‘“Oh, uh-huh… Me too, I finished my studies last year…”
‘“Oh so what did you study, neighbour?”
‘“Me? I studied medicine, I’m a doctor.”
‘“What was it like, was it hard?”
‘“Oh, it sure was hard, especially anatomy…”
‘Right. And she didn’t flinch a single muscle as she reeled off a list of all the classes she’d taken during her years at university, and then told me how she’d since been concentrating on radiology. And I was young, and I believed everything, and afterwards I walked over to another bench, where some queens I already knew were sitting, Owl and a few other older ones, and I said:
‘“There’s this really lovely sister here…” Oh, wait, I hadn’t started saying “sister” then, it was two, three years before I started talking like a woman. It was only later that I started conspiring with Joanna the Priest’s Girl and Bolita, and Bolita talked me into using the feminine. So I said to them:
‘“I met this really great bloke over there, so sophisticated, and he’s a doctor…”
‘“Right, Andie, so sophisticated, but the coat he’s wearing is falling apart!”
‘But you know, back in those days… And the girls all said, “Which one is it? Who?” And I said to Owl, “The one who was sitting there on the bench when you walked by.”
‘“Oh! That’s Patriiiiicia! How did she introduce herself?”
‘“Well, he told me that his name was Piotr…”
‘“That’s just Patricia! Her a doctor? Fuck me! Maybe she once talked to a doctor!” And then this hideous old queen who rode with the paramedics, who was an orderly, somewhere outside Środy Śląskie, says:
‘“That one does it on the x-ray machine, she does it on the x-ray machine! In oncology. I’ve seen it. One day I was driving up, bringing in a patient, and I looked over, and I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes: it was Patricia. That flaming slag was walking down the corridor just like a doctor, in white clogs, swishing her arse, jiggling her keys…” Well, anyway, that’s how it all began…’
How Anna Dealt With a Customer Complaint
One time Anna came across some drunken grunt in the park, and evidently he was so dissatisfied with her service that he started complaining:
‘Eh, a blowjob like that, even my girlfriend can do better…’
Anna immediately stood up, got on her bicycle, and from a distance, where she was sure the grunt couldn’t do anything to her, shouted:
‘Huh! Thirty years I’ve been sucking cock, from the Don to the Dniepr, from the Dniepr to the Oder, and I’ve never had a single complaint!’ And she jumped on to her bike, and poof! She was gone!
How Anna Got a Grunt to Pity-Fuck Her
When nothing else worked, when she didn’t have a chance in hell, Anna got her grunt by making him feel sorry for her. She made herself appear all manly, and while they were with friends (having already bonded over the masculinity thing), she suggested that they go and drink vodka together. A bench, the park, bottle wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, a pack of Wiaruses, autumn leaves underfoot. And then they started talking about girls, about ‘arses’. The hot ones, the saggy ones, how you really have to chat them up before one of them will give in, and when Anna couldn’t take it any more she’d blurt out:
‘Damn it all, bloody hell, mate, there’s something I wanna get off my chest, but bloody hell – it’s embarrassing…’
‘Spit it out, man, we’re drinking together, you and I, we’re pals… Spit it out, maybe I can help you.’
‘So, you know, I know it’s definitely hard and all for you, I mean, I know it’s not easy, when there’s not a woman in sight, and a man’s on furlough, but what can I say, when I have it a hundred times worse…’ Then our Anna spits twice, at equal distances in front of their feet, on the leaves.
‘What do you mean?’
Here Anna’s head drops, and she mutters something, lights a cigarette, and has another shot of vodka…
‘I mean, well, I was once in prison, you know, and fucking hell, that’s where I learned it, from the others, and ever since then I keep wanting to, well, you know, suck a guy’s cock…’
At that the grunt demonstrated complete understanding, sympathy even.
‘Whoa, that really sucks, what the fuck, to be a queer, that’s like, I mean they screwed you up badly, didn’t they… that’s not funny at all, a life like that. You completely sure? And you’re able to go out into the world like that? I mean, mate, is there anything I can do to help?’
