‘“Hey, you’re the one I’m fucking today.” I didn’t say a thing. He lay on top of me and started rubbing. Everyone laughed; it was all a kind of in-joke. There was a certain young queen there, too. My God, was there anyone she didn’t do! And how she protested! She was wearing white briefs from Pewex. And this is how it was: I was lying there on the ground with that young grunt, in a sleeping bag, with a quilt under us, and she was right across from us on the lower bunk. And the things she was doing with that arse of hers! Twisting it left and right, so the grunt on the bottom and the poet up top could see, too.’
But wait, what was it that Wojtek kept saying to her? Paula falls into her thoughts and pulls out a cigarette; she rests her head in her palm. ‘You know what, I can’t remember. But she blathered something about turning the lights out; maybe she thought it really would lead to something? Now I remember what happened, but you can’t write this down. Please no! Don’t! Cross it all out, I mean it! Now I remember everything, of course.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, that Wojtek with the poofter was more my… than my lad on the floor, who was already groping me; so I pulled a little maneuver, fired off some aphorism or other, and we switched. The little queen in the white Pewex briefs went down to the ground floor, and I went up to the first-floor bunk with Wojtek. Eventually everyone fell asleep and lights out. And what happened with Wojtek, well, that was for real.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course, you loon!’ Paula laughs. ‘What do you think? The true course of our life is love, but our element-engendered body… Those top-shelf poets didn’t stand a chance against the first floor…
‘Everywhere it smelled of youthful sweat, of plywood, and paint… The odour of grunt. The next day I slept on the first-floor bunk. With a “mid-level one”, a “middle of the road”. A nobody. And the third day – I was up on top with a lad who read his poems to me all night! Exactly as expected. You know: long hair, sensitive… Nix. I even experienced that gesture of my hand being taken, too. Since there was going to be some recitation competition or ceremony in someone’s honour. I was singled out as a star, of course, because I’m a humanist. But I rebelled; I refused to memorise the poem (by Gałczyński). I sat in the cafeteria, furious at the world, my soup getting cold in front of me; everyone had already left, and my tears drizzled into the bowl. Then that grunt from the floor, the big, uncomplicated one with the broken nose, came up to me…
‘“Hey, what’s wrong, Paweł? What happened? Don’t worry, everything’ll be just fine.” And he stroked me. I sat there, upset, so he’d keep on doing it. My nose was running, a tear welled up; I lowered my eyes and prayed in my heart of hearts that he would take me in his arms and console me. He continued:
‘“You don’t have to play football with us if you don’t want to; I’ll look after you…” Then he took my hand in his and talked to me like I was his tart:
‘“Come on Paweł, let’s go to the woods and rehearse…”
‘I just sat there, sniveling and looking at my nails, since a growing girl needs that kind of manly warmth and tenderness. And just so he would offer me his coarse, masculine hand and squeeze me, hard, oh so hard! Come to the woods! With me, to the woods, maybe even to the marshes…
‘Eventually he led me to the rehearsal, by the hand, like that redhead did when he took me to the marshes, like he wanted to both protect me and kill me… All the queens in the schools and summer camps were scared shitless of those butch studs from down on the ground. They’d belch at us and bully us, but then, after we’d had our little cry, they’d gather round, like they would round an affronted tart, and take us in their arms…
‘Anyway, I won the competition; I was the star of the camp. The lad from down on the ground walked round me like a bodyguard, so proud that “our team” had won; that’s how they are, those straight bits of rough. He didn’t have a clue about poetry, but he honestly felt that “our team” had won something; after all, I was from his house. As for the middle one, I don’t remember what he thought about it; but the one upstairs… Well, he swept his hair out of his face with a preoccupied air:
‘“Oh right, right… Gałczyński, definitely; he’s rhythmic, easy to memorise. Right” – and here he swept back his hair again; oh, how he was always sweeping back his hair! – “right. But have you ever tried reciting Stachura, for example?” Exactly.
