Dum spiro, spero.

If I want to be frank I must say that all the blame for my fucked up life I must put on my parents.
Well, there is another person whom I would like to point out, but I can’t. I am sure I was sexually abused by that person when I was a child and I blocked those events in my memory. Why I am so sure? I remember this person sleeping with me in my bed and touching my penis and even masturbating me. I was 14 years old at the time.
No, I do not want to say the name of this person. I still think that this person did for me more good than bad. However I keep asking myself did I turn homosexual because of sexual molestation? I don’t know?
I really do not remember how early this sexual molestation started?
I can recall that I was very fond of boys when I was about 9 years old. I remember I was totally asexual in terms of liking this or that gender when I was about 10-11 years old. Later on, when I was about twelve I discovered masturbation via pornographic book, which I found in the family closet. Until today I have no idea who brought it and who hid it there?
Nevertheless I read it and as I recall today I was paying a lot of attention to the parts of the book where male sexual organs were described. I liked them and when I read about them I masturbated.
Later I became crazy about pleasing myself I could masturbate six or seven times a day.
One may say that this is quite normal for a boy of such age, but I can say that this habit did not disappear since.
Am I sex addict? I guess I am.

Few years ago I was trying to figure out my sexual habits so I decided to read few books on the subject. The information I found in them prompted me to the conclusion that I had to be sexually abused in my childhood. I wasn’t surprised. I tried to recall my childhood and all the signs of sexual abuse and I succeeded by remembering a man in the summer camp who did something to me. How long he molested me? I can’t say. I only remember his action during our trip to the movies when he decided to hold me on his lap. I remember the darkness and his hands in my crotch. I can’t remember if he masturbated me or not. I was 10 years old at the time.
I know more things happened even earlier. One of my younger family members took me ones to the tent he built and masturbated in front of me and my sister. She doesn’t remember this event but I do.
He was about 15 years old at the time and we were 9 years old.
Did he do anything to me later? I do not know? I can’t recall many things from my childhood although I remember being touched and fondled by other grown ups.

I do not know how bad influence those events had on me and my sexual future? My sexual activities besides masturbation happened late in my life. Although I knew I was gay I never acted on my desires.

There was Ted when I was 17 and he was 15. We masturbated in front of each other few times. Later there was Valdi who was 17 and I was 22. I masturbated him and he liked it. Then there were few other guys but it was just another mutual masturbation.

My real first homosexual intercourse occurred in America when I was 28 years old. I met Marc, he was 21 at the time and we fell for each other instantly. There was nothing more exhilarating than our first anal intercourse. Marc gave himself to me and we stayed together for next 10 years.
After that I have met very many guys with whom I had sexual encounters. Those were pre AIDS times and nobody cared about protection. Marc decided that we should have an open relationship so we loved one another and had sex together but we agreed that we can pick up other guys and do it with them.
I did not want to agree because I thought that Marc and I should be together for the rest of our lives. Marc laughed at it and said that he is not going to be fucked by one guy only.
I remember when he told me “I love dicks and you love ass. Let’s do it and have fun with other guys.”
So we did.
He was cute but his cuteness wasn’t lasting and at the age of 25 he started to look really old. On the other hand I was looking magnificent and was able to bring home any guy I desired.
And I did bring them home in throngs. This was pre AIDS time and picking up a guy on the street was nothing for me. One look and if a guy was gay he was mine.
I can say that during my 10 years with Marc I had about 120 guys.
Later on, when he left me in 1989 I found Jorge and quit playing around. Besides, this was already AIDS time and I was very careful.
I did not know that I was already infected…
I can only guess but I think i was infected in 1984 by the guy named Federico. He was a cute Mexican guy of 23 and we were fuck buddies for about a year.
We were not worrying about HIV at the time; however the disease was already killing people. I guess our awareness was pretty low.

I kept having sex like a drunken sailor, with all the guys I wanted. I am sure during that time I got re-infected many times but to my astonishment the guys who had sex with me, including my boyfriend Marc, did not and do not have any infection. How is it possible, especially with Marc with whom I had unprotected sex for 10 years?

I found out about my infection in the last days of December of 1993. One day i found out I have candida in my mouth, which is one of the first symptoms of compromised immune system.
I went for the test and got my answer in a week. Was I devastated? I was to the extent but I knew I am going to get this. I knew it and I can’t say why I knew it.

Well, I am going in to some details about the predicament, which is a consequence of what have happened to me in my childhood. Of course this is my opinion and other people can have different one.

My life ended during the night in the end of August of 1980 when I saw Marc during my concert and instantly fell in love with him. Later I decided to leave everything and stay with him in America.
With not knowing anything about hard work as a laborer and with being a youing star and used to pampering, all of the sudden, I became nobody and did not have any idea how my future supposed to look.
Only thing I knew was that I loved Marc and he loved me.
We got along very well and sex was fantastic. I was hungry for real love and real sex and so was he? We could fuck 4 times a day and we never had enough. I thought this love will last forever.
When later he left me for a lawyer who was into leather I could not believe it. Marc became a leather man and tried to turn me into liking that fetish, but I could not convince myslef to this thing. Besides, he just graduated from nursing school and felt like a real pro while I was nothing but a cab driver. He must have figure out that he has to upgrade his status.
When he left with Bob I was devastated. Why didn’t I return to Poland then? I did not know I was infected so it was not an issue, although I was suspecting it from the time in 1984 when I started to get cold sweats at night. Of course Marc was ignoring it saying that this is impossible, that I can't to be sick becasue he is not.

