Lovetown

by Michal Witkowski

  And she’s still asking… Gypsy sits there in that beach chair, fanning herself with the newspaper, sweat streaming down her face, fending off the mosquitoes, and so serious in her distress, so utterly preoccupied, and hideous, frowning…

  The Actress and Apparel

  By way of reciprocating, and to clear her mind of that unfortunate incident, as well as my own of my unpleasant loss of Totty, I quickly tell her a story about a certain Actress, and offer her a cigarette.

  So there was this one famous Actress by the name of Iga. And all through communism she learned her lines on the picket line in the park. On a bench. In an interview in a local newspaper, the Actress was once asked where she most enjoyed learning her lines, and she replied, ‘In Hanka Sawicka Park. Go ahead and laugh!’ Fans would approach her there and ask for her autograph, and she always gave it. The queens would ask her what role she was learning, and then they’d learn it, too, and later they’d go and camp it up on top of the hill. Back then they had one of those communist bandstands up there, just the thing where queens could put on their burlesques. Like all good things, it’s gone now; somebody objected to something or other, desperate people chopped up the stage for fuel. They would stand in that bandstand and read their lines by heart, but that soon got boring, so our chanteuses would sing – arias, recitatives: What do I see, who is that woman whose hat resembles all the flowers of Araby? Has she come to avenge her unhappy brother?! O, forsooth, I knoooooooow her! They’d find a stick and an empty bottle, and presto: a microphone. Sometimes the Actress even joined them. One winter, after a snowstorm, I was taking a stroll there at night, and there they were, the queens together with the Actress, sledging helter-skelter down the hill. All I could hear was their squealing:

  ‘Luuucreeeeetia! Ack! A tree! A tree! Help!!!’

  So the Actress would stand there out on the street together with this ballet dancer, in front of the State Department Store, which was right next to Cruising Central, of course; they’d stand there at that traffic light for hours, chit-chatting.

  ‘Look, what I bought today,’ says the one, pulling a blouse out of her bag into the light, unfolding it and showing it to the other… Cars would honk their horns, but they were no match for two queens examining newly purchased garments. Though they were whispering to each other, they were theatrical, stage whispers; you could probably hear their conversation as far as the Rynek.

  When the Actress got into a fight with her opera-singer boyfriend, she took all his clothes from their flat and hung them up at the moat (the cruising ground extended along the moat back then), on the fences that separated the park from the water. All day long she hung out his things, as if she were hanging them up to dry – underwear, socks:

  ‘Take your mink coat and sod off! Go back where you came from, where you belong…!’

  Golda, aka La Belle Hélène, turned up and saw the moat flooded in clothes – the Actress’s boyfriend was evidently something of a clotheshorse. She took one look then trotted off to the Monopol, and even before she walked in the door, she told the moneychangers:

  ‘Gypsies are pitching camp on the picket!’ Then off she went to tell the toilet lady, and the cloakroom girl, and the lift girl…

  In the good old days, that is, in the seventies, the Actress frequented a cruising ground known as Sądówka. These days even a three-legged dog wouldn’t be seen there, but back then the place was in full bloom! Normal straights, men, paters familias from the nearby flats and council blocks, would come down in their house-shoes and shorts, in a hurry, because the wife had dozed off in front of the telly, and before you knew it they’d been serviced. I was told this by Kitty of the Stinky Breath, who was young enough then for Iga to snatch her up and take her, like it was the most natural thing in the world, back to the theatre, clear across the stage, through all those nooks and crannies, and right into her dressing room. Actresses were going onstage, there were people shouting and bells going off, you know the way it is in the theatre, and no one gave a thought to Iga walking through with Kitty in tow. They made love there among the props and Iga’s dust-covered costumes, since that was before Kitty’s breath started to stink.

