Lovetown

by Michal Witkowski

  ‘Anna Jantar was the best!’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘’Cause… ’cause “jantar” means “amber”!’

  She’d phone you and right away start making up stories:

  ‘Fuck me if there isn’t a crowd at Cruising Central tonight!’

  ‘A crowd there? That’s a load of bollocks!’

  ‘Like hell it is! They’ve set up a scale model of the picket line,

  Radwanicka’s there walking about in a white coat, sucking off grunt left and right, a great big commotion, cameras, lights! Except they repeat the scenes like twenty times, and they can’t do the take as Radwanicka’s eyes keep rolling back into her head the minute a cock goes in her mouth. The director wants to get a shot of her looking, of her eyes, and that’s the moment they have to keep doing over and over! Queens all walking about in high-heeled shoes, tight white trousers showing off their bubble butts! Wiggling their arses!’

  ‘Did you get my card from Ciechocinek?’

  ‘That was you?! Warmest regards from sunny Ciechocinek – Regina, Roman, and the children?’

  ‘Yes, we were doing a training course there… I heard Michalina La Belletriste is writing a book about us… God, what a comeback that girl is having, a cover photo and everything. I remember back in ’88 when the queens at the Nellie Bar and Cruising Central were already saying how she was on the slide… ’Cause back then if you didn’t show your face for any length of time, rumours would start flying round about how you’d been locked up. They’d say things like:

  ‘“Snowflake’s either in the slammer or she’s finally met her maker in some poorhouse, destitute, just like Norwid.” And here I come down from Bydgoszcz and that whore Michalina’s all tarted up! What a star, with a cover photo and everything! Talk about marketing! And how young she looks, like a punk rocker. I bet the queens are all making Instant Whip over that one.

  ‘And did I ever tell you girls about the time I went back behind the Novotel for the lorry drivers? No? Ha ha! I went back there…’ – and here she starts singing So much sun all over the city, you’ve never seen anything like it… ‘Just a second, girls…’ In the background she says something in English, in German, muffling the mic with her sleeve, but not so much that we can’t hear her. ‘Listen, I’ve got the Scorpions here visiting me… Just a second, I’ll be sending them off, they’re going into town…’ And again she says something in the background. ‘OK, I’m back.’

  She’s been living the last few years in Bydgoszcz, our Anna has, in a working-class area. She’s all alone, doesn’t know a soul…

  ‘But don’t you know any other queens there you can swish around with?’

  ‘I do. If I draw stick figures of them. Day, memories of summer, day…’

  The Scorpions have evidently left, and now Anna pretends to be her sister on the phone:

  ‘Anna’s at her dressing table putting on her face, shall I call her?’

  ‘Anna, Annie… come on and tell us about the lorries…’

  ‘Anna! The gentlemen from Gazeta Wyborcza are on the phone.’

  And then a moment later: ‘Hello? Yes? Oh, it’s that whore Michalina. Get out of here, you really think I’m going to talk to you, so you can make money off me and smear your cunty Lancôme balsam all over my stories? Is that it? Well, whatever, I’m only joking… Anyway, so listen, I was down in Wrocław not so long back, and I’m thinking to myself: the barracks are gone, and I’m not going anywhere near the young offenders’ home cause I’ll run into Oleśnicka there, and I’ve owed her fifteen zlotys since time immemorial and that slut won’t have forgotten… So I’ll just go to the lorries and compete with the vice girls, I think. But I’ll be damned if I don’t run into Patricia there. It was winter, bitter cold, steam coming out of your mouth, and how on earth am I going to get out on to the highway, way out by the turn-off for the Ikea carpark?

  ‘But I set off anyway. I can always manage at night, just like when I used to wander around the railway station, spending half the night trailing a soldier, or a railway guard, or some nobody, until he found a woman, and I’d follow them: they’d take the night tram out to Biskupin, and I’d be there with them with; they’d head off for the bank of the Odra, into the dark of the bushes – and I would follow, too, and when he fucked her I’d be standing six feet away, and then I’d crawl on the ground towards him, and in a fit of jealousy I stole the handbag that whore tossed on the grass. She didn’t notice a thing. Where he was standing, I could have reached out and touched him. The infamous chanteuse Anna in action. Sometimes they would take their women into the front hall of a building; sometimes they’d just go into the park behind the station, but I knew their routes. One of them said to his woman:

  ‘“Bend over. Show me your cunt.”

