From Russia With Sex

This memory goes once again back to Chicago. It covers not a year, but a period from 1991 to 1995. It's about my first apartment on my own after college. Lincoln Park was the neighborhood. It was well known then and still is today. Sure you've even heard of the band with the same name.

My place was a small one bedroom with lots of wood, old charm and views. The last part is what makes this memory quite unique. It was like my own Rear Window a la Hitchcock. I lived on the top floor of a three flat walk up. The street below was so narrow I had a close up view into the windows of the apartments across from me. Being such, I got to know the routines of my neighbors and surely they mine. Of course one tries to keep from walking around in the nude with the lights on and shades open, but occasionally one forgets.

During this time, I had a terrific job working as an environmental engineer for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. My task was to find and try and clean up some of the most polluted areas in the Great Lakes. I was real passionate about my work. I loved the people and the purpose. But at night, I had a secret alter ego. I studied ballet at a Russian school that was in Chicago's historic Fine Arts building across from the Art Institute.

The owners of the ballet school were Madame Boitsov and her giant of a husband Vladamir. She was a petite ballerina with pretty long blond hair who was raised during the Cold War and classically trained by the famous Bolshoi Ballet - and she was evil or lovely depending on the day. My classes were almost nightly and always brutal. I've been an athlete all my life, but Madame Boitsov was a bruiser.

Madame Boitsov screamed and threw chairs at us when we screwed up or if she was just having a bad day. She even had a stick and knew how to use it where you'd remember. One really funny thing she would do is scream "you stupid, lazy Americans" and stomp out of the room nearly in tears. I nearly walked out the first time she did this, but I realized this was simply her anger masking a deep sadness that the discipline, passion and limitless resources once dedicated to the art of ballet - the environment of old Russia in her youth - was probably gone forever. All that was left was trying to find a diamond in the rough of a bunch of spoiled American youth.

I subjected myself to these long days and nights of abuse because it was exhilarating. There were moments, and I recall them well, where I truly felt the music deep inside me, driving me, flowing. It was magic. Of course, the music was mostly by Russian composers. You know, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and probably lots of other dudes I should remember better than I do. Vladamir played them on the piano like an elephant stomping fire ants. It was heavy, dark and rather sad - just like Vladamir. But when I danced to it, I felt happy and somehow connected to the centuries of hardships, hope and heroism of mother Russia.

These moments were gifts and all those hours spent dripping with sweat in a stinky barely lit studio getting hollered at in Russian made them well worth it. Obviously, I kind of got into the whole Russian thing at this time. Even maybe a wee bit obsessed. My Dr. Zhivago period if you will.

Now back to my apartment. In the early romantic mornings, I would make a bowl of coffee - yes, I thought a bowl as so artistic and so European with my cheap little stove top espresso maker. We'd sit at my table in the pre-dawn light and watch my neighbors start their day too. At the time I was in love with a beautiful girl who I actually knew from High School years back in Nebraska. We ran into each other by chance in Chicago and hooked-up - great chemistry for sure. She lived with me for a spell so it was really the both of us having coffee in the mornings reading, talking and watching the city wake.

We would listen to a CD of Russian folk music over and over again. I swear there was a line somewhere on the front reading "Warning, may cause suicide or induce heavy drinking." It was so sad, but somehow very sexy there with the low morning light, the cold Chicago winter, radiators hissing, steaming coffee and us.

What added to this steaminess was a young couple who lived in the apartment directly across from us and at our level. We called them "The Newlyweds" because they were always having sex. The woman was strikingly beautiful. She wore elegant negligee every night. And each morning, without fail, she'd wake and come to the same exact window and open it wide entirely in the nude. Never the guy, just her.

She had jet black hair and pearl white skin. She struck a stunning figure on full display. And there was no doubt she knew we were there. Then she'd go about fixing breakfast moving with such poise and grace (I've always found the way a woman moves to be such a distinctive and attractive feature) that I wondered if perhaps she too was a ballerina and maybe, just maybe she was Russian.

My girlfriend was quite impressed too and we would make up stories about The Newlyweds - their names, what they do, where they came from, how they met. It was fun. Of course we had similar "revealing" moments in our place so there was quite a lot of nudity on parade in this tiny urban space. Then one night we were having a pint at our favorite Scottish pub on the corner called the Duke of Perth.

We were sitting next to the fireplace talking and drinking and in walks The Newlyweds sitting down right beside us. We wanted to speak to them but didn't know what to say, "Pardon us, but your wife is beautiful and we hope you don't mind us walking around in the nude too." Hmmm...no, that wouldn't do. All we could muster was a smile which they returned, then we resumed our intimate conversations. That's it, no winks, nods, or notes.

I heard some Russian chants by the Russian Orthodox Church this past weekend. It reminded me of my love of ballet, the freedom of my first place, and the appreciation of beauty be it inside you or just outside your window.