The next entire day I roam around Ohio State University campus. Columbus doesnt have much to offer, so I focus on exploring American student lifestyle: attending mathematical analysis classes, doing small talk with a football team mascot, interviewing protesters disappointed with the quality of the campus food.
I think the folks here are having fun speaking to an alien interested in the way things are here.
Striptease
Having left the Chicago bus station, I jump into the car of my host Charlie. Charlie looked like a real baron from a gypsy camp a sturdy, positive infused guy. The big guy like him came along with a big car.
[Charlie]: Look whos here! My Russian man!
[Me]: From Russia with love.
On our way to Charles apartment, I feel like the guy knows absolutely everything about Chicago: every building, most likely every citizen.
[Charlie]: You see that high-rise? Thats the Trump Tower, the most despised building in Chicago.
[Me]: You think Trump will win next elections? (2016)
[Charlie]: Impossible, he has too few supporters.
Charlie works as a tour guide in a local company and knows Chicago like the back of his hand. He lives in a newly built two-room apartment on the fifteenth floor. He is around fifty and lives alone. His mother, sister and some cousins live in Chicago, too.
Theres one thing in Chicago that interests me more than the city itself Riot Fest, with System of a Down and The Prodigy as headliners.
After the first day of the festival, I come to Charlies home with lots of emotions and dirt in my pants. Heavy rain turned a park lawn into a mess. Im knee-deep in mud, there is no way to guess the color of my sneakers.
[Me]: Charles, look at that mess on my pants and snickers. What are we going to do?
[Charlie]: Ha-ha, you better do some striptease before entering my apartment!
[Me]: Fair enough. [I take off my pants and snickers and pack them in a bag from IKEA Charles gives me]
At the dinner after the second Fest day, Im impressed when Charlie shows an interest in Russia. Hes concerned with Russian province. He realizes life there differs from life in Moscow. I make some calculations to convert average monthly salary 25 thousand rubles to dollars.
I think at that point, Charles' mouth fell open.
Wings
Buffalo, 9 a.m., my host Bob is already at work. The station sends its first buses at 10, the only alternative is $50 taxi. Annoyed, I strategically choose waiting in the hall with a rubber hot dog in my arms.
[Bob]: The keys are under the rug. Dont hesitate to come inside. Dont mind the dog.
This man leaves the keys from the house to a stranger he has nothing to do with, for a chatting in an app for cultural homestays. How is that even possible? How can you trust people so much?
The dog Pinky was astounded by the presence of an unwelcomed guest, but didnt bite me. I leave my bugs in the living room and go explore the city. Buffalo is yet another place in my tour where theres not much to do, though it doesnt bother me anymore. Im staring at the nearest embankment, cracking up as I see a half-dead tram proudly called Metro, sneaking to the baseball team stadium bleachers.
As the evening comes, I meet Bob with his bunch as they play kickball. Kickball is like baseball: instead of batting a small hard ball, players kick a big pumped rubber ball. Theyre drinking beer from aluminum cans in-between the innings and Im just puzzling my head over how they manage to combine one with the other.
Bob was born in San-Francisco and grew up in that holy place. He moved to Buffalo five years ago. Bob got tired of Silicon Valley and rat races for all that glitters: from behind-the-scene games to green notes with Franklin portrait, from nootropics to cryptocurrency. Bobs willing to go smoothly through the life in an American suburbia way. Hes up and running here: white collar job from nine to five, a devoted doggy, great pals, occasional girls, house on lease and local puny teams to give you a minute for cheering. Pretty much the same goes for Bob he is a nice, calm guy who knows how to have fun and so helps others.
Bob showed me the room I was supposed to be all on my own. He assured me I could take everything I wanted from the refrigerator and gave me instructions how to look after Charlie.
[Bob]: If Pinky goes nuts open the yard door, point him a finger on the road and command Go pee. Right after he pees, make sure he runs back inside the house. I dont want him locked in the yard hes gonna be stressed, poor boy.
Having finished with Pinky, I take a bus to Niagara Falls. Water runs intensely under the cliff. Theres a footbridge to Canada right to the waterfall. Having left the park, I stumble upon locals complaining about extremely high crime rates, absence of decent job places and other drawbacks of life in a tourist city.
