Talk six.
Bangkok, 23rd November
- Have you calmed down yet?
- Well, you know, eleven hours from Frankfurt to Bangkok was enough to take care of my growing numb butt and stop thinking about the event at the Berlin airport.
- Seth arrived one hour late.
- He hadn’t got the text massage that we would be flying in one hour ahead of the original schedule.
- Good we came at all.
- With a near go we could have lost our round the world ticket.
- Unfortunately in November such fogs may fall that make some airports close down. This time it fell on London, Amsterdam and Paris together, and there was no chance of getting to Heathrow airport in time for our Qantas flight to Thailand.
- You know, it was your father who was the most worried one. When he went to park the car and before we managed to explain to him what was going on and how we solved our problem, all he knew was that the flight to London was cancelled and we might not fly off from Europe.
- You were shaking yourself quite well.
- But I didn’t lose cold blood and found one of those ladies over there from the ground service.
- She took all of twenty minutes to sort it out and find a solution contriving a new connection to Bangkok.
- She kept us in suspense but in the end with a smile she enounced that she’d changed the airline to Lufthansa and we would be arriving in Bangkok, unfortunately, one hour before the schedule.
- What a relief it was! We thanked her from the bottom of our hearts..
- And you in an American way said to her: – I love you! – You surprised her. German ladies do not expect such declarations.
- What are we going to do about Seth?
- Do you want to say that there will be any problem with him?
- I hope not, but…
- He really wants to keep us company in our trip to the south of Thailand, Malaysia and Myanmar - Burma.
- Shall we put up with his company for two weeks?
- Do you forecast material fatigue?
- There may be trouble, because…
- You feel he has fallen in love with you?
- Just like that. At a single blow! Don’t jump into easy conclusions. I don’t think he has, but I may feel a bit uncomfortable in his presence..
- We’ll take care of the case. As for now, let’s enjoy Bangkok!
- I enjoy it every day. I feel fine here, cause I know the city, and apart from all the tourist attractions in form of exotic monuments, perfect public transportation, excellent food, we can spend the evenings in our favourite Balcony bar in Soi 4 street.
- Whose life member I am.
- An active one? Well, not bad.
- Do not take the words literally. I purchased a card which gives us such membership. Some nice perks are included. Ten percent discount with every bill as well. Considering the regularity of our visits, it has some meaning.
- I like watching that international crowd – the customers of the bar. Often accompanied by their Thai boyfriends. Interesting observations…
- Fiddle-de-dee. You like going there because all the waiters charm you with their beautiful smiles. We know, all Thais smile but the smile and charm of those boys do not leave you insensible.
- I admit that at times they even embarrass me.
- Don’t have to be too modest. You impress them.
- All Caucasians impress them.
- They look at me grudgingly for I block you.
- Not true. They are nice to you, too.
- Maybe because I give them bigger tips?
- You don’t like tipping.
- I Thailand I do.
- How do you feel when we go there with Seth?
- Since he does not feel embarrassed, although he could do, because of the stereotype – a white man with a Thai, why should we do? I have no problem there.
- You have noticed that they ignore him, haven’t you? They don’t welcome him the way they do it to us.
- It irritates me a bit, but we treat Seth as our friend, and I hope it shows.
- We are not going to worry about „what the others say about us”!
- We’ve been doing so for a long time.
- Talking about New York. Did you frequent gay bars or clubs there?
- Again I have to remind you that we are talking about 1976. I am 31, I haven’t done my coming-out yet, I’m worried that life is escaping me, and now I’m working as a receptionist in a dingy hotel twenty kilometers from Manhattan, in a city of Patterson, New Jersey.
- Nobody tried to pick you up there?
- Unfortunately not. Apparently I was sending signals which not were strong enough… But there was an encouraging funny episode there.
- Since when have they been called “episodes”?
- Stop it. One day, at the front desk, I was attending a couple in their late fifties. Suddenly the guy stepped back and started persistently staring at my face. After a couple of seconds he burst out – What a face! Perfect! Beautiful! What proportions! Well, the nose maybe a bit too long. I haven’t seen such a beautiful face for a long time! – At the meantime my colleague – another receptionist – from behind the door, with a gesture of a finger going into and out from his clenched fist, was showing me what it was going all about.
- And? So?
- And nothing. I was left there with a silly and flushed face, and they went up to their room.
- Is that true that nobody wanted such a pretty boy?
- Stop kidding me. Too bad. But nobody.
- Aha, so you were ready and open?
- It happened in the fourth month of my stay in the USA.
- What exactly?
- My visits to New York clubs.
- ???
- Don’t get excited. Nothing extraordinary happened. I didn’t lose my virginity.
- But you wanted to, didn’t you?
- Apparently not earnestly enough. During my few days off I would go to Manhattan in the vicinity of the infamous 8th Avenue with 42nd Street and there I would go to the clubs…
- What time of the day?
- Those are open 24 hours a day. You sit there by the bar or on a chair and watch porn films or live shows.
- Live sex on stage?
- Not just sex! No. Just strip dancing.
- What did you get out of it?
- Today I know that I then felt forcefully and unequivocally what had always been my destiny, as far as my sexual preferences were concerned. I thought: Enough of cheating myself!
- Did you feel better?
- Much better. With determination, I began to think about my future. I already knew that I would go back to Poland.
- Terenia from California told me that they had tried to talk you into staying in the USA and they’d offered to support you financially.
- Yes, that’s true. Terenia’s ex-boyfriend, David, was moved by the stories he heard from us about the then Poland, and really wanted extract me from the “commune”. He recognized that I was being wasted in Poland. He didn’t yet know then that I was being wasted as a gay man as well.
- You could’ve met someone and started new life in America.
- I wouldn’t know that. I’d decided otherwise.
- Why?
- As I would explain it to myself then, I wasn’t yet mentally ready to leave the family and the country for good.
Don’t forget I would’ve had to consider a risk of not seeing my country for at least ten years!
- What about your next stay in the USA? Did you have the same doubts?
- Adek, not all at once! Give me a rest and wait until one of our following talks, when I will tell you about my America AD 1978.
