Tysoвка Corporate or Open Air

Fresh reading for fans of Sergei Chetverukhin's prose. The book "Tysoвка Corporate or Open Air" came out in 2007 from the AST publishing house in two versions - paperback and hardcover, with identical contents. The club scene, cutting-edge geniuses crafting techno hits with the help of expanded consciousness, tenacious society lionesses scouting the dancefloor for rich and famous husbands or patrons, mob money laundered through music projects, and lots more of interest besides...
44100hz, as ever, publishes an excerpt from the book "Tysoвка Corporate or Open Air" in the Reading section. Read and enjoy!

Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
The southern night surrendered to the rhythm!
Volodya is mixing a one-of-a-kind cocktail. A work of art. This mix isn't in any bar register, in any encyclopaedia of drinks, including the Soviet cookbook. It's a love potion. "Love potion number ni-i-i-ine..." - Volodya hums the old song and smirks like an irresponsible fisherman. It's his gift to Dasha. The girl he's been thinking about all these last days. Dasha smiles at him mysteriously. Her lips are half-parted. It's as if she's teasing him with a bleached-white strip of teeth. What's in that smile? Does she like the way he flexes his muscles? It's for this that Volodya always wears a tight sleeveless vest. Perhaps she's mesmerised by the artistry with which he tosses the bottles high up and then slips his tenacious palms right onto the paths of their flight? And isn't there a fascination with his jokes in that smile? His peppery puns? She comes up to the bar:
- You look so much like Manya the coypu... She lives at my grandma's... I mean - lived... In the autumn grandpa needed a new hat, and the coypu... well, you know... in short... to take off the pelt... you understand? - and at this point Dasha suddenly breaks into sobs.
Volodya's aplomb instantly evaporates; he recalls the ancient joke about the seducer James Bond: Bond walks into a bar, orders a vodka martini and briskly makes a move on the most beautiful blonde, confident in his irresistibility:
- Bond! James Bond!
- Off! - the blonde replies. - Fuck off!

Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
The southern night is held captive by the four-to-the-floor kick.
Volodya silently sets the cocktail on the bar. Dasha downs it almost in one gulp. Just to drink something. Dry mouth! She's tripping unreally from the little piece she bit off Alina an hour ago. That is, off Alina's tab, a little heart that splits so easily in two:
- Where'd you get it? - Dasha asked her friend joyfully.
- The right people hooked us up! At the right party there are always the right people!
Alinka had scoffed almost the whole tab on her own and was buzzing with wild happiness at being one with everything going on.
- What people, then?
- The Moscow crowd... came down bit by bit... the providers!
Volodya stares at Dasha without looking away, until the last drop of his magic cocktail flows from the glass into her parched throat.
- I finish my shift soon... shall we go for a swim?
- Uh-h-huh... a-oooo! - Dasha isn't against it at all, she actually likes this guy. Athletic, muscular and not a bit like a faggot, so Alinka can quit talking shit for no reason. Dasha tries to smile at him, but her mouth, it turns out, is already stretched so wide in a smile that if she pushed its edges any further - it would tear. - Adios! - tearing her own mouth isn't part of Dasha's plans, and she floats off from the bar towards the dancefloor.
- Wait! Where are you going? Don't leave! - Volodya tries in vain to hold her back. Without turning round, she gives a farewell wave of the hand, which in forty-three countries is taken as a promise. Volodya is already ready to jump over the bar and abandon his post, but the boss materialises in front of the bar in the form of Che.
- Che, I'm so ashamed! - Volodya mutters into the ear of the old pirate who's come over for his customary portion of Agwa with Red Bull, - I slipped something into her drink... that is... I fixed her a cocktail... out of...
- Well!
- Basically, I made her a mix with an aphrodisiac! She's about to start throwing herself at every guy!
- Fag-got! - Che's assessment has nothing whatsoever to do with Volodya's sexual orientation.

Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
The southern night is losing its mind over the percussion.
David Swenton is turning it inside out! Right platter - to the left, left one - the same way, and immediately - back the other way!
- Rule, Britannia! - a dyed Creole yells on the dancefloor.
- Yoo! Yoo! Yoo! - shrieks a one-armed rave veteran, about forty, with a short, spiky crew cut on her head but, alas, with saggy tits.
- Le Bomb! Le Bomb! - three teenagers in T-shirts printed with a battered Kirkorov under the logo of OM magazine bounce in a slam.
- Where's-the-buzz... whose-firewood-buzz??? - a lanky bloke lays the words between the kicks of the bass drum, nodding at the three identical T-shirts.
- From ma-a-a-agical pla-a-aces, - one of the lads sings out in a goatish falsetto.
- Ah-ha-ha! - a pair of twin girls try to punch a passage into a parallel world with their hips. The persistence with which their taut hips batter against the springy wall is boundless!
Swenton turns it inside out. Sweat, tears, blood, euphoria! The honeyed sweetness streams upward from the dancefloor... and dissolves into the mountain peaks...
Swenton turns it clean inside out! Five hundred people, at the very least.
Che jigs along nearby, on the pier. He's admiring David, who flew in just three hours ago, quickly wolfed down some kind of meat, flopped into the sea, climbed out, dried off and stepped up to the turntables! He admires the virtuoso scratch technique, the agility of an aerial gymnast with which Dave works his magic in the space between the two decks and his trunk, out of which he keeps snatching black, green, pink vinyl records, juggling them, undressing them in mid-air, and, like pancakes onto a griddle, tossing them under the needles of the players.
- Ten... Thirty... Fifty-seven... - from up above, Che tries to count the crowd on the dancefloor by heads. Blondes, brunettes, peroxide-bleached, dyed brown, green, orange, blue, two-tone, with highlighted strands, three-tone, with shaved-in symbols, shaved bald, completely bald, with a Union Jack, partly balding, starting to bald... The heads keep on arriving.

Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
Doonts! Doonts! Doonts! Doonts!
The southern night spits out bursts of rhythm.
Dasha dives into the blazing crowd, the way love dived into the ocean of her own soul. In that soul love has been splashing about for an hour now, dissolved as a piece of a little heart-shaped pill generously offered by her friend. In the world there are no longer any people, or objects, or nasty jellyfish, or vile skunks, or repugnant stories that she doesn't love. She sways under the hurricane rhythm like a helium-filled balloon in a gust of the sou'-sou'-west. She touches all these people around her, whom she loves so much. She touches them with her hands. She touches them with her hair. She sticks the tip of her tongue out towards them. The tip of her tongue quivers in the electrified air. The tip of her tongue runs into another one just like it. The tongues intertwine, flowing from one mouth into another. Dasha opens her eyes and sees his closed. The eyes of a Moscow DJ. Moz. She remembers that only a day ago getting acquainted with his tongue was the last thing she'd have wanted. Now what she wants most is to eat this DJ. Her mouth opens until her jaws cramp and devours... Greedily gobbles... Swallows... She drags the half-eaten Moz off to one side. She's clung to him, and the two of them go racing away from the collective bacchanalia, from the many-legged monster, they tear out of the circles of light, they flee the searchlights pulsing after them, they merge with the blackness of the night at the edge where it merges with the blackness of the sea. They fall. Dasha's hand plunges under his belt, pushing the DJ's flat belly still further back towards his spine. What her hand closes around at first fits exactly into her palm, but instantly leaps out of it, instantly grows, like a giraffe that's resolved to make a break from the zoo.

T-Doonts! T-Doonts! T-T-Doonts!
T-Doonts! T-Doonts! T-T-Doonts!
The southern night is torn apart by cannonade.
Swenton changes the rhythmic pattern. The shouts and whistles grow louder.
Volodya runs from the bar, wiping his hands on his tight white vest as he goes. The whole vest is streaked with red, as if it's ending its life on a mortally wounded man. Volodya jerks his head in every direction so fast and rhythmically that to those around it looks as if he's dancing as he runs. He's scanning everywhere for Dasha. She's nowhere. The pier, the sun deck, the toilet, the dancefloor... There are plenty of people, but they're all in plain sight. And not one of them looks like Dasha. Volodya, horrified, clutches his head with his hands, which meanwhile doesn't stop swivelling.
- Where?! Where's your friend?! - he grabs Alina, dancing in the crowd, by the collar of her blouse.
Alina roars with laughter, fixing her dilated and happy pupils on Volodya. Some wired guy is bopping about nearby, grinning and jabbing a finger towards the edge of the beach:
- She pulled a lad! Dashka's swe-e-et!
Volodya runs into the darkness, to where the powerful scanners from the dancefloor don't reach.
- Excuse me! Sorry! - he leaps over couples inspired by a bit of light petting. There she is!
Dasha has mounted Moz and dug her hands into his thin, long neck. Her bare buttocks rub against his thighs. He lies there, arms flung wide and eyes shut. She's choking on moans, not like a cheated depositor of Trustfigbank, but like a hen about to drop an egg. Volodya throws himself at her at a run, grabs her by the narrow shoulders and tears her off Moz.
- Forgive me! I didn't mean to! It's all - not what you think! It's all - totally not that! - Volodya waves his arms desperately, finding no words to explain, - it's all the pill! The aphrodisiac in the cocktail! It was me!!!
- A-a-ah... I'm not thinking... Come to us... - Dasha winds herself around Volodya's neck and fastens a kiss onto his lips.
- You! What are you doing? - the stunned Moz jumps up and tries to drag Volodya off Dasha by the hair.
- Get off! - Volodya shoves Moz away.
- What fools you are! - Dasha grabs Moz's dangling member with one hand and tries to get into Volodya's trousers with the other.
- Take that! - Moz swings and hits Volodya in the eye. Who said a DJ can't be a male beast, enraged when his female is being taken from him?
Volodya throws Dasha down onto the fine shingle that covers the whole beach and delivers a series of return blows to his opponent's body. Dasha shrieks - she doesn't like it either. A security guard emerges from the darkness. His name, it seems, is Dima; his mother calls him Mitrya, and the girl he lived with all through his youth and split up with six months ago used the pet name Dyulya:
- Freeze! Anyone who twitches gets a smack in the mug!
By this time Volodya and Moz have already locked together and are butting heads in the literal sense.
- I'll give someone a smack in the mug right now! Not getting through, you gannets?! Break it up, I said!
Moz and Volodya let go of each other. They're as if in agony: breathing convulsively, their limbs still twitching spasmodically.
- What fools you all are! What... after all... - Dasha weeps her heart out, face buried in the shingle.