  The Actress had a doppelgänger who, in addition to looking like her, had altogether failed to distinguish herself in life. She was a boring, old queen who’d worked her whole life at the post office; the only nice thing about her was her pretty sobriquet: Rachel. Young actors and students were always sucking up to her, and as a result she’d been able to bed her fair share of young men, or else they would follow her on the street, smiling at her. And more than once that envelope pusher found herself telling them the secrets of the actor’s craft, expressing her views, really speaking her mind, and they’d listen with rapt looks on their faces, dressed all in black. But that Rachel lied to them; she invented all sorts of adventures from her ‘early years in the theatre’ – though it’s unclear whether she’d ever actually been to a play even once in her life – how this or that famous lover had courted her, and all the men who’d sent her flowers in huge, overflowing baskets. Her image of the world of the theatre was more Hollywood than Wrocław. In the end, one particularly intelligent poof got mad at that stamp licker for cashing in the actress’s ration coupons, which she got only because she looked identical and which she obviously didn’t deserve. So she sent her an anonymous letter with the Jew’s words about Rachel from Wyspiański’s Wedding:

  They say that music fascinates her,

  But a man has yet to captivate her;

  Maybe I’ll find her a job at the post office…

  UFO!!!

  They come back. First one, from lunch. But seeing that I’m alone on my blanket, she doesn’t dare approach me (the one condition of her sitting down here is that the other one, her accomplice in age, be there too). She walks on a bit further, spreads herself out on a towel, places a leaf on her nose, slips off her vest, and starts tanning, looking over again and again to see if I’m watching her. Finding that she is, unfortunately, being watched, the least she can do is to place a leaf on each of her nipples, too.

  I look up and see the other one returning with a lot of shopping; it’s clear she’s planning to sit here until late in the evening. I pounce on her: I’ve run out of cigarettes, and sitting in the dunes always makes me want to smoke, especially if there’s a beer to go with it.

  She treats me to some of her bad cigarettes, but she also got me a pack of R1s. She also treats me to the news that she believes she may have seen, in the Międzyzdroje spa park, with her evil hound at her side, Oleśnicka – evidently they let her out. Which may be true since Oleśnicka is like the chairwoman of the Polish National Committee on Faggotry. Anyway, I look over and notice that my Old Dear No. 1 has emptied her bag of various books of the bodice-ripping kind, as well as – people get more childlike in their old age – one of those yellow inflatable arm bands for swimming! In a flash she inflates it (pulling such faces from the strain!), picks it up in her skinny hands, and, after asking politely if we’d keep an eye on her things, which were all packed into one of those flower-patterned cloth bags that old ladies use for their shopping, she goes off to bathe. She must have houseplants at home. Violets and geraniums and ancient, sprawling aloes.

  ‘That’s right, I saw Oleśnicka on my way back from lunch…’ says Old Dear No. 2. At which the other one, Wiesław, steps back and sneers and says quietly:

  ‘And on my… on my way back from lunch… I saw it… It!’ She makes as if to flee.

  ‘What? What did you see?’

  She looks back and cries:

  ‘The UFO!’

  Then I start chasing after her, infuriated, and she squeals and runs away. She stops mid-run, turns on her heels, and shouts:

  ‘A giant ball, a great ball of fire, a light, glowing over the dunes, a giant ball, a ball, a ball!’

  Finally I catch hold of her, tackle her to the ground, and drizzle sand in her eyes, in her face. ‘Don’t do that to me, what are you doing? Oh God, wha
t is this bitch doing to me?’ The whole scene is interrupted by Zdzisia yelling:

  ‘Here it comes!’

  ‘Oh no, that too!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I ask seriously, the two of them having gone completely off their rockers. On the horizon, though, I notice someone, not a UFO at any rate, but some poof or other. Zdzisia exclaims:

  ‘Hare Lip’s coming, girls! Duck!’

  ‘Who on earth is that?’

  ‘Everyone knows Hare Lip because of that affair she had. Look at her, how meticulously dressed she is.’ And it’s true; in spite of the heat the figure’s wearing a black, long-sleeved blouse, long pants, a hat, gloves…

  ‘She must have an aversion to showing any skin… Ha!’ says Zdzisława, and begins to tell me the story of Hare Lip…

  Hare Lip

  The metropolis of Wrocław, on a summer night, just before daybreak. It’s about four in the morning. The tarmac lit by streetlamps, the streets empty. And all of a sudden, there between those moribund buildings and shuttered shops and offices, a bald bloke of about forty rides by on a bicycle. Quickly, looking uncertainly from side to side. Hardly cause for surprise, except that one thing stands out here – the man is naked, stark bollock naked. No underwear, no eyeglasses, no watch, no shoes, no bag: just a naked body on a bike! How he managed to get back into his flat, nobody knows, but then nobody was around to start with.

