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the Polish City of Krakow and the Drunks

            Krakow

I went to Krakow with him although I did not want to; why I did not want to should be obvious to all lovers secluded from their partners for a lover’s eternity (four months in our case), I wanted to keep the rings spinning around us cutting off all debris, human or not.  The events that unfolded there were probably a result of my already set decision that I was not going to enjoy myself. A simple magical fulfilment of expectations from the mind-fuck fairy. Josh’s friend and the girl who picked us up from the airport, in pictures, wore the boxers I had given him which actually belonged to my ex boyfriend Chris. They had slept together and I was not about to get messed up in the whole who did what where in what position and in what country and was not too concerned about that. On the train I had positive thoughts, girls like me, girls are not threatened by me, everything will be smooth sailing as is usually the case. We get out of the train and this little girl starts babbling away without making eye contact with me at all. Now I am not one to be ignored. I like my strong hand shake or awkward hug and a strong eye to eye appointment. This worried me. What kind of person cant look me in the eye? And then the hyper, coked -out string of incoherent words began. He says I never gave her chance, I couldn’t, the time to give one a chance would not fit into her schedule of speech. Later, I think through a drunken haze I made friends with her, but not the Babysitters Club version of “friends.”

Everyone has a type of person they don’t like or rather a type of person they prefer over another. I like my friends and mates to be down to earth (as in respectful of Earth’s gravitational pull), aware of the situation, respectful, and not coked –out (by coked-out I mean preoccupied with a million things at once, rejecting immediate situations). I, myself, am a bit ditzy and split into various interstellar rocket –ships and I need someone to hold me down, ground me. Maybe the girl was nervous herself, I have thought about this, and different people have different ways of dealing with things but she made me feel uncomfortable. I have been around a lot of girls in recent years, beautiful girls, smart girls – girls who kept their cool and were able to rescue me if need be. As everything in my life it is a selfish fancy but this I really cannot change.

I take Joshua aside:

“I can’t take her Josh. She is on drugs.”

“She is not. She is just hyper.”

“I feel tragically uncomfortable. I want to go back.” Freeze frame. This I am not proud of; basically everything I say after this I am not proud of. I should not even be writing these set of events but this is a novel about...shit I don’t even know what this is about, something psychologically relevant. I grab the liquor bottle we always carry around and chug that thing like it doesn’t taste like gasoline in order to obliterate any prejudice I might have toward this girl. He chugs with me obviously very distressed and torn about this. He knows I am over-reacting but he loves me, then again he wants to hang out with his friend....oh the dilemma.

“You are going to have fun. You just need to give it a chance. Give her a chance.” He pleaded and I drank. She was fluttering somewhere in the terminal, she must have been aware of the grumpy spoiled girlfriend. I had no choice. If I was in the States I would have left him, would have regretted it and wrote it here in those exact words “man I regret leaving him that day at the train terminal. End of book.”

We stopped by our Hostel which is award winning in itself for it is the place where my suicide attempt blossomed like a crystal rose. The room was extremely large with a small lovely balcony looking out onto a beautiful Krakow street. The bed was a simple mattress and up to our ankles and the walls, floors ceilings were all made out of beautiful orange-grey mahogany wood. We had a dresser drawer which looked like a coffin standing upright against the wall. On the table lay all my clothes, liquor, and my cosmetics. I got changed, trying to strike up a conversation about her boyfriend. People usually like talking about things that are bothering them right now. So not about their mother’s death but about a fight they just had or about the train they just missed. You just have to feel out what that urgent concern is. She was scared that her boyfriend would find out she was drinking with us, she mentioned something earlier so I clung to that.

“Come on take a swig! A great big hefty one! Come on!” I handed her the liquor bottle and she took a little one while I swallowed a swallow-sized gulp of vodka. I change right in front of her, possibly trying to embarrass her. My mind is a broken rubics cube.

“I can’t my boyfriend will smell it” she said

“Oh ok. Well we stick to little tiny shots then” I was almost being patronizing but I honestly wanted to check out this girls intensity for fun, her reluctance, and her weakness. 

“Why do you not want him to know?” naively because I honestly did not know. The only person I ever hid the fact that i drank was from my grandmother so this undercover drunk role was new to me. And then come the flapping of girl gums not as flappy as I wanted them to be but I think we established a trust.

