Radio talk

Transcript of TAL episode 238, "Lost in translation" , originally aired on 05.30.2003, first five minutes.

Host:Alex loved Russia, lived in Russia for a year, worked with Russian refugees in Chicago for two years, and his Russian teacher thought that he only needed one thing to make his life complete.

Alex: She thought that I needed a Russian girlfriend. She thought that only Russians would be able to stand up to me the way that I needed to be stood up to... or something... I don't know.

Host: Or American women are just too soft?

Alex: I don't know. I truly don't know. But anyway, that's the thought she had.

Host:So, she kept trying to fix him up with Russian women. And this once she had come out with a whole bunch of people, including this woman Alena, who was going to be his date.

Alex:And so, I meet them for dinner. Well, in the sushi restaurant, everybody's telling stories, funny stories and I am sitting across my date and my Russian teacher's turning to me and saying: you know, tell them this story, tell them that story. So I tell them the story and everybody is laughing except my date. And...so we leave the sushi restaurant and we go to this club and we are all dancing. Like my Russian teacher is dancing, all of her friends are dancing and everybody is sort of like exchanging partners. It's this fun scene and everybody is dancing except for my date, who is just sitting at the table and nursing a drink.

Host: And looking...

Alex: And looking, euh, bored, really bored.

[Music enters]

I keep on coming back from the dance floor and trying to say: you want to dance, are you sure you don't want to dance? She would smile bitterly and just shake her head. So then somebody else would drag me up. Finally I come back and I am sitting next to her, trying to strike up a conversation, something about dancing, or something like that. She sort of looks at the floor. People are having a great time all around. She nods a chin towards the floor and she's like: This is an American dance.

[Music zooms to first plane, fades, continues]

I drove away, thinking well that was a horrible date. Neither of us enjoyed eacher other, that was——

Host: that was a disaster, pretty much.

Alex: We were not going to be seeing each other again. I get to Russian class next week. My russian teacher says, hey are you going to call Alena? She had a great time! I was like, I was trying to figure out what that possibly could have meant.
It really became fascinating to me. I realized that I have a clear and perhaps culturally enforced idea of what a great date is. It has to do with what it is like to fall in love. In my head, what I think of as a great date was like in the movies, like falling in love montage of the movies.

[Old movie soundtrack]

You know, you go on a great date, it often involves some boardwalk, there's a great deal of throwing your heads back in laughter. You might chase each other around a tree.

Host: There's the splashing of water.

Alex: Splashing of water is always involved. (chuckle)

[Movie music]

I think for her, there's this thing I always noticed in Russia, for her, I think it's a totally different thing. In Russia, and in Russian literature, there's a lot of talk about the "soul" and "soulmates" and like...

[Russian music begins]

I think for her, falling in love means finding the one person on the planet who understands the misery of life as deeply and fully as you do，and then can talk to you about it.

Host: So, when she acted all depressed on a date, she was not actually blowing Alex off, like he thought at the time. She was flirting. So Alex decides to ask his Russian teacher about this theory, that Americans and Russians have completely different views of what it means to fall in love. Alex was a little nervous to try this out on her, because he's worried that maybe it's insulting, or it's stereotyping Russians. But he explains the theory to her.

Alex: She totally agreed. She was like:" that's absolutely right! You are right! Then, she just went on a rant about Americans. She was like: Americans, they have no understanding of what it is like to fall in love. Americans, I never understand, why do you always say: he makes me laugh? Why is that so important? 'He makes me laugh!' Every American I've ever met, all they say, you know, when you ask how their relationship is, they say 'He makes me laugh'. Is that the greatest thing in the world? What's so great about:'He makes me laugh'?"

She just, you know, went off.
This is something that I've actually said many times: I just want somebody who can make me laugh.

[Voice fades, Music regains volume and marches on]