Krakow Melt (19 page)

I would love to heal you with my own poetry one day, but I truly wonder if I’ll ever write anything worthwhile. I appear to be made of school, not neologisms.

Here’s a clipping you might like:

“Speaking with European Union officials in Brussels, Jarosław Kaczy
ski said: ‘I ask you not to believe in the myth of Poland as a homophobic and xenophobic country ... People with such [homosexual] preferences have full rights in Poland; there is no tradition of persecuting such people.’”

Well. Jarek had
better
hope that gays have full rights in Poland, especially now that he’s been outed on the radio :)

What’s with those Kaczy
ski brothers?

Dear boyfriend, we may not have much time before the government, with the help of the church, crushes us completely. But we will have to use something stronger than fire. We will use the Internet.

I’ll tell you more about it on the train tomorrow.

Now, let me ask you a few questions about the Smok Wawelski: why would the dragon prefer virgins? It baffles me. Wouldn’t a girl be more succulent with the additional vaginal mucus that comes with sex? And where would a ten-year-old boy get a calling card before the printing press was invented? Very funny. I’ve read the original version of
The Legend
, and I can see that you’ve re-imagined it much differently. Your version is
ekstra
.

I’ve taken the liberty of rewriting the ending. No offence. And I added a bit more dialogue because I was struck by
inspiracja
. (I agree that some things sound stupid in English.)

Chapter 3

The King realized that knights, princes, and other wastrels were impotent against the dragon. He was on the verge of giving up when a most powerful weapon skipped into his quarters: fifteen-year-old Stefcia, a nymphet in full bloom. She promised the King that she would be able to kill the dragon, “no problemo.”

“I don’t believe you,” the King said.

“Piece of
ciastko
. I’ll need thirty days alone with him, and someone to bring me books and meals and fresh clothes.”

“Foolish chickadee. He’ll munch you in a second!”

“Not with
this
,” Stefcia said, pulling a square of fibrous, handmade paper out of her dress, flicking nipples already swollen with excitement. Dragon-hunting, it would appear, was her thing.

“Paper,” his Majesty croaked. “You’re an idiot.”

“Are you really a king?” Stefcia asked, narrowing her eyes. “Where’s your crown?”

“Never mind that. How will paper save my kingdom?”

“First of all,” Stefcia said, “I’m foremost saving my ass, and
then
your stupid kingdom. Secondly, written on this paper is a secret that will change the way business is done, not only in caves but in castles as well.”

“What’s the secret?”

“It’s for dragons only.”

“Okay. Go ahead and try, but mark my words: there shall be no funeral for you.”

So brave Stefcia marched straight to the
Smocza Jama
and knocked on the cave wall with a discarded femur. “Hello?” The startled dragon ran to the mouth of the cave and opened his cage-like jaw over her head. “Uh, you don’t want to do that,” she said, and waved her piece of paper. The dragon ignored her and wrapped his pulpy lips around her ears.

“LISTEN!” she screamed.

The dragon stepped back and obeyed.

“On this paper I have the secret to how dragons can live forever. But you cannot kill me until I read it to you, and you cannot leave the cave to eat or drink, in case I read it while you’re gone.” Stefcia fixed his gaze with her own. “I will read the secret only once.”

So, the dragon camped in front of Stefcia while she read her books. He waited patiently, scrutinizing every movement of her delicious mouth for the moment when she would reveal the key to his immortality. Days passed, and she remained silent, taking her meals, bathing in the Wisła River, weaving daisy chains, and finger-painting on her naked body with pollen. The dragon studied her curves and clefts, salivating, imagining the hiding places where she kept the paper tucked away. But he kept his hunger in check, determined to hear the secret.

Ten days passed.

Twenty days passed.

Between chapters, Stefcia brewed tea with fresh chrysanthemums, dipped her toes in the river, and looked for words spelled out in the nighttime stars.

Thirty days passed. Still no secret.

[Watercolour illustration of the Smok Wawelski, dead at Stefcia’s feet. The corpse is shaded impeccably: scales pulled taut over his hollowed-out face, his parched, leathery tongue spread across her toes like a piece of roadkill. Green evaporated into halos of carbonic black. Stefcia, it appears, is still reading.]

CONCH

I just figured out how Radek rides PKP express trains for half-price: He buys a local fare (for much cheaper) and when he hands his ticket to the ticket-taker, he presses a nail-polished thumb over the incriminating section. Of course, they never ask him to move it.

No other thumb would work, not even mine. It’s homosexual genius at its best.

Radek is so handsome. I’m not sure you care, but he has puppy-dog eyes like Elvis, and shaves twice a day to keep his face smooth. He has one dimple, a swirl of
koperek
I’ve wanted to lick for some time, and a permanent case of bed-head that makes me think about ... his bed.

