Say what you will about the Moscow Metro system (dirty, reeking sponge glistening with other people’s sweat — there’s a starter), sometimes it’s got excellent in-ride entertainment. At least three times a week I see disoriented drunk people unwittingly sleeping through city tours; women shove their children aside to get prime seats; hot Russian indie guys slouch intellectually and page through cheap detective novels. And last night, some American chick belted out the classic Divinyls song “I Touch Myself” while her friends awkwardly looked around the car.

Oh god, wait. That was me.

To put it gently, my voice is not exactly mellifluous. To be more specific, imagine Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton singing a duet. All of the scratchy, yowling, discordant tracks that have to be edited out to make the whole mess barely audibly acceptable? That’s roughly twice as melodious a note as I can carry. Family members have requested that I lip synch “Happy Birthday” at events to save them embarrassment. As my awkwardly pubescent cracking voice filled the Metro car and I danced along like an electrified jellyfish, it fleetingly occurred to me that anyone watching would probably think I had snapped. And they might be a little bit right.

A friend who spent last summer in Ghana told me the cardinal rule among white students in Africa: NEVER talk to a white person just because he is white. The game is played the same way in Russia. For those of us who came to Moscow fairly conversant in the language and hoping to become more so, never seek someone out on the street just because they speak your language. Better to suffer in pride than catch up on celebrity gossip in shame.

When you’re dealing with wild animals you’re never supposed to show your weak spot; to the wild animals in this urban jungle, that weak spot is being American.

In all fairness, I’ve never been harassed or seriously bothered in the city for being American. It’s more of a secret embarrassment. Every once in a while I have to explain to a taxi driver that, no, I am not the voter who single-handedly put Bush in the White House and, by the way, great job on that whole Brest-Litovsk thing — but on the whole, I prefer to tell Russians about my passion for their beautiful, lively city and rich language and they’re glad to hear about it.

The real discomfort with being an American in Moscow is our fellow tourists. British teenage socialites with bulging shopping bags blowing kisses to the Kremlin or Texan high school students mocking Russian waitresses to their faces make me angrier than the most insensitive Russian assumptions about American culture.

Nevertheless, for some reason I find myself creeping around the ledge of this abroad faux pas on a daily basis. Even mid-cringe I had to keep myself away from wandering up to aforementioned socialites and making polite conversation about the Thames River in the summer. Fortunately, halfway through my friendly “Hullo!” I remember that I know or care nothing about the Thames in any season and duck into an alley for some unsanitary shaverma.

Two weeks ago, I followed a man out of his Metro stop and three blocks down the street just because he was wearing my boyfriend’s cologne. He turned out to be from Kazakhstan, and not a little freaked out.

Last month, at the dregs of my homesickness, a few friends and I sat at a bar and watched a man in a blue argyle sweater stroll in and immediately knock over a microphone stand. My heart skipped a beat: Obviously he was a Canadian! The logic of Siberskaya Corona (at 24 rubles a bottle, it’s my favorite philosopher after Dr. Drew) told me to wander up to the man and ask if he spoke German. If he answered in English, obviously he was from our neighbor up North. Then logic told me it would probably be less embarrassing to dare a friend to do it.

A few minutes later she came weaving back: “He says he doesn’t know German, but his English is pretty good because he’s from Toronto.” I bought everybody a round and forgot about it until two hours later. We staggered across the dance floor to collect our coats and I look up to realize that Argyle Sweater is the band’s lead singer. He made eye contact with my friend and screamed into the mic: “Tonight I was accused of being German. Tonight I was accused of being German!”

The thing is, no matter how ridiculous some of the measures I’ve taken to meet English-speakers, it’s like meeting a brother again to find someone with whom I share not just my literal words, but also a cultural vocabulary. For some crazy reason, your average Russian kebab-hawker is completely ignorant to the nicknames of Britney Spears’ children (“Tater Tot” and “Small Fry”), the delirious ping of a TiVo menu or the existence of North Dakota.

After three months of skirting my identity, pretending I’m only American by accident and my language is a hideous blemish like a club foot or a bad nose job, I finally gave in on that Metro car and realized that I’m proud to be American even, or especially, when that means embarrassing myself. And of course I expressed my national pride the way that any articulate, intelligent woman would: by singing a song about masturbation on public transportation. But my friends joined in on the whoa-whoa-whoas, and between us, I don’t think they were embarrassed either.

Kat is currently taking song requests. If you’d like her to butcher any classic ‘90s hits on her flight home from Moscow, let her know at klewin@stanford.edu.