself to the Ukrainian women in mock surreptitious manner.
What do you think of me willy, Sheila?
What do you think of me now?
What do you think of me willy, Sheila?
You silly ol’ fat-assed cow!
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, for the Village Green Preservation Society Home for the Mentally Unstable, Tom O’ Bedlam’s Bulletin 753-18-H3 (to be forwarded to Kyiv Unedited at the Master’s Leisure following Passage by the Censors), November 20, 2013