‘The third time, the gesture happened in my lodgings. It was the early eighties, just after I left our manor in M. for school. I boarded in a house that was probably built in the eighteenth century, all red brick. A very barracksy atmosphere. What strange characters lived there… In the toilets for example: mildewy walls, no bathtubs, just shower bases, everybody washing at the sinks. Everybody – except the queens! There was this one queen there. And since there was no bathtub – oh, you’ll get a kick out of this, Michał – she’d run water into two of those shallow tubs and lie down in them, legs in one, back in the other, and her dry torso and naked arse in between. And then she’d read a book! She absolutely needed to have a bathtub, with bubblebath and a book, like in the movies. A makeshift Hollywood in the dormitory! We’d be washing at the sinks, and there she’d be lying, reading in her tubs, every inch the star.
‘There was a lad in those lodgings who went to the fine arts academy; he had long dredlocks, piercings up and down his ears. He was always painting me. Then once he squeezed my hand in his and said:
‘“Listen, Paweł, how about we don’t go to school tomorrow, but instead you sit for me…?”
‘Here was a lad from the highest bunk of the bunkbeds. Long hair, makeup. To me, my hair was blonde, but he said he saw plum in it, and I said, “I’m sorry, but there are no plums in my hair…” And he started to laugh and kissed me on my hair; and he smelled of turpentine and mulled wine with cloves and cinnamon!
‘But there were the ones from the first floor, too: the ones who washed themselves at the sink, splashing about, the ones from the Railway Mechanics Workshop… who’d fling soap at each other.
‘When I was little, our teacher took us on a “career education tour” to that railway workshop. We had to get up at five in the morning for it. I remember the roar of the factory siren, which was absolutely unbearable at that time of day. We were all freezing our arses off; it was late autumn. I rubbed my bloodshot eyes and thought I must still be dreaming. I had visions of grubby men fiddling with the machines, amongst the sleepers, in the grease, in the frost, all morning long. It was still dark, as if those lads had come to work in the middle of the night. With grimy hands they peeled the paper from their ungainly sandwiches of fatty sausage. When they rolled up their shirt sleeves, they revealed deep scars, in rows, as if they’d been made on purpose. Their nails turned black, transformed into little clumps of earth, and disappeared. Somewhere in the foreman’s office a radio was quietly babbling some important speech or other. As long as the morning appeared to be night, sleep seemed unnecessary, and it was exciting, such strange things happened at night, but what would happen once the the boring, humdrum day finally broke? That’s when I decided to become an actress, and that nothing could make me become a railway mechanic. I enrolled at the House of Culture. The teacher told me: if you study hard, you won’t end up in a place like that. The people you see here were all trouble-makers; they bunked off lectures, smoked cigarettes behind the school, and never learned to play piano. But they winked at me not to listen to her. Grimy lads daubed with their Tuesday like a coat of grey dust.
‘Then, years later, that gesture came again. I was sitting together with my Filip on All Saints’ Eve by Szczytnicki Bridge; we’d lit candles and were drinking vodka. We were looking into the water, which was rising. Over and over a ship’s siren kept wailing. Filip hurled the empty bottle against the Odra’s concrete levee, and I rose unsteadily to my feet. I said we should walk along the bank, not on the embankment, but along the levee, the sloping levee that leads down to the water. And then (but is that what I wanted
?) he took my hand in his, and holding me tight, he began to lead me. Our feet kept slipping on the moss covering that old German cobblestone levee; but we made it to the next bridge, which was too low to stand under, and then we discovered a manhole leading to a cellar under the bridge, and then… and then he took my hand in his once more.
Paula and Her Phone Calls (I)
Paula still in bed before her first coffee of the day, reading.
Brring-brring-brring!
Who’s calling? Oh, it’s Rotunda!
‘Hey Paula! Inez is here, over from the States!’
‘Inez who? Don’t bother me, you old bag; I’m in bed reading about Greta Garbo.’
‘Inez, you nutter, Inez who went to the States before martial law, the one who robbed Jurka from Krzyki. The one who lived with Daria from the Pewex…’
Paula fumes:
‘I don’t remember her.’
