Hey folks!

Here's the lates update. It's a bit difficult to post photos on here while calling from Russia, so I'll let you check 'em out on my site. You can find them here:
http://www.aaronlawrence.com/newfiles/aardiary2.htm

And don't forget, you can preorder our videos at the following address as well:
http://www.aaronlawrence.com/newfile...e/ordering.htm

Life is going well here in Russia. So without further ado, he's the latest update!

--Aaron


Day 2 - Getting the Feel

June 2, 2001
7:35am Moscow Time
Hotel Pulvoskaya

Hey Folks! It's pretty early here (7:35am) and I've been out all night. So much to tell. Where do I start? Probably by letting you know that I know a bunch of you want to know how to contact Maxim. Never fear, I'll let you know toward the end of the updates. You can't hire him before then anyway, as I already have him booked. : )

Last you heard from me it was May 31st in the late afternoon. Timo and I were settling down for a long evening's nap. It felt wonderfully. Even the fact that the sun only sets for a few hours per night didn't bother us. Yes, it's very light here. You could go outside at 2am and read a book without needing a light. The sun sets about 10:30pm and it never really gets dark.

Maxim was getting bored, so he asked if I minded if he went out for the night. I told him to go ahead, and he went out to Club 69. He came back in around 5am on June1st. I woke up for a few minutes to welcome him back, then went back to sleep. We all finally got up around 7am and went down to breakfast - our first real encounter with Russian food. It was a lot like an American breakfast, only different. The eggs had a lot of salt in them, for example. And there were curds (cuzds as the Russians spell it - z = the "r" sound here). That was my first time having curds. A bit like cheese. I wasn't sure whether I should put them on bread or just eat them with a fork. There was also a cake that looked like cornbread, but was much heavier. Physically heavier, too. It actually felt heavy to hold up. Maxim said it was made with some sort of curds too, although for the life of me I don't know how they'd get curds in there. Tasted a bit like lemon. Quite good. There were croissants for breakfast too. Not quite sure what croissants were doing in Russia. Making the French feel at home, perhaps?

We went back up to the room to take care of some business. We called the models and left messages with most of them to call us back later that afternoon. I e-mailed two contacts that I have and asked for their numbers. Maxim also called the airline about my luggage - they said it would be coming in on a 4:10pm flight from Helsinki. So I put back on my clothes (and the underwear I'd been wearing since the morning EST on May 30) and we headed out to do some tourism.

We decided our first bit of tourism would be to hit the downtown and look at some of the Russian architecture. Cathedrals, old buildings, and the outside of the Winter Palace (Hermitage). We wanted to find a place to exchange some money and to grab something for lunch at some point.

The tourism part turned out to be fun. We took a nice walk through the busy St. Petersburg streets and we took lots of pictures and filmed lots of footage of the old buildings. You'll see some of it on the videos, and I'll attach a little bit of it to this update.

Stopping by a cathedral, we had a lesson on how Russians treat foreigners. Maxim bought us three tickets at 10 roubles (30 cents) to do up to the top of a cathedral and view the city. He said we needed to be quiet around the ticket-takers, as those were the Russian prices. Foreign passport holders paid $10 each. Later on when we were exchanging money, we found out that the big outside signs only applied to Russian passport holders. Once you went inside they had not-as-good rates for foreigners. We stopped in several places before Maxim exchanged money for us. We got 29.12 roubles to the dollar that way. Not bad considering the inernational exchange rates were officially 29.16, and Americans were being offered 28.85 or so. I was pleased.

Maxim found it funny to watch Timo and I walk around. We kept oogling the guys. I mean there are a LOT of good looking guys here! So much so that we fell in love about 50 times. Well, not love perhaps. But certainly a high amount of lust. Needless to say, we are looking forward to meeting (meating!) some of these boys.

After lunch we went back to the hotel to take a nap. Maxim was particularly tired, as he had only slept 2 hours. Timo and I were just as sleepy, and fell asleep. We woke up periodically as models called us to arrange meetings for tomorrow. And we woke up to call the airport. My luggage didn't make it on the plane from Helsinki. It would come on a later flight that evening.

To my good fortune, it did! We got up around 10pm and called the airline. The luggage had arrived and I could go pick it up. After a relatively painless conversation with customs I had my clothes, condoms, and lube, and we went back to the hotel. A friendly taxi driver gave us his personal # and agreed to be at our disposal during our trip. A useful arrangement, as not all drivers were so friendly. We arranged to meet him in front of the hotel at midnight to take us to Club 69.

I took a quick shower and put on clean clothes (and underwear, thank God). We went downstairs at midnight, met our cabbie, and went to Club 69. It was everything it was supposed to be - clean, nice, not too crowded, and quite trendy. The staff wore soccer uniforms that drove the three of us wild. Upstairs where some of the strippers hung out was one waif of a dancer that I REALLY wanted to get into my movies. We laughed that everytime I tried to make eye contact with him he just didn't notice. Later on we made him an offer to be in my movie. He turned us down and seemed slightly offerended. "I would never do that!" he exclaimed in Russian.

