The first picture in this series, Life in Russian, is one of the most beautiful images I have ever seen. Look at her and you can finally feel these words by Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

As for our drunks? They have nothing on the Russians.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...