Not a Dream of Kyiv, but quite simply, Sweaty’s a filthy loser
And everyone’s sick of his pathetic ass
Sitting, Sweaty decides to speak.
“Uh, ich Oym ‘ere reckoneen ye eenvoited me te yer luncheon.”
“Wha… what did he say?”
Sweaty doesn’t like being referred to in the third person. The face behind the voice is unseen. He can’t figure out where it came from. He looks around the room, completely barren, with no visible indications of any devices or vents anywhere that would let it in.
He sits frustrated in a chair behind a table. The walls are all the same, except for what seems to be one of those one-way mirror-windows on his right. But that’s only a guess, since whatever’s there is covered by black draping. Maybe it’s not what he thinks at all. It’s possible that behind those drapes is nothing but more wall.
The room doesn’t even have a door.
Ruffled and insulted, Sweaty Tank Top, former publisher of the once extant What’s Not magazine, a third-rate English-language weekly playbill rag in Kyiv, today greatly missed, decides it’s worth persisting. He’s got his pride.
“Oy… ich Oy feegures ye eenvoited me te a Kyiv Uneedeeted luncheon, seein’s ha Oym een passeshun o’ thees eenvoitation… Um… ich Oy –”
“Whoa, whooooaa there, Smelly! We –”
“That be Sweaty, na Smelly, eefin eet’s all th’ soime te ye…”
“Yeah, whatever. What’s that you say? A lunch… in? A… hey, anybody here figure out what this clown’s saying?! A lunch… in… a lunch… what, what…”
“Jus’ loike eet says i’ me eenvoitation, fro’ th’ offeeces o’ Kyiv Uneedeeted, fer a gala luncheon, spelled l – u – n – c – h – e – o – n, boi vertue o’ me choif eedeetin’ an’ poobleeshin’ prewees, today, ye eenvoi –”
“We never sent that,” one voice says from somewhere, sounding dismayed, but giving Sweaty the distinct impression that it wasn’t talking to him.
Confirming Sweaty’s suspicions, another voice responds to the first, again referring to Sweaty in the third person: “No, no… it’s not that we never sent it, but he wasn’t invited… You see, he wasn’t invited… he wasn’t…”
Talking behind his back, as it were, but to his face. As if he’s not there. How insulting! And what do they mean they never sent it and-or he wasn’t invited? He has the invitation – right there! He has it right there… in his hand… right there, and… and… he’s now waving it furiously above his head. If they can hear him and talk to him then they must be able to see him too, Sweaty guesses correctly.
“He’s being aggressive,” says the one voice. “He’s acting like a child…”
“Mr. Smelly… Mr. Smelly… please, you’re acting like a bully. You’re…”
Sweaty Tank Top continues to defiantly wave his invitation for the gala luncheon from the offices of Kyiv Unedited. He waves it with ever-increasing vigor – so much so that the action no longer makes sense, which, realizing this, impels him to increase the senseless action’s vigor even more.
“And what’s that you said, Mr. Smelly? What was that – a lunch… in? A LUNCH… in?”
“I think what he meant was lunch.”
“Lunch?”
“Yeah, lunch.”
“Mr. Smelly – why don’t you just say lunch? The word is lunch! You can look it up in the dictionary, for chrissakes, that is, if you can read. That is, if you even know ENGLISH!!! What the FUCK is a LUNCH… in? After all, we’re only asking you to speak in a human tongue, if, that is, that isn’t –”
“… too much to ask,” chimes in the other voice, and both voices chuckle…
Sweaty Tank Top looks down at his tank top and knows it’s winter because the tank top is his thick one, made from grade-A virgin wool, imported from Scotland.
But does he have a place to go? Somehow he knows he’s in Kyiv, but can’t remember where he lives. Where will he sleep tonight? He can’t remember. But is that possible? He’s got to have a place… he’s just got to!
“Ich Oym a wroiter,” Sweaty cries, “Oym a wroiter, Oym eh fookin’ wroi –”
“Yeah, right,” says one of the two unseen voices; rather sarcastically, I may add.
Sweaty looks out an expanse of windows with backward Cyrillic letters on them he can’t make out, as they’re on the other side.
He sits at a tiny table squeezed in by many other such tables filled with patrons inside a small joint. In front of him is a cup of coffee and a pastry.
It’s a café of some sort. He knows he just HAS to be in Kyiv, although these particular environs look ominously unfamiliar… even unreal.
