My First Joint in Kiev-

My First Joint in Kiev-

Kiev, February 1997- I had just spent a couple hours at my new hangout bar when a girl named Renata came up and invited me to join her and her boyfriend, Vasya.  Native English speakers were quite unique in Kiev back then and they wanted to meet me.  I was the first American they had ever seen in person.  Renata and Vasya both spoke English good enough to hold a decent conversation, and I was already buzzing and up for a talk, so I accepted and joined their table.  Vasya worked as a driver in an office and Renata was a student.  After a few more rounds of drinks and pretty banal talk about where I was from and how I liked living in Ukraine, I noticed Vasya doing something in his hands under the table.  He had emptied the tobacco out of a cigarette and was refilling the paper with what looked like a marijuana-tobacco mix.  He noticed that I noticed.

“Michael, you smoke grass?”  I liked his choice of word for weed, it seemed archaic, really 60s to me.

“Wow, I haven’t seen any “grass” in Kiev since I got here.  I didn’t think people smoked here.”

“You can join us this cigarette once I finish.”

“I’d love to, thanks!”

Vasya reloaded the cigarette paper with the weed-tobacco mixture.  He then rolled the foam filter between his thumb and forefinger so that it separated from the cigarette paper and took it out.  He replaced it with a little piece of a business card rolled into the shape of a filter and invited me to join him and Renata outside for a smoke.  We went outside to the street.  They left their jackets at the table even though it was snowing outside, so I left mine as well.  It had been snowing all night and everything was covered in a thick blanket of white.  The city seemed very peaceful and quiet.  

Vasya torched up the cigarette looking joint and took a few deep drags.  He was in no rush.  After a minute or so and a few more deep hits, he then passed the joint to Renata.  She took a few drags, again in no hurry, and it was more than halfway gone by now.  I was excited to smoke and was anxiously waiting my turn.  Renata finally passed the baton to me.

“Thank you- My first joint in Kiev!” I announced triumphantly, holding it up, looking at it with a smile as the snow fell peacefully around us.  I then brought the joint toward my lips to take a hit.  Simultaneously as I did this, I heard a car sliding in the snow.  I looked over to see the police in a small four-door Lada, a Russian car ubiquitous in Kiev back then.  The road was covered in at least six inches of snow, so the cop car slid for a good ten feet as the driver stomped on the brakes.  I stared in disbelief at what was unfolding before my eyes.  As the car came to a halt, all four doors opened at once and four cops got out and started approaching at a fast clip.  Vasya and Renata looked at me with wide eyes and said in a pleading whisper, “Michael, drop it!  Drop it!”  They were panicked.   

A Russian Lada 4-Door Police Car

I froze at first, but as the cops were stepping up the curb about eight feet away, I dropped the joint and stepped it into the snow.  When I did this the cops yelled something and were immediately on me.  One grabbed me hard by my arm and started saying something forcefully.  I couldn’t understand him at all, as my Russian was still nothing more than basic words like “hello, please, thank you, good day, where is the toilet,” etc.  Another cop picked up what remained of the cigarette joint and broke it apart in his black gloved hand.  He inspected the remaining contents of weed mixed with tobacco and pointed to the green specks and asked, “Schto etot? Schto etot?!”  I knew that one meant, “What is it? What is it?” 

I shook my head, shrugged my shoulders and said, “Cigarette???” 

They didn’t like this and the cop that had me by the arm started going through all my pockets.  Both Renata and Vasya didn’t say a word.  The cop found my passport and gave it to one of his colleagues.  After he didn’t find any weed in my pockets, he put his fingers into my shoes, into my socks; he was determined to find another joint or a stash on me.  When he finished with me, empty-handed, he went to Vasya and did the same thing.  They found nothing.  They then asked me where my jacket was.  I said in the bar and pointed to the stairs leading down to it.  They told me to go get it.  I went down the stairs and opened the door.  The cop was behind me.  He never let go and he had a strong grip on my upper left arm. 

The door screamed as it opened, its hinge was broken.  The bar was packed and it was loud from all the conversations taking place.  Once the cop entered after me the entire room immediately went quiet.  You could hear the mice breathe.  Sophia’s face went from a toothy smile to major concern.  She owned the bar.

