It’s unfortunate what happened to Higgins, though he did seem like a little bit of a tool. As I said to Matt Taibbi many times before, the day would come when he would ask me, Frank Wendelman (not my real name; the eXile gave it to me as a “Nom de plumb”), to write his bar reviews. Unlike all of those losers at the eXile, I have a real job, I know real people in town, i.e. I’ve been networking in AmCham, and, again unlike them, making serious coin.

As I told Taibbi, one day the eXile would need a guy like me who people consider a normal guy, with a real job, to give insight to his readers about where to go in Moscow and how to pussy snipe with the pros. I definitely won’t let the eXile readers down because I have gained a lot of insight in my years here. The eXile calls itself a hedonistic paper, but you can’t have hedonism without money, and those guys don’t have a dime.

Deep down, the eXile guys want to succeed in business like me. They listen to my preaching about getting straight and networking and they always agree with me since now I am now a rising star in industrial adhesive sales. And there’s one star of mine that’s always on the rise: my massive nine-and-a-half inch member, which I put to serious work in this town. Old Tecumseh, as I call him, is actually my most loyal employee. He always shows up to work on time. And business hours are always open in this town.

Matt agreed to pay for my translator Dima Tortovosky to go with me to a few bars and Matt also paid my secretary to type this because... well, fuck it, because I don’t type. As I told Matt, I really don’t speak more than a few words of Russian, just words like Skol-Kah, because am I always so busy working. Matt asked me to go to BEGA and CHAMELEON. I think he was trying to give me a hard time, sending me to Chameleon, but I can handle anything. I’m not stupid.

Dima and I went to Bega at about 10 O’clock because Dima says that is when the dancers start to polish the brass poles. Bega is next to the Moscow horse track and Dima says it used to be called Arcadia. I liked Bega’s interior, there was lots of wood that looked to be the expensive high-pressurized type and it even looked to have the western standard fire retardant coating over its stain finish. The manager came out and sat us at a good table. She was a knockout, better looking than most of the dancers. I wished I asked her for her number but I didn’t. We sat down and ordered food. Dima got the “original salad” (395 RU), which was very large, but it came with mayonnaise and I am allergic to mayonnaise. I ordered the fried mozzarella cheese (98 RU), which came served like a fried egg over lettuce. At Bega, you get a free table dance so we asked Vanessa, who had nice big breasts, to do a dance for us while we drank our German beer (140 RU).

I told Dima that the eXile was paying for this night out so he had 5 more dances (20 US each). I was falling in love with the manager who kept stopping by to see how I was doing. I know she was not singling me out for special treatment because I was from the eXile, she was too nice to do something like that. She wanted Old Tecumseh. She wanted the Tomahawk slam. We were doing great and I ate the Chicken Florentine (289 RU) which was good also. The beautiful manager, who wore a tight red top, told me there was a male dancing area and bar for women to go to also. Women who go to strip clubs are losers, but everyone knows that.

The manager started to like me as she could tell that I was an American and most Russian women are instantly and naturally attracted to American guys like me with dependable jobs and rockets in our pockets. The manager also said I could get a private dance in a private room for $50 dollars and I could even get a boy and girl show for $250 dollars. I just got a couple of normal dances, saving Matt lots of money, from Diana who dances with a real live Boa type snake.

How wild is that? Upon leaving I asked the manager to dance for me, this let her know what a crazy guy I am and that I had my eye on her, she wanted me really bad, Dima noticed that too.

We had fun at Bega and we were not too tipsy to fulfill our professional obligation to Matt so we continued on to Chameleon. When I got out of my taxi to go to Chameleon I lit up a cigarette and then a young Russian man asked me something in Russian. Dima yelled at him in Russian and the man ran away. Dima is really a nice guy even though he is big and wears all black clothes and boots. He told me once that he’d once killed somebody “by accident.”

We went into Chameleon and I was frisked at the door, the door security never frisks Dima though. The place was crowded with young persons and in the first dance area they played cool Brittany Spears music. In the second dance area, which was much bigger, they played more dance type music but they also had men in cages that wore girl clothes. This disturbed me although Dima didn’t mind at all. We moved on to the cafÈ area where many young people sat and talked. On the TV they had real pornography and I recognized the male actor as Peter North who was having his way with a younger woman. I told Dima that Peter North was an American and I asked Dima if Peter North was popular in Russian porno movies too. Dima looked hard at the TV but didn’t know the answer. We found one last area in Chameleon, which I did not like at all. It was down some stairs that had really bad artwork on the wall. Down at the bottom of Chameleon there was a quiet place but mostly guys were down there. Dima and I ordered a beer and once again on the TV there was a porno with Peter North but now he was all by himself. I guess it was a good time. Still, I don’t go in for gay clubs much.