By Adam Cayton-Holland
For a slide show from their romantic night, go to westword.com/slideshow. For the video, go here.
Irina Voronina sucks at beer pong. Or Beirut, if you prefer that name, which I most certainly do. That's how the distinctly college game in which competitors stand on either side of a table and hurl Ping-Pong balls into keg cups full of beer, then either fight, fuck or puke, was introduced to me. But I knew that calling beer pong by its preferred name might confuse Irina. "Why do you call it Beirut?" she would no doubt ask in her adorable Russian accent, and after double-checking to make sure she wasn't a spy, I'd muster some guess about how Beirut traditionally is a war-torn city and since we're bombing each other's beer cups, it just makes sense. And then, since Irina is from Russia, I'd make some crack that if it would make her feel more comfortable, we could call the game Chechnya. I would smile, and Irina would calmly smile back, and then she'd suddenly wind up and slap me in the face with all the force her 5'10" goddess frame could muster, and I'd spit beer out my mouth like a Water Pick. And while that would be kind of hot, it was not the way I wanted to start things off with Irina Voronina. So I sold out my roots and simply called the game beer pong.
Oh, I'm sorry, you didn't spend your Friday evening playing drinking games with the 2008 St. Pauli Girl? Huh. Then you probably didn't spend your Friday evening having wild sex with the St. Pauli Girl, either. And by "having wild sex," I mean "not having sex at all but instead saying goodbye to the pleasant and beautiful Irina after smoking her at beer pong, then watching the presidential debates slumped over on my couch, half in the bag from slamming too much St. Pauli Girl."
Every once in a while, it's good to be What's So Funny.
Backstory: St. Pauli Girl elects a new spokeswoman every year, typically some model/actress/dreamboat amalgam that the good people at the German brewery deck out in traditional hottie Olga gear before snapping an iconic photo of her holding a tray of the booze. That way, frat boys have something to cover up the holes they punch in walls from sexual frustration. St. Pauli sends whatever lucky woman is chosen for this honor around the country, to appear at promotional events and hawk beer. This year's St. Pauli Girl is the aforementioned Irina Voronina, a Russian bombshell who has appeared in Reno 911: Miami and Balls of Fury, and is a series regular on Cartoon Network's Saul of the Mole Men. She's also been featured in, ahem, Playboy. Me being me, and Irina being Irina, it was arranged that the two of us would get together at the Ginn Mill last Friday, for a meet-and-greet and a quick game of beer pong, which the St. Pauli Girl handlers arranged in the spirit of "We couldn't in good conscience leave town without getting you two bombastic individuals together," but which actually came out more like "You have twenty minutes."
Truth be told, I was expecting Irina to be dumb as a mule cart, but she was quite sharp. I had a series of questions that I figured would be hilarious for me, the sarcastic little funny bastard, to ask of the stereotypical hot blonde. But none of these worked; Irina was too on point. I guess you don't make it out of Dzerzhinsk, Russia — the center of chemical production for the country, one of the world's most polluted cities, where the average life expectancy is 42 — on looks alone. I did get one off, though. When I asked Irina if, as a Russian, she even liked German people, she responded that she did and that she understood what went on during World War II and everything, but feels it is time to move on and seek common ground, closing with, "I mean, what did Hitler ever do to you?"
Murdered my family.
But enough of that downer talk — on to beer pong! Irina had never played before — though she did say she's a flip-cup ninja — so I suggested a bet: If she won, I had to chug a St. Pauli Girl beer; if I won, she had to marry me. Laughing, Irina pointed out that not only is she already married, but she has a boyfriend, too, and is trying to get divorced. For some reason, I found that to be the hottest thing about this woman. I wanted to be the third man in the equation, have some two-month fling that left me a quivering, broken shell of myself, incapable of leaving the bed, weeping for my lost Irina, who made off with my soul and $150,000.
Instead, I demolished her in beer pong. She was ignoring the rules — in all fairness, I don't think she fully understood them — but I still beat her. She didn't chug all her beers, either, but that didn't matter. What mattered was the fun that Irina and I had, and that incredible attraction between us that we both felt so strongly except for her not at all. What mattered was that for ten glorious minutes, Irina and I were united on this earth as we were supposed to be, caught in the dance of love and lust and pointless, juvenile drinking games.
And that I was able to abscond with a St. Pauli Girl cardboard cutout. Because all I've ever really needed was my imagination.
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