Maniacs in parks

I don't floss enough.

If there was one thing I could change in my life it would be... well, maybe not the one thing I would change, but one of the things I'd change would be my willingness to make time to floss. People who floss live longer and happier lives. Look it up, it's true. I'm full of useful information. It's true, look it up.

So, flossing is one of my weak points. A casualty of this weakness is the fact that the inside parts of my teeth started to weaken while I was still young. Combine the fact that I don't floss enough with a childhood filled with the misappropriation of parental affection via excessive offerings of ice-cream and sweets and you have a recipe for oral hygiene disaster.

So, I have a few fillings. Most of my teeth have been drilled and filled from the molars to the ones right before the incisors. The worst of the lot is the lower left molar. The one right at the back. It's probably more than 50% fake. I decided I needed to do some standard dental work while I was in Romania and one of my friends suggested I see a dentist she knew from back in the day. Romanian dentists are renown for being both cheap and excellent. My hostess, who was introduced to me via my couchsurfing hostess at the time, dropped me off near the dentist's office one fine morning and a few hours later he had resurfaced and touched up two of my bottom-front teeth. The dentist told me that I had to re-fill said molar because it had a crack in it and was ready to break, so one of my priorities was to find a good dentist in the Ukraine as soon as possible.

I woke up in the morning after another sleepless night to meet Adriano, the shisha master, who decided that he would help me on his day off. He metaphorically took me by the hand to lead me through a maze of Ukrainian dental administration. It actually wasn't that bad. I took some X-Rays, got pumped full of anesthetic by a spectacled dental anesthesiologist wielding a 4-inch screw-tipped needle who insisted I keep my eyes open and look him straight in the eyes while he administered my meds, got drilled and filled by a dentist who reminded me of that maid from the Brady bunch and payed a total of 25$ for the whole she-bang. Not a bad way to spend an hour in the Ukraine.

After setting up the next appointment Adriano and I went back to his place for some hookah action. Yes, hookah the water pipe. He mixed up a nice batch of cantaloupe-apple while Shawn made his way over and within a little while I was drooling from the half of my face that was frozen from my ear to my nostril while the other half sucked down some shisha. The dentist told me that I would experience some pain once the meds wore off and that I should take pain killers if the pain got bad. Anyone who knows me knows me better than that. I hate drugs; if it hasn't grown from mother Earth I avoid it. So, the shisha was the perfect thing to help me calm down while the meds wore off.

I got real drowsy after a little while so I decided to lie down on Adriano's sofa. I hit the sac hard and dreamt that I was being chased by someone but couldn't run fast enough. It was like I was walking through concrete. I hate those dreams. An hour and a half later I woke up and headed back to my couchsurfing hosts' house to pack up and take a shower. I was meeting another couchsurfer at 1830 for a walking tour of Kiev and then my new hostess at 2100 so I had little time to dilly-dally.

Shawn was heading to another couchsurfer's house for the next few days so we said goodbye outside the building while I went to search for my couchsurfer guide. She was waiting for me right outside the building so we were able to leave right away. She was a tall young brunette and walked quickly and gracefully, matching my long strides with ease. We made our way to the friendship arch, a huge arch lit up along its length by a rainbow of coloured lights that spanned a circular plaza whose centre held a statue of two muscular and angry looking men holding a flag. To the mens' left was a group of Cossacks standing in line looking right past them. They looked pretty mean and ugly too. It was built by the soviets to portray the friendly nature of the Russian empire to the Ukrainian nation. “I hate this statue” said Lera. “It reminds me of the attitude that Russians have towards Ukrainians, like we are their younger and weaker brothers.” It was an ugly statue.

We took in the view from the plaza. It overlooked the river and a new bridge that connected Kiev to an island in the middle of the river. “That is ---- island. At night it is full of maniacs.” “Perfect, I love crazy people, lets go” I replied semi-sarcastically.

We left the plaza and started walking down the road while we chatted about psychology, university, relationships and engaging in small-talk. I noticed that we were getting farther away from the centre and that the area started looking quite desolate. I realized the we were going towards the bridge we saw from the plaza. “You don't really want to visit the island of maniacs do you?” I asked. “Of course, isn't that what you said you felt like doing?” “I was joking!” I replied. “Oh, in that case we should go back.” “No, it actually sounds like it'll be fun... let's do it.” We crossed the bridge to the side of the island. After I stepped in a freshly-poured sidewalk of concrete we came upon a bar. My tooth was starting to ache so I thought it was a great time to start drinking. She told me that she doesn't drink after I asked her if she wanted to stop at the bar for a shot of vodka. “No worries, I'll drink for the both of us.”

The barmaid was an older Ukrainian lady with a serious face betrayed by playful eyes. “Tell her I want a glass of Vodka.” “A glass?” “Yeah, a glass.” The barmaid gave me a funny look and showed me both a large shot-glass and a regular glass. She looked at me quizzically. Fine, I thought, I'll do the shot-glass. I pointed to the shot glass and she poured me from a bottle she brought out from the fridge. I downed it. I indicated that I want another. Another quizzical look and I downed the next shot top-speed. I took out some napkins and cleaned off some of the concrete that was still on the sides of my shoe. Looking behind the bar for a garbage can the barmaid held out her hand. “It's dirty” I started to say but she was already speaking in Ukrainian. Lera started to laugh hysterically. “What is it?” I asked to no avail while Lera was almost rolling on the floor. “She said that she likes taking it in her hands.” It was pretty funny. I gave her the dirty napkin, paid for the shots and a small bottle of vodka for the road.

Lera and I walked to the shore of the island. We kept warm by drinking some more vodka and by sharing some body heat. “There is a maniac looking at us” Lera whispered to me. “Let him look” I replied as we started walking back downtown to where we met originally so that I could pick up my backpack. Lera then took me to the metro station where I was to meet Olisia, my new hostess, who appeared within five minutes.


Olisia had braided blonde hair and a shy smile. She showed up with a friend of hers who she introduced to only to say goodbye to immediately after. We took the metro and then walked for thirty minutes along the train tracks and a pet cemetery. “I don't understand these people,” she began, “I mean o.k., so you love your pet, I love my cats too, but to pay so much money for a marble gravestone like that one,” she said as she pointed to a laser engraved black granite tombstone with the picture of the canine occupant's head on it, “is just crazy.” “I agree. Once I had a cat who suffered from asthma. I mean it's just a cat. Why should I start paying for asthma meds for a creature that would have obviously been a victim of natural selection had humanity not intervened? After the first treatment I decided that it was unnatural to fight natural selection, so we euthanized her. I was thinking to myself which method of euthanization would be better: taking her to a cold strange clinic where the smell of death and other animals hung heavily in the air to be injected with a needle before dying or taking her out to a green meadow to play with butterflies, chase small animals and smell the freedom of wild nature before taking a bullet to the head from my rifle? I'd prefer the rifle.”

We finally reached her home and I dropped my backpack onto the ground like it was a sack of bricks. “I am going to sleep so well tonight, I can feel it.” She made me some green tea and we chatted a bit about her vacation to Crete and before I knew it I was in la-la land. It lasted for a few hours. I woke up and rolled around again in the wee hours of the morning until I heard Olisia get up. She made me some wicked arabic coffee before we left for downtown again.