Read You Must Go and Win: Essays Online
Authors: Alina Simone
You Must Go and Win: Essays (4 page)
What if Papa hadn’t tried again with Sununu? Or what if he had stopped at just ten signatures? Even fifty? Then maybe Chudnovsky would have remained stuck in Kharkov, left to take Papa’s place manning the kiosk at Café Lira just off Shevchenko Park. I could suddenly picture him there, his uniform worn to a dull shine, drinking industrial alcohol from a plastic cup and spitting
semechki
on the frozen ground with barely repressed brutality.
semechki
on the frozen ground with barely repressed brutality.
But maybe Papa’s laws of probability did not apply to me—maybe they applied only to people like Papa, who had noble goals
and the iron-plated constitution necessary to pursue them. My goals were small and ignoble: to record some songs, to play a Tuesday-night show at Arlene Grocery, to be a person whose ambitions weren’t best described using air quotes. Was it even worth a struggle? I could always go back to living with the low-grade shame of having a dream in life and doing nothing to pursue it. It was a common-enough affliction to live with, like dandruff or a deviated septum. Certainly a far distant cousin to that other kind of shame, the kind that confronts you directly in the form of rejections that are blunt, damaging, and Google-searchable. Coming to New York to become a singer had only made me realize exactly how fine a palate for humiliation one could develop, and how quickly. It was as though I had unknowingly signed up for some kind of twisted Iron Chef competition in which shame turns out to be the surprise ingredient. There were countless subtle variations on a few persistent themes: the shame of not being good enough, of secretly wanting something from someone, of pretending to like people you don’t like, of rejection, of self-doubt, of looking like a poseur, of being too ambitious or not ambitious enough …
and the iron-plated constitution necessary to pursue them. My goals were small and ignoble: to record some songs, to play a Tuesday-night show at Arlene Grocery, to be a person whose ambitions weren’t best described using air quotes. Was it even worth a struggle? I could always go back to living with the low-grade shame of having a dream in life and doing nothing to pursue it. It was a common-enough affliction to live with, like dandruff or a deviated septum. Certainly a far distant cousin to that other kind of shame, the kind that confronts you directly in the form of rejections that are blunt, damaging, and Google-searchable. Coming to New York to become a singer had only made me realize exactly how fine a palate for humiliation one could develop, and how quickly. It was as though I had unknowingly signed up for some kind of twisted Iron Chef competition in which shame turns out to be the surprise ingredient. There were countless subtle variations on a few persistent themes: the shame of not being good enough, of secretly wanting something from someone, of pretending to like people you don’t like, of rejection, of self-doubt, of looking like a poseur, of being too ambitious or not ambitious enough …
Papa clearly had the inner strength to endure defeat and triumph—but me? I had all the resilience of a slug being introduced to a nice teaspoon of sea salt. The fatal flaw, I thought, must lie in my upbringing, in the fact that Papa had grown up forging his character against the whetting stone of a totalitarian regime, whereas I had grown up in the Reagan-era suburbs of Massachusetts, wondering why the sprinklers were always left running in the rain.
In my family you learned to solve your own problems. Perhaps this was because the Soviet Union just wasn’t a place that coddled
its weak or troubled—personal issues requiring anything short of a visit to an asylum were typically self-medicated away with vodka, dubious herbal remedies, or emigration. Besides, the kinds of problems I had growing up in America were not even things my family remotely recognized as problems. It was as though I were pointing out mushrooms from the window of an airplane. I would complain about my lack of ponies, my seemingly genetic inability to learn French, their unreasonable refusal to send me to five-thousand-dollar summer camps for the performing arts, and they would consider my words with a preoccupied and distant air.
its weak or troubled—personal issues requiring anything short of a visit to an asylum were typically self-medicated away with vodka, dubious herbal remedies, or emigration. Besides, the kinds of problems I had growing up in America were not even things my family remotely recognized as problems. It was as though I were pointing out mushrooms from the window of an airplane. I would complain about my lack of ponies, my seemingly genetic inability to learn French, their unreasonable refusal to send me to five-thousand-dollar summer camps for the performing arts, and they would consider my words with a preoccupied and distant air.
