by Kirsten Koza
I was offended by this at first. Then I went to find a toilet. The toilets were locked and porters guarded them, shaking their heads when I motioned they should open them. They kept refusing. I made a fuss but didn’t get anywhere with it. So I made my way from car to car searching for an open toilet. Finally, I found one that was not guarded. Instead it was booby-trapped with turds smeared all over the floor, walls, and the outer door. However, the handle and lock were somewhat clean. The lock was not actually a lock so much as an Allen-wrench hole. My knife fit into it perfectly. I opened it and discovered why nobody was allowed in the toilets. The floor was more than ankle deep in shit. I found a relatively less filthy spot for my feet outside the doorway, and unloaded into the room. After that I did all of my business in Chinese trains by shitting off the end of the caboose. And when it was warm enough, a pack of children would chase along the tracks after my bare caboose.
Sleeping in this kind of filth is exceptionally difficult. There is nowhere to put down your head without getting your ears wet. I managed to nap propping myself up by the hand. But my arm would inevitably fall asleep. I eventually managed to find a spot for myself because the further west we went the fewer people there were on the train. But now, those that did get on the train were frequently accompanied by gaggles of geese, a few goats, or some sheep. I didn’t mind. Their shit stunk less. The conductor even allowed some pigs on the train—a rarity in the Muslim part of China. The hogs cleaned the floors almost sparkly, eating every turd in sight, and I was thankful for the few Buddhist swineherds allowed to ply their trade in these parts.
A skinny old man with a long beard sat with me, curiously eyeballing my big nose and green eyes. He was harmless, and he didn’t spit so much. But then some cops boarded. They asked for his ticket. He didn’t have one. They beat the shit out of him right in front of me. Two held his arms and a third kneed him in the groin. He cried out and went limp. Then the man in charge of the blows slammed down so hard with his elbow on the old man’s shoulders that he lost consciousness. They rolled the old man out the door.
All of the cops then left except for one. This one sat across from me, chain smoking, spitting and gazing out the window into the dust storm. I wrapped myself up and lay down on the bench, closing my eyes and trying to forget what I just saw. But I couldn’t. Because the cop kept spitting on me.
He had a peculiar way of spitting. He used his tongue, so that the spit would come out in a string that broke into a spray as it traveled through the air. In this way he managed to drench me. My shoulder, neck, ear, and face were all subjected to hours of spit.
Occasionally he would get up and I’d assume he was leaving for good. But he always came back, always with another cigarette and enough saliva to fill a swimming pool. I tried various means of showing him that I did not like it. I covered my face with my jacket. But it was too damn cold for that and after a couple minutes I was shivering.
I tried to demonstrate to him that I was disgusted. I grimaced, grunted, groaned, shook my head, wiped myself off, and stomped my wet feet. But he seemed oblivious, not even glancing at me to see what it was I tried to communicate. He didn’t care. I was invisible.
Eventually I decided to be a little more blunt. I stood up, squared myself directly in front of him, and spat a big glob his way. I’d meant for it to land on the seat, right next to him. But I missed. It landed on his lap, in the vicinity of his crotch.
A tingle of apprehension shot through my limbs. I winced, prepared to receive a blow. I closed my eyes and scrunched up my face, hoping it would communicate to him how pathetic I was. I waited. Nothing. I peeked and saw that he hadn’t changed position. He didn’t even bother to look at me or wipe my glob from his groin. He just kept on staring out the window, dragging off his cigarette. Only now he had a slight smirk on his face, as if he were satisfied with something. Maybe he’d heard foreigners weren’t as hip with spittle as the Chinese.
What could I do? I lay back down and closed my eyes. The cop remained across from me for another ten hours. But in that ten hours, never once did he spit, not even on the floor.
After a year in China and another in Turkey, Scott Morley is now in Vietnam journaling his family’s expat experiences. He is a graduate of Antioch University, Los Angeles, with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and is published in Larry Flynt’s Big Brother Magazine, Jeff Lebow’s Korea Bridge, and Tom Glaister’s Tales of a Road Junky. On Busan Web he published The Mother-In-Law Diaries, about raising his sons with his Korean mother-in-law. Scott has recently finished the novel Hanson’s Homeland, about an American expat in Asia with a deep-seeded phobia of everything American.
