Martyn meets Bolt

A sigh rose up from his bed, and, since he was not able to turn around, or even as much as stir any of his limbs without any pain, Martyn rolled his eyes to the ceiling. His body felt like painful slush everytime he moved. Last night, before going out, he had written into his notebook: "These days I have the feeling life is punching me in the face continuously. It used to dunk my head in the toilet every day, now it's only throwing punches. Things have gotten better, right?"
Little did he know that later that night he was to be punched in the face quite literally. This whole story had not contributed to lift his spirits, needless to say.
The evening had been a rather quiet, but nice night out, in a bar round Kitay Gorod, seeing a band. By the time they had decided to go home, it was gone half past two, so there was no metro service anymore. Lena was going to let him crash on her couch that night.
To enter the house you had to pass a glass door. That uncomfortable moment when you didn't really know what to say anymore, but knew you should find something, had long come and gone. Both had partied hard the night before and tiredness had had the upper hand that evening. Lena had a problem getting the key for her apartment out of her pocket, and held the downstairs door open with her left hand splayed onto its surface, while her other hand fiddled around in her pocket. Martyn walked forward into the disorientation of the complete darkness that shrouded the staircase. Just a second of this uncertainness had passed as his surroundings alit with a flash, and it was not Lena pressing down the staircase clock timer. Someone whose eyes had been better accustomed to the dark had walked up to him and hit him right into his face. While Lena scrambled to make some light, Martyn felt he was choking as his airways were being cut off by the same person grabbing him by the collar and pushing him violently up to the wall. Martyn could feel the adrenaline rush through his temples, and he hastily tried to cover his face and stomach with his arms and elbows as punch after punch rained down on him. By the force of the blows he would not have guessed this was a girl. Someone must have taught her how to punch. Later on he found out it was a known fact she was into lifting weights and so on. That moment right there he could feel all that in the swing of her fist. She did her job without so much as sweating a drop, using his face as a living punchbag, going to work quite business-like, forming some sort of bloody, mushy sculpture out of it. Not even taking a look to appraise her work, she finally made off out onto the street, leaving Martyn and Lena to put the clock timer back on as it cloaked them in blackness. It had all been over in less than two minutes. Lena looked at Martyn, trying to shake the blank stare of disbelief from her face, then rummaged in her pocket to find a tissue and wipe the blood of his cheek. "That was my ex", she said, almost apologetically, "I crossed her once before in the staircase, but I did not know she came to hang out here regularly at night. I had not realized what she was up to." Martyn had slumped to the ground, leaning against the wall. Lena held out a hand and helped him to get up with the words, "Let's put some ice on your face". They started the slog up the stairs under the clinical white light of the glaring, glabrous light bulb sticking out without lampshades from the tiled wall. Martyn felt nauseous from the punches in the belly, and he felt like his knees should be shaking, although they weren't. When they were inside Lena's apartment, he lay down to sleep with a bag of ice gingerly posed on his cheek. He felt like his cheekbone might have been brayed to dust, and under his fingertips he could sense the swelling. Maybe it was fractured. In the night he felt the heat swell his skin, bloating the features of his face into puffy distortion and the next day he would even have bruises on his back from being pushed onto the wall.

April, 2007

A handful of potent purple pills were split in halfs and ingested. Twenty minutes later we were coming up on them like floaters being released from an underwater anchorage surging to the surface of a watertank.
The boys immediately pitched into a brawl. Lena and Shurik threw themselves into the mix, too, and soon I also had an arm or leg entangled in the whole mess. The next day Flor had a black eye, and the rest of us were adorned with deformed inkblots and blurred black-to-blue blossoms of bruises on limbs and shoulders. Anyway, none of us had a clear memory of how that had happened and what happened after that. One distinct thing I can still make out is that not long after the scuffle, I puked all over myself and subsequently practically felt my pupils pop even larger.

There was a nazi-concert not far from the house that night and with these goddamn monster pills we were just about in the right mood to go for a serious punch-up. Luckily we were also too damn drunk already, so that, all dressed up with our crash-helmets on and our baseball-bats at the ready, we collapsed in laughter on the stairs on our way out and cancelled the whole affair.

This may be the one evening when it's fair to say that alcohol may have saved my life.

Ungdomshuset Solidarity Evening, March 2007

Concert in the bunker. Its vault is so low, that although people were lifted up continuously to crowdsurf, it was a dangerous undertaking if you didn’t want your face get chafed off by the ceiling. All the skinheads feared for their 300 euro keppis, the punks kept checking their hand-mirrors if their mowahawks were still neatly in order.

