After a nice time in the living room you may be thinking about visiting the restroom because…well, let’s just say you want to. Toilets, restrooms, outhouses, toilet paper, outdoor plumbing and all the related paraphernalia is the next chapter of my “Behind the Iron Curtain” series.

Toilet paper.

Toilet paper was hard to find. If it was available you had to stand in line like the one on this picture and then it was probably limited to a certain number of rolls per person. A proud new owner of the precious TP would head home with a bunch of rolls hanging around their neck causing jealous reactions from the not so lucky bystanders. Of course that was not soft, quilted or baby skin toilet paper that American buttocks are so used to. It was more like your printer paper in a roll, maybe a little thinner but still required substantial calluses in certain places. And calluses we had: since the paper was not readily available everything served the purpose. It could be magazines, newspaper, stolen forms from work. I distinctly remember reading an obit for some communist party honcho in the paper before using it for its intended purpose, and the guy died in 1983. In more civilized houses the newspaper was pre-cut into squares, in others you had to rip it yourself. Outdoors people used leaves and whatever else was easy to reach, I myself once split an empty cigarette box with my buddy when nothing else was available.
Now with toilet paper in hand you are about to discover the facilities.
To be continued.

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When I was growing up©, I used to calculate how old I will be in the year 2000. This was my Mayan Calendar of sorts – the year 2000 was so far away and the double-digit age of 31 seemed so unbelievably huge that I didn’t bother to look beyond the year with too many zeroes. Now, ten years on the other side of that imaginary horizon I still can’t believe I made it so far without any outstanding achievements. No lives saved, no cure for cancer discovered, no small town square named after me, no major scientific problems solved, no bestselling books written and no spread in the Blind Playgirl Magazine. The only thing I can show for the previous 40 years of my life is a steady weight gain and a child who is extracting the most aggravating noises out of the Nintendo WII as I type this.
This year started with me trying to decide if that’s what an alcohol poisoning feels like and will end at the same place in another attempt to achieve it. As always I hurt some people, made some people laugh, got fatter but not any wiser. In other words, a pretty average year, just another one in now a long line separating me from that naive age when I couldn’t imagine the life past 31.

I would like to thank many readers of this blog, people who thought enough of my writing to stop by and leave a comment, and many others who know me on Twitter, Facebook and in real life (there are about 4 or 5 of the lucky ones). I hope you all have a great year, stay healthy, employed and sexually active happy.

This is an old (1956) Soviet song – “5 minutes til the New Year”:

httpv://youtu.be/12kPdU6A71o

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One cannot visit Memphis without making a stop at Graceland. I’ve heard of people visiting Graceland more than once, but beyond checking the visit off your bucket list there isn’t much to do there that would warrant repeat visits. Elvis’s mansion might have looked impressive in the 1960’s but it’s pretty average today and it’s not even fully open “out of respect for Elvis”, so you won’t be able to see the infamous toilet where he met his demise. All the other exhibits across the street including Elvis’s personal planes and cars are of limited interest. And for a dead guy Elvis is charging way too much for the pleasure of strolling by all his jumpsuits and gold records and cassettes. That really doesn’t stop the crowds of people from filing in, and parking lot that would make an average Wal-Mart proud is never empty.

The first thing that struck me was that the mansion is fairly small by today’s standards. I always imagined it to be more grand and lavish. Not so much.

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When I was drafted in July 1988, there were only 8 months remaining in the 9-year war in Afghanistan but no one knew it at the time. Luck of the draft could throw you into the Army for two years or in the Navy for three, you could end up in a 100-degree desert or somewhere inside the Arctic Circle, in a tank, on a submarine, parachute-jumping or digging ditches, but all of these were preferable to the hell-hole that was Afghanistan. There was never any official information about what was going on there but despite the fact that the government tried to hide the funerals everybody knew that people were coming back in the zinc caskets. Over 15 thousand of them during the course of war. Many people came home handicapped trying to rebuild their lives in the  country where nothing was handicap accessible, many had to live with mental problems, many returned with bloody nightmares preventing them from leading anything resembling normal lives. They were 20 years old, in the army they didn’t volunteer for, in the country where they were despised, fighting for something no one believed in.

