October 7 - Day 20

“Moscow is hard.” Daniel whispered behind me. I had been sitting on a bench in the Tretyakov Gallery staring at a painting for nearly twenty minutes. I knew I had a pained look on my face but didn’t have the energy to disguise it. I was tired, hurting and sad. The silence had finally gotten to me – too much time swimming in my own head. We had spent another rainy day in Moscow sightseeing in a large group. It began with the Stanislavski Museum, which was the home where he was imprisoned by during the final years of his life. It was fascinating but frustrating. I wanted to be able to ask questions, to talk with my classmates about what I was seeing but I couldn’t. So I cheated, speaking as lightly as I could without whispering; only a few words here and there when I was absolutely desperate. It was a very bad idea and the pain slowly crept up my throat. Big groups are impossible with this speechlessness. If it is just one on one I stand a chance of being able to communicate at some level but when there are multiple people it is just too easy to speak around the person who can’t talk. There was time to kill before the going to the gallery and somehow I ended up spending the day with Nick, the only one of my classmates I never really talk to. I can’t quite figure him out. Maybe he is shy, maybe we don’t have anything in common, maybe he just had no desire to talk to me but regardless, this was the first time we had spent any time together and there we were traipsing around Moscow in the rain, making a pathetic attempt at charades. I finally broke down and asked him if he wanted to get a drink – I have never wanted one more than at that moment. Katherine and I had discussed keeping FAQ as our little secret but desperate times called for desperate measures. We ran into Daniel on the way and at that point I was just relieved to have a break from my feeble attempts at sign language. As I anticipated they were utterly blown away by FAQ and thanked me profusely for bringing them there. We drank our hot whiskey and cider and Nick and I read Puskin Fairytales while Daniel attempted to check his email. It was so nice to be able to sit in the company of others without trying to speak. There has been a strange side effect of this situation which is that my other senses seem to be supercharged. I am noticing people’s subtle tells; their vocal tones, shifts they make with their eyes, and just general energies. So I am sitting there, across the table from a person with whom I have never shared a real conversation, who I am still not ‘talking’ to, but dare I say, I think we might have been making strides toward friendship through weird glances and ridiculous smiles. When we left to make our way to the metro to meet a few other students going to the gallery, Moscow, to be perfectly blunt, looked like the apocalypse. These days it is dark and rainy and generally unpleasant. A week ago we were running around without jackets and now I am deeply regretting my decision not to bring military issued snow boots. It had already turned down-to-the-bone cold and sadly, I was quickly losing my spunk. The gallery is a very beautiful place in an older area of Moscow that feels much more like the city I anticipated, then the Rodeo Drive-inspired area we typically frequent. The place was packed with people and I just wanted to wander around by myself. Our very, very sweet Russian ‘angel’ Katiya, however, seemed determined to show me around. While I truly appreciated her enthusiasm, classic portraiture is really not my interest so I took the first opportunity I had to disappear into a quiet wing and gaze at the a massive fresco. I was lost in thought when Daniel found me. “Moscow is hard,” he said and there are days or fractions of days when I want to hate this place. But then something so unbelievably random happens that it is impossible not to laugh. Daniel curled up next to me on the bench and I sooo wish I had a video of what happened next. It was a sort of slow motion train wreck aided by my inability to speak. There was this woman who was dressed like a low rate hooker. Her black bra was fully exposed though her sheer mid-drift top and as she teetered on her stilettos she tugged methodically at her over-processed platinum hair. Her mesmerizing erratic behavior was directly in my line of sight, while from Daniel’s perspective, in the opposite corner of the room, a vicious looking schoolmarm type was becoming increasingly enraged. At the same time he and I tried to point out what we were observing but before we could get our lines of communication uncrossed, the schoolmarm charged the hooker like she was a regular in Pamplona. She got so close she could practically count cavities and began reading her the riot-act. The young woman who was clearly strung out just stared back at her and then let out the most terrifyingly animalistic cackle. Neither woman budged for a solid minute until the blonde lost her balance and stumbled backward. Suddenly the room refilled with air and the blond woman marched out of the gallery laughing all the way down the hall. Daniel and I just stared at each other with the “What the hell was that?!?” grin that has become such a necessary part of daily life in Moscow and is typically followed by the “Who the hell knows” shrug. And just like that we were off and moving again - rehearsals to get to, meetings to plan. Maybe if we are lucky we will get home before dawn.