We were headed to the Baltic Sea again, passing one dreary town after another, and antique tractors and homemade pigeon coops and seas of radishes and potatoes. Radek was fascinated and stared out the window, his chin lit by sunlight. We passed all his favourite animals: pigs were snuffling truffles out of the muddy soil, dogs were chasing foxes, and the sheep were doing nothing.

I unwrapped our lunch of hard-boiled eggs and a salad of peas and carrots, and I salted everything appropriately.

“Tell me about the Internet,” Radek said.

“It’s mostly online and written in code,” I answered.

“I mean your plan, silly ... what’s all this about?”

“This?”

“We’re not going on an adventure, because we’ve been to Gda
sk before. Withholding information is a very Communist thing to do, you know.”

“So people should constantly be spitting out their thoughts?” I said, suddenly not finding him very attractive. “They should speak without timing?”

“Of course not. But I’m ready to know.”

I showed him my brand-new video camera.

“We’re making a YouTube piece,” I said.

“Actors?”

“You.”

“Just me?”

“No, but you’re the star.”

“Pay?” He double salted his egg.

“Fame. I hope there are no zits on your ass cheeks.”

“You can just pop them,” he said. “You’re pretty good at getting under the skin. Should I have brought condoms?”

“No.”

We watched the countryside roll by.

“Thanks for the book,” he said.

We got off in Gda
sk and had a cup of
herbatka
at the station restaurant. Then we pushed through the usual crowd of hooligans that clogged public places when school was out for the day, past juvenile comments about the size of my breasts and about Radek’s nail polish. You know, “Who’s the wife?” and other such childish remarks. Of course, I was the one who answered back, “Go fuck a pencil sharpener,” because if Radek had said it, they would’ve beaten him up on the spot. You can’t outrun a pack of kids on a 4 pm sugar high.

We caught our
tramwaj
to the beach. The weather was gorgeous. On our way to the bluffs, we passed a cluster of people setting up their picnic and arguing about the best way to get sand out of a cell phone. After we cleared them, Radek got naked immediately—even before I did—and I took it as a sign that the shoot would go well.

While we were walking through the bluffs to find a cozy spot, we came across patches of blood in the sand. People apparently had violent sex out here to a soundtrack of the sea ... I guess the water brings out something different in everyone.

We continued a little further and eventually settled on a bank of white sand flanked by reeds on three sides. We sat facing the beautiful, blue Baltic, at peace despite the broken shells and dead hermit crabs that poked through our towels and into our skin.

I leaned over to Radek, kissed him on his cherry lips, and then fell into his naked, cross-legged lap. He hovered over my face for a few seconds, inhaling my hair, and then he buried his tongue down my throat. Searching. He was always looking for something, this boy. We made out for a few minutes, then picked sand out of our mouths.

“Wow,” he said. “Your molars taste metallic.”

“That’s because I have fillings. You’re not supposed to notice.”

That did it. My pussy was wet. Please understand, dear reader, if I need to use Radek’s vulgar, Americanized English to explain what happened next.

He sniffed a noose around my neck and then turned idiot. He turned theoretical.

“Poland may learn to accept gays and lesbians in the coming decades, but it will take centuries for it to accept—”

“Be quiet,” I interrupted. “I need your face near my pussy.”

Radek obeyed. He lay on the sand in front of me, planted his face in my pubes, and took a deep whiff. His nostrils flared. This was about the body—our bodies—and not about “us,” so I wasn’t upset that he avoided eye contact with me. I preferred that sentimentality didn’t ruin our session.

You see, Radek thinks I’m a nice girl, but I’m really an animal.

Who whitewashes a city of all tampon advertising for some guy’s funeral? My vagina wasn’t going to stand for invisibility. I lurched forward and fucked Radek’s nose, smothering him with my labia.
Ekstra
, I thought.
His tongue knows what to look for and doesn’t take long to find it
.

His tongue, in fact, was radically fudging up the gay community’s spit-shined image of boy-on-boy, girl-on-girl. Bisexual stigma, lost right up my cunt.

I should’ve been enjoying these precious moments with Radek— the wind in his hair, the sun bronzing his pale ass, his tongue unleashing months of pent-up energy in me. Instead, I was thinking them to death.

“I almost forgot,” I said, setting up the camera on a book beside us. “Let me just turn this on.”

I rolled him over on his back and tried to quickly brush the sand off his cock, but it clung stubbornly to his moist foreskin. So I picked and picked. Then, when I thought it was clean, I pulled the skin back and found even more. The pee-hole is so interesting.