Twenty years ago today the last Soviet troops crossed the bridge home. In the end there were no winners in this war: Afghanistan is still a hell-hole and one of the poorest countries in the world, many young Soviet lives were lost or damaged, and Americans are now finding out what Russians learned 20 years ago, by some twist of fate reusing the same airforce base where rusting Soviet equipment is slowly turning into sand. That’s why I was against sending American troops to Afghanistan, people who have nothing to lose and no regard for human life cannot be beat, just annihilated. We need to get our troops out of there.
Below is a video that contains the footage of the Soviet troops leaving Afghanistan on February 15, 1989. The video starts with soldiers watching Gorbachev congratulating the country with the New Year 1989. The song in the background is “We are leaving”. In the end there is a photo of Igor Lyahovich – the last Soviet soldier killed in Afghanistan and the final statistics of the killed and wounded.

httpvh://youtu.be/UCnvLIoVDS8

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The mid-1970’s, when 7-year-old me was roaming the mean streets of Odessa, was a great time to live there. Odessa’s Jewish population somewhat recovered from the devastation of the World War II and the pogroms and devastations before that and, while the Soviet Government had a firm grip on the emigration spigot, prospered as much as was allowed. Jewish actors, teachers, musicians, artists, restaurant singers, underground business owners, doctors, tailors, professors – Odessa’s Jewish population was having another one of its golden ages. Maybe I should say “Odessa’s adult Jewish population” because many kids like me didn’t know we were Jewish.

Recently I ran across a website where Jews of my generation were describing how they discovered that they belonged to the Tribe. Not one of them found out from their parents. It was always a neighbor or neighbor’s kids, some lady at the store, an angry classmate, an opponent in a fistfight, someone throwing an insult or a backhanded compliment; Jewish kids were last to know about the most important thing in their lives. And then I understood why we don’t always see eye-to-eye with the American Jews, the ones carried to a Rabbi on the 7^th day to have parts of them snipped, and taught how to participate in the great world Jewish conspiracy from their early days. Unlike them, we made it to adulthood intact, without ever seeing a Rabbi or even knowing the word Rabbi, or anything about being Jewish or the conspiracy we were born to participate in. While they were able to proudly announce their Jewishness in more languages than one, our nationality was conveyed in a series of winks and tongue-clicks with an understanding look and a sad face.

Around that time every resident of Odessa worth his eggplant caviar recipe had to have an underground recording of so-called Odessa songs. These were the songs usually performed in restaurants or weddings, sometimes funny, sometimes stupid, but always entertaining and good for dancing. Some of those included faux Yiddish lyrics and even when the original Yiddish had some meaning they were copied from musician to musician so many times that they lost all or most of it in the process. My household of course had a tape like this and I played it enough times to remember all the words in Russian and Yiddish. Except I didn’t know it was Yiddish, just like I had no idea I was a Jew and many other things a 7-year old not supposed to know. I also didn’t know I couldn’t sing.

That didn’t prevent me from volunteering to perform in a school concert. The casting committee consisted of my first grade teacher with the last name Rosenberg* and the father of my classmate with the last name Schneider*. I went on to perform a hit “Rahilya, May You Croak, I Like You”.

It went something like this:

Rahilya, may you croak, I like you.
I can’t live without you, Rahilya!
Rahilya, we’ll get married, you’ll plump up
And we will live on the beach together.

And then the Yiddish part started. I dutifully repeated every word with an exceptionally joyful intonation, perfect projection and a smile on my face. At that moment I was Pesachke Burtstein reincarnated if I only knew who he was.

Afn boydem bakt zikh knishes,
They are making knishes in the attic

Funem tukhes shit zikh mel.
And flour is pouring out of the ass

Az der tote trent di mome,
When Papa is banging Mama

Kinder makhn zikh aleyn.
Kids are playing alone.

Rahilya, you are beautiful like Venus,
But you will grow a large belly
And if not, let the cholera take me
But let it take you first!

Rahilya, we will go to Yessen-tukhes**,
Where sun comes up between the blue mountains,
And if not, kish mir in tukhes***
But my patience has run out.

Tears filled my teacher’s eyes and streamed down her face. My classmate’s father, a gentlemen in what then seemed like his 70’s but probably in his 40’s, was shaking and crying like a baby. We didn’t have Kleenex then so they wiped their faces with newspapers and rags. I finished with an especially well-done kinder makhn zikh aleyn and triumphantly looked over my teary-eyed audience of two.

This is the original song I was performing that day from the infamous tape.

httpvh://youtu.be/n8j1_ksW61M

My parents were friends with my teacher, so she just called them that night and asked them to try and contain my singing talents at home.

My Mom still reminds me about this every once in a while.

I never found out why I wasn’t featured in the school concert.

I still remember the words to this and other songs from that tape but nowadays my only audience is the shower curtain.

I don’t remember how I found out I was Jewish but I don’t think it was from my parents.

And that’s how I was a Yiddish singer.

*Unmistakably Jewish names
**Play on word combination Yessentuki, a famous Soviet resort, and a Yiddish word tukhes (ass).
***Kiss my ass (yeah, I know lots of ass-words in this song)

Big thanks to my friend Yelena S. for her Yiddish expertise in preparation of this post.

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