  Hare Lip owed her sobriquet to the impressive cantilever of her upper lip and the funny way it made her speak. She was a doctoral student at the University, though maybe it was the Polytechnic. She would spend all Sunday correcting student papers until evening drove her to the picket line. But ‘nothing’s happening’, ‘no one’s around’, ‘slim pickings’, were the usual prognoses in the park, and had been for years. It was a kind of key phrase. Nothing is happening, nothing is happening… What’s happening? Nothing’s happening… There was something Buddhist about it, a kind of wisdom informed by the concept of nirvana… There’s nothing, nothing’s happening… Causes, effects, nothing… Suffering… The utter nonexistence of time, of space, of people. Nothing, nada, nix. Waiting for Godot and nada. And even when there’s something – that’s nothing, too… It was no different that evening. And it wasn’t until three in the morning, utterly knackered from constant strolling, smoking, cruising, that she spotted some grunt. Oh. My. God. He was super! Totally straight-acting. They went down to ‘city hall’. Into the shadows of looming columns, into the bottomless gloom of their crevasses, into shadows cast by statues. The lights were on a timer and quickly, obligingly, went out. Suddenly the grunt spoke up:

  ‘It really turns me on when a lad takes off all his clothes.’ Hare Lip responded in a breathy lisp:

  ‘Turnth you on, huh? Hmmm…’ she dithered. ‘Well… thuper!’ Then she wholeheartedly began ripping off her clothes, throwing them off into the distance, her backpack, shoes, keys, watch, briefs… The grunt ordered her to turn and face the wall, lucky girl; her striptease had excited him so much, he was going to take her from behind now… But instead the grunt carefully aimed a hearty kick to Lip’s buttocks so that she fell, lacerating her face. He took her things and ran off; he left her bicycle (he had his own, and there was no way he could haul away a second one). He must have been straight, but that thought somehow ceased to give Lip any consolation. Because now, without her keys, without her money, without her underwear, she had to ride home on her bike… The narrow racing saddle wedged itself awkwardly up the crack of her almost forty-year-old arse, and between bouts of panic Hare Lip was struck by a deeper realisation. The clock on the cathedral tower struck three, or maybe it was four, but for Lip it was striking the hour of realisation. Fortunately the city was empty for now, but who knows when, out of an alley, there’d come a band of youths drunk on cheap beer, including, who knows, some of Hare Lip’s students?! So it was better to take the side streets, although that would mean extending her route indefinitely – she lived on the outskirts of town after all! And she needed to make it home before it was completely light, before the birds woke up and the streets started filling with people. Before any of that took place, the dreamy, surrealistic hallucination that was naked Hare Lip riding her bike through the very centre of the city would have to disappear once and for all, melt away or dissipate in the morning fog. The distant ringing of the night tram – Lip’s bottom felt wet; she stopped and looked: it was her own blood. Mosquitoes were stinging her mercilessly, and every inch of her skin was bare. She picked up speed on her bike and in a moment felt as if she were about to fly over the city, so free, so naked, so liberated, she’d bolt up the hill and soar over the awakening city like Margarita on her broom over slumbering Russia.

