homo superior used to blog

Marek on the sofa, arms up on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

For the first time, my stomach didn’t churn, my heart didn’t leap, my hands didn’t tremble. Nothing happened at all really, except a small spike in interest, when I saw Marek come out of the station’s second hand shop, pause at the top of the stairs and then go down. One hand was slipped inside a pocket, the other rubbed his chin. His legs pulled him along in front of him and his shoulders rolled a bit.

“You don’t get much more butch than that,” Clint said. He and I and The Quiet American were sitting in the Kavarna bitching about how fucking boring the station had become. Several gypsy druggies sat at the foremost tables, openly shooting up. Everyone but us ignored them, including the cops and the servers. I was relieved that Mark wasn’t among them. The lowest of the low now sits in the Kavarna every day. I’ve never seen it so bad, or so open.

“You never see him anymore?” The Quiet American asked me.

“No, but then I’m never in the station,” I said.

“I see him here maybe two or three times a month now. He never really was a biznis boy,” Clint said.

“No…” I answered, and thought, that really was true. He’d turn a trick now and then when he needed to buy piko, but I’d only given him money for sex once. The first time. Most of his money came from thieving – shoplifting and purse-snatching.

Our group didn’t talk much after that. We instead finished up our drinks and went our separate ways. I needed to shop for groceries and once outside headed off in the direction of namesti Republiky, towards Old Town. On the path, just before the Big Love statue, I ran into Marek, coming back to the station, after making the rounds, I guess. He saw me coming and smiled, both hands in his pockets, shoulders still rolling in a slow, syncopated roll. He was wearing sunglasses, which I’d never seen on him before.

He walked right up to me and said, “I’m thinking I see you today. Station.” And laughed.

“I see you Kavarna,” I said.

“Uh, and why you no speak?”

I shrugged. I’ve never run after Marek, except after he stole something from me, and I hadn’t expected to see him. I have to admit, though, standing close to him affected me physically, if only slightly. Like feeling the breeze through an open window from across the room.

I think about Marek a lot, but had been patting myself on the back for not looking for him at the station. He’d so thoroughly turned me off him with his mercenary behavior the last time I’d seen him that I wasn’t looking forward to ever seeing him again. But standing in front of me, scratches on his face, fat chapped lips grinning and looking glad to see me, I didn’t do what I’d imagined I’d do – a little revenge – which was chat a bit and then take off.

Nope, I felt sorry for him. I asked him what he was doing. He said, “Nothing,” and so I hesitated and asked him if he wanted to go drinking at Rudolfa later on.

“You want?” he said. He looked like he thought I might say no, or that I was baiting him.

“Yes, you want?

“Yes,” he said and cocked his head at me.

“OK, but I need to shop first and eat. OK?”

“OK,” he said, and we began walking again.

Coming back from the grocery store, I got an SMS from Pavel. We were supposed to meet up for beers later in the evening but he was getting shit from his girlfriend for spending so much time with me. He wanted to meet earlier rather than later. I texted back that would be OK.

“My friend Pavel want see me now. No problem?” I asked Marek.

“No problem…Kdo?” he said.

“Very good friend. Pavel. You see me and Pavel Rudolfa,” I answered, referring to the night Marek came into Rudolfa unexpectedly and caught Pavel and me dancing and making out.

“Dobre,” Marek said.

During the tram ride, Marek showed himself as being the perfect gentleman. Whenever an old lady would enter the tram — it was midday and quite crowded — he would give up his seat for her, which made me smile. It happened twice and finally he gave up trying to sit down at all.

He stood over me, one hand grabbing onto the metal pole, his body rocked by the tram, and grinned back at me.

“Rick, you happy see me. I know,” he jibed.

“Ty take, Mark,” I said. You, too.

“I know.”

He added 30 seconds later, “Every day my life…” and here he raised his palm to shoulder-height and lowered it in stages past his waist, “Go down, down, down.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. Instead, I turned my head and lost my smile. I may have been thinking, I’ve given you so many chances, Marek, and I know you’re not a stupid boy, but you act stupid, and I can’t help you anymore. You’re lost. I may have also been thinking that I might try again with him. As so often happens when I’m around him, even sitting down, I lost my balance.

