Tupoi and Zapoi
The two words I have written above are two Russian words that are very sound very much a like, but have slightly different, though in a way connected meanings to each other. The word tupoi basically means slow, but when used in reference to a person, it means that the person is stupid. The other word, Zapoi refers to the time during a person by choice engages in daily vodka drinking- the duration of the drunk would be a good way to say this.
Now, I think that drinking vodka as a cultural norm in the former Soviet Union is misunderstood by the west. It is not only normal, it is a part of things and to think otherwise is completely foolish. We in the states have a different view of the activity of perceptual self diminishment and have attached various stigmas to the various levels of acceptance of alcohol into ones system. We have phrases like social drinkers, and beer drinkers and wine drinkers and drunks, happy drunks, street drunks and falling down stupid drunks. Lot’s of categories.
But people here simply don’t think of it in this way. To me, for the most part I find that it is very simple and works like this: If you go to the store to buy some vodka, the woman who sells it to you will sneer at you. That same woman though when she sees you weaving through the streets afterward will then laugh at how funny you look. And, if you were to then weave over to her, lean in close to her face, grope her a little and tell her how thoroughly sexy she really is, she will accept the compliment graciously. These are time honored and well practiced rituals. In other words, they get it, and they let it be. And, for what it is worth, the Zapoi is accepted to a very large extent as being an occurrence in people’s lives and is quite forgivable if not practiced too often.
So yesterday, as I was invited to come for a little social get together in the middle of the day, I visited again with my bike friends here. Being well aware of the accepted social graces, I tried to bring along a bottle of local vodka but found that all of the shops were empty of this, and so I had to purchase a bottle from a neighboring district. Now vodka here is very cheaply bought and the local brands are to my taste really is quite smooth and nice. We can buy also Stolichnaya here for about the same price as local, but really it is very sharp compared to the local spirit, though having no difference in strength. The general opinion is that Stolichnaya is akin to Polish vodka in taste which means that it is very harsh on the pallet. Polish vodka is also about three to five times as expensive and this is taken into consideration, along with all of the other prejudices against them, as proof of the strangeness of Poles in general.
There were three of us at the initial sit down, Kolia and I joined by Sasha, a fellow who helps out a bit with the bike club. Sasha is tupoi. I don’t say this maliciously, but it is the truth. Having spent some time with him it is not entirely clear the level of developmental disability he has. As a way describing him, I would simply say that there is a gentle innocence about him. He simply doesn’t really worry about anything. He tends to act like a big kid and likes to play with the kids in the club. In talking to him though you get the idea that he is in fact a few spokes shy of a wheel because you never seem to ever get to the point of what he is trying to tell you. Because of this, trying to converse with him can be a little tiring, but in general he is, if not well liked, at least accepted here. He was a part of the party.
Now, as I mentioned there is a social dynamic here and drinking is a normal thing. However, it is also taken somewhat seriously and people do have their pride; their face. The last time I drank with these folks, Kolia had a few too many by the end of the evening, and lost his sense of balance (among other things). As he had become incapable of getting home under his own power, Sasha who was yet alert enough, along with myself, helped lead, carry, drag Kolia back to his flat. (In the book I detail another such party when I ended up sleeping there so I am not above anything here.) But because Sasha is tupoi, that he outlasted Kolia during his zapoi, was quite damaging to Kolia’s sense of self. I guess this was the first time we had all drank together since then, and Kolia seemed to be making a point about proving to Sasha that he was in fact a bit tupoi. I don’t know why he needed to do this, but he did and it made things a little tense.
Anyway, we had a few people come and join us, and so we paused to add something to eat and some more drink. Sasha contributed some rather horrible sugared wine, and on a dare drank a bit too much of this. I don’t think we would have played with like this is there wasn’t some anger but we did. We went through this and my second bottle and were drinking beer when Sasha tipped over the edge. I suppose we should have stopped him when he was obviously drunk after the wine. I myself wouldn’t touch the wine, and forgot that this was an insult to Sasha. Perhaps I thought that unimportant also because he is tupoi. Looking back, all of this had to be a little too much for Sasha ad regardless of the pain of the constant insults; being who he is (Belarusian) he simply had to go on and drank what we offered him.
