Painting the Town Boris Yeltsin

I asked Boris Yeltsin if he wanted to paint the town red. "No," he said, backhanding the wall. "We'll paint the town Boris Yeltsin." (He was infatuated with referring to himself in the third person and with inserting his name into idioms: "tilting at Boris Yeltsin"; "once upon a Boris Yeltsin"; "all Boris Yeltsins on deck.") I nodded as if I understood. He spoke perfect English. I was on primo hallucinogens but I never did detect an accent. We sipped and enjoyed two bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue and headed to the college bar scene.

It was a balmy spring night, and we wore khakis and pastel polos. It was beyond weird to see Boris Yeltsin in khakis and an apricot polo, but he made it work. "Perestroika? More like Pee-estroika," he said, wobblingly urinating behind a dumpster in a dim alley.

Boris Yeltsin didn't walk. He strolled down the sidewalk, his white hair shining under the moon and in the neon. He glided through swarms of collegians. Some looked askance at him. Others patted him on the back. Others made ignorant comments. "Welcome to Nebraska, Khrushchev!" "Watch where you're going, Gorbadouche." "I loved you on Gilligan's Island." "Joe Stalin, hey! What's Joe short for? Joseph?" Boris smirked and whispered, "Nebraska sounds like a Russian invective. 'Go Nebraska yourself.' 'Suck my Nebraska.'"

We barhopped like crazy. Boris Yeltsin was not a man who had two drinks in a bar. It was one and gone. I repeatedly offered to order him a White Russian. He continually refused, saying, "Boris Yeltsin is not a cliché, not a so-called good German. I want a screwdriver."

At one bar, he ordered a Guinness and proceeded to pour half of it on his left pant leg. The dark liquid beaded off and pooled on the floor. "Stain-proof! Stain-proof pants!" he beamed, before adding, "What's the greater invention: the hydrogen bomb or stain-proof pants?"

Two bars later, an accoster poked Boris in the chest and asked, "Why's your face so red? Is it because you're a flea-bitten commie bastard?"
"No," Boris said, his eyes hooded and glassy, "Boris Yeltsin is an alcoholic. Boris Yeltsin wets a duffel bag of whistles."

He had one glaring problem: He was unskilled with the ladies; however, chicks may did the long ball but they dig the titillating power to bombard Russian Parliament more. They were naturally curious, and Boris wasn't above a friendly graze here or an unplanned grope there. It wasn't exactly good, clean fun. In his immortal words, "A breast is a breast" and "Nipples need twisting." After exchanging pleasantries with a random woman, he'd say, "Boris Yeltsin wants to know if you have syphilis." Conversation over.

The bars closed at 1 a.m., and that's when his iPhone began blowing up. "I can't hear you!" he'd yell into the phone, "Where you at? You having after-hours? Boris Yeltsin makes after-hours happen. Holler." We went to an after-hours party which Boris deemed a sausage fest. He quipped, "What is this, the Ukraine?" We left and went to Perkins for pancakes, where his insatiable lust for liquor and women revved up again. He elatedly and wildly swigged from a flask, made none-too-smooth remarks to our waitress ("Unlike these pancakes, I'd smother you in more than syrup and powdered sugar"), knocked three forks on the floor, and left a $2,000 tip on a $20 ticket. Still, he couldn't convince her to quit her job, leave her husband, abandon her children, and join him for some "Easy Rider-like misadventures."

I dropped him at his hotel. "Let's do it again—tonight," he said with a wide, childlike smile, his face redder than a tomato in a glass of Merlot. "What happens in Boris Yeltsin stays in Boris Yeltsin."