  But then she remembered where she was; a cold sweat broke out on her forehead. Bells were ringing – Lip was thirsty. Her throat was parched; the last time she’d had anything to drink was at eight that evening, before leaving the house, and that was vodka. If it was four now, then she hadn’t had a drop to drink for eight hours, and vodka makes you thirsty! In the course of that inauspicious night, she’d smoked a whole pack of Marlboro Lights (all that without a drop of water); who wouldn’t be thirsty! The monotonous hum of some nocturnal electricity – Lip was hungry. The traffic lights tediously blinking over the crossing, out of operation at this time of night – Lip was paralysed by the realisation that getting home would bring her no consolation, that she wouldn’t be able to tuck herself away in it like a pair of cosy, comfortable pyjamas, she wouldn’t be able to put on anything she had in her wardrobe because she wouldn’t even be able to get in without her key. A black cat crossed the road – Lip circled back in a wide arc and decided to ride over to see a queen she knew in Kozanów. She’d bang on her door at four in the morning. On the outskirts. She’d ride as fast as she could on her bike and maybe she’d even take wing above the city. Covered in blood, naked. Elated.

  Kino Studio

  ‘And you know what, Michał, they say that one time the very same Hare Lip walked into the first class of the school year and… there he was in the lecture hall! Her student! The bit of grunt who’d nicked her clothes! They say she got her revenge on him, all sorts of stories were reported. But only the good Lord knows what happened there…’

  The first thing I did was read her bodice-ripper… There she was, sitting on the terrace at the end of the season, gazing at the autumn leaves, but of course right off she meets a doctor (because the book is in the ‘Medic Series’), and they immediately start screwing (because the book is in the ‘Spicy Series’ too), and then it all ends happily ever after since he’s a dog breeder and is loaded to boot, etc. A well-thumbed copy carrying the stamp of the Cheerfulness 4 Library of the Workers’ Holiday Fund. The pages are coated with various blotches, dashes, and spots, like liver spots, like the hands of the old ladies who turn them.

  I stood up from my blanket, stretched and looked out over the dunes. A lone fatty was standing there, scouring the beach through a pair of binoculars. I could hear the team from Poznań, from Scorpio, singing in the distance. Old Dear No. 2 was off picking forget-me-nots in the dunes, or else just pretending to as a cover for stalking someone. Meanwhile, Old Dear No. 1 had come back from the water, sputtering and squealing. The water’s warm, bottom all sandy, I really should go ‘for a dip’, she’ll watch my things. The sea’s still as a lake. When I demurred, she asked me what my earliest (gay) memories were of. I answered: of the eighties and Studio Cinema…

  Studio Cinema… where once a week the local chapter of Lambda would meet. Queens in jumpers and neck scarves would smoke cigarettes and sit in the cinema bar, which had a TV and plants in the windows. They’d drink tea from glass cups, bitch at each other, gossip, or listen to the president’s speeches and try to be ‘political’, part of the ‘struggle’. Sometimes they showed movies, like My Beautiful Laundrette. Once a month they held a disco, but this was back when the streets really ran with blood! The cinema was in Popowice, the most skinhead-ridden part of
town, and the skins would wait outside the theatre like dogs; they’d throw rocks through the windows and hit their targets. Whenever anyone wanted to leave, he had to be escorted by a police bodyguard, because folks were always getting knifed or stoned and as often as not taken to hospital in critical condition. Blood, I remember that; blood on the faces of people who’d simply come to have a good time. I remember those bloody skinheads, too, who would keep trying to break free of the police, kicking their legs in the air.

  But here my story is interrupted, for we both look over: someone is walking towards us. The Old Dears immediately begin whispering to each other: how it’s a certain Apothecaress from Bydgoszcz, a really wealthy queen who’s obsessed with her health. She always carries a bottle of water with her so she can rinse off her darling’s cock before they get down to work. She always has condoms handy, and a lubricant gel that she prepares herself in the back of the shop; she mixes it in a mortar, since the chemist’s where she works sells both ready-made and made-to-order pharmaceuticals. So she concocts all kinds of lube, mixing in anaesthetics, sometimes even psychotropics. She gave me one once in a white pillbox – it blasted me and my arsehole to outer space! She eats vitamins and definitely minerals. She’s been spoiled rotten by her money like the lewd bitch she is.

  You’ll Never Be Sated…

  ‘No licking…’

  ‘No licking?’ We couldn’t believe it.

  ‘No licking.’ The Apothecaress shows us a brochure, and there it is, black and white, you’re not supposed to, because when it leaks…

  ‘That’s the pre-ejaculatory fluid…’