Talk twenty eight.
Los Altos Hills, 22nd January
- Finally, you got a nice haircut.
- The hairdresser’s parlour in Nadi didn’t promise anything good.
- I didn’t like the owner. The Chinese man with his excessive complaisance made us wait over an hour as didn’t want to lose such customers. Those two ladies getting their hair dyed took such a long time to finish.
- It was worth waiting for that excellent stylist.
- I was watching that Fijian guy how skillfully he was working on your scalp and I was musing on how all the stylist in the world look alike.
- Not physically, though. But stylistically. This dark-skinned man didn’t look particularly nice with the red dyed hair and a strange make-up.
- He certainly liked it. I didn’t like his painted toenails. But he was an expert hairdresser. I enjoyed watching him at work.
- I hope he enjoyed the tip.
- He will give you still a better haircut next time. I’d like to go back there again! Out of over three hundred islands in the Fiji archipelago we barely managed to see ten.
- I could, but I don’t need to. See, we took off from Fiji on Saturday evening 21st January, and after an eighteen-hour flight via Los Angeles we landed in San Francisco the same day, the same evening, the same Saturday.
- Yes, that’s true. No mistake there! We have crossed the International Date Line.
- This way, are we one day younger or older? I’m confused.
- Regardless of our age, we are in Los Altos Hills, about sixty kilometres south of San Francisco. And regardless of my being younger or older, I’m cold. Until Wednesday it’s going to be only 2 – 10°C here! Imagine! In California!
- Are you happy to be here again?
- As usual, Terenia received us warmly. As usual, John received us with friendly indifference.
- And the dogs?
- Dora and Fritz didn’t forget us despite three years that has passed since our last stay here. They greeted us like crazy.
- Already three years? When I look around and look at the work I’d done here, and look at the results of what I’d done here, I’m getting the impression it was a month ago!
- Everybody praises you for what you’d done. John who’s not able to show it, adores you for your ability to have done so perfectly a job which would have taken several contractors. In most of the cases not as good as you.
- What do you mean by this „adore”!? He likes me for I’m less expensive.
- This too. And less cheap. This „adoring” is a big problem. To adore means to worship. How do you like this: “I adore cream cheese”? During my pilgrimage to the Holy Land…
- You and a pilgrimage!?
- Then it was the only way to see Israel without visa and other organizational hustle. Besides, the price was attractive. The priest who was in charge of the trip, was very nice, intelligent and sensible. The guide, however, who was a monk and who all the time forcefully tried to catechize us, didn’t win my empathy. It was he who preached about the use of the word “to admire”. He’d claim it was reserved for God only!
- Sounds fine to me. But I do not admire anything or anybody.
- And me?
- Sorry.
- When John had an idea of taking Terenia for a three-month cruise round the world, she set only one condition: „Jacek and Adek have to come to California to house-sit and take care of the dogs. I wouldn’t trust anybody else. The dogs are most important for me.”
- She forgot to add the gold fish in the pond, the pea-cocks in the cage. We were also supposed to keep an eye on a Mexican cleaner and Mexican gardener who’d come to do their jobs weekly.
- The scope of your work on the house was impressive.
- Nothing much. The only difficulty was the work in the height, as painting the outside walls above the second floor needed suspenders to hang off the roof.
- Not only did the house have a pitched roof, but also it was situated on a hill with a significant slope. I’m proud of your job and that you didn’t show any fear!
- Stop it!! I wouldn’t’ve taken up the job without your support.
- For the record: Thanks to you John finally accepted me and my gayness.
- Thanks to me? He stopped being homophobic?
- Yes. I think we are the first gay couple who he watched up close, I mean, at his own place. We saw how “normal” we were and additionally he got captivated by your technical abilities when we had been in California for the first time together, i.e. in 2007. That’s why he employed us in 2008 for the house-sitting during their round the world cruise.
- Now, I’d like to hear something about your acquaintances and friends with whom you’d been socializing at the time we met.
- Again we must go back in time. After Jarek’d left Szczecin in the autumn 1999, I decided not to get engaged in any relationships, to breathe freedom, and besides work, to devote myself to friends who I believed surrounded me.
- Who were those friends?
- I’m going to tell you about them only what’d been of some importance for me during those years, before I’d meet you.
