No, I am not from Florida. Yes, I did vote via absentee ballot before my departure to Siberia. While Americans began to enter the voting booths on November 7th, I was witnessing the former Soviet Revolutionary Day Holiday in Tomsk, a small city in Siberia, halfway between Moscow and Vladivastok. It was half past ten in the evening and I began my search for the "Communist Party" Olga had invited me to. Up and down the tram tracks three times but no club. It must have been two or three times that I passed two older women chatting on the corner. They had a rotweiler on a leash that began to eye me suspiciously. I asked them if they had heard of the club or knew where it was. The blank look in their eyes told me otherwise. I thanked them and scurried away, mindful of the rotweiler's white fangs as they trembled and glowed under the dim streetlight.

I finally looked a bit closer at the map and realized I had been pacing back and forth along the wrong street. With frozen cheeks and floppy fur beret, I walked down a bloc, turned the corner and saw the neon lights of the Graft Nightclub in the distance. As I walked in, my glasses immediately fogged up so I didn't see the man who approached me and asked if I was American. I felt like a prisoner in my own clothing all tangled up with the straps of my rucksack and the big collar of my fancy coat. Perhaps the women at the banya pinned a sign to my coat, or maybe the floppy beret gave me away. Or maybe it was just the clumsiness of being a Californian in Siberia. I was definitely the American. No matter how difficult it may be, Russian women manage to always appear so light on their feet in their stylish formfitting coats and 3-inch spiked boots. I'll never know, as I am a pragmatist when it comes to walking in snow and ice.

When my glasses finally adjusted to the heat, I looked around at the interior of the club entranceway. It certainly was "new Russian" judging by the fancy marble floors, mirrored walls and ostentatious chandeliers. The young men in their theme costumes, Soviet uniforms and arm bands, were obviously too young to remember what the revolution was like. The enormous bust of Lenin perched on the counter ominously observed everyone who walked through the door. Young locals raced around from room to room, saluting each other in mockery of the former Soviet holiday while sipping their milk cocktails through colorful straws. For a mere fifty rubles, or $2, I could stay till 6 a.m., rocking to the techno-beat of new Russian music, intoxicated by the secondhand smoke from my fellow partygoers ultra-cool foreign cigarettes.

I found Olga, or rather, she found me. She looked great. She is a petite bleach blonde with a figure like Marilyn Monroe. Her long eyelashes painted blue-black, she obviously has learned to use her eyes to her advantage in this ravaged economy. Her boyfriend is from Cyprus and while he's away for a few months, they share a modest two-roomed flat for $50 a month. Going out is not rare for her and she can afford to sip milk cocktails through colorful straws.

Remember those old Soviet pictures of the bleach blonde in the working clothes and red kerchief? She was that woman with bright blue eye shadow and blood red lipstick to enhance her striking features. She was so excited to see me and took me on an excursion all around the club.

Upstairs, there is a restaurant with an open spiral staircase of marble and gold connecting the balcony to the main floor of the restaurant. The first section contained an indoor pond with plastic plants and a waterfall. I didn't notice if there were any fish. We reached the top of the staircase and a young red-haired Russian woman began waving to me from across the room. I didn't recognize her at first without her whiskers and cat-costume, but it was Nastya from the Halloween party. She was with two American men, smoking and flirting and sipping her milk cocktail through a straw. She invited us to join her and I ordered a local beer. The two men were computer programmers from the Denver, obviously enjoying this interesting party.

We chatted for a few minutes and I glanced around at the other tables. Men and women in their thirties and forties well-dressed and obviously well-off, sat around with tables full of Russian "zakuskis" or appetizers, bottles of vodka and small crystal shot glasses. Laughter and excited chatter mixed with loud music and smoke created a surreal feeling as the three or four TVs portrayed the various communist parades of decades past on Red Square. They showed speeches by Gorbachev from the 80s and Yeltsin from the 90s. I couldn't tell where the past ended and the present began as I never saw Putin atop the mausoleum giving a speech or waving to the people in the square.

I know they closed the roads this morning for a parade when the driver had to circle around the main street, but we worked through the holiday in a small fourth floor office. Along with my twenty and thirty-something colleagues, we discussed the market for dry wall construction mix in Tomsk and how to break into a Mafia-dominated industry. Outside, the bright winter sun created severe shadows in the snow of the forgotten veterans as they somberly marched down Lenin Street from the lonely concrete statue of V.I. Lenin to the massive 20-foot high metal image of a man and woman entwined with their hammer and sickle hovering over a small eternal flame at the other end of the street.

My thoughts returned to Igor, as he asked me a question as to why I was in Tomsk. I didn't really know how to answer that question and I was saved by the entrance of 7 or 8 beautiful young Russian women dressed in workers clothes and kerchiefs, escorted by a muscular man in tight red shorts and tank top, an enormous dildo stuffed sideways into his pants. They performed to the old Soviet songs and by the end of the number, the stick thin women were gyrating their bare white flesh, covered only by thin lacy red g-strings and shiny red stars that somehow managed to cling to their nipples. Now I understood their hesitation to allow me to enter with my camera. The show lasted less than 8 minutes, and they returned two or three more times in different clothes, but with the same red stars. I must admit, I now wished that there were a few crystal glasses and a bottle of vodka on our table as well!

I remembered that it was Election Day in America and I tried to muster up some interest in American politics. As far as these young partygoers were concerned, Mickey Mouse could have been elected today in America. Democrat, Republican, Communist or Green, it didn't seem to matter, as long as the Party continued. Siberia is not a place to worry about the next President of the United States.

After the forth striptease, dizzy from the smoke and noise, I politely bowed out and headed home in a $2 cab at 12:30 a.m. Outside, the full moon and street lights created a soft warm glow on the snow as the silence of the early morning hours permeated the air. As I looked out the window at the quaint wooden houses where the regular folks slept soundly in their centrally heated rooms, I chuckled at the memory of those stars and the skinny white legs in high heels kicking to the music. The playful looks on the bright innocent faces of the youth blended with the stark serious images of the old communist politicians and veterans on the TV screen like oil and water. The contrast is bittersweet as this enormous country with thousands of years of tumultuous history continues to struggle to find an identity that does justice to both the rich culture of an elderly past and the dynamic effervescence of a youthful present.

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