Gouzelle From The Museum

Gouzelle From The Museum    

  

Shortly after I moved to Moscow in 2002, an ultra high-end cocktail bar and restaurant opened called The Museum.  The name was apropos, as the place was like a museum in terms of the extreme beauty that could be found there.  It was usually stocked with the most stunning, elegant, and sexy women you could ever imagine.  It was also similar to a real museum in that it was a great place to look, but you couldn’t make any contact, as all the women there were with gangsters, mini-oligarchs, corrupt apparatchiks and thugs.  These people usually had security teams/bodyguards with them and there was a clear border between them and their ladies, and us.  It was a strange and alluring place.  Back then, Moscow’s social scene was still infantile and this was a fairly common package at the elite restaurants and cafes.  The babes followed the money and the mega-riches were mostly in the hands of gangsters and the like.  Most foreigners in Moscow didn’t frequent places like Museum, as they were total rip-offs designed for the Russian elite to flaunt their fortunes, power and women.  

Being an investment banker with a corporate credit card, I stumbled into Museum one night and after seeing such a lineup of ladies, I brought clients there as often as I could.  Usually, we were the only foreigners in the place.  It was a great place to show visiting clients how Russia’s top 0.1% lived.  Clients were blown away by the scene and eye candy.  Upon taking a seat, you could easily see in a client’s face the shock and awe the extreme beauty these Russian bombshells with their connected men inspired.  

One night, I went there after dinner with our chief equity strategist and a heavyweight fund manager from London for a nightcap.  As we were sitting in the lounge area on these little couches with a table between us discussing Russia’s investment case, one of the most beautiful and exotic woman I have ever seen sauntered in and sat on the couch at the table next to us.  She was dressed to the nines and as she passed with her heels clicking on the floor, her perfume flowed into our space and captured us like the song of the Sirens.  Our conversation hit the brakes as we all took in this mesmerizing lady, but after a moment, my strategist found a way to break the spell and continued gabbing on about Russia’s economic growth.  I was sitting across from her and couldn’t help but steal glances her way as our discussion continued.  We were speaking English, which was rare in Museum and I could tell she was listening in.  After a short time, maybe twenty minutes or so, the London fund manager said he was beat from his flight and wanted to go back to his hotel.  As we waited for our bill, the angel on my left was still alone.  I couldn’t not say anything, so I reverted to my old standby pick-up line:   

“Hi.” I said. 

“Hello.”

“My name is Michael.  What’s yours?”

“Gouzelle.”

“Gouzelle?  What a beautiful name.  I’ve never heard it before.  Where’s it from?”

“It is Chechen.  I am from Grozny, but I live in Moscow now.”

“Wow. Chechnya!   You’re the first Chechen I’ve met since I moved here…”

We started talking a bit about very mundane things: how often she came to the bar, how I was an American living in Moscow, how did she ever get such big and beautiful eyes... You know, the usual stuff you say when you meet someone.  As I was talking, my strategist picked up the bill and he and the client went to get their jackets from the coat check.  I had to wrap it up.   

“Gouzelle, it was really nice talking to you, but I have to go now.  Would you want to go out for dinner sometime?”

“Ok, that be nice.”

“Can I have your number?”

“Um-hum.” 

I started pulling out my phone, which made her freeze in an evident panic.

“Please do not take your phone.” She said flustered.   I left it in my pocket. 

“You want me to remember the number in my head?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Uh-Ok, give it me.”

She quietly told me her number.  I repeated it back to her.  She confirmed it and we said goodnight.  As I got up, I kept running the number through my head so that I wouldn’t forget it.  I then noticed that there were a couple bandits coming in.  They saw Gouzelle and bee-lined it straight over to her.  Everything then made sense.  Her boyfriend (or whatever he was) had arrived and I had managed to squeak out her number at the latest possible moment.

Once I hit the street, I pulled out my phone and entered the number into it.  I earned big points with the fund manager for this move and we kept talking about it as we walked to his hotel. 

“…She then told me the number verbally and wouldn’t let me take out my phone to enter it.  I then realized her boyfriend or sponsor or whoever that guy was had just walked in.  It was quite lucky timing actually or she would’ve been busted.”  I was saying.

My strategist, who had been in Russia for many years jumped in, “Lucky?  Picking up a Chechen mafia girl from a place like that- are you crazy?!?  I’m surprised you didn’t get killed!”   

