Krakow Melt Read Free Page B

his testicles like a rutting pig. They hung several inches away from him like loosely attached eggs, as if on display. I smelled, licked, and sucked them. A kind of gender worship, I guess. I imagined piercing through the skin when he was least expecting it, siphoning out his testosterone with illicit sips, and then waiting for his pubic hair to sprout magically through my cheeks so I could smell him all day. Me, the lusty and deluded Chia Pet.
    I am a swine, an alchemist, a human. I am a curious boy of twenty-five.
    One of those times, Karol was most rude.
    “Radek, I would like to see you naked.”
    “ Je ne comprends pas .” I had already begun to speak the language of the revolution.
    “Don’t be coy when I’m horny,” he said. “That just makes me frustrated.” He put his hand behind my head, yanked it like a slot machine handle, and I went down. Choked on pre-cum. I loved the feeling of his cock head stretching the back of my throat. It changed how I spoke, ever so slightly, giving my vowels a hollow touch.
    “But I like it when you’re frustrated,” I said. “It makes you do things to me.”
    I stood up, shucked my shorts, and instantly heard the voice of the apostle Paul, residual ramblings from somewhere in my childhood.
    Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
    I was not made for the Lord’s work. I was built for fucking, and I had known that for many years. But these scriptures echo across the land, and it’s hard to tune them out completely, to escape even subtle pangs of guilt. I had Karol’s stinky pubes in my teeth, his fingers near my shitty hole, and the stain of dried DNA on my belly; I processed these stimuli through years of programming and filters that told me the body was an unclean organism that worms its way closer to hell every day. Fail, fail, fail.
    You cannot outrun echoes in Poland, but you can block them out. There are ways to loosen the church’s grip on your crotch.
    Karol cupped my ass, perhaps to catch my sway, perhaps to centre my asshole over his cock so it would be a clean pierce when I eventually squatted.
    I recoiled from his touch.
    “What’s wrong?” he said.
    “Maybe we can do it with my clothes on.”
    “Are you retarded?”
    “Don’t be a hater,” I said.
    “How is sex even possible with your clothes on?”
    In a way, clothing had protected me from sin though many sound fuckings: if my body was only a remote participant, then it wasn’t exactly sex.
    “My jeans have holes in all the right places.”
    I was ready to defy the apostle Paul with a striptease for the ages, but Karol was already zipping up.
    “Someday,” he said, “we’re going to need you to fuck openly.” He pulled an elastic band around his pony tail. “We might all have to fuck in the streets until people get it. No more hiding.”
    Sure. I was conquering the physical world, all right.

DANISH BLUE
    Chicago hardly fit through the doors of Kraków’s No. 8 tramwaj , but the driver let me force it through and chip the corners where future suburbs would grow. He knew that the incredible level of detail would keep the kids from screaming for a few stops.
    I couldn’t reach the timestamp to validate my green transit ticket. This happens every now and then. Jaka szkoda . If the ticket-taker ever catches me, I’ll just bribe him with a free tour of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. I don’t know what the Communists were thinking, putting Polish trams on the honour system. As if we wouldn’t figure out, after all these years, how to ride with an unstamped ticket.
    An oak tree uprooted and fell off into a woman’s handbag without her knowing. She had such a stern face, I decided not to retrieve it.
    I got off at Stradom station and paid some guy