“Michael- what happening?”  She said.

“Sophia, I’m in trouble,” was all I could say with a breaking voice and scared eyes.  The cop pushed me forward.  I went to our table and grabbed my coat.  It was a long heavy jacket, trench coat style that went down to my knees.  Once I took it in my hand, the cop immediately yanked it violently out of my hand with all his might and then manhandled me back out the door and up the stairs.  He then went through all the pockets himself.  Again, he found nothing.  As before, they moved onto Vasya and he went into the bar with another cop and they came out a minute later with the cop holding his jacket.  They found nothing.  Strangely, they never harassed or even searched Renata at all during this incident.  Also, by this time, Sophia had sent a young kid, he was maybe 20 years old, out to translate for me.  He spoke to them in Russian and then turned to me.

“Do you have any money?”  He said.

“Yes, I showed him my wad of Ukrainian Hryvnias.”  This was the new currency of Ukraine.  They had only started using it a few months earlier.  “They can take it.  I’m happy to pay them.”  I told the kid.  My heart was racing.  I dreaded the idea of having to call my boss to have him bail me out of prison or even worse, have my visa revoked and lose my new job.  I was pretty much freaking out as I thought over all the ways this stupid joint could screw me. 

“No, not Hryvnia, real money, do you have dollars?”  My translator asked clearly concerned that my bribe money was in local form and not hard currency. 

“Dollars?  Uh, no, only Hryvnia.  Why?  The police only take dollars???”  I was confused.

“Dollars would be better.”  He said clearly indicating his disappointment that an American would be without greenbacks in such a situation.  I shrugged my shoulders.  I didn’t have any dollars on me, but I did make a mental note to always keep a small supply of them on me for bribe purposes if at all possible.   

They all started talking again and I just stood next to them holding out about a hundred dollars worth of Hryvnia in my hand.  I had no idea what they were saying, but after a minute or two of seemingly heated discussion, an old Ukrainian babushka walked by.  She was hunched over and bundled up with a lot of layers of clothes.  She stopped and listened to what the group was saying.  She looked at me with my hand still held out with the Ukrainian money in it and heard me speaking English to my translator.  She then looked back at the police and said something.  One of the cops answered her.  She thought about it a moment, shook her head and said something else shaking her head and trudged away through the snow.  When she said her last remark and walked away, all the police broke out laughing, as did my translator, Renata and Vasya. 

“What did she say?”  I asked.

My young translator replied, “She asked what happening.  The police explain that you American and smoking something, but you no anything on you.  They say they try figure out what to do now.  To this she say, “he American, just take his money and go-” and then she walk away.” 

I saw this as an opportunity and again offered my Hryvnias, but everything had changed.  The old woman’s realism had miraculously defused the tension and the cops handed me back my passport and just like that got back in their car and drove away.  I was shocked that the situation ended so abruptly, bloodlessly and without a bribe changing hands.

“It finished now.”  My translator said smiling. 

“Why didn’t they take my money?”  I asked him as we walked back into the bar.

“They could no.  In our country anything on ground public and you no have anything on you, they could no charge you.  Come inside.  Have drink.  It finish now.”

And that was my first joint in Kiev.  I didn’t even have one small hit, but it packed a

punch nonetheless- large stress filled drama followed by a happy ending.  When we got back into the bar everyone went quiet again, anxious to hear what had happened.  My translator told the story to Sophia in Russian loud enough so that the crowded room could also hear it and at the end, everyone clapped.  One person even yelled, “Bravo!” a couple times.  The people next to me were patting me on the back.  Sophia gave me a fresh beer and a shot of vodka on the house.   It was surreal.  People were buying me vodka shots all night- toasting to my first run in with the Ukrainian police.  The accelerated drinking went on and on and my street credit went up big time at the bar from that night forward.  

I don’t even remember leaving the bar that night, but I woke up naked in bed next to a girl the following morning.  I had no idea who she was or how she got there. 

One  Hryvnia

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Interested in other stories from Kiev/Kyiv?  Try this one: An Afternoon in the Drunk Tank in Kyiv

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