Rotunda responds:
‘She’s invited the old gang to McDonald’s for lunch tomorrow!’
Paula puts down the receiver and gets up, mumbles something under her breath, and goes off to make coffee. She turns on the radio to Channel One. Classical music fills the kitchen.
Paula with her first cup of coffee behind her. Sunday morning, in the distance the sound of bells ringing. Brring-brring-brring! It’s Anna.
‘Your line is always engaged, Annie. What a chatterbox you are!’
‘It’s always engaged because I’ve been ringing up all my friends. But listen, I’ve just got the new ranking of the Wrocław queens at Stage. None of the old names are there. What happened to them? Where are they now? The names are all different now – Esthers and Pamelas… You and Michalina La Belletriste aren’t even mentioned! The only consolation is that your sister here came in thirtieth. And now, listen to what the cards told me this morning: Cruising Central will undergo a renaissance. Except it will be the same old faces meeting there again. Everyone will come back. It’ll be like the old days. I can’t say any more about it. And the cards don’t say when it will happen either… Paula?’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I come visit you in Wrocław?’
‘Of course, Andrzej. Come! By all means!’
‘You know what, dear…’
‘What?’
‘I’d like to rob you… You and that slut Michał…’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’
‘I’d slip truth serum into your soup and rob you blind, I’d say: Bitch, tell me where you hide your money…’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’
‘Tell me or I’ll kill you, I’d say! And you’ll go off to the picket line in Szczytnicki Park afterwards and go up to one of the biggest gossip whores there and say, “You still remember Anna who went to Bydgoszcz?” And one or the other of them, Grasser Grażyna or the Owl, will say, “Uh huh.” And you’ll say: “Turns out she’s a thief now, emptied out my house and robbed me of a hundred thousand zlotys… The bitch even stole the eggs from my fridge.” And then the others – I bet you anything – will all say, “I always knew that one was a thief; that whore had the look of a thief in her eyes! Call the police right away, don’t think twice, no mercy for that slag!” How happy that’ll make them!’
‘Ha! Ha! Ha! Oh God, Annie, the things you come up with!’
‘Paula, you know why that whore Michał is writing a book about us, don’t you?’
‘Why?’
‘Because he thinks the grunts will read it, that they’ll be moved by our story and feel sorry for us, and kindly offer to let themselves be sucked off. They’ll say, “So much fuss over that cock of ours! Well, here you go, Michał, have a go…” And that slag will go off on reading tours on military bases, and she’ll be doing grunts all over Poland, and we won’t get any, even though the stories are all ours! She’s a high-class lady now. She won’t be joining you on excursions to the park like she used to, oh no, that would involve her getting herself dirty… Come on, we’ll rob her for it or drag her name through the mud…’
‘Since when does grunt read books… I mean, the book’s supposedly all about blowjobs.’
‘Right, a thousand poems about shelling peas… But you know she’s already counting her money, just look at her profile; even though the Witkowskis converted, why, she could just as easily be a girl on the streets of Tel Aviv… There’s an ahash – racha – bash for you… She can count her money, all right. Can she ever!’
‘Michał’s a Jewess?’
‘Just smell her breath sometime… There’s no question about her nationality. If you don’t drop dead first! She reeks so strongly of garlic it’ll make you hallucinate… I’m serious… An absolute slag, that one.’
‘Annie! You know what, I ran into Radwanicka on the picket line!’
‘May heaven help you!’
‘I think she’s very nice.’
‘Well, I think that slag already found out you have a huge flat and rooms available, and now she’s going to butter you up – and down!’
Paula hangs up the phone and begins to brood. Cruising Central, that was one of several picket lines. What were the others? The Beaux Arts, the General Bem… And now they’re back in fashion? Paula rolls her eyes and shakes her head.