“I just got off of drugs, and I want to be good and if he smells it then...I don’t want to upset him.” Now she was a human to me, really that’s all I needed.

She takes us to her friend’s house for dinner. Before I know I feel comfortable with the five or so friends there, I joke, I don’t remember if I really talked to the girl but I did get really close with her friend. A quiet, gentle, intelligent creature with whom I could talk for hours. She was the highlight of all of Josh’s friends.

Before we left for Krakow, Joshua had made a few references to the fact that we were running low on money. And by “we” I mean him because I did not pay for anything while in Warsaw for four days. I felt guilty because I always had my own money. I paid for myself with every last cent I had, so to hear that I was causing someone to loose their savings was worrisome. I will get through this part of the story quickly, like pulling off a bandage because it is still raw and sober in my mind. The girl took us around Krakow, to bars, Joshua had paid for all our shots, and the prices were steep in Krakow. The description of Krakow I leave for the next part for it deserves no dramatization on the part of human interactions. He paid for the entrance to a water park his friends invited us to; which turned out to be fun if not for my dramatic outbursts and arguments. I was bombed by this point and the alcohol was closing doors on all rationality. I was arguing and laying on the guilt in the pool, Jacuzzi, changing room and lobby. Back and forth, a constant nagging in Josh’s ear. Joshua then paid for cabs and more drinks for me and for the girl.

What was painful, I suppose, is that she did not ask him. She simply put juice on the counter in a convenience store and expected to be paid for. Very much like my father’s old girlfriend who used my father for money and was an absolute pest in my life. All of a sudden I saw Josh like a dupe. My father did it because he was infatuated by the young woman, then why did Josh do it? For the same reason?

He had mentioned she was a mooch but I never imagined someone being so inconsiderate as to not contribute anything. It boggled my mind. I was taught that you should always be thankful if someone hands you something for free, to ask nicely, to not expect much. This access of flamboyant treasury bothered me down to my fallopian tubes. I felt myself, like magma, flowing through an ice-berg ready to melt, explode and steam. Why was money a problem when he was alone with me but it was not a problem when this girl was around? I simply found it a bit deceiving.

You know a man loves you (and this most defintely sounds like a remake of a bad Cher song) when he ends a night of possibilities, a night with friends, a night he looked forward to, a time when he could shine brightly in order to take you home, and whats more, stay home with you. I demanded this from Josh after the water park, where we had fought and made up before anyone could blink and notice. I remember we were in the cab, seperated by the girl in the middle, and she nudged me and pointed to him. Josh was writing with his finger on the perspiration on the window: I love Ina. He did not look at me, it is as if he was writing it for himself, maybe a reminder, he carried sadness in the ark of his neck, his hair poking at his upper cheek. I nodded and cringed with shame and love. Why did I not understand then? Why did I have to take it farther and farther, the night was still young and I was out for blood.

We stopped and got liqour. We have always drank a lot; no liqour in the house makes us anxious. I am not sure why Joshua loves to drink so much, whether it is because he has been doing it for so long that it has become a part of him or it is a certain way to deal with his life, that is up to him to describe. I drink because after a while contours of objects become to sharp, thoughts become to intrusive and lead me astray. I begin to bubble with awkward sentences, I feel like happiness and excitement are too strong. Like I will jump right out of my skin in order to be higher. Alcohol is my crutch and as horrible as that is, it is not of a concern yet. I must also mention the fact that Joshua and I glorify drinking to ourselves and others. We mention the writer Bukowski whenever our drinking starts to spill over the wells of functioning.

“You love her!” I stepped into our room at the Hostel and screamed.

“What? You are so delusional! I dont love her. I can not believe you...” he answered. I had been rubbing a sore spot for the last five hours, his rash was spreading fast.

“Why did you bring me here?! Liar!” imitating him “Oh we have no more money, I am so poor, I spent so much, here let me pay for the little slut! I wish I never came back to see you!” and on and on...one can imagine the filthy things coming out of my frighteningly evil mouth.

He opened the balcony, took the bottle with him, and left me, drinking himself into oblivion. I went bezerk. He left. He left me, he did not pay attention to me! How could he? Rolling his eyes while I am so miserable and unhappy!

