Jose, Can You See the Man with the Dildo

Jose , can you see the man with the dildo

You git off the Q line at Brighton Beach and walk into Little Odessa , your ocular videocamera pans everwhere, panoptic, panorama, soak it in, be the bread, this is the vodka:Cyrillic signs, women selling piroski, dubious men selling pirated dvd’s of movies still in the theatre, people here have different genes.You are not in New York any more.According to Vitali Vialiev,"Spiritually, linguistically and psychologically, Brighton Beach is not part of the USA. "We don’t go to America. We have nothing to do there," its residents like to say. An American, arriving there by accident, stands out and gets stared at - like an Eskimo in the streets of Abu Dhabi. (Brighton Beach, by Vitali Vitaliev,Travel Intelligence)

The men , for the most part, have thick lips and sad baggy eyes. Everyone seems tired and sad, but still theres a sarcastic smirk right below the surface. The women are stereotypes: huge, roly poly "babushkas", old women wobbling down the street, faces looking more like brown carved apples, bags in both hands, eyes darting from you to the street, half quizzical half nothing. Then, there are the Slavic beauties sashaying down the sidewalk, heels, high cheekbones, pursed lips. Young toughs standing, smoking, no neck, chains with Orthodox crosses, piercing you with a beating from their narrowed eyes.Kitschy Russian music wafting from restaurants, old men with grizzled faces, sitting on buckets, smoking, drinking tea with jam, playing chess in their ketchup stained Russian Navy tank tops. Trash is everywhere but noone pays it any mind. I don’t feel like I’m in America anymore. All around me is tangible evidence that I’m not. But, according to Russians, neither is this "like" Russia.
The buildings look older here, plaques are either in Rafi script or Cyrillic, Hebrew or Russian. Even the ice cream man is Russian. Nowhere else in America have I seen a non Hispanic icecream seller in a truck.
Cars slowly pass by, Russian men hanging out the windows, the Russian 50 Cent or Kelly Clarkson blaring from the speakers.
The boardwalk, though, is where it gets wierd. Its where good old American perversion meets the Old World. Hasids scurry past, holding up their skirts or pants, men with fistfulls of misplace fat wearing Speedos, their bellys swelling over, bitchtits sweating, spindly legs carrying the whole shebang down the promenade. They look impervious to my stares, my open mouth. Women, too, are wearing tiny bikinis when they should be wearing a tent. White cellulite hangs from arms, midsections,necks, derrieres,even ankles. Mullets thrive here. Lapdogs, too.Hang left at the boardwalk and you enter mostly Russians, go right and it’s mixed with African Americans, Hispanics and noise. Its dirtier, louder, drunker. Go left. Stay clear of the Americans. If you wanted Americana, you’d visit Omaha or Dallas. This is not your papas America and things will go from strange to whacked, from different to not too far from a David Lynch story.
On the beach, people are lolling, splayed. Burning themselves. Russians love to get brown.In addition to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the pasty Jews are Hispanics, Congolese, Cameroonians,Lebanese, etc. Spinsters with National Geographic physiques , conical bosoms and zip code hips, amble by, darker than a Maya. Men a million years old cruise by with walkers, nearly the hue of a walnut table or a Hottentot slattern. Young women, men, kids, even the shaved poodles have Hawaiian Tropics tanning lotion clinging to their skin like alive cellophane. There are alot of the white paper nose strips, there are sunglasses ala CHIPS on people who probably cannot see through their glaucoma. A man plays "If I were a Rich Man" on a violin, a kid races out of the ocean with a small crab cage, he measures it and throws it like a baseball back to the fourfeet of water. A man sits in a canvas white kilt, his belly gently laying on top of it, he rests on one arm, like a girl posing, only he is not a girl, nor a boy, he is close to 60, he is nondescript, except for this white kilt . He is looking around, as if he is waiting for some one, suddenly he lifts his leg to reveal a 14 inch black strap-on. It bounces and points towards me. I can’t believe it. Not 20 feet away are 2 women, early 20’s, kicking a ball with all the concentration of a couple of ADD posterchildren, theyre not so much kicking a ball as displaying their wares, they kick with outstretched legs and, as they do so they look at a group of muscled men, to see if theyre looking. Theyre not. Oh, but the man with the white kilt is. He smiles. He lifts his leg, I can see the silhouette of his faux equine cock. The girls startle and stop kicking. They whisper in each others ears and look back at freakboy. He is all smiles and opens his leg for a wider shot. This isnt just your average American exhibitionism, no, this is whacked. This is too European, too artsy, too staged. Eventually, he becomes bored flashing his faux member or he has another beach to haunt, either way he leaves, with a strange leer spread across his face.I’m reminded of the passage in Neil Simons, Brighton Beach Memoirs, where the character, Eugene Morris says:

Seems like Brighton has always been a little twisted. Yep. Twisted.