KATKA LAPELOSOVÁ
“’Allo! ’allo, ’allo, ’ahhhhhllo!”
Naked men in Budapest.
I’M IN BUDAPEST FOR THREE DAYS BY MYSELF. MY BOYFRIEND OF TWO years and I broke up during a backpacking trip through Europe. After a discussion of mutually apathetic feelings culminating in, “I just don’t love you anymore,” Sean opted to cut his trip short and fly back to the United States. We had spent the weekend in Vienna, attempting to find locations from the film Before Sunrise. Slightly wounded, and looking for validation, I chose to forge ahead and explore the rest of our once-shared European itinerary—alone.
Can we all agree that “emotional schizophrenia” is one of the worst parts about breaking up with someone? Three hours sitting in an empty train car conjures up feelings of, “Oh my God, what was I thinking?!” followed by, “Why did we ever break up? I miss him…” and then, “Switzerland was amazing, the streets are practically made of chocolate!” and so on and so forth.
My real post-breakup issue is that I’m no good at striking up conversations with strangers. I find it to be awkward and embarrassing and especially difficult when there is a language barrier. Would my conflicting emotions prevent me from enjoying this trip on my own?
It’s surprisingly easy to enjoy my own company while exploring Budapest during the day. No one thinks it’s weird to take photos at the Fisherman’s Bastion or visit the Museum of Fine Arts by myself. Even the Széchenyi Bathhouse is welcoming to solo visitors. The Hungarian language barrier turns out to be a blessing. It’s nice to be spared annoyingly probing questions like “Where is your boyfriend?” or “Why aren’t you married?”
But at night, everything changes. When the sun sets, the world becomes suddenly intimate. Budapest’s streets are full of couples holding hands; laughter from groups of friends echoes through the chilly air.
The excitement of hanging out with myself during daylight fades, and I feel lonely. Where can an independent woman hang out in the evening to avoid feeling awkward and abandoned, where conversation and companionship is not necessary for enjoyment?
The theatre, that’s where.
A woman from my hostel gives me a brochure for Un Peu de Tendresse, Bordel de Merde! (A Little Tenderness, For Crying Out Loud!), a dance concert occurring in the Józsefváros district of Budapest. The pamphlet displays a pile of nude dancers lying on the floor.
I assume there will be nudity during the performance, but this isn’t a problem—as a fairly open-minded person, naked people don’t upset me. At the same time however, I’d prefer not to be front-row-center, staring at a pair of balls or a full-blown bush, three feet away from my face. No, I’ll take a seat somewhere in the middle.
Sitting in the middle means: “I’m O.K. with your naked dancing—as long as I view it from a comfortable distance.”
The Trafó House of Contemporary Arts is a revived warehouse-turned-theatre. This unique up-cycle of architecture is especially popular throughout many contemporary theatres of Eastern Europe. Seating is stadium style, so patrons look down at performers on a flat, ground-level stage.
Trafó is devoid of curtains and scenery; only the raw concrete and industrial piping of the original warehouse, with some stage lights hanging above it, are visible. In the center of the stage sits a man, on a chair—a naked man, with a full
beard, wearing a long, blond wig.
He waves at the audience members as they file into the theatre. “’Allo!” he shrieks in a high-pitched voice. He sounds like a little girl. “’Allo! ’allo, ’allo, ’aaahhhhhhllo!” I sit in my strategically selected seat in the middle of the crowd and watch as some other naked men sporadically join him. All of them sport full beards and long, blond wigs, and speak like children. They stand awkwardly together in a line at the front of the stage.
Seems like I made the right choice, I think, as I settle in comfortably. Any minute now, the show will start, and I’ll have two hours of conversationless distraction. The first row of people certainly got what they paid for tonight, as none of the dancers are censored. The brochure wasn’t kidding about this nudity thing.
