There’s a cute little Karaoke Nightclub Restaurant across the street from my hotel called DaVinci’s (1) where you can order Fitness Tea (2) and pizza. Sveltlaana was my guest tonight and she was sick of nightlife and the catty girls who dress to attract men with the deepest pockets. “I’m not like that,” she said. She prefers post-war Dior. She collects vintage. Her dream is to be a clothes designer for “erotic pole dancers”. Pole dancing is a valid and respected profession here. Housewives take courses. She would give up her toothy grinned career to do it. Yes, she’s a doctor, but doctors don’t make anything here. It’s a poor person’s profession like being a schoolteachers is in America. Russia and Ukraine are the only two places in the world where being a doctor doesn’t pay. She would leave, but she met her husband last year and he’s already made two million dollars (dollars, not Rubles) in the past 16 months from establishing a Wellnes Center in St. Petersburg. A person can sell vitamins, health cocktails and new-age advice a few hundred times a day and you’d be surprised to see how fast that multiplies. He proposed to her after 3 days of courtship and now she’s put herself off the market. There’s really no reason to go out anymore.

Her husband was phoning again because he couldn’t understand what we could still talking about, but he was cool and told her she could take as long as she wanted. She walked to my hotel after diner and she just stood there in the lobby not saying good-bye so I invited her upstairs. In the elevator she compared a woman’s body to a guitar and told that what she loved about me clothes was how they can create different illusions if they are used skill. Men are attracted to illusions out of instinct, but it’s really a woman’s eyes that they are captured by because that is the part of her that reveals her passion. “Most people have no passion,” she complained as she poured herself a drink from my minibar. The artist’s duty is to provoke passion in the common man even if it’s only for a short time, like an epiphany. Then she lifted her chin with her fingers and she squinted. I thought that shit only happened in the movies but it also happens in Russia real life apparently. After an awkward silence she asked me if I only take nudes of young women or if I would consider taking photos of an old woman like herself. She told me she was 27.

1. Danny, Nastya’s boyfriend, told me that it was one of the best Italian restaurants in St. Peterburg even though nobody every really eats there. “The BEST doesn’t necessarily mean the most popular in Russia. Italian and Sushi restaurants have taken over the city like weeds.”

2. Fitness Tea is green tea infused with jasmine flavor, antioxidants and caffeine. That way you could feel healthy and righous and still get that little bump that coffee drinkers get.

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