When I return to Buffalo, Bob and his pal comes to pick me up. We go to a bar. At the table, Bob offers to check out a masterpiece of the local cuisine Buffalo chicken wings.
[Bob]: If you eat up a portion of twenty wings, Ill give you a ride to the station tomorrow morning.
[Me]: You know, Im hungry as hell, never mind paying damn fifty dollars for a taxi so thats a bet.
[Bobs pal]: You have it.
Having an empty stomach since the morning, I am swallowing these wings as if in a speed contest. I nail it eventually, though that must be gross to look at. During the breaks between my gluttony sprints, we have some funny exchanges:
[Bob]: How do you say yes in Russian?
[Me]: Da.
[Bob]: And no?
[Me]: Njet.
[Bob]: Thats it, now I can survive in Russia with my vocabulary: da, njet and vodka.
In the morning, Bob drives me to the station. I think hes a cool guy, because he kept his promise.
Richard
My new host Richard gives me some weird vibes when we text. He sets rules like sleep naked as clothes damage the air mattress. He sends a lot of long messages the days before the trip, introduces all guests by the country theyre from Russia, Greece, China as if we have an international gang-bang instead of a co-living. Doesnt matter much for me, though theres a couch, and the rest are mere details. Am I supposed to part with my hard-earned dollars to spend a night at Uncle Sams hotel? I'd better see how homos live.
Besides the bags with booze which Id utilized my whole five months of American life, I carry some undigested chicken wings in my stomach. Twenty wings are a serious challenge for the body, better have a hangover. Looks like my body threw all reserves to help the stomach and screwed my brain. Thats the only way I can explain the fact I left my credit card in a ticket machine. That piece of plastic gives to lucky one access to all the money I've earned in four months of slaving away in the States. Such hard-earned money is so easy to lose.
I come to Richard and start to exhaust both myself and him with disturbing thoughts concerning the fate of my card. Richard immediately turns on a fixer mode and calls to the bank hotline. Twenty minutes later the problem is solved: the card is blocked, and a new untitled one will be waiting for me on Monday in the nearest banking department. I only have to survive Sunday with 10 dollars cash.
Before we go to bed, I use my last bits of energy to put up private borders.
[Me]: I will sleep in clothes. And that's that.
Sometimes such ultimatums may get you kicked out, but not with Richard hes a cool guy, and he accepts it.
He is fifty, born and raised in Boston. A bit taller than me, bald, odd accent. But hes a good fella with a kind heart. He is on welfare now because of a wrist break. His whole life he works with his hands, so such traumas cut the ground under his feet.
He lives in a tiny room, around six square meters. It includes his kitchen, wardrobe, one air mattress bedroom and a little nest for surfers. You can also find a bathroom stocked into every floor. Old posters of pumped-up naked men with big penises' en face are glued to the walls. All these details plunge me into the atmosphere of American 90s.
For breakfast, we have pancakes that Richard baked on a camping gas stove. Richards neighbor Shawn is sitting with us. Having returned from hotel night shift, he reports how busy he is. After breakfast, Richard and I walk around shiny Boston.
Richard tells me about his life eagerly. About the Polish roots of his mother and the family of like three or five siblings. About his job as a hot dog guy on Patriots matches when he was fourteen, about boys he likes more than girls. Incidentally, we enter a library where Richard connects to the Internet. Its 2015, and he has no smartphone, no tablet, no laptop. A poor hard worker he is.
In the evening, we go to a Boston Red Sox6 game. Somebody at the entrance to the stadium sold me a ticket for twenty dollars. I borrow a twenty from Richard for a day. Richard doesnt like professional sport, so he goes back home. He has things to do after all: like cooking breakfast, doing chores.
Instead of a comforting solitude in anticipation of a game I dont really understand, I get into the continuation of American socialization banquet. A guy who sold me the ticket is sitting nearby. Theres his wife and another sweet couple. They are drunk as hell and ingenuously kind-hearted. They came from Rhode Island the smallest state with a territory compared to my hometown.
[The Man]: Where are you from, pal?
[Me]: From Russia.
