Polish politicians may have banned gay pride parades on several occasions last year. But 2005 also saw the rise of Polish gay fiction, with several writers, including Bartosz Zurawiecki, winning critical aclaim. Zurawiecki's tongue-in-cheek book 'Three Men in Bed, Not Including the Cat', the story of a burnt out yuppie who clings on to a gay couple to put some meaning in his life, went on sale in all the major book stores. Two other hits of 2005 were 'Lubiewo', a hilarious story set on a beach frequented by elderly gays, and 'The Positive' by Maciek Meller, about patients in an AIDS ward.
Listen to excerpts from Bartosz Zurawiecki's book in a feature by Krzysztof Fordonski.
Before taking off his pants, he switched off the light. The two boys were already quite busy down there but he still wasn’t sure if he really liked it all. Finally, he laid down delicately on the very edge of the bed. He wanted to whisper “Boys, move aside a little” but he immediately realized the banally obscene ridiculousness of the sentence. He did not have the time to think any more as he was pulled in and it was too late for doubts.
Such openings were not possible in good old Polish novels. “Three Gentlemen in Bed (to Say Nothing of the Cat)” were not heroes you could hear about from a decent Polish writer. Homoeroticism in Polish fiction, if it appeared at all, most certainly did not dare to speak its name. It was usually limited to a “tender friendship among teenage boys” or more often veiled fascination with masculine body one could find for example in the fiction of Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz or Jerzy Andrzejewski.
Although the tradition of homoerotic fiction in Poland dates back at least to the famous composer and writer Karol Szymanowski, a major change came only in the early 1990s with the publication of the first openly gay novels written by Marcin Krzeszowiec and Grzegorz Musiał such as The Czech Jewellery or Al Fine. Their books, however, were completely disregarded by reviewers and quickly disappeared from the market. Polish readers were clearly not ready for gay fiction yet. Also such translated works as E. M. Forster’s Maurice or the novels of Alan Hollinghurst did not make any stir in Poland.
My friends sent me to their psychiatrist. I did not feel like confessing to him so I told him briefly that my life made no sense, I was tired and stressed, I had no perspectives in life, and I threw in some suicidal thoughts. The doctor looked at me with professional comprehension and stated that I suffered from depression, or actually something else but it also started with the letter “d”, I didn’t get the name. He prescribed pills for a month, very expensive pills by the way. The “d” thing is a real luxury!
The market waited for almost fifteen years for a new wave of gay fiction but when it appeared, the reaction was almost enthusiastic. Probably to the surprise of the authors, Bartosz Żurawiecki and Michał Witkowski, most of the important weeklies and broadsheets published quite favourable reviews and interviews with the young writers. Ironically, however, many of the reviewers attempted to praise the books without actually touching upon their most important subject. Bartosz Żurawiecki recalls the reviews of his first novel:
The reactions of press and other media to my book were very varied. What I found especially interesting was a kind of, probably pretended, indifference. Many critics felt obliged to state that they didn’t care at all while the book was actually a bourgeois love story.
Bartosz Żurawiecki is a well-known film critic, he publishes his reviews regularly both in such specialist magazines as “Film” and in mainstream cultural weeklies and monthlies. His essays were included in the volume The Authors of Polish Cinema. He is also a gay activist, founding member of Gay and Lesbian organisations in Poland, although recently he fights for the rights of the homosexual minority rather with his pen as he did publishing an article in the collection Polish Homophobia.
Although a published author when he finished his first novel, he realised that it was not an easy task to get it published. For over a year the book circulated only among his friends while excerpts appeared on an Internet site. The publication of “Three Gentlemen in Bed (to Say Nothing of the Cat). A Passive Love Story” as his author called his short novel was finally possible thanks to the immense success of “Lubiewo”, another gay novel written by Michal Witkowski, recommended here by Krzysztof Zablocki, translator, literary critic and academic teacher from Warsaw University.
KF: The success was truly enormous. Żurawiecki and Witkowski were immediately invited to the literary saloons – soon they became ambassadors of young Polish literature. In the early 2006 they visited Germany to participate in this year’s edition of the projects Region/City Partnership and TransFusion – Meetings Across Boarders.