  ‘And then he slapped her on the arse! I was speechless. I told my Zbyszek to slap me like that, too, and talk to me in that way. Something else I used to do was go to the porn cinema at the railway station. I’d sit down next to some conscript wearing a scarf printed with naked women, and watch while he masturbated. It was only worth going there on Scarf Day though – undergarment-washing day for the whores meant general mobilisation for the queens. Word always came through the grapevine. The first to walk through the railway station at six in the morning on her way to work would blurt it out: Fuuuurrrrloughs! Once I tried to pick one up. Heavens, he didn’t half make a fuss! The lights went up, all these men glaring at me, the manager and the usher leading me out the door. I felt so humiliated!

  ‘So one night I headed out past that Novotel, a bit further on, a couple of stops on the bus, a greenish-yellowy petrol station on my left, lorries up and down the road on my right. I headed over to the shop at the petrol station so I could pretend to be reading a German newspaper. But there in the distance I noticed Patricia standing in the window, and I was overcome with a fit of laughter at how old and fat she looked, with that fat belly of hers (second trimester, at least!), and hair dyed black with purple highlights. Goodness, how she’d aged during all those years without me! But Patricia didn’t have a clean conscience where I was concerned, so when she saw me in the distance she slunk off behind the McDonald’s and peeked back around the corner. Aha, I thought, go ahead and peek all you want, I’ll fix you!

  ‘I’ll fix you, all right. So I looked over, and there in front of all those parked lorries the female prostitutes from Russia and Romania were milling about, carrying cardboard signs that said things like: “v ruku*: 20 zl, v pashtshu**: 50 zl, v shopu***: 100 zl.” One of them, hair cut short and bleached blonde, was eating chips; that’s all she did, she just kept eating them, sticking chip after chip into her mouth with the same repeated gesture. So I sashayed over to that Russian, all dramatic like, and at the top of my voice, loud enough so that trollop behind the McDonald’s would hear, started to ask:

  ‘“So where’s that whore, the slag, the fat one? You haven’t seen a whore with dyed-black hair moving in on your patch, have you? A whore who does it for free, who does it v ruku for free, and positively adores doing it v pashtshu?” The Russian just kept eating, and between one chip and the next, chewing, she pointed at the McDonald’s:

  ‘“She’s hiding in there. Over there. Look at her hair standing on end. She’s hiding over there.” And she kept chewing. “She’s hanging out over there.” And chewing. “You can see her pashtsha.” And between one chew and the next: “There, there, there!”

  ‘Girls, don’t laugh. I love Patricia like a sister, but running into her like that, Lord help me! I had to keep a straight face so the Russian wouldn’t figure out that me and that tart had known each other for years. So I acted like I only just noticed her:

  ‘“Oh, I see her now, I see that slag!” And I said to that Russian: “Thank you. I’ll just go and chase her away now… Keep on working. That whore won’t be giving her pashtsha, her ruka, or her shopa for free to anyone. No way anyone’s going to pay a moron like that. I’m here from the tax office, and that stupid twat ha
sn’t paid her taxes in forty years, so I’m shutting her shop down for good.” I had a plastic bag with vodka in it to bribe the lorry drivers and get them drunk. I went over to her, behind the McDonald’s, and she raised those chubby hands of hers to her eyes and said, “No! No!” and “Forgive me!” and I whispered to her: “Act like you’re shielding yourself, bitch, scream like I’m beating you black and blue,” and I pretended to hit her over the head with the bag, and although I was laughing to myself, I screamed out across the entire parking lot so that prostitutka could hear:

  ‘“I’ve found you out, you stupid twat! So I found you slinking your way back behind McDonald’s? Take that! Take that! You haven’t paid your whoring tax, you whore! Giving it away for free, you were! Take that!”

  ‘So I pretended to beat her, and out the corner of my eye I could see the Russian calming down about her and her friends’ fortunes that night, realising La Brunette over here wouldn’t be giving them any competition, giving it away for free and all. Right.