“Yes, life is hard, isn’t it?” my father would say, without looking up from his lined pad of yellow paper. My father, who had been denied any kind of livelihood in our native Kharkov, who’d been blacklisted by the KGB and sent to serve hard labor with convicts, who had arrived in the United States knowing no one, with a young family and one hundred dollars to his name, who then completed his PhD in physics in just one year, would shake his head. “Sorry to hear about gym class. But you’re very resourceful. I’m sure you’ll find a way to manage.”
Sometimes I would take my complaints to Babushka, who lived in nearby Cambridge. Babushka’s father had died fighting for the White Army when she was an infant, and she spent her first seven years in hiding with her mother in the small town of Sevsk, where they lived in constant fear that the authorities would discover their “bourgeois” background. Her first husband died at the front, during World War II, leaving her to endure the Siege of Leningrad, watching aunts and cousins die slowly of starvation, before finally escaping to Kyrgyzstan. I would come over to recount my various grievances and Babushka would sit at the dining room table, watching me with ancient eyes, listening quietly. When I was done, she might pause for a moment and then push a bowl of cold strawberries across the table.
“Lastochka,” she would say, with an encouraging smile. “These aren’t quite ripe yet so try them with some sugar.”
Perhaps it was precisely because I had nothing to oppose or protest, no wars or famines to suffer through, no evil idealogues to oppress me, that I was anxious. It started with the houses, specifically the mansions. The big, imposing Colonials and Victorians and the brick compounds of a more recent vintage that could easily be confused for the embassy of some Mediterranean country. I walked past a stretch of them every day on the way to school, my worries only growing as the grand parade of stately manors, laced with snow like exquisite pastries, unspooled before me one by one. It seemed that somehow by going to school, and then going to college, and then getting a job, I was expected to come back to a place like this and acquire an impossibly terrific and expensive house. True, nobody had ever poked me in the chest and made this particular declaration, but the implication was always there, built into the suggestion that perhaps I reconsider dropping that AP history class. All I had to do was look around and learn by example. My parents had pulled themselves up out of nothing, acquiring a sizable mortgage and a Honda several cuts above a Civic. They had filled entire photo albums with pictures of themselves riding llamas in places I could not pronounce. Their Russian friends were similarly accomplished, having all invented a magical, cash-producing piece of math that lived inside a computer. It came as no surprise, then, that their children were the straight-A students, the violin prodigies and science fair winners, the shitty athletes and social misfits with untamable hair and oversized lips, waiting with barely concealed bwahahas for the day when they would rule the world.
Only I knew exactly how doomed I was. There were faint assurances from different quarters that it was only a matter of time, my innate ability to solve integral equations and calculate the torque of falling objects on the moon was bound to surface sooner
or later. Out of all my relatives who had emigrated to the States from the Soviet Union, the only person without a PhD in the sciences was my loser mother, who’d only managed to drag her slacker ass through a masters in physics. But as I sat there, listlessly sniffing rocks in earth science class and trying to determine their salinity, I knew it just wasn’t true. I would never wake up one day alive with the feeling that the Bunsen burner was a life altering piece of equipment that must somehow be integrated into my daily routine. No, the only thing that I really cared about was singing and writing songs. I wanted to write songs just like Sinéad O’Connor’s. Not the ones that made her famous—the other ones. But since this rather specific subject matter wasn’t covered at school, I had the gnawing feeling that I would get stuck doing something else when I grew up, something grim and joyless and papery. And I worried that I would end up as bitter and bitten as the school secretaries with the lipstick-stained teeth, standing outside by the fire door and glaring at us as they sucked the last dregs of youthful desire up through a Lucky Strike.
or later. Out of all my relatives who had emigrated to the States from the Soviet Union, the only person without a PhD in the sciences was my loser mother, who’d only managed to drag her slacker ass through a masters in physics. But as I sat there, listlessly sniffing rocks in earth science class and trying to determine their salinity, I knew it just wasn’t true. I would never wake up one day alive with the feeling that the Bunsen burner was a life altering piece of equipment that must somehow be integrated into my daily routine. No, the only thing that I really cared about was singing and writing songs. I wanted to write songs just like Sinéad O’Connor’s. Not the ones that made her famous—the other ones. But since this rather specific subject matter wasn’t covered at school, I had the gnawing feeling that I would get stuck doing something else when I grew up, something grim and joyless and papery. And I worried that I would end up as bitter and bitten as the school secretaries with the lipstick-stained teeth, standing outside by the fire door and glaring at us as they sucked the last dregs of youthful desire up through a Lucky Strike.
