Fear

I lunch with Dina. I like lunching with Dina. I'm comfortable with her. I liked her right away. When I just came to Moscow and started at work, she was the 'not-unpretty' one. Always busy, always focused, always determined. Very smart. Very professional. Tracelessly supressed southern accent... and... endless, ceaseless, tireless struggle for perfection... how do you get those legs? Just when it was so hot this summer, those girls... and there are so many of them... beautiful bodies! and their legs!... how do they do that... I looked real close... not a signle pore... It was yellow teeth before... oh no... I can't have coffee... my teeth will turn yellow and he won't like that...And it was books and films before that... each time something she has never heard of before gets mentioned, she feels personally degraded... Cosmopolitan is bad and 'Slimming the Right Way' or 'Slimming Together' or whatever glossy wrapping the slimming neurosis may take is good... being a graceful size 6 at best... more like 4 actually... the kind, tender and friendly tone of all that slimming club cohort is so much more preferable over the competitive, intimidating, feminist approach of the second-rate glamour mag coterie. Oh, right! Pigeons. They are colateral...

Girls here... afraid of speaking a foreign language in the presence of someone who in their view speaks a foreign language better than them. Afraid of the 'hip' boys (like, local 'hip' boys are really something to feel intimidated by). Afraid of wearing to work the clothes they like as 'everyone will stare!' of course. Afraid of cholesterol ('cholesterine' in their parlance). Afraid of excessive body hair. Anything else you are afraid of?