“I would rather die!” I screamed. Like a child I started throwing myself around the floor. Hurting my knees, hips, and ribs as I hurled myself against the table. I grabbed a lamp and swung it at the wall. The lamp broke into well formed rose petals, except with tips as sharp as a hunter’s knife. Joshua looked back through the balcony window at the chaos I was causing. He started screaming. Screaming. Slammed the balcony door with a bang. I was completley dillusional at this point, I was zapped with a stunt gun right infront of the edge and I jumped..

            I grabbed the petal like piece of glass and started slicing my wrist, the vertical way (learned well from my own boyfriend). He flew through the balcony door and tried to pry the piece of glass from my hands, which I realized, for future reference, is not a good idea for it cuts the cutter’s hands in very painful places: crevices of the fingers. The moment one piece fell from my hands, bloodied, I would grab another. And on and on. Eventually Josh got tired, said “Fuck this!” and left for the balcony again. This enraged me to the point where I was not only over the edge I was drowning in my own insanity. I was more determined now to peel my own skin, more determined than an astronomer is to find a planet, through his telescope, on which little green men tan using our sun’s rays. I was mad.

            This time Josh had to use his whole body, knees on my wrists to stop me. I think I subsided when he held the bottle to his chest and started crying himself. Then I think I sobered up enough to love him and pity him. We both drifted off in our own tears, drunken stupor and leftover jam.

            Josh started the morning with drinking. Swig, gulp, bam the bottle hit the floor with the weight of his hand. Swig, gulp, bam the bottle hit the wooden floor. Over and over. I was sober and scared. He was drunk and wild. The same look in his eyes as when he tried to kill himself. We were in an unknown town, we were in love, we were psychotic and he was getting drunk. Conversation only lead to insults from him. So I started drinking, mostly to stop him from drinking. It was a race to the bottom of the bottle. It was a brutal time for my tongue, throat and stomach. From past experiences I knew I had to get him sober. Sober enough to see that I am here now, sane, and willing to talk.

“Come here and hug me a little” he whimpered, crying, hugging the bottle. I was hesitant because of the spitefulness in that question. This was almost a vengeful act and a desperate need for reciprication of comfort. I did so awkwardly for when he drinks he begins to slur his hands. All of a sudden I had palms in my eyes and fingers in my mouth, and I did not like it. I was at the point where I knew we could not get any more drunk. We had been drinking two days straight, we were exhausted from crying, we were both bleeding, the room reeked and we were trapped in the city we were not familiar with. I needed him to sober up so I waited.

I grabbed a magazine and made coffee and waited while he slept...waited...fear, regret, and love flutuated throughout my body in dull throbs from my head to my nervous intestines.

A few hours passed and he got up. Started looking for his gloves. He got dressed. I froze in panic; was he going to leave me here? Was he going to get more liqour? Is he going to the bar? His friends? Million and one things occured to me that did not even occur to him.

“Where are you going?” I asked quietly.

“Out. I need to get out. I cant stay here.”

“Can i come along?”

“Sure. Come on” he said in a very cold and non-chalant voice, sarcastic almost. He later told me he was like a robot existing only to feed himself, I had destroyed all that was passionate in him.

“Thanks” I said obediantly, promising myself to be on my best behavior.  I put my trench coat over an almost naked body, slipped on boots without socks and ate a tick tack. 

            We barely spoke as we walked through the dark streets. 

At every fork he asked “do you want to go this way?” and I would quietly answer “yes, sure.”

“Are you hungry” he asked. “Yes, quite.” “Where would you like to eat?” and I answered mildly “wherever you want to eat.”

            While eating dinner he cried and ordered shots of strong expensive vodka. I asked him to take it slow. He said “i dont care anymore. You said it is over. I will drink myself into nothing. I am a robot, nothing matters. You killed me.”

“It doesnt have to be like that, all or nothing. Please, we can talk it over. We are here together, we love each other, dont cross it all out,” I begged.

“ There is nothing to talk about. When I break up with you I know it is not over, like when I left you in Chicago and flew to London. I knew I would one day hold you. When you break up with me I know I will never touch you again,” he said in a very detached emotional state.

“A few hours ago you asked me to hug you, now come here and please hold me. I am going to break from the pain. Please hold me.” He got up and sat next to me and we held each other in the Polish restaurant with whimpers trembling our necks.