Anna suppressed a smile, but made a grave face and said:
‘Yeah, mate, it really does suck.’ She spits on the ground. ‘Fuck, I mean, when I see someone like that I really want to beat the living shit out of him, and yet at the same time the minute I get a couple of vodkas in me…’
At that point, the grunt said:
‘You know, mate, if you’ve got to do it, maybe I can help you out? Maybe you want to give a blowjob?’ (Grunt always forgot that the phrase required both the direct and an indirect object. In the language of grunt, fellatio was always referred to as ‘blowjob’ or ‘blowing’.)
During the act itself he said: ‘Mate, you suck cock better than my girlfriend.’ And there you have it. But afterwards, he asked for money, and Anna told him she was on a pension, and off she went on her bike!
How Anna Picked Up Grunt Thanks to Zofia Kiełbasa
The doorbell rings. I look through the peephole. I think to myself, Well, I’m quite a big bloke myself, so even if he has a knife he can’t do anything to me. So I crack the door open.
‘I’m looking for Zofia…’ She had some kind of funny last name, I don’t remember what it was, let’s just say Kiełbasa. ‘Is this the Kiełbasa residence?’
I’m thinking, what a fine piece of grunt he is; even if no Zofia Kiełbasa ever lived here, does it matter? So I pull this sad face, like I’m going to cry, open the door a bit wider, invite him in – please, come in, take a seat, have you travelled far?
‘From Olsztyn. I’m looking for this girl, it’s been years, she used to live here…’
‘Oy, oy, oy, well, yes, Zofia… Well, you see, she did live here once, but, well, how can I put it… Zofia died a month ago. Heart condition.’
And then I immediately take him into my arms, comfort him, suggest I go out and get a bottle of vodka and… drink to her memory… together… After all, I was Zofia’s best friend…
* Russian: in the hand.
** Russian: in the mouth.
*** Russian: in the arse.
* Russian: Oh look, the show’s been cancelled.
THEORIES
The Inviolability of Cars
Among confirmed heterosexuals there is no place for irony, for games, for inverted commas, and stylisation, not to mention swishing and camping it up. That’s the biggest difference between us and them. They’re serious, stuck up to their eyeballs in the hard realities of everyday life, and all we do is wink at them and tickle them with our airs. But they’re so serious that our tickling them (under their chins) only infuriates them; they refuse to come over to our side; they go ballistic, because they see everything as an attack on their serious, heterosexual world. They’re up to their eyeballs in their own social roles, and we come at them with our transgressions, our metamorphoses, our primping and preening. We relativise everything. They have names like Sławek, Arek and Bogdan, and we come at them with our pseudonyms, our Euphrosines and Lucretias. They’re up to their eyeballs in their local patriotisms, symbolised by their faith in brewery and football team, and we come at them with our trips abroad and lack of Polishness. They always wear the same thing, and we come at them with our dyed hair. Zero postmodernity, zero relativism, zero sense of the constructedness of everything and the conventionality of values – instead they have a handful of basic, unchanging principles: the honour of their city’s team, hence the honour of their city, too, because the two are inextricably bound… The inviolability of girlfrien
ds, their own and those of others. The inviolability of cars.
Theory of Swish
Queens have adopted the same behaviours that women abandoned in the process of emancipation: passivity, the desire to be dominated, reserve, crossing their legs as a gesture of standoffishness, pursing their lips for the very same reason, preying on men instead of practising independence, self-abasement, a hypersensitivity you’ll no longer find even among the most feminine women, gossiping, and moodiness (‘women are moody’). These qualities, chucked out through the door of feminism, return through the window of faggotry. The rest of the theory goes as follows: why are queens so ardent in their adoption of these old-fashioned female characteristics? Because that’s how men see women (and queens are still men after all). To a bloke, an emancipated, athletic woman with her feet up on the table and a can of beer in her fist isn’t a woman at all. In his eyes, only traditional qualities – so uncanny when freely achieved – are feminine and can truly turn him on. And now the real question: are straights attracted to femininity or to women themselves? That is, if I’m feminine, will they find me attractive (fuckable)? Is it sex or gender that attracts them? Because if it’s gender, then queens should by all rights be turned on by butch lesbians. But that, alas, never happens…
Cha-Cha-Cha
So, for example, one of them says to the other:
‘I had a straight man.’
