Last night I had just swapped my earrings for my bulkiest, comfiest sweater and resigned myself to a slow, quiet Saturday night with my books and guitar when, from the Italians' room--"Nadia! You want some wine?" Equipped with my wine-jar and my tri-cultural goggles, I joined Consuelo, Iladia [Oh yeah, I found out a few weeks back, in a sitcom-worthy head-on confrontation, that though I had been addressing her as "Anatolia" for nearly a month, my roommate's name is actually Iladia. We laughed it off.] and their Russian friend Nikolai (Kolya), whom they met smoking in the staircase--which, aside from the balconies, is the only area in the dorm where smoking is allowed. It's also, incidentally, how they meet all their friends. The two of them smoke like chimneys; if I'm in for the night, I hear the door open and close in a predictable rhythm throughout the evening. Every so often they bring home acquaintances and I see them squint-eyed in the morning after carousing until the wee hours with the folks they met in the staircase. Everyone smokes in Russia, so it ends up being a really good way to meet people--the staircase is a contemporary public watering-hole.
The (metaphorical) tri-cultural goggles came in handy almost immediately, as the three of us came up against Kolya's typical Russian chauvinism in the age-old debate of women driving cars. We headed out to the staircase to continue our fight with the stabilizing affect of nicotine and "fresh" air (in my case, neither) and within moments we were joined by one, two, five students from our floor. Somebody conjured up a guitar, and suddenly Dima was growling Gogol Bordello and folk songs and classic Russian rock--and then there was a clatter from the 18th floor and a flock of Chinese boys bounded down the staircase, offering "Chinese cigarettes? Chinese cigarettes? Double luck!" to anyone who looked their direction--and steps from below and a boy from two floors below came into view, carrying his girlfriend piggyback. I called David to come up from the 6th floor to join us. And then! My Italians, back and forth from our room, brought out a bottle of wine and--another, and--another! Everyone was singing along, somehow one of the Chinese boys got the guitar and banged out some accented Nirvana, Katya with long, long blonde hair started up a primal yell. The guitar got back to Dima, Iladia reappeared with a bottle of champagne, and soon we were all on our feet, in a line with our arms around each other, kicking to the beat.
The crowd shifted, people came and went, the ruckus died to a simmer when the champagne was gone, and now Dima sat on the floor and sang us a song about our languages, declaring each "the best in the world". He stopped singing and told us to speak, each of us speak in our own language, and suddenly the staircase resonated with the polyglot echoes of Chinese, Italian, Russian, English--laid over the guitar, Dima's voice rumbled out "That Chinese language...My shitty English, my bad, bad, bad, bad Russian language..."
Five o'clock clicked into place and the party had dispersed. Just me, Katya, Kolya, Iladia, Dima, a few boys with another guitar, whose names I never caught, on the landing of the 13th floor--Consuelo had slipped off up the staircase with a 14th floor boy, David called it a night at 4 AM, everyone finished their last cigarette and emptied their glasses and slouched off to bed. The guitar ended up in my lap and I heard my voice echo around the stairwell in sudden silence as they listened and then clapped along to my "very American" Old Crow Medicine Show and Neutral Milk Hotel.
The night felt good, and when I poured myself into bed, I grinned into my feather pillows and fell asleep in instants.
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