Slucham

JAMES WARREN BOYD

Being a gay Peace Corps Volunteer in Poland wasn’t easy, particularly when trying to dance around my sexuality in another language. With the English-speaking faculty at the college, I could converse freely in English, deftly revealing my gay self by degrees and subtleties. With others, including my host family, it was a different story.
I never became fluent in Polish; as a native speaker, my job at the teacher training college was to speak in English as often as I could. I muse now that a scholar conducting a study of language acquisition in Poland might note a surprising trend. An entire corps of teachers, having graduated from a certain college in Radom from 1996 through 1998, speaks with vocal inflections similar to gay men from the Castro district of San Francisco. These instructors, it also would be noted in an EFL journal, speak with expansive gestures and integrate the words “fabulous” and “whatever” far more frequently into their speech than other English instructors.
The first summer before I began teaching I lived with my host family, the Piankos: Richard, Jadwiga, and their teenage daughter Justyna. One hot afternoon, Richard and I were bonding on the balcony of their Soviet-era apartment while smoking horrible Polish cigarettes. I had learned at language training that day that there are two different words for “friend” in Polish: one means an acquaintance or “regular” friend, and the other means “extremely close friend.” I decided to try to explain my relationship with my then boyfriend in San Francisco, Jeffrey, using my new Polish vocabulary.
“Richard,” I began.
“Tak, słucham,” [Yes, I’m listening] he answered.
“Jeffrey jest moim przystojnym.” I wanted to explain that Jeffery was my close friend. “Jeffrey jest moim przystojnym,” I repeated. “Rozumiesz?” [Understand?]
He rocked his outspread hand back and forth—the international symbol for “sort of.” I repeated the phrase over and over with greater elocution and intensity, seemingly to no avail. In the end he nodded and changed the subject.
Only later did I realize that I had confused the word for “good friend”—“przyjacielem,”—with the word “handsome”—“przystojnym.” I imagined the conversation from his side, with my American houseguest repeating over and over, “He is my handsome. Do you understand? My handsome!!” Perhaps, though, I had said just the right thing.

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