‘And?’
‘It was all right, but he couldn’t get it up.’
‘What do you mean? Didn’t you cha-cha-cha him?’
‘I did, but nothing happened.’
Exactly. If theory had anything to do with reality, if our femininity was what turned them on, then cha-cha-cha would always work, but in practice it only works once in a blue moon. Cha-cha-cha involves painting the fingernails on one hand a delicate rose colour or with translucent shellac, donning dainty little rings, and in general simulating the delicate, cold hands of a teenage girl. Not the paws of a transvestite, but the slender hands of a young maiden. And then, with those slender hands, delicately, effeminately diddling the straight man’s genitals, whilst saying things like:
‘Oh, just look how big you are, and I’m such a dainty little thing, so little, my hands are even trembling! Oh, come on and show us your ginormous shlongadong.’ Cha-cha-cha! And then totally work the little Asian girl thing, squint your eyes, straight from the video for ‘Macarena’. ‘Coo-coo-coo! My pussypuss is so moist, my little snatchkin! Hi, my name is Anna Maria! Who are you? I’m just a girl in my first year at university, and now look how my hand goes from writing lecture notes to rubadubbing that big fat elephant trunk of yours. ’Cause you’re so big, and I’m so teensy-weensy. And my panty-wanties are so dainty and white, but they’re already all moist, ’cause I’m right out of a Manga comic, I’m totally kawaii, teen category!’ Then on the basis of this simple (really, only too simple!) interaction, the grunt bounces back hard into his masculinity, so that he doesn’t get inundated, doused, by all that femininity, so that he doesn’t himself turn into a woman, he guns it right into being a man, and the intended side effect of the bounce is that he gets a hardon. Like in Kieślowski’s Short Film About Love, when Szapołowska cha-cha-chas the young Olaf Lubaszenko and says:
‘I’m so wet… You have such delicate fingers…’ as a way of infecting him with her delicateness, her fecundity, so he’ll feel like a man and pull back into his masculinity. With straight grunt it’s no use pretending you’re not a queen. You need to be aggressive, look them straight in the crotch, and go totally swish on them, because they’re looking for the slapper in you, not the lad. And that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Supposed to.
The Supermarket Trick
One day Alligatorina went to the supermarket. She left her bag at the bag-check, but lost the number tag. On returning with her shopping, she searched and searched her pockets – no luck.
The world had become a barcode for which Alligatorina no longer possessed the scanner.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but I lost my tag, and my shoulder bag is in there.’
‘Oh, well, look in your pockets, your wallet… ’Cause it’ll cost you…’
Nothing.
The man in customer service called the security guards. Alligatorina withdrew into herself, frightened. People crowded. She didn’t have it.
‘Well, then we’ll have to fill out the form, won’t we, and there’ll be a fifty-zloty charge for the ticket. Which bag is it?’
‘That one, in that box down there, the second one up, the pink one!’ The security guards set Alligatorina’s bag on the counter.
‘Excuse me, sir, but this is a lady’s handbag…’
‘No, it’s mine.’
‘What’s inside?’
‘Let me see. Keys, tissues…’
‘Excuse me, sir, but every bag has keys and tissues in it. Maybe something a little more specific?’
Alligatorina was silent; she lowered her head and bit her lip because she knew she had her makeup bag and a lady’s comb in there, and a little mirror…
‘A little mirror,’ she added quietly, and lowered her eyes.
