Chapter 14 Tube of Happiness

23:45

Robert Rej had always known he was gay. When young, he might have appreciated the girls’ looks, could distinctly tell which one was attractive and which one was simply plain. But the sense of taste had little to do with his state of emotions and physical needs. He enjoyed girl’s company and they definitely enjoyed his. He had always some sort of a girlfriend, following him around, creating a cloud of gossip material for his peers and giving him the ‘taken’ label, which prevented other girls’ attacks. Robert’s and the girls’ expectations were different as he wanted to have a friend (with whom he wouldn’t be emotionally attached, as falling in love with heterosexual men was his doom from late primary school) and the girl wanted to have a boyfriend (and made him fall in love with her), but somehow it never happened. Their tricks never seemed to work, their flirtatious arranged one-to-one situations never led to any romantic outcome. Even his wife didn’t make him a proper husband and having two daughters didn’t change anything between them. No wonder that they were both unhappy, as their visions of a happy relationship were entirely different. When he looked at his daughters, he felt more like a sperm donor than an actual father, and yes, he was convinced that his personal life was a failure.

But it was difficult to come out as a gay man in Poland. It wasn’t the easiest place to carry a rainbow flag and walk to school and then to work with a bold statement on his forehead and subject himself to discrimination and ridicule. He wasn’t only afraid of being called a faggot in the face. There was a real prospect of being beaten by some homophobic kids who knew sex only from porn magazines but couldn’t digest that two men or women could engage in some sexual activity, not to mention fall in love. Possibly that’s why he became a policeman: he didn’t want to be beaten but, as he was able to carry a weapon, he could help those with a real threat of physical abuse. Maybe even for the reason of his sexual orientation he went for a couple of years to Berlin as the level of tolerance there was different than in his mother Warsaw. He followed the footsteps of some other twenty thousand Polish gay men and women and worked there for a couple of years. But at the end of the day, he wasn’t German. He was Polish. He liked his home landscapes, music and literature. He liked watching Polish films and eating traditional Polish food. And somehow he couldn’t fall in love with Germany. He came back.

And while he wasn’t loud and open about himself, he was actually at the point of his life that he stopped giving a shit about anything. His years in the police taught him one or two things about life and, mostly, taught him about people.

Was he for the same-sex marriage? Now he was a divorced man (divorced even in a heterosexual relationship) and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to get married again. Was he for the kid’s adoption by same-sex couples? He already had two daughters and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to have another baby. In any relationship. His small political effort was protecting the participants of Pride Parades while they were screamed at by Catholic fanatics and football fans. And that was it.

‘For me it’s disgusting,’ one time he was interrogating a middle-aged man who was taken from his flat at night faced with charges of manslaughter and the subject just popped up ‘Two guys kissing each other. It makes me throw up. It’s not natural. God didn’t create us this way. I can tell these homosexual men. I sniff them from the distance. They have something about them...’

Robert Rej raised his eyebrows in interest and smiled skeptically, wondering if he actually had been sniffed.

‘You know that some animals are homosexual. Statistically, it happens everywhere in the world...’

‘Natural? It’s a deviation. And what would happen if there were only two gays on this planet? We would completely disappear. We were created to reproduce. A man and a woman were brought to this world...

This idea of the end of the world made Robert think about the possibilities. If there were only two people left in the world, the result would be different depending on the configuration. Two gay men would probably have sex and set some fashionable piece of art, a sculpted Michel Angelo or they would write an Elton John-like song. Two lesbians would build a house and organize a home, a school and a farm, as men really weren’t necessary for anything and they could manage without them. Lesbians would probably find some sperm deposit and might reproduce. A heterosexual man and a woman could produce children, but if later on, these children bred between each other this would mean incest and the progeny might be genetically flawed. If there were two heterosexual women left on the lonely planet, they would probably argue, compare their body size, cellulite and skin condition, steal from each other, whatever there was to steal: cosmetics, clothes and probably cardboard men carved and painted in times of desperation. Two heterosexual men would be pals, they would drink beer, play cards and masturbate at the memory of their lost women. Or made some sex dolls out of the things that remained on Earth. Either way, two people weren’t enough. Civilization needed more than two people. The guy must have miscalculated.

‘Tell me again how come in the body of you wife we found seventy-six pieces of glass?’

‘We pretended that she’s a Christmas tree. She wore some balls. We had sex from behind and the glass just got stuck in her body.’

‘And couldn’t you hear her screams?’

‘We were playing Christmas carols. When I finished she had already been unconscious.’

Robert Rej doubted that there was something as nature at that time. And human beings were rarely exemplifying this nature. There was no black and white. People were usually different shades of gray. And his years in police taught him that this gray usually gravitated towards black.

But now, when his life situation stabilized a little bit, he decided that he also had the right to some pleasure. He took out the piece of paper and made a phone call.

He heard a voice. Instantly he switched to Russian, as he was afraid that his conversation partner would switch to English.

‘I’m a friend of Jakub Krakowski. We saw each other a couple of times in front of his office. I was wondering if you would like to go for a coffee with me?’

‘Yes, I remember you. Robert, right? You mean as a... date? Yes, sure, why not? I’m not seeing anyone.’

Robert felt a relief. He actually didn’t consider if Anton had any love life, which Robert might be interrupting. They arranged a meeting for the next afternoon and Robert was glad that it all came about so easily.

He went to the bathroom and looked at his body. He wasn’t exercising. His pale skin hadn’t seen the sun for a long time. His muscles were more or less neglected. He took a look at his penis situation and hopelessly started searching for some razor to save his last bits of sex-appeal and reveal his member from the bushes of singledom. He found something which apparently belonged to Lena and was a tube of a depilatory cream. That was even a better solution. He applied a fair amount of cream to his crotch and prepared to wait the said fifteen minutes. He sat on the edge of the bathtub and read the back of the instruction.

And somewhere between the sixth and seventh minute of the procedure, he felt something of an intense pain and a sense of burning. Like crazy, he started washing the substance from his body, hoping that the acid didn’t burn his skin to the meat.

And after half an hour he was looking at himself in the mirror, his pubic hair half shaved, with dozens of different-length single hair protruding from his sad penis covered with a thick layer of scab.

‘You walk in a strange way,’ Lena happened to notice that he wasn’t his natural self.

‘I used your shaving cream. I wouldn’t use it if I were you.’

‘Yeah? You should first try whether you have an allergic reaction. Plus it is for women. You have a different skin PH. Where did you apply it?’

Robert ignored the question and went on a date. Nature. If there was something which helped his situation, it was a bright face of Anton who listened to his story and burst out laughing with such a lovely laughter that he actually didn’t mind that his ex-wife hated him, that his daughters didn’t like him, that the guy who fucked his wife as if she had been a Christmas tree thought it unnatural, or that his penis was actually seriously wounded and might never return to its primary condition.

Anton kissed him on the lips and took him for a walk along the Old City of Warsaw. And assured him that they could simply hug until his member felt better.

Happiness was just another shade of gray. And maybe it was a part of nature, despite the general opinion.