- Did anything change between you and them when we met? I’m asking for I want you to collect your thoughts and sum up all that, although I know the answer.
- To make the story some clear, I have to go back to the beginning of the 90s, when Tomek shows up into my life. He invited me and Andrzej for his birthday. With a great difficulty I managed to persuade Andrzej to join me. He’d always had problems with meeting new people. Tomek assured me that there won’t be anybody else but us. When we arrived, it turned out that Tomek’d invited still another couple. Janusz and Andrzej had already been together for two years. Both in their late twenties.
- I assume, it was when your longtime friendship started. Am I right?
- Soon, you’re going to hear about the dramatic end after eighteen years of the friendship.
- Everything with you has to be so dramatic, doesn’t it?
- Mainly when great emotions are at play, and final decisions are to be taken.
- Again, something happened because of me?
- A lot has happened because of you, but into this story politics got entangled.
- The great politics?
- Stop mocking me. The politics which concerns all of us and is important for all of us in our daily life.
- How did your friendship with Janusz and Andrzej got developed?
- We’d been close to each other over eighteen years. As if we’d been a family. We would spend all Christmases and Easters together. We’d travel to Portugal once and many times to Spain where we have our common friends – Juan and Carlos.
- Was Jarek welcome to and accepted by your hermetic group?
- Yes, he was. But there was no question about any friendship between them.
- Why not?
- You see, one of few advantages of the age difference between me and the rest of the group got revealed clearly. As a guy some (!) older than the others, I wouldn’t compete with their intelligence or with their ego. The age peers have a problem with accepting each other’s points of view. They are not authority for one another. They don’t accept each other’s playing a wise man, imposing their opinions and showing off their knowledge. Each of them is the best. Especially if they are strong personalities.
- Did you have to reconcile them?
- No, not necessarily. I skillfully buffered their mutual performances in such a way that there weren’t open conflicts. With time, it only got worse, for there’s no way of imposing friendship on anybody. During my last year with Jarek, Janusz and Andrzej would politely tolerate him to finally speak out against him.
- Did they see and know more than you did?
- I don’t think so. They wouldn’t say this straight-forwardly, but they thought Jarek didn’t deserve a relationship with me.
- They must’ve been jealous.
- It took me many years to understand all the elements which influenced real friendship which happened in my life.
- ?
- Friendship means appropriation of the other person. Friendship means seeing the friend’s happiness through one’s own eyes. Friendship is hardly ever tolerant. Often can’t such attitude be controlled because it all happens subconsciously. Apparently, it must have been like that in my friendship with Janusz and Andrzej. They wanted my own good so much that they weren’t able to see the happiness I got from my life’s fortune. They didn’t make a slightest effort to take care of the foursome friendship. They weren’t able to give up any opportunity of making a point that Jarek would never reach their level.
- And Jarek wouldn’t stay debt, would he?
- Thus, the reciprocal dislike was there. Nevertheless, the four of us went to the Galery for another New Year’s Eve party 1993/94. Again we had a lot of fun there. Alek whom we had met as a waiter when we were there for the first time, was one of the guest now.
- Why did you sponsour his coming to Jelenia Góra from Złotoryja where he lived?
- Jarek and Alek had been in touch and we found out that Artur – the owner of the Galery place – fired Alek and now he, at the age of twenty some years old, was back at home without any cash. At the meantime he went to school for young adults to get a profession of an accountant.
- So, you invited him to the Galery to have him as an entertainer?
- Not only for that reason. We liked him for his determination in fighting difficulties in his path of life. Besides, we knew the story of his employment at the Galery, but that would be another chapter. It was almost a slavery. A job for peanuts. Fortunately, without sexual services.
-That would be only missing!
- I suppose, those who fancied that, didn’t miss anything. We heard some stories, didn’t we? Artur liked Ukranians a lot. Not only as cheap man power…
- As a result of this addiction and his drinking as well, ruined his business, didn’t they?
- Over ten years later his business got auctioned for the debts. Now, talking with Alek about his future, we came to a conclusion that we were able to help him in starting studies in Szczecin. Jarek had nothing against it either, so Alek would be staying at our place for the recruitment period at the university.
- Thus, a long period of your friendship with Alek and his cortège got started.