That turned out to be the mantra of Club 69. Even the boys that were clearly hustling didn't want to hear our offers. They didn't consider themselves for hire. They simply liked to hang out and wait until someone befriended them for some sort of long-term arrangement. Unlikely, since the average age of the bar was about 24. But they seemed to keep up hope. Maxim recognized one gentleman with a boytoy who was well-known in Moscow as being wealthy, but never quite spending money on boys. He'd lead them around with lots of promises of money that never quite panned out.

After several hours at Club 69 we were tired and frustrated. The boys were great to look at, but they simply weren't interested in money. They wanted to dance and to see and be seen. So we decided to head to Sinners, the other bar in town. Maxim said it wasn't as good, but perhaps that would be what we needed.

Our cabbie was off duty, so we hired a local cab to take us over. Maxim arranged the fee in advance (100 roubles = $3.30). We we got to our destination he said something to Maxim in Russian. After he pulled away, Maxim said that he complained that if he had known he would be driving foreigners, he would have raised his price. He called us a Russian swear that loosely translates as "rich trash." I was offended at first, but decided not to be. From his perspective I am rich trash visitng a foreign country. And from mine he's an ill-mannered cabby working the night shift in St. Pete. I'm not the one who is jealous.

Perhaps it was because of the cabby, but once inside Sinners we felt very out of place. The bar was clearly more of what we were looking for, especially the top floor where a number of young men were hanging out. We couldn't tell if they were hustling or not, but it seemed a step in the right direction. Our bad vibes continued for some time until we met a pair of Australians there. They seemed to be having a good time, and that put us at ease.

After frightening away a few guys at Club 69 with an offer to bein videos, Timo and I thought we'd try a new approach. We asked Maxim to invite guys to come hang out with a pair of Americans, and to tell him that we thought he was cute. We'd buy him a drink and get talking to him. Maxim would translate for us, and would tell us his impressions of what the person might be thinking based on his language and culture. If he was giving the other guys information on us based on what he knew ("you can probably bargain them for more" for example), we couldn't tell. I don't think he was though. He had become a friend by now, and was also being employed by us.

So we got talking to two guys at Sinners. The first was Eugeney. I'm not sure if that's how you spell it, and Maxim is asleep. But it's close enough. Eugeney turned ou to be a military boy. He is in college at the Pushkin (a neighboring city) naval academy, and is training to become an electrical engineer. When we had built up his trust we asked him if he would like to make a little extra money. He was quite interested, probably dueto the fact that miltary boys make notoriously little in Russia. According to Maxim, even afer he graduates he can only expect to make $100-$150 per month. The ability to make another couple of hundred dollars from us would be quite appealing.

We told him a bit about our videos, and he was interested. We didn't explain all of the details (such as how I sell them, for example) because it was difficult to explain the context. Saying I sell them over the Internet might have made me think I was some sort of George Duroy from Bel Ami. So we told him that they were sold to private collections. Which is fairly true, actually. I don't like to lie or take advantage of anyone.

Maxim predicted he would want to negotiate, so we started with a low bid. Sure enough, he counteroffered something closer to what I expected. We agreed to pay his transportation costs. He asked for the transportation money in advance but I told him I'd prefer to repay him when I see him. He was not offended and agreed. And when Maxim went to the bar to get another drink ("Can I have a pack of cigarettes, too?" Eugeney asked me), I told Eugeney he was cute. He didn't understand the word but understood my gesture and compliment. He replied "you too" in very broken English. Very sweet.

We talked to him for a few minutes longer and then said goodbye. We arranged to meet him in front of our hotel at 1pm on Sunday. I wasn't sure he would show, but Maxim predicted he will. As I understand it, what we offered him would be the equivalent of offering a poor US sailor in San Diego $2000 to do a video for a couple of hours. Even if they turned it down, the money is very tempting. Made all the more powerful because the offer, at least here in St. Petersburg, is not likely to happen again.

After Eugeney we went to leave, but stopped when we saw another boy by himself. His name turned out to be Andrei, and he was 19 years old (Eugeney is 20, by the way). We talked to him for a while, but he turned down our offer. He explained that he had a boyfriend and they were monogamous. Bummer, but such is life.

We left the bar around 5:30am and went out to breakfast. I would have stayed and looked for guys for a little longer, but the guys were rapidly heading out anyway. We had done what searching was possible for the night.

Breakfast was uneventful except for the guy in line next to us. He was surrounded by half a dozen women. He asked us if we wanted any of them. At first we thought he was joking, but Maxim assured us he was serious. He asked Maxim if we would preer boys, but Maxim wasn't sure he heard him correctly until it was too late to respond. Oh well! At least now we know that the prostitution scene in St. Petersburg is alive and well. It's just a question of how to access it. Harder in gay circles than in straight, but that's not surprising. Probably just as well too, since Maxim was sure the guy was connected with the Russian mafia. They are very alive and well here.

From there we went back to the hotel, and Timo and Maxim went to sleep. I am writing this update then I too will drift off. We'll get up at 10am to get the free breakfast, then come back up and sleep again.

Our status now? No scenes filmed, 12 scenes to go (ideally) and 2 for Timo. We have several models to meet, several leads on local contacts, and have started working through our list of local hangouts to meet models. Later today we have meetings with guys at 3pm and 6pm. We haven't seen either's picture, but are hopeful one or both will work out. In other words, we're getting the feel for Russia and our adventures have just begun.

--Aaron