  ‘And then somehow we fell into each other’s arms there behind the McDonald’s. But that old slag quickly got fed up of me and grew irritated about me competing with her. So she said to me sweetly:

  ‘“So are you staying at Paula’s? Really, Annie, this isn’t Bydgoszcz, we’re in Wrocław here, everything’s really spread out. I’m just worried you won’t find a bus at this hour… I mean, public transport has become so unreliable even during the day; they seem to have scrapped the night bus altogether… You should get going, go on home, put on some cold cream and your night shirt, the way they do at your age. I think I’ll wait here a bit longer, though I suppose I should be going home myself before long, seeing how empty it is and how cold, the whores all rubbing their hands and stamping their feet, steam rising out of their pashtshas like steam engines.”

  ‘Can you believe that? I left that whore there and went off to the lorry drivers by myself. I ran across the busy motorway. Since they sleep at the wheel, you need to climb up the little ladders on the passenger side to see who’s in the cab, because it’s really high, like they’re sleeping on horseback. They sleep. And on their windscreens they have pieces of cardboard inscribed not with v ruku, v pashtshu, v shopu, but with their names: Rafał, Wojtek, Big Shooter, and… Józek!

  ‘Oh, Józek, Józek! I could’ve washed your socks for you, what do you need an old slapper for? Heavy-set, fortyish, a little belly, fast asleep, exactly the type of grunt I go for. I climb up, knock on the window. Nothing. He had these curtains, window-coverings in his cab, and I’m sure he drew them whenever he took in a prostitute. I fantasised about him fucking me as I shouted:

  ‘“Józek! I’m not sparing you tonight! Józek! Harder! Deeper!”

  ‘Listen, Michalina, listen, you little tramp, I know you’ll be getting rich off our stories, carting your arse off to catch some rays in Lubiewo and all. Or maybe Rowy… Probably better not show your face in Lubiewo after this book is published… But, listen, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I pounded on the window and climbed down the ladder. The bloke looked out to see what was happening, and there I was having a wank. Heavens, was he ever shocked! Like he’d seen the Countess’s ghost! Or the Virgin’s. His face took on – I’m telling it like this, bitch, so you’ll write it all down just as it happened – his face took on an expression of terror and incredulity. All at once he pulled the curtains shut, and that was the last I saw of him. And then that tart with the chips comes along and says to me with this smug look on her face:

  ‘“Vot, spektakla nye budyet!”*

  ‘Nye budyet spektakla, she says, all full of herself, because now the cat was out of the bag: I’d been planning to give her a run for her money too, and all without charging a cent.

  How Anna Went Into the November Night For the First Time

  ‘So, tell me, darling, when did you first discover all these places?’

  ‘Well, you know, I really didn’t have a clue. This was back during the academic year ’85/’86. And it all started because in my first year at university I decided not to return home to visit my father’s grave for All Souls’ Eve. It was quite a way to go, after all, and I’d have had to come right back, and I was really busy with school, with my classes. I was constantly studying. I thought: if I want to get into the army, I have to finish my degree.

  I suppose it goes back even further, when I was still living in my village, and there were these workers, see, fixing the bridge. And at night they’d get pissed out of their heads, and pass out and fall asleep on the ground outside the barracks, their clothes all crusty with mud, you know? And I – I was still a child, I suppose – I’d sneak off to grope them. They were so drunk I could’ve robbed them blind and they wouldn’t have noticed. Their clothes were so shabby, their flies fastened with safety pins instead of zips. I undid them, copped a feel, and ran back home! The dark of night, I’m lying in bed, o good Lord! Did I remember to fasten the pin back properly on that blond, or did I leave him wide open? I couldn’t sleep, thinking of him turning on his side and the safety pin puncturing his willy. So I stayed up all night, and at dawn I ran back and checked. Fastened. Uff.

