Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child

by Bert Kreischer

  I tried to read Igor’s facial expressions, hoping that through them, I could figure out what my words meant. My heart raced and I started to panic until something unexpected happened. Igor cracked a smile. In broken English he asked, “What did you just say?”

  Not sure what I had said, but confident that it had made him smile the first time, I repeated it in Russian.

  “I am the machine!”

  His smile widened. He put his arm around my neck and in even better English than before, said, “Come in and tell my friends what you just say.”

  Smiling back, I walked in with him to find a smoke-filled room of Russians. He said something to them that I couldn’t understand and looked at me, arm still around my neck. “Tell them what you say.”

  Not sure if I had told him to fuck his mother, or that they could kill me and fuck me like a mother, I put all my confidence in the moment and proudly said in Russian again, “I am the machine.”

  The room broke out in laughter, and Igor broke into English almost as good as mine. “So you are The Machine. Well, Machine, sit and do a toast for us.” I cracked the bottle and pulled out my knife and lemon, thinking I would introduce them to lemon drops. I got an even bigger laugh. “The Machine runs on lemons,” someone said laughingly, and the room fell apart. This, much like the rest of the conversation that night, was in Russian. I struggled to follow, but I was certain of one thing: I was killing. They took the lemon from me and taught me how to shoot vodka like a Russian. All I said the entire night to them in their language was, “I am the machine.”

  And so began the legend of The Machine.

  I don’t remember much from that night—only that Igor spoke English, played the guitar, laughed easily, and that I was The Machine. The Machine lived out of the box, and never said no. Also, The Machine was the funniest guy they had ever met mostly due to the fact that they had never seen any of the movies that I had grown up on, which inherently played to my advantage. Every night that week, under the radar, we smoked, drank, played guitar, and laughed hysterically as I dropped one-liners from Caddyshack, Fletch, and Uncle Buck, claiming them as my own.

  One day, visibly hungover, my hot teacher asked where I had spent the night drinking. I told her. She was as shocked as she was intrigued. When I told her I was doing it again the next night, she asked me to take her, so I obliged. That night, I introduced her to Igor—and to The Machine—and by the end of the next week, everyone was partying in Igor’s room.

  The interesting thing to know about Igor was that he wasn’t a hard-core gangbanger. He was a guy misplaced by Russia’s failing government. He had been brought up not to dream of becoming famous or a millionaire, but with simple goals like finding a wife, having babies, and living a carefree life, taken care of by the government. Then things went caca. Now, with a new government in place, he and men like him suddenly had to fend for themselves, stand out from the crowd, and make a name for themselves in order to achieve the life that had been guaranteed to them at birth. So Igor did what many men with few options and less hope do: he got involved in illegal activity. Igor was a good guy—a guy who knew how to read the streets of Russia, who could tell two minutes in advance when a problem was going to happen. One time at a flea market, Igor grabbed me and my buddy John by the arm and told us in Russian, “Let’s go.” As we walked away, three men jumped out of the car and ruthlessly beat another man into submission in front of a bookstore, then put a gun in his mouth and began shouting. Igor saw it coming, and he wanted no part of it. I, on the other hand, in typical gawker-American fashion, was pissed I hadn’t gotten a picture. I told him next time he saw something like that to let us stay. But that was not Igor—his path clearly was the path of least resistance.

  * * *

  I may have been wrong initially about how hard-core a gangster Igor was, but one thing was for certain: The Machine was making a name for himself. I’d meet Igor’s friends and he would rejoice in telling them about the outlandish things The Machine had said or done the night before, like the time The Machine had won four straight games of billiards against the house pool shark and begun singing and dancing with his pool cue, swinging it wildly like a ninja-samurai. It didn’t matter that I had taken it directly from Tom Cruise’s performance in The Color of Money, because they had never seen that movie. All they knew was The Machine was spontaneous and improvisational, a wild card who was fun to be around.

  Midway through our stay, I was informed that we were taking a trip to Moscow. Great: see the countryside, maybe I’d bump into that girl in the sundress on the bike; she’d love The Machine. But to my chagrin I found out that Igor would not be accompanying us. When I asked Igor why, he said very simply, “One group runs the trains, and a different group runs Moscow. You’ll have different escorts for both, but not me.” The next day as he walked us to the train, he told me that he had talked to our new escorts and that they were excited to meet me. Before I knew it, I was eye to chest with our two new Russian bandits, Igor and Igor. (I’m assuming when boys were born in communist Russia it was probably best to keep their names in the state-approved comfort zone. All I’m saying is I didn’t exactly meet a lot of Millhouses.) In Russian he told them, “Guys this is The Machine, this is the guy I was telling you about. If you give The Machine vodka, you’ll have a great time. Take care of him. You’ll laugh all the way to Moscow.”

  They had smiles on their faces, and while they spoke English better than I did Russian, I asked another classmate, a guy we’ll call Big John, to hang with us so we could communicate. Despite his size, John was shy and not a big drinker. He was funny, nice, an all-around sweet guy who loved quoting comedians. But even more importantly, his Russian was impeccable and he looked like a defensive lineman.

  He looked at me as they told us to follow them. “They said something about wanting us to sit with them on the train, and the bigger of the two keeps looking at you and saying he can’t wait to play with The Machine.”

  We left our friendly Igor and said good-bye to my class as John and I headed to first class, in the front car of the train with our two new Igors. This was like a horrible Richard Grieco movie, I said to John, only in real life.

  Their cabin was much nicer than the ones we passed. The ones our classmates were in had two sets of bunk beds with a three-foot-by-seven-foot breezeway between them, while ours was palatial. When we walked in, the first thing we saw was a spread of cheese, meats, bread, and lots of booze. I felt like royalty—and acted the part. There were two couches, a table, a bathroom, and a bed. The best part was that as the train took off, the people who worked on the train, in the know, came back to pay their respects. When the conductor came back to our cabin to introduce himself, John translated.

  “He said it would be an honor to have a drink of vodka with The Machine.” And then under his breath, “What have you told these people?”

  We took our shots, and then the conductor ripped the stripes off the shoulder of his conductor’s uniform and handed them to me, “A present for The Machine.”

  My jaw dropped as the man who was supposed to be driving this moving train—the same man who I just drank vodka with, the man who had defiled his uniform—anticipated my reaction.

  I smiled back graciously, thanking him profusely, as he sat with us and stared at me. The whole time I thought two things: (1) who is driving the train?; and (2) these Machine stories might have gotten out of control.

  We killed the only bottle of vodka we had before the train was even out of St. Petersburg. Everyone who worked on the train had said hello and either been introduced to The Machine or had already heard stories about The Machine. Things were falling into place. John and I laughed big laughs as we shared jokes with whoever was in our cabin. This was exactly how I had envisioned it. I was Frank Sinatra, holding court with my gangsters. The entertainer that could turn thugs into puppies. My name had made the rounds with the Russian mob, and I was the guy to party with. While John and I were getting buzzed, Igor and Igor se
emed to have hollow legs. With no vodka, they started in on a bottle of peach schnapps, offering us swigs straight out of the bottle. When I declined, they smiled. “Then we go to the bar.”

  I’m an extravagant man. I enjoy the finer things that come with whatever celebrity I have. This, however, was a type of respect and attention I, to this day, have never seen. As the four of us walked to the bar car, we walked as mobsters, just like in the movies, and everyone knew it. Doves flew beside us, a breeze blew back our coats to show our holstered guns, we flicked cigarettes behind our back, to set big explosions. And I was the guy out front. It’s like when you see a hot chick with an old guy or a fat black dude and you think, “Who is he?” We walked into the bar car, and people stared. I strutted like a peacock with a big dick.