Looking back, I see only missed opportunities for just merrily going off the rails. Once a person has been declared a human castastrophe, any move they make is pretty much considered a move up. Perhaps against the grim backdrop of a life spent living in hotels that charge by the hour, my goal of becoming a rock singer would have been reframed as a fine and healthful step forward. Besides, if things didn’t work out, youth was always the best possible insurance policy for eventual forgiveness.
I had it all laid out in my head; the only problem was I lacked guts. My plan was simple. First, I would camouflage myself using the oceanic quantities of eye makeup that lived in the medicine cabinet behind Mama’s bathroom mirror. Then I would walk the mile from my house to historic Mass. Ave. and take the 56 bus to Alewife just like Paul Revere. From there it was but a short subway ride on the Red Line to Harvard Square, where
some casual inquiries among the kids hanging out in the Pit would earn me a place on the floor of an Allston squat with eighteen roommates and a bunch of cats that no one took care of. I would get a job waitressing at Wursthaus, the bar where I’d once successfully ordered a vodka and cranberry juice at age fourteen, and save enough money to buy an electric guitar. At this point, the route to stardom would naturally reveal itself. My parents would be devastated by my disappearance, of course, but they could always adopt a girl from Russia who would surely make a much better ballerina.
some casual inquiries among the kids hanging out in the Pit would earn me a place on the floor of an Allston squat with eighteen roommates and a bunch of cats that no one took care of. I would get a job waitressing at Wursthaus, the bar where I’d once successfully ordered a vodka and cranberry juice at age fourteen, and save enough money to buy an electric guitar. At this point, the route to stardom would naturally reveal itself. My parents would be devastated by my disappearance, of course, but they could always adopt a girl from Russia who would surely make a much better ballerina.
I didn’t run away, though. I kept my head down, went to college with a lukewarm feeling in my heart, and generally did all the things that were required of me. To do otherwise would have meant enduring Mama’s hemorrhoidal screaming, Papa’s quiet disappointment, and Babushka’s potential heart attacks. I fulfilled my duties well enough to stay afloat, but never well enough to distinguish myself. Yet long after I’d moved away from Lexington, I still felt the weight of its houses. I graduated from college, moved to Austin, but always returned home to pointed conversations about my low-paying jobs and lack of direction. Arriving at the door, Mama would always greet me wearing the same necklace, a familiar family heirloom. This was the last remnant of my great-great-grandmother’s waist-length lorgnette chain, a piece of finely woven gold that had been passed through generations, then cut down and traded for food during the Siege of Leningrad until just this small piece remained. At some point after the dinnertime conversation had dwindled to the polite clink of teacups and saucers, Mama would inevitably take the chain in one hand and absentmindedly start twisting it around one finger.
“You know,” she would say to me, with a meaningful look, “one day this necklace is going to be yours.”
And I felt the weight of that too.
After my encounter with the Producer I took a long break from Craigslist, preferring to spend my time writing songs in the bedroom of my Hoboken apartment and performing them for an exclusive audience of cats. Eventually, though, I did get my shit together. I paired up with a cellist recruited through a flyer tacked up at Maxwell’s and a drummer I found on Craigslist to form a scruffy little band called Disfarmer. We recorded some demos, played a few shows around the city, and were denounced as “Bjdorklike” by Chuck Eddy in
The Village Voice
. It was finally looking as though all my modest dreams were coming true, until one day my cellist announced she was moving to D.C. and a few months later the band fell apart. I found myself right back where I’d started, at the beginning of another miserable hunt for bandmates on Craigslist. I realized it could easily take the better part of a year just to reach my previous high-water mark of being called Bjdorklike. This thought was dreary enough to consider, but now there was the other problem as well. The problem of the ultimatum.
The Village Voice
. It was finally looking as though all my modest dreams were coming true, until one day my cellist announced she was moving to D.C. and a few months later the band fell apart. I found myself right back where I’d started, at the beginning of another miserable hunt for bandmates on Craigslist. I realized it could easily take the better part of a year just to reach my previous high-water mark of being called Bjdorklike. This thought was dreary enough to consider, but now there was the other problem as well. The problem of the ultimatum.
