A gauntlet of Natashas
There is a bar in one of the neighborhoods near my apartment that always intrigued me. It is on a dark side street, and there was always a group of men gathered outside. A gaudy gold-painted loin’s head is mounted above the door. To my eyes, it seemed to be something secret, something that was purposely underground.
I had two guesses of what this place might be: a run-down gay bar for old people, or a seedy mafia hang out. On several occasions walking home from a concert or gallery, I have been tempted to go in and see for myself what lies behind the lion’s head. Luckily for me, I didn’t follow my curiosity until I was with a good Turkish friend. He and I walked in front of it a few times, and his instincts were the same as mine: elderly gays and/or criminal masterminds. We were already under the influence of wine/beer/raki/vodka, so we didn’t have the best judgment.
We walked past the group of guys gather in front. They were a rough crowd, markedly different from the moneyed or middle-class guys that the trendy bars in the better-lighted streets nearby. My friend and I were out of place, but we pressed on. One look at me, and the bouncer/coat-check man asked if I were a foreigner. My friend, not so drunk as to lose his cleverness, jumped in with “I’m Turkish,” and we went into the bar.
The décor was a mix between ancient Egyptian kitsch and cheap, fake rococo. Is it any wonder that it appeared gay? However, after our eye adjusted to the dark, we saw that the back part of the bar was taken up almost entirely by women with dyed blond hair waiting for customers. Oh no, we misjudged – it’s a mafia/prostitute bar.
My friend, standing his ground insisted that we stay for a drink. He explained that as a proud Kurd, even a gay one, he wouldn’t be intimidated. So at the bar, we asked for a beer and a vodka. There were maybe twenty bottles of Absolut on the shelf. Only after the bartender told us that they were all out of vodka did we notice that all the bottles on display were, in fact, empty. We settled for a beer and headed to a booth. At that point, one of the blond women came to try and speak with us. My friend thanked the woman but, using his most upper class register, dismissed her. He explained to me that, as Turkey is still a very class stratified society, he was able to show with his accent that he was powerful and connected so that the bouncers wouldn’t try to exhort money from us (a sadly common racket in mafia run bars in Istanbul). Hmm linguistic anthropology is everywhere we look.
One of the common words for “prostitute” in Turkish is “Natasha,” obviously derived from the Russian name. At once funny (from a word-origin standpoint) and depressing (given the realities of human trafficking following the financial crisis in the former Soviet States following perestroika), “Natasha” is often applied to the many big-haired, short-skirted Slavic women, regardless of the way they make their living.
In the bar, I noticed a clue that this place might also be a strip club later in the night. Above the area where the women were seated, a platform and “stripper pole” were suspended in the air. Oddly, there was a mannequin saddled up against the pole and wrapped in what appeared to be christmas tree garlands.
In the end, we escaped unscathed, though we gorged for the price of the beer (roughly $15 for the local equivalent of a Pabst). I also emerged wiser from the situation, and will avoid exploring seedy places on my own.
