English / 26.03.2020 / 2057

Dentist's Spartakiade. Or the life of Spartacus

Nikolay Mokhov, author from the Dark Side of Business

— I used to run like a wolf! I looked at everything in a skirt. And now?.. — says Sparta-cus — a strong man in his 60s.

— The computer is frozen — I can't do an X-ray. Let's go for a smoke, — Spartacus is the dentist of dreams. Even in the middle of treatment, he can offer a smoke break on his balcony, the way to which is through the hallway with a shelving unit. On the shelves are Soviet books on dentistry with new-fashioned magazines...

The balcony is small, hardly accommodates an armchair and a table with an ashtray. The view is on the dusty supermarket parking lot...

— ...That's what I tell her: when a man has an affair, it's a situation! And when a woman has it — it's whoring. So why do you confuse whoring with the situation?... Oh, men, women — are such a thing. As they say, the hair from the pussy will sink any barge (fem-inists are asked not to read any further, and it was not worth reading before)…

If my parents called me Igor, I'd sit at home. But they named Spartacus. All life is an ad-venture…

While Spartacus is telling the stories, I remember the plastic clinics in Moscow that are obsessed with service but have forgotten about humanity. The weary doctors there didn't know the names of the patients. They were only interested in speed — to serve as quickly as possible. And in a receipt from the cash register. Spartacus treats patients as human beings, not as units in the business plan...

— I couldn't sleep for shit, — says the doctor.

— Why is that?

— At two o'clock in the morning, the patient woke up... The pain, he said, is wild. Yelling. Well, what should I do? I had to go and prepare my tools.

— Have you cured?

— Yes. But then I couldn't sleep…

Muscovites, having visited Cyprus, often complain about the lack of service. Well, let them try to wake up their dentist at two in the morning... And have him do the surgery af-ter that. No. That's only possible in our Cypriot village...

— The cops put me and my friend in jail, — says Spartacus, another story from his time as a jeweler. — And my friend had long hair, he hid a pencil behind his ear — during the search, the cops did not notice. They put them in jail on Friday. Two days off ahead — nothing to do.

Oleg, a friend of Spartacus, took up painting Jesus on the wall. Then there was the virgin Mary. Spartacus helped. The paintings came out all over the wall.

Then comes a Monday. The cops are coming:

— Who did this?

— God from above... Who-who? Who was sitting here?

The guard left to consult with his superiors. Eventually they gathered a council and called the metropolitan. The church representative silently examined the artists' work... An hour later, a comrade in uniform commands:

— Gather your things and go!

They let the artists out, giving them a farewell parting:

— Get the fuck out of here. And take the metropolitan's card.

The metropolitan wanted a silver prayer scroll...

From the heading

Superstar of Conversational Writing

Oh! Were you expecting something? That’s odd. So many people gathered, and nothing’s happening. No-thing. Absolutely nothing. Can you imagine it? You might have thought we’d have a new text for you here, maybe even a story. One with elements of philosophical and theological discussion, one filled with real stories and adapted for practical use. So many expectations, and here I am, unprepared. I didn’t write a single word. It’s embarrassing, really. Well, don’t you worry. We’ll find something to “snack on”. I can’t promise a real feast of the mind, but there will be some food for thought. Like a diligent housewife who wasn’t expecting guests, I’ll have to come up with something on the spot. That’s not a problem. I just have to find the first Word. The second one will find itself. And before you know it, we’ll have enough for some salad and a couple sandwiches. It’s no Christmas dinner, sure, but if you pull out that bottle you have stashed away…

Whetstone for attention

— So the secret to success is to be in the right place at the right time?" - Someone asked in the Dark Side chat. How can I comment on this? Let me tell you about a multi-million dollar deal I once made. I'm not telling the story to show off as the money was already spent for parties in the city a long time ago — there is nothing to brag about. I'm telling the story to illustrate one principle.

So, here is the story. At a restaurant in Moscow, there was this construction businessman, his PR guy, and me. I had already handed over a report on my work. I was having some coffee, meanwhile listening to them discussing the promotion of business operations abroad.

Leonardo’s Notes

“The problem is, Nikolai, that you never finish anything you start. You don’t even have a degree,” my girlfriend scolded me. We were on the subway.
She had just received some money to make a website, where she would eventually put up some boring local news. The site had dramatically less subscribers than even her Facebook page. In a couple years, the project went bankrupt. But she never lost her faith in the magical formula:

“You need closure. Every beginning has an end…”