essay number two hundred fifty-one — plus or minus sixty-three — seventy-five

I never went to clubs alone. Only in Primorsky did I dance at night “under clozapine” - everyone looked away from me. In Moscow, never.

So I'm assuming, you pick two girls, not prostitutes, and when they're kind of okay with the “approach”, I order two “meet down” cocktails and get four espressos for myself. And then you have to pretend like I've swallowed two “wheels” with hearts drawn on them, pretend I'm Dmitry Medvedev smoking an AK47, and tell an interesting story, hypnotize the girls and take them into slavery.

No, I'm lying. I went alone to a Moscow club — about ten times. It belonged to people from the Caucasus, I still don't know which ones.

It was brutal. Real brutality. It lasted two or four hours, I'll attach pictures later.

It was a freak club. I was filming on weekends and there was a “show” with scary topless women and half-naked men. They were dancing or something, mind you, this file is not vertical. I was fucking dying to shoot those clubgoers. I'm not talking about the music, it's terrible from start to finish. It's like a hell of a rattle.

I was getting two or four thousands a night.

I hit it off with the bartender, there was free coffee. I showed him my iPod playlist, it was The Green - Non Phixion, we got to know each other. We walked around the room when there was nothing to do.

There was a common area and there was a karaoke area. I was filming here and there and there and there.

The cops from Petrovka 38 came to the karaoke room. They told me that if their pictures appeared on the Internet, something bad would happen to me, a soldering iron to all of them in one place (save me, grandfather). One of them, the “main” one, grabbed my lens, and I had one of the cheapest lenses of the whole line at the time, smiled with a smirk and said something - with a sneer or not - it's not clear.

There was an incident. In karaoke were these police officers, at the next table sat some man. They quarreled over the queue, they didn't understand whose time it was to sing the song “about Alyoshka” (or whatever they were listening to). It came to a fight. Three cops kicked this one dude's ass, went outside and continued the affair. The cop pulled a gun. The guard twisted him. I don't know what happened next.

I don't remember much from those days. I talked to the director of the place, but I didn't hear anything, so he sent me to the manager.

I would finish 10-15 minutes earlier than I was supposed to, because I couldn't do the job anymore, my head was spinning.

I drank coffee and talked to Nadia, who got me a job there, she's a singer; and to the bartender, sorry, I forgot your name.

I drank coffee and waited for the trams to start running. I would take the tram to the subway, and then either go to a coffee house to play poker on my laptop and drink coffee, or go home. Once I came and woke up Mariam after work, and once after the club I came to the church for a training shoot, at that time I went to a course, there was a liturgy and then confession. I think because of me the bishop said that we (there were other students with me) were filming like paparazzi, brazen and not respectable. Father, my apologies.

It was a winter morning. I didn't wait for the tram and I walked to the subway. I was tired and exhausted, I could hardly waddle. It was winter. A zhiguli with dagofags stopped, saying, let's give you a ride, let's give you a ride, brother, let's give you a ride. Then one of the dags got out and started to brother me, saying, “Russia, Dagestan, USSR, friendship forever and all that”.

When they left, I was missing my wallet. Should I go to the police? Fuck both of them. The wallet had 500 rubles and a Mosbitch card. An unknown kind woman called and returned the card. The wallet was a pity. Quicksilver. It was a nice on

On New Year's Day I went to Peter and wrote to the club's manager that I wasn't working on New Year's Day. I came back to Moscow to go on a shoot. I turned out to be fired. I never showed up at Club Era again. They hired another poor photographer.

Several times I went to DJ sets of Western musicians at large venues. With Beskov we went to Shpongle, there I got tired, he said he was tired, left, and I left. Fucking mental hospital.

So, for two years, even a little more, I was almost permanently in computer clubs from 1998-2001. And they turned my life around in a big way. Starcraft, Quake 2, then Counter-Strike. I could play all the games, games were my life. In many ways I was one of the best in Moscow. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

1998, then. Since 1995, I had been reading all the press devoted first to games on consoles and then on computers.

At the beginning of 1998 I read an ad in a game magazine: “Orks club. So many computers, such and such an address”.

My parents were against my fascination with computer games, strongly against it. There was no console or computer at home. And we didn't live richly at that time - there was no money for such things.

Anyway, I showed up at Orki, took a computer for an hour or an hour and a half — there was no more money.

And it began. Playing online was a novelty at that time. And I was a fan of playing online. It was a living fiction. I sat behind Dilvish's back, the best Starcraft player in Russia at that time. And studied for a long time how he played. Dilvish is a master of sports in chess. He took first place in the first season of ladder on Battle.Net, using the imbalance in the game. Considered the first world champion. At one point I picked up a notebook and started writing down what he was doing and in what order.

Dilvish set up free StarCraft tournaments in Orks. I missed the first one, but came to the second one and took either second or third place. My six zerlings took them all down. I was only 13 years old.

Money was the problem. And I wanted to play more and play harder. My skill was growing. But I didn't have access to a computer, a free one. And that was the real problem.

Now I vaguely remember what was going on back then. I was in the eighth grade at the Humanitarian Lyceum at the Russian State University of Humanities, and they were as stressful there as they were in the first years of institutes that existed in the USSR. Anyway, it was hard.

So I started skipping school. I finished the eighth grade of the lyceum and was transferred to a regular one.

I can't remember much about it, but I have a story to tell.

Someone got fucked up, so I'm finishing writing this idiotic text.

24.12.21. Edited one hundred and fifty times — 10.01.2023