ORGANISM

When Marcin was approaching the park, you could hear him from far away. A stadium, drunken roar: "Lech! Lech!", "Arka Gdynia!". Thrown out with tremendous, animal force, it tore through the night.

He walked down the middle of the path. As if the park was his fucking backyard where no one had the right to mess with him. As if the whole world belonged to him. As if it had never occurred to him that it could be any other way. Trash bins that weren't even in his way got kicked. They simply disturbed the harmony of his straight-acting thug world. He had to set them straight.

The trees trembled. The queens fell silent and parted before him like a flock of pigeons before a dog.

I saw him for the first time near Słowacki. He was pure light. Some incredible glow surrounded him. Mid-summer. He was wearing a sailor-striped white-and-blue T-shirt and shorts. A white baseball cap on his head. He was twenty-five and his face, despite the dark blond hair, simply shone. It had perfect symmetry and boyishness. Only those big, protruding ears broke it. They ruined everything and fixed everything. Because of them you couldn't take him completely seriously as a threat, nor stop looking at him.

He had a slim, almost skinny body. But with that springiness that doesn't yet know what a hangover or decay is. No gym. No sculpted muscles. Just natural strength. On his arms, tattoos done in some basement by an idiot with a machine. Dark blond thick hair on his legs. An insolent, self-assured gaze. Unapologetically alive. He looked like a typical straight-acting thug from the post-communist housing estate who had just learned how to drink and fuck.

My total opposite. I watched him like I was hypnotized. Absolute fascination.

I started desperately asking around about him. I found out quickly: straight. He came for resources: money, beer, a roof over his head. Nothing else interested him. Pure pragmatism. In the park he was a separate phenomenon. He didn't belong there, and yet he was at home. And he couldn't give a shit. He was a force of nature, feeding on whatever he needed. He removed obstacles from his path with threat and violence. He was completely natural in it. Like an animal that doesn't know the concept of shame.

At Wolne Tory, by the rusted, withdrawn train cars, he let me get close for a few dozen zlotys. The whole time he was rushing me. He looked at me, kneeling in front of him, with an indifferent expression. He ordered me to hurry because "the mosquitoes were biting." He kept saying he didn't have time. He was soft. A pure transaction that gave him no pleasure at all. A duty to be ticked off so he could buy beer as quickly as possible.

Those flashes in the bushes in no way violated his masculinity. He was a parasite feeding off the environment that kept him alive. He maximized profits. He accepted no loss. I remember once at night he first pulled thirty zlotys from me, then ripped out another twenty. He took fifty and promised he'd just run to the station for beer and come right back to the bushes. Of course he didn't come back.

Despite all that, Marcin could be a shield. In the park, muggings, beatings, and robberies were everyday occurrences. Once some unhinged guy with long, dirty hair cornered me. He threatened me. I froze with fear. I was sure he was going to beat me. Then Marcin appeared out of nowhere. He calmed the guy down — they knew each other.

— Leave him alone, he's my buddy, he's cool — he kept repeating until the other guy backed off. He saved me because I was his "resource" that needed to be protected.

Marcin never pretended. He didn't pretend to be better than he was. Vulgar, brutal, insolent. He could scream straight into someone's face for a few zlotys for beer. And then come to me calm as a cat and sit down next to me on the bench.

Later there was that plot in Suchy Las. He got off the tram at the loop in a T-shirt stained with blood.

— What happened, Marcin?! — I asked, terrified.

— Nothing. — He shrugged. — I got into it with some guy.

We went to the plot by taxi. It was hot. There was drinking. It was summer. In the wooden shack he drank himself senseless. I never really saw him completely sober. Beer was his only rightful drink. "Nature's gift" — that's what he called Żubr. He hated drugs. He approached with disgust the fact that I had to take psychotropics.

He demanded money upfront, but then avoided contact. "Not now," "later." When he was completely shitfaced, he finally let me pleasure him with my mouth. He always treated it as something that in no way undermined his masculinity. This time too, I didn't feel him get hard.

In the morning we walked several kilometers back to the city. The sun beat down on the asphalt. At the Narutowicza viaduct I stopped and said:

— Marcin, look. That's a beautiful viaduct, it looks like a ship. It's named after the president who was shot in an assassination.

He looked at the structure, spat to the side and said:

— Fuck him.

— You probably don't like books?

— Fuck, I hate them more than anything in the world.

I laughed. Not because it was smart. Precisely because it wasn't. Marcin never pretended. He didn't pretend to be sensitive. He didn't pretend to be curious about the world. He didn't pretend anything. He hated books, hated talking, hated posing. He was simply himself — brutal, simple, alive.

He walked on with his hands in his pockets. Slightly hunched, kicking stones along the way. And I again felt that strange tenderness. I never told him. For him I was probably just one of many queens hanging around the park. And I collected him piece by piece, storing him inside me. His voice. Drunken singing. Protruding ears. That brutality mixed with boyishness.

And that's exactly why I loved him.

He could protect me, let me get close, and then disappear for a week without a word. He was like a wild dog — sometimes he licks your face, sometimes he bites. I collected him. Every "fuck him," every kick to a trash can, every drunken roar across the entire path. I buried it deep inside my head and carried it like a treasure. He never knew he was being collected. And he never had to know. He just was. And that was enough.

Today I see him sometimes in bars. He sits with some older gay guy who buys him rounds. Marcin doesn't change. He's still that naughty straight-acting thug with protruding ears. He takes from the world what he needs and never apologizes for it. He just is.

The years passed. Life played a film with Marcin — or maybe just a looped gif. Smoothly transitioning from a bright angel under the poet's bust to a man with sun-damaged skin. When I saw him as a thirty-seven-year-old, he still wore the baseball cap. But biology had sent the bill.

Skin, burned by the sun without any filters, had become brown and worn. The hair on his legs had darkened and thickened. I checked it later on Wiki: in guys like him the sun doesn't lighten the hair, it stimulates the follicles to produce darker pigment. His body was simply armoring itself against the heat. Gaps in his teeth were striking with every smile.

The last time he burst into my life uninvited. He showed up at my place with a repulsive, fat guy. He didn't ask for permission — he came like it was his and took two hundred zlotys for nothing. I smelled the street, sweat, and stairwells on him. It took away my desire for closeness. I felt only enormous regret. A great sorrow that this time nothing would happen between us.

Because my fascination with him never faded. Over the years he only became more valuable. He gained character, like everything in my collection that I can't and don't want to abandon. On his way out, standing in the doorway, he snapped straight into my face:

— Stop pissing me off with that neurosis of yours! You have to quit that!

Then I understood the abyss. He went through life like a battering ram. He completely didn't understand that you could be afraid of something you can't touch. I compulsively analyzed, collected moments into a collection. He just was. He was the present — brutal, simple, and unapologetic about devouring what others were too scared to even touch.