Pink Monkey Chatter

So a friend of mine was trying to give up smoking, and apparently his grandmother had great success with the notorious Yefim Shubentsov, otherwise known as the Mad Russian of Brookline.

Being a pessimist and general bad apple…I had my doubts. I helpfully suggested that my friend simply forget the circus sideshow and let me purchase a tazer. I truly felt that I could whip up some serious negative association with that puppy, but alas..tazers are frowned upon in MA, and it seemed impractical to drive to CT or NH everytime my dear friend had a nicotine craving.

Sigh…I suppose that tazering someone will for the moment  have to remain on my bucketlist.  

It is claimed that for $65.00 Shubentsov will cure a patient of chronic pain, smoking, drinking, drugs, anxiety, nail biting, or whatever other vice plagues him/her. All within one afternoon and with a lifetime guarantee.

Pretty sweet, huh? Finally, a man who comes with a decent return policy.

So the big question that I had was….WTF is this guy all about??? Hypnotism, mass hallucinations, alien anal probing???

I was giddy with excitement and armed with the glow of three beers, raced to my computer to beer Google Yefin.

I was shocked with how much was written about the guy, and it was stated that he had something like an eighty percent success rate.

Fascinating!!!

So I waited with baited breath this past Saturday, and pumped my friend for details the moment he got back from the session. And this is his account in all its bizarre glory….

“I found the address in Brookline. It was a large building with the typical beautiful features of most old buildings in Boston. The inside of the office had an old world charm but was littered with cheap, poorly put together office furniture. The floors were covered with heavy, dusty Oriental rugs and the ceiling had drapes of peeling paint hanging down from it.

About twenty of us were instructed to sit in a semi-circle around a desk that looked like something that was bought at Walmart. There were several large paintings on the walls in overwhelmingly ornate gold frames, but the paintings themselves were simple reproductions of landscapes that one might find hanging over the vibrating bed of a motel.

The group was comprised of typical Brookline residents ( a wealthy bedroom city community that is largely made up of Jewish professionals and students), two thirty-something, preppy couples, a mother and a daughter, and a few urban men who might have been sent there as part of a rehabilitation program.  

Fifteen minutes after ten, the Mad Russian leapt into the room and started lecturing at break-neck speed and with an impossibly thick Russian accent, which resulted in only about half of what he said being understood. It required my painfully undivided attention to gleam even that much, and it was exhausting! 

Shubentsov claimed not to be a doctor or support the use of medicine to end addiction, and he was violently adamant about not being a hypnotist. He talked about tapping into some sort of force or power, but he never fully described what the power was.  The conversation swung wildly from Sherbentsov claiming that bad vices came from each of us being utterly miserable to his complimenting every woman in the room. Each woman was beautiful and Russian men hated skinny women, and then, he ranted about freedom of speech and his dislike for sexual harassment lawsuits. Throughout the ninety minutes, he waved his hands like a magician in front of our faces and emitted a loud, “Wom-paa!” much like the chef Emeril.

At one point, he broke his stream of speech to scream at a man who was translating for a woman. And he threatened to kick out another woman who was whispering. 

Toward the end,  Yefim Shubentsov held up a cheap brass bust of Ruben and instructed everyone to think of it when he or she had the urge to smoke, drink, anxiety, etc.

I was not unconscious for any part of this conversation, but it did seem as if time jumped in a nonlinear fashion. Before I knew it, the group session was over.

The second part of the therapy involved a one-on-one session.

The entire group waited in silence for The Mad Russian to call his or her name.

When I went into the private room, I was instructed to close my eyes, (Which he very bravely did.) and I was asked to describe the two problems that brought me there. I had picked smoking and writer’s block. There was some sort of wind and a deafening, “Wam-pum!”  After the burst of energy, I was promptly ejected into the streets.”

And that was the end….

HOWEVER…four days later, my friend HAS NOT touched a cigarette.

Cue the intro to the Twilight Zone..

The world is a very strange place…. or maybe just Massachusetts.