  In a voice that was loud enough to quiet the room, the bigger of the two Igors said in Russian, “Machine, get bread.”

  He started to rattle off his list of party rations in Russian as I walked behind the bar to find them, and it dawned on me: I understood what he’d said. I was learning, for the first time in my life. Before I could congratulate myself, the next order came. “Machine, grab cheese.”

  I turned to John excitedly. “I know what they are saying! I can speak Russian!” A visibly buzzed John smiled back at me and said in Russian, “Congratulations.”

  Now, behind the bar, with a loaf of bread in my arm and looking for cheese, I waited for Big Igor’s next order. “Machine, grab more vodka.”

  I was giddy as a two-year-old. “I know what you are saying!”

  “Good.” He wasn’t as impressed as I was. While everyone else had been learning the language through flash cards and textbooks, here I was picking it up my way, by joining the mafia.

  “What else?” I said proudly. “Give me another one.”

  “Grab the money.”

  “What?” I said, smiling.

  “Grab the money!”

  And suddenly time stood still.

  I remember being hunched over, still looking for cheese. When I looked up, I saw the bartender standing against the wall, not making eye contact. He was scared. As I looked around the room, I saw that everyone had that same look. Everyone was scared. Even John.

  Before I could argue, John spoke up.

  “He said grab the money.”

  “I don’t want to grab the money.”

  “I think you should just do it.”

  Standing half erect, I uttered my last word as an innocent man:

  “Huh?”

  Big Igor was busy going through the pockets of the people in the bar, as he shouted the same command over his shoulder, this time slightly annoyed.

  I looked at John. I looked at the bartender. I took the money.

  I grabbed a couple bottles of vodka, gave up on the cheese, and we left. As we made our way out of the bar car, I made eye contact with a couple of kids in our class who had seen it all. For a split second I felt cool—cool like the first time you smoked pot, or drank beers in high school. Outlaw cool. As we walked past the coach cabins to our cabin, the cool feeling that comes with committing a felony quickly faded to panic. I was the man behind the bar. I was the one with the bread and the vodka. I was the one who had displayed the spoils of our treachery for all to see.

  When we got back to our first-class cabin, things were a little more solemn and the drinking escalated. My teacher came after hearing of our escapades, more to check in than to reprimand us.

  I was silently hoping the two Igors would pass out and that I could return to my classmates in coach, but my dreams were dashed by the entrance of a teacher I will simply call SHE. SHE was a substitute chaperone who did not much like me, even before I robbed the train. SHE was in her fifties and fancied me a stupid frat boy, which SHE was mostly right about. SHE opened the door to our cabin and began berating me in front of the two Igors.

  “You are done! It’s over! You, mister, have a huge lesson to learn in how to be an ambassador for your university and for your country. Stand up right now, the both of you and let’s go! Because I—”

  Before SHE could finish, Big Igor took a sip of vodka, spit it in her eyes, and said, “No one talks to The Machine like that.”

  John and I were terrified of what would happen. But SHE was as scared as we were. It was like witnessing a tidal wave firsthand and realizing you are not in as much control as you think you are. SHE said nothing, looked at neither of us, frozen.

  Igor shut the door in her face and smiled at both of us. “Fuck that bitch. This is Russia,” he nonchalantly said. “When it gets dark, we’ll have good time.”

  To our dismay, the debauchery hadn’t even started. Igor and Igor had keys to the entire train and we were about to play Butch Cassidy to those other Sundance Kids. John looked at me in horror as he listened in on their conversation.

  “We’re robbing everyone,” he said with a forced smile.

  “Huh?” I said, smiling back.

  “I think we are robbing the entire train.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  And sure enough, as the sun set and conversations subsided to snores, the four of us were off like the Newton Boys.

  As we walked out of their cabin, John pulled me aside. “We can’t rob the train, but we can’t leave them either, or really bad shit might happen to our classmates.”

