Men's Day (or Susan becomes a celebrity)

In Russia, the 23rd of February is men's day. Well, officially, it's "the day of the defenders of the fatherland" (den' zashchitnikov otechestva), but since most men serve in the army, it has become kind of the analog of March 8th (International Women's Day--international in the sense that all the former communist countries celebrate it). Anyway, they have big celebrations all over the country in honor of all the men, whether or not they served in the army. On a frozen lake, near where I live, they had music and other kinds of performances all day long, people gather together with friends and family, women buy their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands/boyfriends small gifts, and, in the evening, young people go out to the clubs, where a whole set of events are staged in honor of men.


My friend, Masha, is a kind of event coordinator in the city, so I had the opportunity to go club-hopping with her as she went around to different places to MC the festivities. First, we went to a restaurant where a group of doctors/medical students had a party. Masha had men volunteer to take part in various games--for instance, who can braid a girl's hair the fastest, who can blow up a balloon until it pops the fastest, who can tie up a girl the fastest so that she can't get out, etc. After a number of these games, she tells them she has a present for all the men. An American young lady has come all this way to congratulate them, and not just in Russian but in Sakha language! And she calls me up on the stage, insisting that I say a few words in Sakha--which for me is still quite difficult. I was mortified as I stumbled through a greeting. and she kindly apologized saying that I was shy... And then, later, after the final game, the prize turned out to be a dance with this same American girl...

A word of explanation: Americans very rarely end up in this part of the world and so I end up as a kind of celebrity at times. America, by virtue of its endless outpouring of hollywood movies, appears as the center of the world, a land of milk and honey where everyone is beautiful and everyone eats in restaurants all the time. So, to simply be from this world is something fascinating for people here. And then, that I can speak Russian and a little Sakha language on top of that gives me far more social capital than I deserve.

Anyway, the night went on and we ended up at a club called "Sporthouse" where further men's day events were being staged--here this included a belly dancer to entertain the fellows. and of course another greeting from the American guest. Fortunately by this time, I had figured out what I was going to say and so no longer looked like a complete fool. Sporthouse is one of the more popular clubs in Yakutsk (although the most popular is without a doubt "Dragon"--a 3-story European style club that has different kinds of techno music on different nights-drum and base, house, etc.). Sport house is two stories--the first floor being the discotec and the second floor for billiards. (I was surprised to find out that Russian billiards is actually played quite differently than in the States--there are no colors and no stripes, any ball can be hit into any other ball. Just one ball is orangey-yellow and is worth more points than the others if you can manage to hit it into the pocket.) After the main festivities, we were introduced to the owner of the establishment who turned out to be overjoyed at the presence of foriegners in his club (at this point some girls from Austria that I knew from the dormitory had met up with us as well--America is not the only place with prestige). We were showered with free drinks and invited to sit and eat various Siberian delicacies with them while we were there. In addition, the idea was proposed that we be given free passes to Sporthouse in order that our presence would somehow give the place greater prestige.


We finally extricated ourselves from our host's hospitality around 2:30 am and headed home. No limousines showed up, but anyway, such was our night of celebrity...