He tries the coffee and finds it to be hot and quite good. He bites the pastry, causing his mouth to fill with saliva.
He looks out the floor-to-ceiling windows. People rush by, going this way and that, while he is in here, looking out at them.
He peers out farther through the windows and notes the café is a few yards across from a station of the Metro.
Marching aggressively in front of the station is a tall hipster girl in a thick oversized lumberjack coat with a backpack and a megaphone pressed to her lips. Her hair, long, brown, and disheveled in the wind, whips about her thin oval face and black-framed glasses, flying back in a jump scare as she makes her turn. She appears angry as she shouts stridently into the megaphone. She gestures emphatically with her thickly padded free arm as she shouts, her hostility raised to the second power (maybe) by the amplification. Her gloveless hands are raw and red from the cold.
Sweaty can’t hear any of the bustle outside or the megaphone girl. It is only when the door is opened that Sweaty hears a quick burst of the city’s winter life before all sound is once again sealed against his hearing.
Sweaty blinks and his eyes catch the metallic Cyrillic lettering on the Metro terminal that spells out the station’s name: Darnytsya.
“Darnitsa?! Ye mean th’ fookin’ leeft bank o’ thees blooody sheet coven! So far fro’ th’ oop-an’-coomin’ distric’ o’ Podol whar ich Oy oncet doon me fookin’ roarin’ poobleeshin’ beeznees?!”
The woman behind the cash register rushes over to Sweaty and tells him to finish his coffee and get out, because they need the table for new customers coming in, and he’s just sitting there. She picks up the coffee and lifts it to his lips, trying to force him to drink it, and then spills it on his virgin wool tank top, adding a big brown puddle stain to all the old stains already there, but even worse, scalding Sweaty’s repulsive lumpy whey-textured chest, ending the debate.
Sweaty hollers and screams:
“Ye fookin’ twoont! Oy’ll keel ye! Oy’ll sue yar blooody arse! Geet me yar fookin’ manger! Oy’ll –”
But the table is surrounded by a large number of staff and patrons who squeeze and push Sweaty out the café.
He finds the girl marching back and forth with the megaphone annoying, both because she’s shouting in what is indisputably good grammatical English, rather than in Russian or Ukrainian (why would she do that?; who, passing by, can understand her?), and because that indisputably good English is overlaid with a Slavic accent a little too thick and heavy for such a young and modern Ukrainian girl.
It is precisely now, as Sweaty Tank Top looks at the girl with growing arousal and a notion to approach her, that he hears her words:
“… and that’s because of fucking Sweaty Tank Top!
“Sweaty Tank Top took all the money from What’s Off magazine! He used it to live high on the hog with his foreign partners in crime! – that bitch Lava Encole and her stupid husband Piper Nadine!
“Using that money, Sweaty Tank Top and his criminal gang treated themselves to expensive restaurants and traveled to exotic locations – and then wrote about it in the magazine!
“Sweaty Tank Top and his partners in crime laughed at the Ukrainian people! In his editorials, Sweaty Tank Top complained about Ukrainians! He complimented the women but called the men round-headed Trypillians and losers! Did Sweaty Tank Top ever think to look at himself?! His head is like thickened sour milk curdled over a scarecrow sack!
“But Sweaty Tank Top is responsible for even more crimes!
“There’s no more money, because Sweaty Tank Top took it!
“During the revolution two years ago, our brothers and sisters died at the barricades in the center of Kyiv! But Sweaty Tank Top and his gang of criminals turned tail and ran! They closed down the magazine and took all the money with them!
“Now there is no more English-language entertainment magazine! Sweaty Tank Top killed this city’s cultural heritage! No more English announcements about what’s playing! Foreigners don’t know what to do here and stopped coming! Because of Sweaty Tank Top, the tourism industry is dead! Thanks to Sweaty Tank Top, Kyiv is dying, and if someone doesn’t do something fast, it will soon be dead! The city’s infrastructure is crumbling because there’s no more money going into the budget! And all because of Sweaty Tank Top! He took the money! Foreign investors saw no reason to stay – so they left too! The entertainment sector died and Sweaty Tank Top killed it!
“Sweaty Tank Top took all the money! He took it, he took it!
“Because of fucking Sweaty Tank Top…”
A mist drifts in from the river and swallows the scene.
Filed by Mr. Ted “Blood and Guts” Woijehowski, February 17, 2016