Oleg Razumovsky

Springtime we used to drink mostly in our favorite joint 50/50, anywhere closer was dangerous cuz cops might appear at any time. Our guys drank Three Axes, cheap rotgut, and talked, especially sport and politics. Sometimes they went out to take a leak and some of them never came back. On that very evening I got loaded. As usual. All …


I remember one outstanding summer day. Not very hot, with occasional warm rain, but also with a lot of sunshine when you can sit with your buddies in the yard, in the shade, and drink vodka. Perfect. 

The day before I had drunk with my wife all night long and in the morning, she, as usual, went to look for …

In the evening my phone rang. Nobody had called me for ages. I thought that all the people I ever knew had died already. It was so boring. And suddenly it turned out an old friend remembered me. I have not seen him for a thousand years. Since he had gone into business, we parted ways. Here, all of a …

I can’t for the fuck of me understand Aksinya. One moment she’s bald and the next she wears blue hair. One moment she is demure and sad and nothing will cheer her up, than she is the tumult of the falls and starts to fight. That day we sat on a bench in broad daylight on Kozlov St., near the …

Mary worked as a coiffeuse and drank rather heavily. She even sold the toilet bowl in the apartment. Then she met a businessman named Volodya, fell in love with him, quit drinking and married. With Volodya’s help, Mary bought a bistro, where in the old days there got together all sorts of local drinking profligates. She herself often dropped in …

She grabbed me by the balls in the alley near the fashionable beer joint Mug, where all sorts of outcasts usually hung out. Intelligent, sometimes talented young people thrown out of the roadside of life by the damned community of worst philistines, punitive organs and the middle-class hypocrites. We drank all that was available at that plague time: the fatal …

On the eve of the new year, Oksana invited me to her place to acquaint with her parents. In the corner of the room stood the Christmas tree, and in front of it, right on the floor, sat Oksana dressed like a toy from a Department store. “Well, you look okay, ” I told her, not even daring to sit …

In the morning I woke up knowing that I was absolutely broke, but it was necessary to have a drink. Very urgent. A matter of life and death. I got up, thanking God it was not necessary to dress because yesterday I fell asleep fully clothed. Outside it was very cold and my zipper was broken. I almost froze my …

One day I sat with Natasha near her house, eating cakes. Her parents hated me. They thought that I was a useless scum. Even her Father, a pathetic drunk, despised me. But Natasha sorta loved me and sometimes brought some food from home. Even booze, on occasion. She was a kind girl. Just the day before we had got shitfaced …

On Independence Day we sat with a former translator Phil in the park near the bronze deer. Soviet soldiers brought it from Goering’s hunting ground and gave it to civilian children. Phil quit translating right after the last default, then worked as a guard and drank like a pig cheap counterfeit vodka called Freedom. We sat, drank Freedom, and talked …