March 8, 2007

In Moscow there is no network of feminists and Vlasta had to roll in on a jolty, clattering train from Kiev to kick her friend Lena’s ass to get something done. Her unshaved female armpits came to match the only ones existant in Moscow right now. These are mine, -and so we instantly connected. In typical Russian inefficiency, having feted Vlasta’s arrival the eve, the 7^th of March we slept till five in the afternoon, then had slow tea over exciting stories from ecological camps and anti-establishment actions, and it is only because Russian shopping centers tend to be 24 hour-ones, that my mission (steal all the tarpaulin and coloured scotch for banners from OBI) could still be accomplished. The real preparations had to wait till the “holy” 8^th of March itself.

It was a feat, but in order to manage our very tense schedule for the day of the action as efficiently as possible, we got up in the middle of our usual night, some twenty minutes before noon. Despite my usual scatter-brained laziness, some of my “German efficiency” shone through, 'cause had I had my way, we of course would have been up on that bridge hanging that banner at 5 in the morning already. I simply had too many ants in my pants to let them have slow tea over exciting stories from ecolollic camps and anti-allegorical actions this time and let trickle away that day. So at around 1 o’clock we finally moved our asses, bought some beer on the way to the metro, and off we were to our task.

I am not going into the tedious details of how exactly the stars aligned to meddle with our mission, but overconsumption of vodka impeding our motoric skills honestly was just one of the factors. For example we also lost the key to the squat where we were going to stick our sticky bits together and all that, and so we had to walk all the 2 km back to the metro exit, everyone scrupulously scanning the ground for that tiny shiny tool that was supposed to open the door to the bunker for us. On the way we stumbled across a bottle of champagne, still more than half full, sunken in the snow by a tramway stop, the occasion of which was greeted more clamorously than the actual rediscovery of the key I must say.

When finally we were tottering over tarpaulin spread out on the ground, trying to coordinate the words the best –“and where do you think we can fit an anarchist sign?”-, I mentally remarked, somewhat resigned, that in Belgium we would have done all this much quicker, simply because of the fact that instead of debilitating alcohol we would of been consuming stimulating amphetamines. Oh well, whatever. When we were done, we actually expected to step out into the night, but *surprise, surprise* there was still a good hour of daylight left -we’d done better than we thought!

Half and hour later at Kazanskaya metro station a great confusion of hands called-in as back-up were shaken. Climbing up that muddy and slippery slope to the railway bridge actually proved the most difficult part of the action. The banners themselves were swung over the railings swiftly, and were readily attached. Granted, we ran out of sticky tape, but I deftly fixed the last lash with a sock of mine. We then ran away along the rails, no one losing their life to the unexpected 7.31 to Odessa speeding out of Kazanskii Trainstation or anything. Climbing over a wall in a convenient place, we split and saved ourselves into different side streets, no one after us, and Vlasta and I, walking hand in hand like a couple in love, French-kissed to celebrate the smooth success of our action.

The banners, hanging from a railway bridge above one of the busiest streets of Moscow were clearly legible and hung there till the morning. One small gesture in a town of 15 Million people, but I’m glad we did our little bit.

July 2006

Everything was spectacularly disorganised. Ideas for really cool actions fizzled out in hourlong conversations turned into bickering: "You always spoil my plans" -"No, but YOU never help me with mine!".

Some ideas were hilariously megalomanic: for example the one to "conquer" Peter Pavlovskii Krepost' with anarchist flags -Peter Pavlovskii is pretty much the St. Pete equivalent of the Tower of London, if you get the idea.
Another splendid idea was as follows: There'd have been eight people in suits and ties with the 8 presidents' masks handing out portions of vegetable caviar (which by colour and consistency comes pretty close to those of squashy, semi-solid diorrhea) to a handful of us others. At first we would have been submissively spooning up their shit - like much of the world is doing right now. Then the situation would have turned and we would have covered our ad hoc representatives of the great leaders in a volley of hurled excrement - as we can only hope will somehow happen in real life.
We had the banners "G8 - We're eating your shit" and everything else prepared, but then -not going into the details- it all went tits up for bad communication. Shame Shame Shame.

On the whole, the amounts of vodka consumed on a daily basis were barbarous. People's hands were shaking before the first few drinks in the afternoon time. The meaning of the word "hangover" became so global as to blend with the word "sober" and both words' meanings became hollow... : by the end I had to drink just to start feeling a little sober. One of the last nights I drank 6 or 7 shots of vodka, didn't feel drunk and instead went to sleep on the couch with the Oi playing loudly and everyone else continuing the evening. I woke up at around 4 to sit with my good friend Insomnia just when the music had been switched off and everyone else had started snoring away.
One guy from my circle of friends disappeared for a few days, everyone was worried, then we found out that he had got arrested for public drunkenness. Not even for an action, for god's sake.


And, by the way: As you see, no one got shot.
All the paranoia for nothing.