We did not sleep in jam that night.

The Brain was Enlarged to Store more Memories

The Brain was Enlarged to Store more Memories

(therefore this is a true and most likely an inaccurate memory)

By: Ina Cudnok

After the photo shoot she dropped me off in front of our place and placed an oily hand on my oily knee. “Good luck” she said with the forced worried look that only a hired best friend can muster up. In the loft, where we had just shot our photos, the light was maneuvered, aligned and controlled by the photographer’s minions; on the outside the earth controlled the light and it was not flattering to her skin. Looking up I saw that dawn’s strongest ray of light was focused right on our living room window as if through a reverse prism. I thought for a second how easily our old wooden floors would spark and catch on fire if dawn wasn’t soon to be knocked off its stand.

I tried to turn the knob to our apartment but because my hand was soaked in oil, it awkwardly slipped off of the handle. I heard obnoxiously loud music on the other side of the door. My heart sank into my stomach like a fertilized egg into the womb. He only played music this loud when he got unearthly drunk.

The photographer did not like his ‘subjects’ to drink before the shoot. This was specified by everyone working for him, even the dog growled at my flask. So, I reluctantly spilled my flask into the flower pot.

“We can have wine afterwards!” chirped the make-up girl who was really a naughty lawyer’s secretary, in the office and in the bedroom.   

“Wine…yea. Sipping from a tiny tea cup. What is this… no liquor rules…pure fascism. “ I muttered so my statement fell only on my best friend’s ears. She could have used a drink more than I wanted one. The thought of being naked had her toes curling upwards. I laid my cell phone on top of my empty flask and went to watch beautiful, naked, oiled up people soberly creating art. May I ‘p.s.’ here a second and say that sobriety and art have never made magnificent contributions to the world. My cell phone rang 16 times in the next hour.

            I gripped the doorknob and pushed my body against the door. It cracked open the length of a movie stars eyelash and hit something on the other side causing my palm severe soreness. I heard cries. No, it was more like laughter. High pitched laughter, hiccupping laughter, like someone laughing on a buggy crossing the Rocky Mountains. I realized the degree of seriousness waiting for me behind the door even before I saw the actual scene. The other side looked like a psychiatric case the madhouses rejected because they didn’t have enough tranquilizers. I pushed harder against the door, the laughter got louder and my tears scrambled to the top faster.

            The girls had me pinned in between their hips. My best friend living out her most obvious fantasy and the other girl going for what was un-doubtfully promised to her if she did the shoot which just happned to be me ( I am only this narcissistic if it is true or if the situation needs comedy, you figure it out). I had been in painfully uncomfortable situations throughout my life, two lesbians were nothing I couldn’t handle. But I really wanted a drink. I looked soberly at the flower pot where the trader dog was licking the last grains that remained wet. I slid from in between their throbbing clits and went into the kitchen where the photographer was taking a wee bit of a break from shooting. He was talking to the one and only Black Jesus Brian which means nothing to you and really nothing to me either. I started opening the cupboards trying not to attract too much attention to my raging alcoholism.

“Are you having fun?” Mr. PhotoTaker asked me as if the whole shindig was arranged for my amusement. The little guy I like to call Narcissist living in my brain pulled out a flash card on which the words THIS IS ALL FOR YOU BECAUSE HE WANTS YOU were written in lipstick. I freesbed that flash card out through my eyes. He saw the skeptical look I couldn’t help but hide.

“I mean are you ready for your shoot?”

“I have been ready since Carrie got all oiled up and balance a bazooka on her shoulder while flicking her clit to the rhythm of a…box spring.” I pulled open the last cupboard to find the whole cupboard lined with Johnny Depp pictures and in the center was a freshly rolled joint.

“Come on, Ina, this shoot isn’t for erotic exposure. I hope you feel comfortable,” he said. The flash card did a 180 and fell through my eye onto a cork board.

“Oh I know. It’s a great art project. I told you I’m down, though I think my boyfriend is a bit frightened that I decided to pose nude for you.” I didn’t really know why I told him that extra lard of info. Maybe because he was two decades older, had a soft voice, wore a worried mask on his face or because I wanted him to know that I was in a rocky relationship.