We all laughed.  We dropped the client off at his hotel and then the strategist and I went out for a few more drinks.

A few days later I gave Gouzelle a call and we arranged to meet for dinner.  Considering that this was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, let alone gone out on a date with, I pulled out all the stops and suggested another totally high-end cafe.  (At this time in Moscow’s development, there were only a handful of top calibre places, so the list to choose from was pretty short.)  The place I picked wasn’t trendy and it was the most expensive place I knew of at the time.  Being such, it was usually pretty empty.  It was on Red Square overlooking the Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin’s tomb and the Kremlin Wall, and they made a mean beef stroganoff.   I always found the view to be impressive, romantic and it really put everything into a proper Russian context.  Gouzelle knew it and we agreed to meet there at 8pm a few days later.

I arrived twenty minutes early.  When I walked in there were a few bodyguards by the door and they gave me a once over as I went past them and to the coat check.   They were protecting the only occupied table in the place, which was near the entrance and away from the windows that overlooked the square.  The table had three bandits with dark skin at it.  They stopped talking and looked at me as I passed.  I went to the far corner of the room and took a table at the windows across from Lenin.  I ordered a gin and tonic and waited for The Gouze.     

At 8:15 Gouzelle walked in.  She was more beautiful than I remembered, a real goddess.  As she removed her fur coat at the coat check, she revealed a sexy as hell dress with a floral pattern underneath.  When she passed the gangsters, they started talking to her.  She stopped and they had a conversation for a few minutes.  She then came over to my table smiling.  We hugged, I kissed both of her cheeks, Russian style, and we sat down.

“Who are those guys?”  I said.

“Oh, just some people I know.” 

Jesus this girl is really running with the sharks I thought to myself.  She ordered a fruity cocktail that cost $30 and I ordered another gin and tonic.  After a couple minutes, she got a phone call and then excused herself to go to the bathroom.  As she was walking to the loo, she again stopped at the mafia table.  Minutes went by.  When the drinks were delivered, she was still at their table talking.  Ten minutes passed and I was almost finished with my new cocktail when she finally left their table and went to the bathroom.  I wasn’t digging her behavior.  It didn’t matter how insanely hot she was, I felt she was disrespecting me.  What kind of game was she playing?  I stewed and fumed for a couple more minutes; then my phone rang.  It was Gouzelicious.

“Hello?”

“Michael, I am very sorry.”

“Why are you calling me from the toilet?  What’s going on?”

“You need to leave.  I cannot come back to you.  I am very sorry but those men say they will hurt you if I go back to your table.  They are dangerous.”

“What?  Hurt me? What’re you talking about?”

“They will hurt you.  They do not want me talking to foreigner.  I no want you hurt.  Please go.” She sounded very scared.

I was shocked, but the writing was on the wall, “This is ridiculous, but Ok, goodbye.”  I hung up. 

I called the waiter over and asked for the bill.  I slammed her drink, paid the bill and started walking out.  As I passed the banditti, they looked at me with sinister, violent eyes.  What assholes.  I got my coat and left.   All this time, Gouzelle was still hiding in the bathroom. 

 I walked across the square kind of shell-shocked.  My strategist was right.  Living in the Wild East during these early post-Soviet years bore with it crazy risks as well as amazing opportunities and one needed to be constantly aware to their surroundings.   You could hit the jackpot or get beaten to a pulp (or worse) by a gangster over nothing…it was a fine line, like walking on a razor’s edge, but I guess that made sense, as since the scale of opportunity was off the charts, so had to be the danger to balance it.  The old risk-reward ratio.

These epiphanic moments that forced you to recalibrate your lifestyle and boundaries happened regularly during these days, but not so often.  It was the price of entry to experience Yeltsinism and Russia’s cultural revolution and everyone who chose to live there had to pay it or go home to the mundane.  I didn’t blame the lovely Gouzelle for anything.  She was sadly just as trapped by the system as all of us.  Her intense beauty and origin (Chechnya) provided the company she kept, which in turn kept her at their mercy.  Despite a mutual interest, she just wasn’t attainable to a common guy like myself.  I had forgotten the cardinal rule of visiting a museum- no matter how beautiful something is, you can look, but not touch.

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Like these post-Soviet tales?   Here is another one from Kiev when I went on a blind date and we went to the circus.

https://libertinereflections.blogspot.com/2017/12/another-day-at-circus.html