Such a stir concerning successful, bestselling and controversial young novelists would probably be something obvious in France, Germany or the United Kingdom where gay and lesbian writing is a natural part of the literary market and every major bookshop has a special section devoted to gay and lesbian fiction. Yet we are in Poland where, according to Robert Kulpa, a specialist in film studies and queer culture, there is gay and lesbian culture whatsoever:
The situation may actually be even more difficult than Robert Kulpa presents it. Krzysztof Zablocki simply sees no signs of homosexuality in Polish public sphere:
The two writers had enough courage to present their visions of homosexual life in Poland. Żurawiecki presented a brilliantly ironic image of the life of affluent metropolitan gays while Witkowski concentrated on a picture of the 1980s – the last years of communism in Poland – and the ways socially rejected faggots, as they call themselves in the novel, coped with the time or rather lived on its margins. Witkowski is especially praised for his style. In this sense Polish gays are much more lucky than Polish lesbians. Doctor Joanna Mizielińska, queer studies specialist from Warsaw University, is rather pessimistic about the imminent future of lesbian writing in Poland.
Krzysztof Zabłocki is not as pessimistic. As he claims Magdalena Okoniewska, the author of “Lesbian Diary” is not the only lesbian writer.
“Three Gentlemen in Bed (to Say Nothing of the Cat)” tells the story of Adam, a successful gay man in his late twenties. Adam has everything a gay male may expect – a steady boyfriend he calls his husband, a teenage lover, a rented apartment, and a well-paid job. The novel, however, tells a story of failure. Step by step Adam looses everything he has, and succumbs to depression.
Although Adam is the central character of the novel, the book presents also the happy-go-lucky life of his friends, an affluent gay couple which accepts him as the third party of their little ménage-a-trois. The fourth important character is their journalist friend, a typical fag-hag who clings to her gay friends unable to form a heterosexual relation and as her visit to the famous and obviously gay psychiatrist prove, to cope with her own life. She provides in the novel an outsider’s view of the closely knit gay milieu.
When the prescriptions were ready, stamped and signed, the doctor sat back in his armchair with a glass of wine in his hand. And he started to confide in me.
"Well, well… My sex life sucks. You know Zbyszek? You don’t? He was once Piotr’s beau, the biologist who had a fling with Michał, not that Michał, the Michał from the Polish studies department. He was later with Andrzej, known as the Director, who broke off so dramatically with Jakub, they don’t talk to each other any more, because Jakub was madly jealous and Andrzej slept around just to tease him, for example with Robert, whom you should know because he works in a newspaper or a radio and has a three year old daughter, he used to be with Rafał from the Telecom, who was at that dinner with Robert, another Robert, a friend of Mariusz, with whom I slept once to console him when he broke up with Wojtek, the famous photographer. Still nothing?
The psychiatrist doctor Kott, one of the many gay friends of the heroes of The Three Gentlemen in Bed is a perfect example of the life described by Żurawiecki. Their existence seems to absolutely carefree and yet they are torn by doubts in constant search for the perfect love. The characters are too intelligent not to see that they loose themselves in their search for sex, physical perfection and sometimes just novelty. As Łukasz Smuga, one of the reviewers, noticed, Żurawiecki could be criticized for his accurate description of gay life in Poland not only by right-wing extremists but also by the gay people who desperately try to prove to the heterosexual majority that they are “people just as everybody else”.