Mock-Grunt
Paula says:
What is the world coming to? Everything’s going to the dogs. There I am walking in the park, I look over: a grunt. This one was a real bull, his face, arse, everything. You wouldn’t figure him for a homo in a million years. Just your typical straight man, but he’s walking through the bushes, so I follow him. After all, a stud like that doesn’t come along every day; there wasn’t an ounce of the poofter in him, as far as I could tell. Right? Classic grunt. He unfastens his fly and I kneel down. All well and good. But then I felt something touching me, and there he was, pulling me out and crouching down too – he wanted to go down on me. But I’m the woman here, the bleeding queer, right? And he’s supposed to be the grunt! And then he pulls his trousers down to his knees and there… Red lace stockings…! I thought I’d die laughing. I couldn’t keep it up of course, but I did make sure I got a good look at everything so I could describe it all for you in detail. I said to him:
‘You know, the police are all over this place, it’s too much, I’m getting out of here.’ And I took off. Really, grunt wearing hold-ups, who ever would have thought…
Now of course everybody knows her; they call her The One With the Stockings. No one could be bothered to invent a special name for her, just The One With the Stockings; sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. But the first time that anyone who didn’t know him saw that grunt walk by, they’d all start tailing him immediately; then, later on, after The One With the Stockings started cruising the park officially (top half skinhead, bottom half slapper, like a mermaid or something), they had all already figured out his number and would just say:
‘Ha ha ha, what a psycho queen. Psycho queen!’
How Paula Pretended to Be a Grunt in Szczytnicki Park
‘Night. I’m sitting there on a bench on the path in the park, smoking a cigarette, pretending to be a grunt. But in my winter cap I looked more like an old woman with a scarf on her head. You would’ve laughed your head off, Michał. In any case, I stretch out my legs in my jeans as far as I can, dig my Adidases into the dirt, and put on my best grunt face. Like this.’ Paula mugs for me; she doesn’t look anything like grunt, though she does look a lot like a big old poof… ‘I didn’t want people to see my cap, so I pulled this very grunty hood over the top, from a shirt with a sports logo on it. So I’m sitting there like that.’
‘And exactly why were you pretending to be a grunt, you freak?’
‘Anna from Bydgoszcz told me to over the phone. She instructed me to conduct a study of the culture of young queens. I had to sit there a long time because most of the queens already knew me and weren’t fooled, but just had a good laugh about it…
‘Eventually this young thing turned up, probably straight from the country or a small town. She
said she was a student, first-year. Just a bashful little thing, looking up at me like I was the sun, squinting her eyes. You could see right away she took me for grunt! I saw a caricature of myself, the way I am with grunts, bowing and scraping… And I started to hate her! The more queens are alike, the more they can’t stand each other; and that’s why I should have risen above it, gone back to my normal self, and squelched the hatred inside me. But princess was absolutely clueless, and she simpered at me with her girlish voice:
‘“You were here a couple of days ago… I recognise you… You were walking with someone else, a friend… I recognise your hoodie…”
‘She took me for someone else, genuine grunt, which was probably why she didn’t look at me very closely. She must have spent her nights groaning and rubbing herself raw for that bit of rough! Eventually she said:
‘“I live in the halls of residence, know what I mean? I just want you to know… so I can’t host.”
‘Goodness. I had to stifle my laughter. I mean, who says things like that to a grunt? What school does that belong to? Whose style? Not ours, that’s for sure!
‘“Gotcha…” I said in a low, manly whisper. Her resistance melted, and she asked me:
‘“So what are you into?”
‘Well, that was clearly going to get me to confide in her, Vicômte!
‘“You’ll see,” I said. “What about you?” Oh, Michał, that What about you? I only asked that for your sake, so I could tell you about it later and see you split your sides laughing. For you. I mean, as far as I was concerned that little queen had already failed the test. But her answer… Well, she really outdid herself, Vicômte! She recited it so quickly, and under her breath, as if she was at confession, you know, like someone embarrassed about something and talking too fast, everything all at once:
‘I like kissing on the lips, sucking a penis (only reciprocal, though), nipple play, and all-over body contact…”
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