From Russia With Lust

On a Saturday night in May, Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi were drinking Pepsi and smoking American Spirits in a one-bedroom apartment in a high-rise near Times Square. They took turns leaning over a plastic compact disc case, snorting lines of speed. I declined their offer, and instead popped a tranquilizer I sometimes take called Soma. I just had a feeling I was going to need it.

Mr. Ames, 34, and Mr. Taibbi, 30, are Americans who for the past several years have been living in Moscow, where, since 1997, they have edited and published a raucous biweekly tabloid called eXile and have been doing their best to introduce Hunter S. Thompson’s “gonzo” style of journalism to 25,000 Moscow readers.

They were in the U.S. on a book tour; their first book, The eXile: Sex Drugs and Libel in the New Russia , had just been published by Grove Press. New York was the last stop. They’d driven a Lincoln Continental 10,000 miles around America, appearing at bookstores, classrooms and think tanks. Average turnout: 25 people. They’d borrowed the Lincoln from Mr. Taibbi’s father, Mike Taibbi, the Emmy-winning NBC-TV re

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He spoke about his sex life in Moscow. “Russian women, especially on the first date, expect you to rape them,” said Mr. Ames. “They’ll go back home with you and say, ‘No, no, no,’ and if you’re an American, you’ve been trained to respect the ‘No,’ because you’re afraid of sexual harassment or date rape, and so you fail over and over. But it took me a while to learn you really have to force Russian girls, and that’s what they want, it’s like a mock rape. And then you come back here and you’re really freaked out-because you don’t know if that actually exists deep in all women’s psyches, that that’s what they all want. All relations between guys and girls is basically violent, I think. It’s all war.”

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Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. pic.twitter.com/s2CGPqYtQw

— Gus (@Gus_802) February 20, 2014