[The Man]: Wow, Russia! Do you like baseball?
[Me]: Not really, I see it first time.
[The Man]: Heres your twenty, its on me. I want you to have a great time and bring home some good memories.
[Me]: Thank you, man, youre great.
Baseball fells like an unbelievably lame kind of sport. Having enough of that even before the middle of the game, I rush out of the stadium, catch the last bus and hope Ill be in time for the dinner.
The next day, another surfer comes in an exchange student from Greece. He came from New Hampshire to a scientific conference. The day after, another tourist from China comes by. My last night in Boston, I spend on an air mattress with three guys. We watch Home alone on VHS before going to sleep. True 90s spirit.
Richard changes a dozen Facebook accounts, keeping the same photo with a shitty resolution. He would persistently write me this and that. Heres his last message:
[Richard, transliterated]: Zdravstuite Mika!! Nadeiusi Vi Pojivaete Horosho7
I think Richard is a warm-hearted guy.
Insolence
My last visit to New York coincides with the visit of the Pope. Millions of tourists gathered in the city from nearby states and countries for such occasion. Among all this, it seems impossible to find a host. Only a couple hosts out of hundreds responded to me: an LGBT-radical from Times Square neighborhood and a student Jongmyao from China. The first one suddenly changed and canceled my request the following day. The second one promised to provide a room for a couple of days and disappeared afterwards. Eventually I lost hope to contact him.
Jongmyao left his address, so I go for a preventive strike and break into his house. Having arrived in the middle of the workday, I stumble upon his parents. They dont know English, so we speak through Google Translate. His mother explains that they are not so big and I should look for a place to stay somewhere else. I realize Im going too far with my virtue seeking for a free couch, so I bring hearty apologies and make farewells.
What was I thinking? Breaking into a house to strangers like this? What was my point? Why would I scrimp on a hundred dollars for three nights in a room on Brighton Beach? What was driving me at that moment: greed, stinginess or obsession with challenges?
In the end of the day, I stay in YMCA8 guesthouse in Harlem. I am on my second tour around New Your commonplaces. Admiring its splendor, its history and at the same time terrified by its dimensions, loudness, sewer stench and never-ending scaffolds on 5th Avenue. On Friday the day of the Popes visit people are crowding the surroundings of the Central Park. I barely make my way through a crowd in a street adjacent to the park. I have a plugged nose and a stuffed ear. Seems like I caught a cold in Boston when I had morning coffee from Richards cup.
My remaining days in the States are filled with anguish. I want it so bad to get back to the University, make up lost time for the first term, return to the Internet lab and continue the sysadmin internship. After five years of low-skilled employment, all I want is to study, do something interesting, think with my own head.
After what seemed like half an hour upon my arrival to Sheremetyevo airport, I get a call from my grandma.
[Grandma]: Welcome back, my darling!
India
Spices
I returned to the hometown and dived into studying and work. I would pass terms, exams and course projects ahead of schedule, do some silly things in the university lab and absorb all the study books, courses and reports I could find. Eventually I changed two different jobs and found myself in an outsource company.
Outsourcing was great too. I was hired as an infrastructural engineer in a project which essentially didnt need any infrastructure in the first place. The client was a kind of megalomaniac who believed the project would go big every minute. This project handed me a blank check to do whatever I wanted and pretend it was all about the clients whatnot. I tested different tools which would come in handy in the future, got some bumps and bruises in a clients sandbox, earned respect from colleagues for a bright mind chock-full of ideas.
One day, the project got closed. I jumped at the opportunity to spend my allowance in a two-weeks trip to India with only a small backpack on my shoulders. Why India? Because its warm there in November!
I knew nothing about India till the very moment my plane landed in Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi. I only read a bunch of trivial click-bate articles during the two weeks in between buying tickets and departing from Moscow. They said its a hearty country, with a spicy smell on the markets and dancing people on the streets.
While in the States and Russia you push your way to a host through dozens and hundreds of idlers seeking a free couch, in India its all different hosts message you first. Post your public trip where you state the dates of your presence in a town and get ready for a dozen invitations to stay over.
I think Im in the beginning of the most fucked-up trip in my life.