  So we accompanied them, forcing vodka down their throats at every opportunity, while the Igors, with our help, robbed our classmates.

  I have to say as terrified as I was of the situation, the Igors proved to be the two least insightful thieves I’d ever seen work. Big Igor would unlock the door, not so quietly I might add, while little Igor would crawl on his stomach into the room and go through whatever bags were on the floor. Big Igor would go through their above-floor shit, and if anyone woke up, Big Igor would spit vodka in their faces (now his signature move). Luckily for our class, Igor and Igor were too drunk to do it well. We half-robbed roughly everyone before the rest of our class woke up and we darted off.

  The rest of the evening is blurry. I remember John and I decided to continue our attempt to get the Igors as drunk as possible so they’d pass out, which meant getting ourselves as drunk as humanly possible in the process. The train was moving fast. I know this because I have a vivid memory of taking turns holding each other by the thighs, hanging halfway out the windows, feeling the cold air punch our faces. We smoked a ton of cigarettes, we took pictures of me taking a shit, and at one point, Igor and Igor left, telling John they had to make their rounds. Not sure what there “rounds” entailed, we rejoiced in our few free minutes of unfiltered conversation. We even went back to our class to make sure no one was hurt, then caught back up with the two Igors to continue our partying in first class.

  We approached Moscow as the sun started to come up, and my teacher opened our cabin door. Igor and Igor were semiconscious so she quickly broke the news. The class had been robbed, SHE had been assaulted, and the police had been notified. She explained that they would be waiting for John and me on the platform when we arrived.

  After she left, we tried our best to tell Igor and Igor the bad news, only to have them laugh it off. “Deece is fahking Russia!” they said in English. “Fahk police!”

  Their reassurance didn’t quite have the calming effect it was meant to.

  “We fahk police in mouth!” All I could do was wonder what kind of trouble they had gotten in while they had been making their rounds—whether we would be held responsible for those crimes, too, or just the felonies we had committed. I prayed that “Fahk police in mouth” was a euphemism we weren’t familiar with, like “He got his ass handed to him.”

  My mind spiraled as I imagined my life with John in the gulag. We’d start by being bitches, living in the mud like animals, being owned by older gangsters who had been there since Stalin. We’d get tattoos from tire rubber on our cocks, like good Russian gangster bitches. We would probably date each other on the DL for nostalgia and convers
ation, while maybe dating stronger men for protection? And that would be just the first year. This was not how I planned on spending my third junior year.

  When the train came to a full stop, I opened my eyes hoping to find a passed-out Igor and Igor whom John and I could sneak past, but as fate would have it they were just starting that day’s drinking, smoking fresh cigarettes, and laughing loudly. I opened our door and looked out the window onto the train platform where I saw my destiny awaiting. Two cops stood dutifully taking a report from my classmates, most of whom were in their pajamas, some of whom were crying, others somehow still covered in vodka.

  I looked back at John, who had his head in his hands, then at our Russians, whose fate I’d be tied to for the rest of my life. They realized what I was looking at and came to the window only to laugh. Big Igor lit a fresh cigarette, and with a bottle of vodka in hand, headed out of the train onto the platform to offer a counterstatement, one I got the feeling he had not been working on.

  My class backed away at his arrival. Again, life slowed down. Little Igor walked out of the train and took position next to Big Igor as John and I watched them present their defense, which had more finger-pointing and shouting than I’d have liked.

  John looked at me with fright and said, “I think Igor just called his mom a goat. Let’s hope that’s a compliment in Russia.”

  Then the finger-pointing took aim at us. It was followed by head shakes, which was followed by shouting, which was followed by more arguing than I was comfortable with, all of it vaguely steered in our direction. The shouting escalated and the cops motioned for John and me to come to them as they barked out some inaudible command in Russian, which, to two kids who grew up watching movies like Rocky IV and Red Dawn, sounded ominous. As we slowly made our way, the cops began walking to meet us. Their stares never faltered.