With drinking, the point of no return always sneaks up on you from behind. And when it hits you, it is always a shock to find you are screwed. We took it as comedy when Sasha, realizing that he had crossed the line, began to growl like a bear for us. When he allowed himself to fall of the chair; we left him on the floor where he seemed more comfortable. Kolia, angry at this display of loss of control, tried wrench him up off the floor and send him home. We convinced him that he was fine there and that he simply needed to sleep a bit and he would be fine. Kolia grinned at us; he had won this rematch and was returned to his proper status.
But there was anger in the mix. There is a lot to be angry about normally. They were just taking out their frustrations on Sasha, but I am sure some of it had to do with my not having opened my shop yet. Everybody is still trying to prove that I am still there friend even though I never delivered on my promises. When I was out of my head, nobody got angry at me, but Sasha is not privileged in this regard and the attitude toward him there on the floor turned harsh. He began to bather a bit and this only made people angrier. But I tried to deflect the anger and turn the situation to comedy, asking everyone to listen to Sasha’s ramblings claiming that it took the wealth of the whole of Russian to put the Tsar at the same level of comfort that Sasha now experienced. I said that we should listen to him for shreds of wisdom and that we should be grateful for the opportunity to do so. This game made everyone smile and they took to it happily. I was secretary and copied down the words. There was much laughter and I could see that Sasha liked the attention and that everyone was happy. This is how I translated what he said over the next fifteen minutes:
Yaaaeewaaee….
I am never understood….
OK ok ok ok ok ok ok ….
I have a day…
I have….
We have agreement….
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait….
We have one…
Ah…
Nobody; nobody agrees…
It is just your variation (choice?)
(We did this) For revolution!
Good God…
I run, run, run, run…
500 meters…
And I am afraid to be vegetarian…
Medals… medals…
We have what we have….
And we will shoot (guns) for our plan…
(All) to go and fuck…
(There was a pause of about five minutes and then)
And what this is…
Is that I want love.
I would have liked to end this piece by saying that our evening continued in a humorous vain and we all went home happy. I would like to say this but I can’t. I would rather not think about how I had to stop someone from beating Sasha for not being able to get up off the floor. Or how he pissed himself and lay in his own puddle. Or about his falling in the snow as I tried to march him to his home, the blood from his beating staining the place he fell. I’d like to speak fondly of a little necessary zapoi, and how good it is to get to forget your problems for a few hours. But really, I can’t say these things. All I can say is what I saw: We were all just so unhappy.
The two words I have written above are two Russian words that are very sound very much a like, but have slightly different, though in a way connected meanings to each other. The word tupoi basically means slow, but when used in reference to a person, it means that the person is stupid. The other word, Zapoi refers to the time during a person by choice engages in daily vodka drinking- the duration of the drunk would be a good way to say this.
Now, I think that drinking vodka as a cultural norm in the former Soviet Union is misunderstood by the west. It is not only normal, it is a part of things and to think otherwise is completely foolish. We in the states have a different view of the activity of perceptual self diminishment and have attached various stigmas to the various levels of acceptance of alcohol into ones system. We have phrases like social drinkers, and beer drinkers and wine drinkers and drunks, happy drunks, street drunks and falling down stupid drunks. Lot’s of categories.
But people here simply don’t think of it in this way. To me, for the most part I find that it is very simple and works like this: If you go to the store to buy some vodka, the woman who sells it to you will sneer at you. That same woman though when she sees you weaving through the streets afterward will then laugh at how funny you look. And, if you were to then weave over to her, lean in close to her face, grope her a little and tell her how thoroughly sexy she really is, she will accept the compliment graciously. These are time honored and well practiced rituals. In other words, they get it, and they let it be. And, for what it is worth, the Zapoi is accepted to a very large extent as being an occurrence in people’s lives and is quite forgivable if not practiced too often.
So yesterday, as I was invited to come for a little social get together in the middle of the day, I visited again with my bike friends here. Being well aware of the accepted social graces, I tried to bring along a bottle of local vodka but found that all of the shops were empty of this, and so I had to purchase a bottle from a neighboring district. Now vodka here is very cheaply bought and the local brands are to my taste really is quite smooth and nice. We can buy also Stolichnaya here for about the same price as local, but really it is very sharp compared to the local spirit, though having no difference in strength. The general opinion is that Stolichnaya is akin to Polish vodka in taste which means that it is very harsh on the pallet. Polish vodka is also about three to five times as expensive and this is taken into consideration, along with all of the other prejudices against them, as proof of the strangeness of Poles in general.