  ‘And thus was I compelled into the November night – into the smoke and into the leaves, into the chill air and smell of bonfires, like Queen Margot herself, everything egging me on, “Go Margot! Go!” Compelled, compelled towards death, Eros and Thanatos at once! Wisps of smoke, there’s something moving over there, go on! Don’t stay at home, the Devil’s calling you! So I went to Hanka Sawicka Park. I’d found out where to go the day before when this one queen in my year had shouted out to the whole college:

  ‘“Fucking Ayyy! Get a load of this! You wanna go make fun of the queers? I’m not just talking about Doctor This or Professor That. Fucking Ayyy! Go see for yourselves, the party going on at the Monopol! All the queers are there, dancing on this moving platform thingy, wiggling their arses, mingling, kissing each other, it’s lad-on-lad on the benches in Hanka Sawicka Park! Both sides of the paths, right there on the benches!” And everyone in our year heard what he said, and those stupid peasant cunts were saying:

  ‘“Tee hee hee, Gutek! You’re impossible! Tee hee hee, you’ve really got some balls to go to a place like that!”

  ‘And I’m thinking to myself, “That was me you saw there!” But at that point all I’d ever done before was peek at the picket line on General Bem Street, but only in passing, and then I’d run away like an idiot, like a madwoman, ’cause of AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, run away, run away! Even as early as ’81 I’d found out about AIDS and queers from different magazines, like Razem or Na przełaj. At first I thought you only had to be a poof to get sick, and didn’t know the disease was contagious. I was still going through a phase when I prayed a lot, and I prayed that the Lord God would absolve me of this awful curse. Ha ha ha! I looked the word up in German encyclopedias, and when I was in the fourth or fifth form I happened upon a copy of Tonio Krüger at the library and immediately sensed a connection. In my first year at university I was looking at this huge East German lexicon and ran across an entry on Homosexualität, Homosexuelle. And I was so amazed, because they wrote about it completely neutrally. At the end of the article there was this note: “Frequently such individuals are confronted with difficulties in finding a partner.” Oh! But in our university library encyclopedias like that were kept in the criminal law section, which tells you everything. And there was this normal bloke in a photograph, just your everyday face on the street, and the caption under the photo read: homosexual. I died of laughter! Back then in Poland there were still people who subscribed to the nineteenth-century view that homosexuals were built differently, had a different “physiognomy”, and could be identified by the shape of their anuses…

  ‘The first person who ever came on to me was Duckie the Gypsy Murderess. She was this Gypsy who’d murdered a queen and done time in prison. Hava or Yava was what they called her. The one on Tombakowa Street. Anyway, I fell in love with Duckie, good Lord… But of c
ourse it was never consummated, we just kissed and hung around together… Later Duckie gave me a telephone number, pretended it was hers… She spread a rumour about what a lovely cock I had, and all the queers started going after me. But I only let her touch it once, maybe twice, and then I immediately buttoned myself up and bolted. I ran off, and then I fantasised about her later; I kept ringing her up, and this old queen always picked up (I mean, how on earth would Duckie have had a telephone at home? She was just trying to show off). And it was a good thing I hadn’t done anything else with her, because Rafalina fell in love with Duckie around then and was broken in by her – her first time – and as luck would have it Duckie gave her the clap! Duckie was basically a crook, don’t forget, Michalina. I was so stupid back then, and only later on did I find out who Duckie really was from the queens, from Owl. From Patricia… Well, I didn’t meet Patricia until the following spring. I was snogging this one soldier, Andrzej, on the picket, and we were about to have a shag right there, but the riot police were stationed next door, so we went over by the opera house, into the grass, in the shit, and had a roll in the grass, in all that shit, instead. We squirmed about, kissing, going crazy, but we didn’t actually have sex. I never wanted to have sex, just kisses. And then, light-hearted and with a bounce in my step, I would return every night from the park to my dormitory.

  ‘I met Patricia one night in May. After the rain. 1985. For about twenty years Patricia had been going around in this Yugoslavian parka she’d got from a girlfriend who worked in a shop, and by this time it wasn’t even a parka any more, just a tattered rag, just like Rimbaud’s line: Mon paletot soudain devenait idéal…

  ‘So anyway, Patty would go about in this threadbare idea of a jacket. But she was so slender, with this great black shock of hair, an absolute flamer all the same. So I see this flaming queen coming at me from the lilacs. And she says to me:

  ‘“Good evening, comrade… neighbour… It’s quiet over there, you can go on in. It’s safe. And you would be…?” She started chatting me up, and I was so open, I told her I was at university, studying German, and she said: