Coming from a small town in the southwest, I assumed Moscow would be filled with big-city slicksters, charlatans and general ne’er-do-wells. Fortunately, my hometown is a few miles from Las Vegas, so I figured Moscow would feel pretty much like home.

My fears were somewhat confirmed when I got to my homestay apartment. To get inside, you need to navigate six separate doors with a combined total of seven locks. My keychain is insured for ten million rubles (approximately $20). Personally, I think this is why communism failed: While your average Ivan was trying to scrape together a few kopecks to buy kasha, locksmiths were feasting like kings on the blood of the proletariat.

With apartment security tighter than Mariah Carey’s latest wardrobe miscalculation, I obviously had good reason to be terrified. My first few days were a haze of paranoia. I freaked out about everything: people pushing me in front of the subway, snipers, rabid dogs, poison darts, angry babushki with bricks in their shopping bags. The number of times I have threateningly brandished an umbrella — in quite a swashbuckling manner, might I add — at a suspicious-looking trashcan cannot be counted on one hand. The other hand, of course, is in my pocket making sure no one has stolen my wallet, passport or holy Metro card.

Muscovites don’t just extend heightened security measures to themselves, though. They’re also moderately OCD in protecting their personal possessions. In my poli sci class we learned that Russians were slow to grasp the concept of private property — but once they did, they took to it like a bulimic to wedding cake

Every night I am gently lulled to sleep by a symphony of car alarms more cacophonous than Paris Hilton’s debut album. Shop windows are guarded by two or three layers of bars and a pony-tailed thug named Dima. Once when I touched a book on sale at an outdoor kiosk, the owner threw a lit cigarette at my face.

One of the most surreal displays of this Uncle Pennybags (that pervy-looking guy on the Monopoly box) mindset is what I affectionately call the Watermelon Gulags. On every street there are at least two or three large cages, filled with literally hundreds of watermelons. Just in case the USSR reunites and holds a summer block party — with mandatory second helpings. Every door to these outdoor melon emporiums sports five or six padlocks. At least in the German program the watermelons get visitation rights with the cantaloupes.

But these security measures have nothing on the most tightly guarded possessions in all of Russia. No, it’s not the chambers full of retina-searing diamonds in the Kremlin — peasants were trading sacks of diamonds for hamburger buns during the Russian Civil War. By far the most guarded commodity in Russia is toilet paper. Sure, in the renowned Pushkin Art Gallery, you can get close enough to wipe your greasy mitts on a Rembrandt, but if you’re going to stop by the restroom, be sure to bring a pack of Kleenex.

There is virtually never any toilet paper in public restroom stalls. Typically, once you move ahead two or three kilometers in the line — just close enough to see the sinks if you squint — you will find a toiler paper dispenser mounted on the wall; an employee stands nearby pretending to mop, but really monitoring how much you take. Even worse is when you are physically handed your ration of toilet paper at the counter where you pay to get in. What, you didn’t think you had to pay for this privilege, buddy?

I understand the Russian need for bureaucracy, but why it is exercised in such an ineffectual field baffles me. What are they afraid of — do they think we will bring our own shaving cream and TP the stalls? Wrap ourselves like mummies, cackling maniacally? Use more than five squares? Maybe in Stalinist times dissident writers hid their counter-culture works between the ply of Soviet Charmin.

Just kidding. Two-ply toilet paper does not exist in Russia. If it did, they would probably guard it with lasers.

The bottom line on everything from apartments to toilet paper here seems to follow one immutable manta: Trust nobody. And although some applications of this seem inexplicable to me as a foreigner (that cigarette hurt!), at the end of the day, it kind of makes sense. Stumbling out of a bar after the Metro closes, you realize that most parts of Moscow are like the shadier areas of LA — except nobody speaks English. So actually it’s exactly like LA. And if you don’t watch out for yourself and your possessions, who’s going to? Probably not the police, who, according to my history professor, are more interested in taking 100-ruble bribes for traffic violations than recovering stolen purses.

The Russians I’ve met (in brightly lit public places) have all seemed genuinely nice and interested in talking to me — probably because I haven’t made any sudden movements toward their personal stash of toilet paper or watermelon rinds — but it’s best to keep your head in the game and your hand on your wallet.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go lock up my keychain.

If you want to email Kat at klewin@stanford.edu, be sure to type with your hands where she can see them and please refrain from all sudden or threatening gestures.