Next Year, I'm Going Someplace Else
Day One
72 kg, Tang units 67, calories 3,200 (but who's checking the waistline when you are weightless with three Russian guys?
Space like the final frontier! It's hard to put into words, but this is even better than glacier skiing and buyintg the state of wyomina combined. It's worth the entire $20 million for that first glimpse of the Earth, our Earth, hangigng in heavens like a giant Christmas ornament. Tears came to my eyes. The crew, I have to say, was less moved. "Iz like a beautiful woman in cage,: said Yury, allowing cigarettes ash to float through the cabin. "You can look but can't touch." I guess you get blasé.
Day two
67 kg, Tang units 43, calories 2,900, cigarettes 4
What a thrill is to be weightless, Tlgat, whom I dubbe the Gentle Giant during training in Star city, can no longer catch up to me for what he calls his little shukta, which we Americans know as a wedgie. “Comeback you little runt!” he cries, chasing me trough the control module. “I’m going to get you, Mini-Mel (New nickname, Sigh.)
And then came some really cheering news: instead of sitting captive like a space monkey, the crew is allowing me to help out. Tonight, I zoomed around with a vaccum cleaner chasing brown bread crumbs and a free floating globules of red caviar. One got up to my nose. Yuk
Bad new this evening. We are passing over Pentagon and Yury announced that a transmitter, the galley’s microwave oven, something called a bulbulyatr and a toilet seat had been found broken.
Apparently, I had somehow bumped into them. “Shouldn’t be bad,” Yury said consolingly. “Around $700,000.” Apparently the Russians buy the same toilet seats as the Pentagon.
Day Four
65 kg, Tang units 22, calories 2,500, cigarettes 25, vodka units 4
The crew was under the weather this morning, and while they snored, I had to swab the borscht off the pod cables. But then Yury rewarded me with a tour of the American section of the space station. (NASA specifically restricted me to the Russian parts) My compatriots were on the space walk. “Screw them,” Yury said, kicking the hatch open. “Break anything you want. It’s – how you say? – on the house.” I didn’t think that was a very nice idea. But I did find some Gulden’s mustard packets. Oops. What a mess.
Day Six
59 kg, calories 1,000, cigarettes 43, vodka units 12
What a big bore the Earth is! Eastern hemisphere, western hemisphere, eastern – it never ends. The nights are completely dead, worse than on Marlon Brando’s Tahitian island, with nothing to do but argue with Talgat, who insists that Eleanor Roosevelt was a secret Nazi sympathizer. The ultimate insult: Yury delivered my final accident bill. I’m convinced I did destroy $40 million worth of space equipment. “We have saying from old days on Mir,” Yury shrugged, twirling me by my oxygen cable. “If broke, drink more.”