It happened while I was living in Austin, moving through a series of office jobs that carried me effortlessly toward a very specific career that I didn’t want. I woke up one day to a deepening state of misery and the sudden vision of my future as a big, rambling house out of a Brontë novel set on fire, the prospects for escape narrowing as each hallway filled with smoke. My panic crescendoed until one night I finally called Papa, my words all tumbling out in a bitter rush, like I’d just drunk a cup of acid and had only four seconds to live. I explained that I’d made all the wrong choices in life because I was too scared—scared of performing, scared of asking for help, scared of failing at the only thing I really want to do with my life. Wasn’t it sad, Papa, that I’d missed the chance to do so many things? That I would never be
an Olympic gymnast or president of the United States or Yo-Yo Ma? Papa listened quietly to my rant, and when I was done, he firmly agreed with me that I should at least try singing, otherwise I would always regret it. But being a practical person, he also gave me the following ultimatum: You have until you are twenty-five to do something with your music. After that, he all but said, it would be time to get about the business of living up to other people’s expectations.
an Olympic gymnast or president of the United States or Yo-Yo Ma? Papa listened quietly to my rant, and when I was done, he firmly agreed with me that I should at least try singing, otherwise I would always regret it. But being a practical person, he also gave me the following ultimatum: You have until you are twenty-five to do something with your music. After that, he all but said, it would be time to get about the business of living up to other people’s expectations.
When I hung up the phone the world seemed different. It was true that as a student, the imposition of an arbitrary and cruel deadline always had the tonic effect of rejuvenating my determination. But this time it had the opposite effect and I froze, becoming a veritable human Popsicle of indecision. When I brought up the ultimatum with Papa many years later, he said, “I didn’t
give
you that ultimatum—I just strongly suggested
you
give
yourself
that ultimatum.”
give
you that ultimatum—I just strongly suggested
you
give
yourself
that ultimatum.”
“Wow.” I was full of doubts on that score. “You’ll have to forgive me for totally misinterpreting you like that.”
“Either way,” he added, chortling, “I don’t regret it.”
But after Disfarmer broke up, no one was chortling at the ultimatum. I was already two years behind schedule—a twenty-seven-year-old disappointment. How would I ever catch up? Jonesing again for the quick fix, I did what I swore I would never do again and answered an ad posted on Craigslist by another producer: George from Brooklyn. A week later I found myself on a Coney Island–bound F train, rattling toward one of those ill-defined neighborhoods where the streets all trail off into endless chorus lines of fix-a-flats and scratch ticket bodegas.
I guessed that maybe the neighborhood where I was headed was one of those obscure corners of Brooklyn where young artists, rent-hike refugees from Williamsburg and Greenpoint, find cheap apartments with high ceilings. All those shuttered, sunken storefronts below probably opened to reveal soaring lofts with
shag carpeting stapled to the walls, I thought to myself. And for some reason I’d already formed a mental image of the hipster who would greet me at the station. He’d be wearing a vintage World Party t-shirt, thrift store jeans, and an old pair of Vans. He’d have the five o’clock goatee and the bleary look of someone who’d spent most of his day scouring eBay for deals on discontinued toy Casio keyboards. But I couldn’t have been further off the mark. The man who met me at the station was much older than I was, with a pockmarked face and watery eyes. He wore a faded army jacket and a logoless baseball cap pulled down almost to his eyes. George, I realized, was the kind of guy who immediately makes you feel sketchy just by association.
shag carpeting stapled to the walls, I thought to myself. And for some reason I’d already formed a mental image of the hipster who would greet me at the station. He’d be wearing a vintage World Party t-shirt, thrift store jeans, and an old pair of Vans. He’d have the five o’clock goatee and the bleary look of someone who’d spent most of his day scouring eBay for deals on discontinued toy Casio keyboards. But I couldn’t have been further off the mark. The man who met me at the station was much older than I was, with a pockmarked face and watery eyes. He wore a faded army jacket and a logoless baseball cap pulled down almost to his eyes. George, I realized, was the kind of guy who immediately makes you feel sketchy just by association.
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