Dear Log,
«So I remained uptown, chilling with the Nigerians. The initial glamour of hanging out with all these black guys after spending my adult life in all-white societies, first in school in Minnesota and then in Russia, wore off quickly, but they were pretty interesting cats in their own right. Everybody was broke, and life fairly monotonous. Most of them would smoke blunts daily; only I and one other wouldn't blaze. Over the summer we'd play pickup basketball and go to the gym. I quickly adapted their diet - sometimes someone would cook a stew, but mostly I lived off of one order of fried chicken wings and shrimp fried rice a day, delivered for five bucks by a Chinese dude from Wing Ling restaurant. I played videogames competitively for the first time. After midnight there'd be the cream of reality TV: several dating shows of escalating absurdity. In the latest one, Elimi-Date, one guy meets up with four girls (or visa-versa) and cuts one after each round. The cat-fights and abject humiliation it spawned were things of beauty. »
