Return to Vodkaberg, Part Five: Little Valya

She always smells so nice, Little Valya. That's the main thing I remember about her; she always smelled, and smells,  nice and fresh and clean and sort of ... fruity.

Now of course we know that most Russian girls are terribly feminine; however, they tend to bathe themselves in perfumes and skin creams and such, which I generally don't enjoy the smell of, and cultural laxness about dental visits mean a lot of them have bad breath.

Little Valya was 16 when we met in 2002, so we started adding that prefix "Little" despite the fact that's she's not especially little.

She loved foreigners. It was one of the African students who introduced me to her.

Souvenir American flag bandanna from a Stuckey's in America

Stomach hickey. And that's all, honest!

2004. When I was 35, it was a very good year ...

She joined the Putin Youth, Nashe, about 2006, however. This didn't much affect my interaction with her; other than occasional criticisms of Bush or NATO expansion or whatever, which I didn't ever much want to defend anyway. She was a born-again Greek Orthodox, too, supposedly, but this didn't stop her drinking or dancing or anything. She did always observe Lent, I remember that. 

We met on dates and drank in my kitchen, she came to our parties, we went to nightclubs. We kissed often, but she never wanted to sleep to me, until the very last January I was there, in 2009, after I'd known her for more than 6 years. 

But only once; when I asked why not again, she said, "It's a sin."

(Hope that's not too much of a spoiler to anybody who hasn't read VODKABERG.)

She shattered the old canard, repeated even by me, that if a girl doesn't sleep with you after three dates she's not going to. 

But it was clear -- here's another Russian girl who wants to stay in Russia and marry a Russian. When I asked her if she'd ever like to go on vacation with me somewhere, she said she doesn't even have a foreign passport, and thought that other countries often didn't give visas to people in Nashe. 

Pterodactyl Girl (preggers, on the left) Girlfriend, and Little Valya, in 2011. Pretty in pink. 

She moved to Moscow and then Piter for a whilein 2009, working in restaurants, but ended up going back to Vodkaberg. She works in a clothing shop and has been living with a guy for the last couple of years, which is somewhat unusual (but perhaps increasingly common.)

I saw her a few times in 2010 and 2011 when I visited Vodkaberg; we drank beer and talked and laughed but no making out this time. She knew I was living with Girlfriend, and I introduced them.

So I saw her when I visited in May, this year, a couple times; she said that she'd be getting married to her boyfriend at the beginning of June.

She didn't talk much about her boyfriend, and I never met him, but I knew the symptoms -- the frequent text messages, the suddenly having to leave, the phone calls that she'd jump up and run away to answer.

We were on the beach with Pterodactyl Girl this time when Little Valya got one of the sudden phone calls and rushed away.

"Her boyfriend is a bidla, I think," said Pterodactyl Girl. A Russian word for a general Russian white trash / hooligan / redneck / asshole, litterally meaning "bull."

"The usual problem," I agreed.

"Like my first husband," she said. Possessive, aggressive, jealous, abusive.

"Yeah, it seems so."

"Well, I found happiness with the second husband, maybe she will also. I hope so. She's so nice."

"I hope so, too."

NEXT: RETURN TO VODKABERG, PART SIX: THE ONES I DIDN'T SEE