A woman in a shiny black dress closes the theatre’s door and walks across the stage. The crowd reacts by hushing their pre-performance chatter. The woman is reminiscent of a modern-day Morticia from the Addams Family: inky-black hair and creamy skin, enhanced with bright red lipstick.
She explains that, due to the international nature of the theatre festival, the show will be performed in English, by a French-Canadian dance troupe, with Hungarian subtitles displayed on the back wall of the warehouse. The naked men behind her fidget and giggle every so often.
“Yes, there will be nudity,” the woman, who introduces herself as the emcee, says to us. “But we’re all adults, are we not? Surely, these performers don’t intimidate anyone here.”
At this, the bizarrely cross-dressed males begin to dance. Pelvises are thrust into the faces of those sitting in the front row. Bare buttocks are pressed onto the laps of unsuspecting audience members. The fourth wall has been broken, the dancers have infiltrated the sacred ground of the viewers. The rest of the audience can’t help but laugh at the victims in the first row, who probably didn’t think they’d get harassed when innocently choosing their seats.
“Oh!” the emcee shouts at us. “You think it’s funny? You think you people in the back of the theatre are safe and sound? Well, think again!”
The dancers tear through the audience, leaving no chair inviolate. They run up and down the aisles, skip through every row, and clumsily climb over people. The men are like a pack of clownish-looking lions, and we are all their vulnerable prey. Absolutely no one is safe. Those affected by this act of insanity include old women, young men, lovey-dovey couples, and one especially hysterical American female who absolutely cannot stop laughing.
Tears stream down my face. I’m laughing so hard it’s almost difficult to breathe, an asphyxiating kind of enjoyment that brings mild pain from pleasure. I am doubled over in my seat, my body retching with delight from this unexpected turn of events.
And then, I’m spotted. Who else but the original naked man, who greeted the audience with his bizarre, high-pitched salutation “’Allo!” only 15 minutes before, should single me out from the rest?
His face becomes long in a frown as he climbs over the two rows of people in front of me, his buttocks dangerously close to a bald man’s face, his genitalia hanging loose above another woman’s perm. Standing before me, he looks concerned.
“Oh no!” he whimpers girlishly. “Oh no, why are you crying! Don’t cry! Why are you sad?!”
I can’t answer him; pockets of air from silent laughter choke back any words I can possibly respond with.
“I’ll be your boyfriend!” he suggests. Oh sure, that’s just what I need now, another crazy boyfriend. As though it were no odd question, he has the audacity to ask, “Do you want to touch my penis?”
Oh my god.
“Look!” he beckons, thinking I need further convincing. “Look, it does tricks!”
Dancing Naked Man #1 gyrates his hips like he’s wearing an invisible hula-hoop. His flaccid penis begins swirling in the air, like a pinwheel spinning rapidly in the wind.
I’ve lost all control of emotion. Any post-traumatic-breakup feelings I may have felt prior to attending this show have completely dissolved. I didn’t think men were capable of such feats. It’s certainly a talent Sean didn’t possess. Maybe I should give this guy a shot; who knows what kind of kinky stuff he’s into?
This display of nude acrobatics continues for a moment as I attempt to steady myself on my chair. Falling off my seat from laughter could mean “getting to third base” quicker than I anticipated.
Despite this inception of comfort, no one leaves the arena. Maybe it’s because Europeans have different perceptions of personal space than where I come from. I like to think, however, that the reason we all stay is the fact that, as the emcee alluded to, no one was safe. We all experienced a false sense of security, and we all came out of it unscathed. Something unexpected occurred, but no one got hurt—what else did we need to worry about? This is going to be a bizarre performance, but we’re all in this together. This is an evening we’ll never forget.
The emcee calls the dancers back to the stage to formally begin the show. My breathing slows, I wipe rivers of tears away from my cheeks, sniffle snot back into my nose and attempt to compose myself once more.
The show begins, and I’m enchanted by what becomes one of the most beautiful, emotionally responsive evenings of my life. The dancers, both clothed and nude, delight me, anger me, make me feel loved and even lonelier. The important result is that Un Peu de Tendresse, Bordel de Merde! made me feel.
