Putin and I go way back.

Not in the "we were college roommates" way. More in the "we once drank enough Russian wood alcohol to reanimate Rasputin and still woke up in a gutter speaking perfect Mandarin" way.

It was 1980, during some joint arms exercise—because, you know, Cold War, testosterone, nuclear peepee-measuring. And officially, Putin doesn't drink. But officially, I also don't have a warrant out in Kazakhstan.

We start on vodka, because in Russia, vodka isn't alcohol, it's breakfast. The kind of vodka that comes in an unlabeled glass bottle with a skull and crossbones and a government warning that just says Good Luck.

Then? Town. Red. Paint.

We pick up chicks. I pick up chicks. We pick up hookers. We bury hookers. Details get fuzzy. At some point, a cop tries to arrest us, and Putin says something about being KGB, and suddenly the cop is begging and handing us his gun like we're in some kind of fricked-up honor system where the first one to pass out loses.

I wake up naked. In a barn. Covered in hay, smelling like guilt and Soviet despair. Putin passed out in a tractor with an unlit and unfiltered cigarette in his mouth and a bottle of Baltika. One of the girls stole my watch. One stole his shoes. Putin still has his shirt off because of course he does.

Fast forward forty-something years, and I still fly to his place on the Volga every few months to ride around on horseback and shoot Dragunovs and RPGs at junked cars with the man himself. Still shirtless. Still looking like a gay Marlboro ad.

I say, "Hey, brother. Ukraine. Not cool."

He looks at me. That vacant, icy stare. Like a shark trying to decide if I'm food or furniture.

Then he nods. "Yeah, dude. I get it. I get why you'd think I'm an butthole."

"So?"

"Nope."

That's it. That's the whole conversation. International diplomacy, distilled down to two drunk buds in a hamlet, one of whom owns a nuclear arsenal and the other who once ate a piece of the Chernobyl sarcophagus for fun.

Back at his place, we drink tea. I look down. My fricking tea is glowing.

I say, "Dude."

He says, "Yeah, alright." (actually he said something like "Да, хорошо. Ты меня понял." but yeah)

Then he drinks it.

Motherlover just drinks it.

Said "You're lucky you're my homie."

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