Pussy Riot Hates Me

On Friday morning, my wife told me Pussy Riot was in town filming “House of Cards.” She said she’d bumped into a friend who worked on the set the day before and forgot to mention it. When I brought it up at City Paper’s morning meeting, people sort of gasped. It was newsworthy that the Russian punk/protest/performance-art group was in town to shoot an appearance on Kevin Spacey’s somewhat Putinesque political thriller. 

The appearance of Nadezhda “Nadya” Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, the two members of the collective who are on the show, was interesting in other ways too. They had been denounced for becoming public figures in an open letter which claimed to be written by the “true” Pussy Riot. It was a respectful distancing, saying the world had gained great leaders, but that Pussy Riot had lost comrades: You can’t talk at Amnesty International, play formal shows, or presumably be on “House of Cards,” and still be Pussy Riot. 

Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina repudiated the letter and, I mean, really it seemed awful petty— they were imprisoned for two years for playing punk music, mocking the state and its use of religion, in a cathedral. Bad-fucking-ass. And then, they get whipped by fucking Cossack thugs for bringing attention to prison conditions! They were goddamn heroes, bringing to mind everyone from Dostoevsky to Solzhenitsyn. Like all alt-weekly writers, I am pretty attentive to the concept of selling out—it’s our bread and butter, man—but, come on, talking at an Amnesty International event is hardly selling out, even if Madonna is there. 

So, I wrote the post noting that they were in town and went on with my day, much of which involved trying to track down confirmation on a story about the Copycat gallery AmEx (where CP contributor Lexie Mountain currently has a show). Or, now formerly AmEx, now Terrault Contemporary. Brooks Kossover, the gallerist, posted on Facebook that the credit-card giant American Express had contacted him insisting that he change the name of the gallery. I wrote him and asked for the letter. We talked, and he said, “We chose the name because it was really just trying to take this idea of a corporate title that has—not necessarily a stigma—but pull and weight and claim. It’s so simple, how can you trademark four letters? But you can.” But the letter didn’t look quite legit enough, so I called and wrote to AmEx, the credit card company, trying to confirm that the letter was real. After all, if Kossover was trying to taunt American Express, might he also be trying to hoax the City Paper?

I was thinking about this when I saw a friend on the street and she told me that Pussy Riot was in Club Charles. I really didn’t want to deal with them, but a reporter is never off-duty and I figured I’d regret it, even as stoned as I was, if I didn’t stop in for a beer. As I walked in, there was a woman in a yellow wig crouched out front smoking. Inside, it was mostly empty but I spied CP contributor Michael Farley and his partner Ryan Mitchell,  in drag as Ellen Degenerate and Whitney Biennial, along with perpetual contender for Best Baltimorean Kevin Blackistone.  Michael did not have his wig on, which, it turned out, was on the woman out front of the club, who, it turned out, was Nadia from Pussy Riot, as I discovered when three women walked up to the table where I had joined Michael and Ryan. 

I was a bit flustered and not eloquent, because my feelings were mixed. I usually don’t mind being hated, but I did not really want Pussy Riot to hate me. That somehow put me in a class with Putin, which was a horrifying thought. 

But Anya looked at Tolokonnikova and Alyokhina and motioned at me with her head and then gave a big theatrical thumbs down. Seriously, like a visible Siskel-and-Ebert umpire judgment. 

Today, in a world where there are far more rock stars or wannabe rock stars than there are journalists, someone needs to reverse the advice about rock stars that Lester Bangs gives Cameron Crowe in “Almost Famous.” Journalists are not your friends. We will seduce you and we will get you drunk on talking about yourself. We are a lot like strippers: We make you feel like the most important person in the world—for a minute. 

Pussy Riot understood that. They were right to simply stop acknowledging me. It was not really acrimony—I was just invisible. Had I been less high, more dedicated, and cared more for the world of famous people, I might have used that invisibility and hung around hoping to write something like “Pussy Riot has a Cold” in imitation of Gay Talese’s great piece on Sinatra, who refused to talk to him. But as it was, I was quite uncomfortably stoned. The red-and-black darkness of Club Charles had never seemed so hellish. So, when Michael asked if I wanted to go outside and smoke, I jumped at the chance, even though I’m off the smokes and he was just vaping. 

The next night, at the Sterling Sisters show at Metro Gallery, I met someone else who had been involved in the shoot, which turned out to involve a musical performance. He talked about how surprisingly poppy Pussy Riot’s music now was. “Le Tigre is producing their record,” he said. “That’s how they’re trying to get their message across now, I guess.”