There were three of us at the initial sit down, Kolia and I joined by Sasha, a fellow who helps out a bit with the bike club. Sasha is tupoi. I don’t say this maliciously, but it is the truth. Having spent some time with him it is not entirely clear the level of developmental disability he has. As a way describing him, I would simply say that there is a gentle innocence about him. He simply doesn’t really worry about anything. He tends to act like a big kid and likes to play with the kids in the club. In talking to him though you get the idea that he is in fact a few spokes shy of a wheel because you never seem to ever get to the point of what he is trying to tell you. Because of this, trying to converse with him can be a little tiring, but in general he is, if not well liked, at least accepted here. He was a part of the party.
Now, as I mentioned there is a social dynamic here and drinking is a normal thing. However, it is also taken somewhat seriously and people do have their pride; their face. The last time I drank with these folks, Kolia had a few too many by the end of the evening, and lost his sense of balance (among other things). As he had become incapable of getting home under his own power, Sasha who was yet alert enough, along with myself, helped lead, carry, drag Kolia back to his flat. (In the book I detail another such party when I ended up sleeping there so I am not above anything here.) But because Sasha is tupoi, that he outlasted Kolia during his zapoi, was quite damaging to Kolia’s sense of self. I guess this was the first time we had all drank together since then, and Kolia seemed to be making a point about proving to Sasha that he was in fact a bit tupoi. I don’t know why he needed to do this, but he did and it made things a little tense.
Anyway, we had a few people come and join us, and so we paused to add something to eat and some more drink. Sasha contributed some rather horrible sugared wine, and on a dare drank a bit too much of this. I don’t think we would have played with like this is there wasn’t some anger but we did. We went through this and my second bottle and were drinking beer when Sasha tipped over the edge. I suppose we should have stopped him when he was obviously drunk after the wine. I myself wouldn’t touch the wine, and forgot that this was an insult to Sasha. Perhaps I thought that unimportant also because he is tupoi. Looking back, all of this had to be a little too much for Sasha ad regardless of the pain of the constant insults; being who he is (Belarusian) he simply had to go on and drank what we offered him.
With drinking, the point of no return always sneaks up on you from behind. And when it hits you, it is always a shock to find you are screwed. We took it as comedy when Sasha, realizing that he had crossed the line, began to growl like a bear for us. When he allowed himself to fall of the chair; we left him on the floor where he seemed more comfortable. Kolia, angry at this display of loss of control, tried wrench him up off the floor and send him home. We convinced him that he was fine there and that he simply needed to sleep a bit and he would be fine. Kolia grinned at us; he had won this rematch and was returned to his proper status.
But there was anger in the mix. There is a lot to be angry about normally. They were just taking out their frustrations on Sasha, but I am sure some of it had to do with my not having opened my shop yet. Everybody is still trying to prove that I am still there friend even though I never delivered on my promises. When I was out of my head, nobody got angry at me, but Sasha is not privileged in this regard and the attitude toward him there on the floor turned harsh. He began to bather a bit and this only made people angrier. But I tried to deflect the anger and turn the situation to comedy, asking everyone to listen to Sasha’s ramblings claiming that it took the wealth of the whole of Russian to put the Tsar at the same level of comfort that Sasha now experienced. I said that we should listen to him for shreds of wisdom and that we should be grateful for the opportunity to do so. This game made everyone smile and they took to it happily. I was secretary and copied down the words. There was much laughter and I could see that Sasha liked the attention and that everyone was happy. This is how I translated what he said over the next fifteen minutes:
Yaaaeewaaee….
I am never understood….
OK ok ok ok ok ok ok ….
I have a day…
I have….
We have agreement….
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait….
We have one…
Ah…
Nobody; nobody agrees…
It is just your variation (choice?)
(We did this) For revolution!
Good God…
I run, run, run, run…
500 meters…
And I am afraid to be vegetarian…
Medals… medals…
We have what we have….
And we will shoot (guns) for our plan…
(All) to go and fuck…
(There was a pause of about five minutes and then)
And what this is…
Is that I want love.
I would have liked to end this piece by saying that our evening continued in a humorous vain and we all went home happy. I would like to say this but I can’t. I would rather not think about how I had to stop someone from beating Sasha for not being able to get up off the floor. Or how he pissed himself and lay in his own puddle. Or about his falling in the snow as I tried to march him to his home, the blood from his beating staining the place he fell. I’d like to speak fondly of a little necessary zapoi, and how good it is to get to forget your problems for a few hours. But really, I can’t say these things. All I can say is what I saw: We were all just so unhappy.
posted by BEING HAD at
10:35 AM