And then that hulking. Beefed-up. Navy blue-clad. Security guard. Stuck his enormous paw inside and pulled out. Her bits and pieces. Her odds and ends. All that nonsense of hers. Everything that was so intimate to Alligatorina… It was almost like he was touching her, like he was. Rummaging through her privacy. Under her blouse.
‘That’s not a man’s bag, it’s a woman’s handbag! Come with me, sir. A man’s bag, a man’s bag? He’s a thief!’ The crowd of people kept growing, and even Alligatorina wasn’t sure any more; maybe she’d been carrying someone else’s bag her whole life?
FLORA TRATTORIA
Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present the world-famous… Flora Trattoria! Hit it, band!
Flora proceeds to tell us all about Tola, the Health Inspectress, and the Pissoiress of Central Station. Listen carefully!
Tola
Tola was from Poznań, and she was stingy, really stingy.
‘Goodness, that Tola of ours certainly was tightfisted! She would piss in the sink because she hated to see so much water go down the toilet! She bought a refrigerator, but kept her food the old way, outside on the windowsill; she never even plugged in the fridge, cause she was afraid it would guzzle up all the electricity as it was on all the time. Tola opened the meter box and told that grunt of hers she lived with:
‘“Look, Mirek, that wheel keeps spinning like crazy the whole time, it keeps spinning round and round! It’s driving me mad, it’s eating up all the electricity, just look how that wheel keeps spinning and spinning!”
‘Anyway, Tola lived for six years with this cook, Mirek, who was certainly grunty enough. Tola was such a lunatic and so tightfisted, it’s not surprising that he finally dumped her. And I had just made a date with her,’ Flora Trattoria sighs. ‘We’d made a date to go to Lidl ’cause it’s so cheap. So we’re standing there in the queue at the till, and I’m getting some of those Knorr soups, you know, the spicy chicken one, and that cheese banquet one? In any case, there were some other queens standing behind us in the queue, chickens the lot of them, with plucked eyebrows, fauxhawks, straight out of the clubs, but really skinny, long necks, all veiny. Maybe they thought I was grunt’ – Flora Trattoria can be pretty masculine, and actually she is quite well built (Lady-Grunt is what she is) – ‘and they start chatting me up:
‘“What are you buying? Soup? Ooh, I think we’re buying the same ones – where did you get that one from? Cup-a-Soup… Ooh, we like that too… And especially those ones there.”
‘Cup-a-Soup!’ Flora Trattoria raises her eyebrows, rolls her eyes, and wrings her spongy hands.
‘And then there was the pair of longjohns Tola had tossed in our cart; the chickens thought they were mine and said:
‘“Ooh, long underwear…! The most vital part of a man’s wardrobe…”
‘And that’s when Mirek’s text
message arrived: “Moving out. Left keys next door.”
‘And Tola said:
‘“Listen, Florie, let’s go – let’s go back to my place. I have no idea what state my flat will be in.”
But you have to imagine Flora saying this sentence while imitating Tola’s Poznań accent, the way an ordinary woman from the Poznań suburbs would say it, the concern in her voice about all her furniture and appliances…
‘So I turned the key in the door, we walked in, and plonk! Tola collapsed on the floor in the cloakroom, bellowing like a cow! She certainly had a pair of lungs on her, that Tola. Mooooo! Mooooo! Eventually she got up, still bellowing, and ran into the kitchen:
‘“Oh my God, oh my God, Flora, look what he’s done to me, after all those years!” and mooooo, she bellowed. But that was nothing, because she had yet to open her kitchen cupboards, and only then did she really let loose and scream her head off, raving in between the howls:
‘“Bloody. Fucking. Hell! My china! He took my china! Mooooooo…!” And she started assessing the wreckage in the flat:
‘“Cocksucker! He took both my saucepans! Mooooo… The only two I had left, oh my saucepans…!” Eventually she calmed down a bit, but then she suddenly looked in the hallway and exploded again:
‘“Oh my fucking God! Oh my God! He took my leather jacket! Now that is really going too far, mooooo! That fucker won’t get away with this!”’
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