We met up with Pavel near his flat in Vyšehrad. I had thought that Pavel and Marek didn’t know each other. But I had forgotten that Pavel had met Marek around the time Marek and I had first gotten together, back when we were sleeping in Vystavište park. The most generous words I could use to describe their interaction would be cool and cautious.

One thing I learned from being with the two of them at the same time is that when you’re communicating with non-native English speakers one-on-one, both of you adapt to one another’s diction, speech patterns, vocabulary, etc. in idiosyncratic ways. If someone were to ask me, who speaks better English, Pavel or Marek, I would say Marek. Marek learns new words very quickly, and is better able to think abstractly and make connections intuitively and on-the-fly. Pavel’s English skills have basically stalled. He speaks about as well as he did when I first met him and never remembers new words when I try to teach him. When Marek and I have been together for awhile, I notice significant advances, in his comprehension especially, but he also uses English words in creative ways. He’s a bit of a philosopher and can talk my ear off if he’s in the mood. If we’ve been apart for awhile, I can see the wheels turning and he hesitates before he speaks, but he has no problem getting up to speed. I find this sexy.

Headed towards the hospoda, I could tell that Marek felt left out, that he wasn’t following our conversation. He went silent. Pavel, on the other hand, didn’t like the way Marek spoke Czech. He told me this the other day. I reminded him that Marek was Slovak and gypsy. Pavel said that it was better for him to speak in English to Mark, and that he actually liked him better when he did. Whatever.

I could only afford two beers apiece for the three of us but, as usual, that’s all it took for Marek to start talking about sex. I had noticed that Marek was drinking his beer faster than either Pavel or me.

“Wow, Mark, rychle!” I said.

“I know,” then he paused and laughed. “100% you me go home and you suck me. 100%!”

Pavel laughed, but shushed him.

“Please, this me bar,” he said, worried about his hetero reputation, I guess. The hospoda sits within 50 meters of his flat.

“I horny,” Marek added, a little less loudly. Unlike Pavel, Marek gets pronouns. More or less.

By the time Marek and I got back to my flat, the beer had made him more tired than horny. He said he usually got to sleep a little bit every night, on the trains, but not a full night’s rest. He did have enough energy to take a shower and to parade around naked in front of me. I got a chance to run my hands through his pubes and sniff his pits, as he walked into the room with the sandwiches he’d made for the both of us.

“For you my chlupy is Jesus, no?” he said, accurately [chlupy is any body hair that's not on the head], and it cracked both of us up.

I was happy to have him in the flat but I had work to do on the blog. So I laid down next to him for a bit and we cuddled, or rather, I cuddled him and he snuggled up under my arm like he used to do — with a grin on his face; with his eyes closed. Although I’m still attracted to him, I didn’t want him to ever think that sex with me was the price for a shower and a good night’s sleep. For other boys, yes, it is, but not for Marek, not even after all the shit he’s pulled. I was also feeling inexplicably shy. Regardless, there was no more sex-talk and he fell asleep.

For me, it had been one of those nights when I couldn’t sleep, transfixed by Twitter, feed-reading and literarily noodling. He woke up a couple times during the night, found me still up, asked me what I was doing, yawned and got up to take a piss. Back in bed, he put his hands behind his head and watched me for awhile and then dozed off again.

The next day I shooed him out of the flat. I had told him I had work to do but that if he wanted to spend the night again, he could.

“You want?” he said, standing on the sidewalk outside the potraviny, smoking the menthol I’d just given him. Marek’s face without a smile or his voice without sarcasm disconcerts me. He doesn’t look butch anymore; he looks like a sad boy.

“Yes, you want?” I said.

“You want?” he asked again.

I suppose I was determined to let this be his decision and to let him know that I didn’t care that much. He was equally determined to let me know he could take or leave my charity.

“Your life, Mark. No my life,” I said.

“Yes, OK, I want.”

We agreed to meet later that night at 7 PM at the tram stop. He asked me the name of the stop. I told him and then said I would wait ten minutes for him and no more.

So, of course, he didn’t show up. Maybe he couldn’t. I could’ve waited longer, but maybe I didn’t want him to come back. Still, I must have looked out the window, from where I can see the stop, a dozen times. Like a junkie, waiting for my muse.