I walked into the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts as a socially awkward, recently dumped young woman. At the end of the performance, I walk out of the theatre knowing that no one back home will ever understand what happened to me tonight.
But I’ll understand it, I’ll remember it. I’ll recognize how I sat in that theatre, watching a naked man wave hello to me from the middle of a bare stage, thinking to myself that I’d be safe and that this performance was “safe” and that life, in general, was “safe.” That being in a relationship was “safe” merely because it provided me with someone to talk to in the evenings.
Since that intoxicating night in Budapest, I’ve travelled to over fifteen countries on my own. I’ve learned to relax, to open myself up and trust others, to recognize that there are times when I can be happy on my own and times when companionship is necessary, and needed.
When the latter arises, I build up the courage to talk to strangers and see where things go. I’ve met best friends, boyfriends, old friends and insane friends, simply by asking them this: “What’s the craziest thing that’s ever happened to you?”
You know my story. It started with “’Allo!” and ended with a bit of unsolicited genitalia, swinging six inches from my face.
Katka Lapelosová is a Managing Editor and the Director of Social Media at Matador Network. She is based in New York and likes speaking Czech when she’s had one too many Pilsners. Her first eBook, 101 Guys to Date Before You Die, launched in 2013. Other publications include articles for Reader’s Digest, GM’s Drive the District, Thought Catalog, Travel Fashion Girl, Yelp!, Groupon, and eight entries in the recently published 101 Places to Get F*cked Up Before You Die. Follow her on
Twitter at @KatkaTravels for 140-characters worth of travel antics.
KEPH SENETT
A Bed of Fists
Putin’s queerly obsessed.
BEFORE I’D LEFT FOR RUSSIA—BEFORE I’D EVEN BOOKED MY TICKETS ON Aeroflot, the airline with the world’s least buoyant name—my father and I tossed around the exact nature of a Soviet-era sofa bed.
“It won’t be built for comfort,” he said, to which I replied, “Nor, I hope, for speed.”
I considered the matter then offered, “It will have no springs, maybe, because springs are ostentatious.”
“Or,” he responded darkly, “it will be all springs.”
Only ten minutes on Russian soil, and I was convinced my dad had been right about “all springs.” The airport was predictably dreary, and dodgy airport nachos or nerves had left me flatulent and nauseated. I found the kiosk se
lling shuttle tickets, but the agent didn’t look up from her newspaper, preferring instead to tap the back of her manicured fingernail against the window that separated us. I followed her gesture to a brochure taped to the glass. Presumably, it contained ticket prices and a timetable, but it was no more use to me than the agent—it was written in Cyrillic.
“Do you have anything in English?” I asked. Without looking up, she shook her head. This agent was definitely giving me all the springs. A cramp ripped through my abdomen, and I went to find a toilet.
Mercifully, the bathroom signs at Sheremetyevo were completely familiar. I picked out the lady in her triangle skirt from 50 yards away and scooted toward her without unclenching my ass cheeks. I pushed open the door, but instead of a row of stalls I was faced with another woman behind glass. Eyes wide—she shouted and waved her hands. I fumbled in my jeans to retrieve rubles but no matter how many bills I shoved under the screen, she kept yelling and gesturing. Finally, she let herself out of the booth, grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back into the hall. With no break in her tirade, she dragged me around the corner and pointed toward another door marked by a stick figure in pants. I jerked my arm loose, unzipped my jacket, and pointed indignantly at my breasts. Without breaking stride, the woman shrugged and tugged at her hair as if to say, “Well what do you expect looking like that?”
I arrived on Konstantin’s doorstep unsure if I’d shit my pants. The answer—thankfully—was no, but upon being presented with a welcome fish caught fresh from the river, I vomited into my teacup. The activists in Konstantin’s tiny kitchen were either being polite or didn’t notice, having just received the alarming news that the authorities had threatened our host hotel management until they withdrew our reservation. Without a venue, there would be no human rights conference. As the activists smoked and shouted at each other under the buzzing fluorescent, I crept into the bedroom looking for refuge.