T-Doonts! T-Doonts! T-T-Doonts!
T-Doonts! T-Doonts! T-T-Doonts!
The southern night is wilting under the weight of the scratches.
- Fifty-seven... Eighty-nine... A hundred and forty-six... - from above, Che tries to count the crowd on the dancefloor by heads. The task is fundamentally impossible, but for Che right now nothing is impossible. Like a child, he's delighted that it's off and running! It's burst open! It's rolling! The people have moved on to the Open Air! Che hurries to count up his new toys, at least roughly, in general terms. Working the till is Irochka, Boris Ivanovich's granddaughter. The very same one who's waiting for DJ Sanchez. Che is absolutely sure of her. Over these weeks he's had time to convince himself that in the local family business it's not the done thing to cheat one another. He's of use to her grandfather, so she'll be utterly honest with him. But - something doesn't add up... Ten minutes ago Irochka told him the sum that had settled in the till by that point. There were clearly more people on the site than people who'd bought tickets... Something's murky here...
- WOW!!!
- OOOH!!! - the dancefloor explodes with ecstatic yells. This distracts Che from his musings.
- Look! Look! She's got - tits!
- No she hasn't! She's got a dick! Ugh! HE'S got...
Demich prances triumphantly across the dancefloor. Usually she comes out to dance in a bikini, which doesn't dispel the crowd's questions on the theme of "boy? girl?". At this moment everyone is watching the Chapayev-style gallop of a completely naked Demich. No bra, no knickers! Her first number in no way stands out on that narrow chest, but between the legs, it's plainly visible, something is dangling. With the shape and size of a cock.
- Demich! Get off the dancefloor! - Che takes advantage of the fact that the microphone is, by right and by duty, in his hands. To no avail, however. So he vaults over the railing and, shoving the party-goers aside, makes his way across the dancefloor to the ringleader of the round dance. Demich looks like Dionysus, the way all the world's drunkards picture him. Naked, drunk, dancing with bravado, and behind him - a retinue of satyrs. Che grabs Demich by the arm and drags her after him.
- Come on, I'm doing it for the show! - Demich screeches.
- Whoo-o-o-oa! - the coliseum stirs.
- You've lost your mind, girl!
- Ow! That hurts! I'll get a bruise!
- Leave her be! We need our queen! - the crowd around yells. - Queen! Queen!
- And what the hell is this appendage? - Che is baffled when he and Demich reach the admiral's bridge on the bar's second floor.
- What, forgot already? You're the one who spun the whole yarn about Vasya the fag!
- So? I was drunk. We had a laugh and forgot it.
- No-o-o way! I liked it!
- And so you've decided to run riot now?
- Well no... I just made myself a dick... I am a fashion designer by calling, after all... It's fun, isn't it! The way they all fell for it!
- Demich, knock it off! All the charm of life is in pranks, I agree, but, as your employer, I'm categorically against your stage costume!
- Why's that?
- Firstly, you've got no tits! You've got nothing to show! Pump in some silicone or make your peace with it! Secondly, mine is not a strip joint, I don't have a special licence... you go running out naked, and then I get done for corrupting the public!
- Is that all?
- No. There's also - thirdly. Thirdly, look around, - Che spins Demich around her own axis until the artiste starts to get dizzy. - We're in the mountains, this place is full of hot-blooded people for whom the sight of a naked woman is a concrete proposition! No need to provoke them! They'll catch you alone in a dark corner, and - goodbye, virginity!
- Ugh! - Demich snorts in offence, but signs of good sense appear in her eyes. It's clear that Che's arguments, especially the last one, have had an effect on her. She sighs and relaxes:
- Jawohl, mein Führer!
Che presses her to his chest and gently strokes her shaved skull, there where hair would be most fitting. Demich purrs pastorally.

To be continued...