Well, anyway, we parted some months ago. He respected me very much, he always told me he didn’t want to be in the way, I had my scholarly work, I needed peace and quiet. Well, I just can’t say… well, well… But, you know, I was just finishing my therapy to cure my narcissism at that time and his seriousness did get on my nerves sometime. So I told him in January, no, in December, just before the New Year’s Eve, that we should take a break from each other. He is very attached to me, we visit each other often, we have sex. It is just that I have reached the age, you know, that I would like to wake up beside a guy, and I would like to wake up beside the same guy every morning, well, well…Then came Grzegorz, just a twink, student of political science, well, he is still a student, he used to be a bartender but got fired so I took care of him and paid him. No, no, not for sex, it’s not what you think, he was extremely modest in the matter, it took me two months of our acquaintance to pull down his boxer shorts. I guess we reached climax together twice at most. He was a kind of my secretary, he would buy train tickets for me when I was going to a conference. But I sent him away, you see, well, well… He treated me like a father, a professional, he was with me to confess his problems, he thought I would offer him a free therapy. He wasn’t with me because of me but because I am a psychiatrist. It isn’t fair, I don’t like it, I am not cut out to be a mentor, there must be an element of partnership in a relation. So, you see, there is this Sebastian, well, well… He stays the night here quite often and I somehow got used to him, although I can feel he is using me. He is a doctoral student at the Chemistry department, so he lives in hall, well, actually, he lives here. But he doesn’t want me, he says there is no chemistry between us, although we do have sex. You see, mutual erotic assistance. I keep analysing it and I understand still less. I have a terrible depression. I just don’t know what to do.
Żurawiecki shows a special talent in picking up the contemporary language and reflecting it in his works. His prose glitters with witty phrases while the novelist cunningly parodies the conventions of trash romances applying them to a reality no trash romance would ever dare to describe. His fiction is saturated with allusions to current events, quotations from song lyrics, TV commercials but also the Bible. Such a cocktail of pop and high culture makes his blasé and often pseudo-intellectual characters come to live. The author is ready to mock almost any aspect of Polish reality, he doesn’t spare even such supposed supporters of the gay cause as the mass-circulation daily Gazeta Wyborcza which one of his characters calls an organ "liberal when flaccid but conservative when erect".
I excused myself and went to the toilet. His bathroom badly needed a complete redecoration. I sat on the toilet looking at a huge patch of mould stains on the wall. I tried to flush but it broke, water trickled down more and more slowly, and I felt all the strength leaving my body. I was stuck on the toilet, I could not leave, I could not fix the flush, it was too high on the wall. The doctor knocked on the door.
- It’s OK, it’s OK. I should finally call a plumber. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it, I know gay professors, gay journalists, even gay dentists, but no gay plumber or a gay locksmith. I once had sex with a guy who made duplicate keys. We had nothing to talk about before or after, but he was great in bed. Well, well… Great body, beautiful dick, huge, you have never seen one like that, I was really scared when he mounted me. But stupid. You see, I need someone I could talk to, a little at least. I don’t insist on talking about new medication or the end of history. Films at least. When we go to the movies together. I don’t have the time to go to the movies but if I did I’d rather he could talk about it. A combination of dick and intellect. That Sebastian, if he only wanted, I would need to think about it. But he doesn’t want me. That’s why I have to continue with my casting for a fiancé.
I drunk up my wine. I called a taxi. I asked the doctor how much I owed him. He shook my hand.
- Don’t mention that. Talking to you helped me a lot.
Many thousand of copies of both novels sold prove that Polish literature may be in for a major break. There seem to be quite a lot of people in Poland ready to accept the challenge of an openly gay book. The question is therefore not so much if Polish publishers and market are ready. Bartosz Zurawiecki wonders rather whether there are Polish writers ready to write about such subjects:
‘Authors are the main problem. The question now is whether there are more people who write gay and lesbian novels and short stories. And if there have been no such people yet, the question is whether they will appear.’
Neither Żurawiecki nor Witkowski waited for new gay and lesbian writers to take their place. Their first novels were followed by new works within months of their initial success. Witkowski published a selection of short stories and excerpts from an unfinished novel in a collection entitled “Fototapeta”, he also contributed to a collection of short stories about people suffering from AIDS. Żurawiecki surprised his readers in late autumn of 2005 with a volume called “Erotica alla Polacca” a collection of three one-act plays which the author himself called “dramatic short stories”. In these short plays Żurawiecki once more proved his talent for catching living language of Polish gays and also his talent for writing for the stage – one of the plays The Sextet has already been performed. The plays came as a surprise as Żurawiecki repeatedly claimed he was working on a detective novel. We hope we can still expect more such surprises from him.