“He has nothing to worry about. This was your decision. And you even invited him.” All of a sudden a big hug was aimed like a Russian Missile at my waist. I let it take off, hit its target, hinder for a few seconds and retreat back and away away from its target. Not one cell in my body helped him achieve this great hug strategy. I have learned that hugs can quickly morph into sexual fondling of all sorts, vertical or horizontal.  When he left I took off all my clothes. Naked, I walked towards the girls who were getting ready to pose. I threw my clothes on top of the cell phone-flask combo. By then he had send me ten text messages.

            Inside the apartment broken furniture like vomit leaked onto my feet. There was a shit storm of clothes, bottles, cds, hangers, and canvases, papyruses of poetry, screams and tears. I wadded through my broken furniture and underwear which reached up to my ankles. I walked into the room where so many nights we made love on the futon. I saw him and my back broke and a splinter rammed into my heart, my tears finally jumped off the cliff, and my hands picked up the vibrations of the base…to put it lightly. The sanity I had been rebuilding since I moved out of my mother’s house, spiced alcoholic rum mommy, crumbled like an unfinished skyscraper with a loose screw. His body, like a skin of a lemon, rocked back and forth on the love plated futon. In his hands he held a razor which he rammed against his bloodied wrists and its neighborhood. Vodka bottles had red fingerprints on their necks only the whiskey bottles were clean; they were the slave owners of his mind. His face was twisted into what only a circus clown would consider a smile. His eyes looked detached; they seemed to be squirming in his eye sockets wishing their way out. All of a sudden the haggard eyes rolled upwards, they scraped the film off of the windshield and I saw the monster inside my boyfriend ready to cause serious damage to the one who hurt him; which as you might have figured out by now was – yours truly.

            I never suspected how un-erotic I could feel wearing an army gadget belt on top of my flesh while a bunch of GAP gone GRITTY people stared at my awkward poses. While I stood there listening vaguely to his commands of where I should throw my hips and where I should hang my wrist, I thought about my boyfriend. We were supposed to meet up after the shoot. Did we say 11 pm? Because it was surely way past 11 pm. Would he care that I had skipped our promised meeting? I asked myself while the photographer softly ordered me to grab the sword lying next to me. A lonely Samurai makes for an un-pretty Samurai. I realized I had not looked at my phone in ages. My boyfriend and I are never intellectually apart thanks to the text messaging system, poems and pictures (dirtier pictures then the ones that would come out of this photo shoot). But I have broken this pact. I have forgotten to wet a beating heart. The fact that I did not feel remorse, slight apprehension about facing him maybe, was troubling. No use worrying about it now. No use in...

            The cell phone propelled across the room and I picked it up while his screams ricocheted in the white light, the room was so bright, the blankets we used to cover up the windows ripped off, wet and bloodied. On the phone was a friend. His friend. Maybe even my friend god knows anymore.

“Ina, he is bad.”

“No shit! God. Fuck! What am I suppose to do? I cant handle this!” I kneeled in the corner away from his raging octupus arms. He had kicked me when I tried to get the phone away from him. Kicked me right where my belly button attached to my heart.

“Call the cops” the friend said calmly. Click.

“I hate you. You cunt! Its over! You sick fucking bitch! I loved you!” and on and on he screamed at me. When the cops came I was outside with the GirlFriend who had made “possible lesbian” the most valuable piece of art in my life portfolio and was trying to keep the Mexican neighbors away from the flying razors Josh was now throwing through the window, they were aimed at me. The cops could not find him upstairs because he had run away to the other part of the apartment, hidden. I had to go up there and help them find him, like a wild beast he was pacing back and forth, a bottle in his hand. His eyes...I will never forget – how we could ever get over the hate in his eyes is a human mystery. His arms were butchered, the crevices of his elbow like baby backyard pools, his wrists had flesh hanging like snot. They strapped him down and I broke completely. Hysterical, insane in thoughts and in gestures, ticks and quivers of the body. My girlfriend did the calls to the parents and to the friends, all I did was bawl and steal hairs from my bangs. His friends came to the hospital, hell they even took me out to dinner. All I wanted was to sit on him and hold him so he can’t move, talk, or see but I had to play a game with the people. Here I am, I am strong, lets eat and shit all over ourselves with stories while the one I love is doped up on tranquilizers and fingered by therapists.

I did not forgive him and moved out.

Three months later I moved back in.

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