Perhaps my refusal to go for a test saved my life. There was not effective meds in 1984, which were able to control the virus and people kept dying because their virus kept mutating and killing their immune systems.
I really have no idea why I am alive and why I survived the time when my CD4 cells were completely gone and my viral load was 180.000. When I got MRSA infection and prior to this sinus infections and bowel obstruction. After five surgeries I was and I am still alive.
Why?
I wish I was dead.
Who the hell decided I must go on?
Now I have to finish my life using my own hands. I have to do it. No way out.

My Sister called, I told her about Andreas’ threats and she said she is going to call him. I told her not to because there is no reason to talk to this bizarre character. When I finished talking to my Sister he sent me another (fourth today) sms in which he mailed me few more threats.
I do not know what it is all about but I can imagine that he in his mental state wants to do all he can to disturb me. I won’t answer and won’t do anything to provoke him.

I am down as I was. I feel pain as I felt it and I am sure I must finish myself. I will go on as long as I will be able to take it. But my pills are ready sitting on the coffee table. I think that dose of 500 mg will be enough to put me to sleep.
I am really sad that I have to do it but I am ready.
My good bye letters to Marcin and Rafal are already written. I will not send them tonight because I am not going to do it tonight. I will wait and see how strong the pain can become?

It is going to be mighty tough to finish the job. I know I’d have to buy me a lot of booze, and it will be my beloved Scotch Whiskey.
I will get drunk and take the pills and lie down in bed, fell asleep, my blood pressure will go down and my heart will stop.
I won’t feel a thing.

Too bad I won’t be able to see another day. I love life very much.

Before my Sister called I was lying in bed and thought about my childhood. How safe I felt then although my family was dysfunctional, kept fighting all the time and the best place for me to be was our garden or the town where I was ofetn going with my German Sheppard dog named Lord.
He was brought for us, me and my Sister, when we were born. I think we were about one year old when my Grandmother brought it for us. He grew up with us and we grew up with him. He was a member of our family and I loved him dearly. He was very intelligent and I taught him a lot of tricks, which he did with great pleasure. When I was coming from school I was always playing with him. We were walking to the market to buy things my grandmother and mother needed for family dinner. He always carried sack of potatoes for me and kids and passerby were looking at us with smiles on their faces.
I often went with him to a park Kajki, which was located nearby. We walked a lot and I threw him sticks which he kept beringin back to me. All the people in the neighborhood new us very well. I was about 12 years old and Lord wasn’t that much smaller than I. We must have looked very fanny together.
I loved the city I was born in. Elblag was an old German town, which became Polish after WW II ended. My grandparents moved there due to my granddad's job in the army. We had a nice house, which stood next to the huge army base were my granddad was a chief of staff.
I was born on 25th November of 1951 just six years after the WW II ended. Six years seemed to me a lot of time then, but ruins were still marking the ground and reminded us about the war, which was still present in my grandparents and my parents’ minds.

On our Beniowski Street there were ruins of a building, which was struck by a bomb. I remember this building since I was about 5 years old. I could see the ruins from the front yard of our house. It is amazing how such little child can remember things like that. I can even remember huge weeping willow, which stood on our front yard. My family, I am guessing today that it was my granddad and grandmother, decided to get rid of the tree. Today as an adult I think it was a very bad decision. The willow was huge, nice and I am sure it wanted to live. It survived the war all the bombs and bullets. I am convinced that all the living things including trees and plants and even vegetables and fruits do have its feelings. As they grow and live they do want to live as long as they can. Especially trees and bushes and other plants, which can live for a long time, must have feelings and do want to live.
The tree had been cut. I remember huge stump sitting on the left side of the yard. Few days later a big tractor came and pulled out the stump leaving big hole in which my father’s baby brother played with his friends. On the right side of our front yard we had beautiful lilac bush, which spread incredible scent in late April and early May.
How I loved this time. When lilac bush bloomed and we had two of them, I knew that summer time is coming and school is going to end.
Second bush of lilac stood on the south side of our garden on the side next to the window of our dining room and front room.

I am seeing the place of my birth and early youth with the eyes of my memory and even right now I can feel the pleasure and love, which was coming from the kitchen where my grandmother always cooked dinner for us.
Despite troubles, which dysfunction in our family brought on us children, the house felt like the safest place on Earth and my family the best in the world. When they did not fight among each other it felt as the happiest family in the City.
I was scared when they fought and quarreled because I did not know who was wrong and who was right? I did not know why my mother and my grandmother cried at the same time and I had no idea who should I love more at such moment.

My life which I spent in Elblag as a child lives in me like it was yesterday. I have never felt so safe anywhere. After we left Elblag, when my grandparents sold the house, our family ceased to exist the way I knew it.
To be frank, my whole world fell apart. There was no of my grandmother anymore who could come and comfort me when I was sick or sad. There was no grandmother to play chess with me or play board games or even cards. My parents did not care about us children. They left all our upbringing to our grandparents. My mother loved to mess up our relationship with my grandparents. My father hated my granddad, his father. They could not stand each other. Just like I could not stand my father, but I loved my granddad and I feared him too. He was an officer and his mmaners were just as such. Besides my sister was an apple of his eye and I was my grandma's baby.

My life in Elblag was happy and safe. I felt loved and well taken care off by my grandmother who never stopped teaching me and showing me the world explaining it to me with patients and love. When she disappeared from my life I lost the only person who meant the world to me, like nobody else before and after.
My family was religious and every Sunday I and my Sister were taken to one of the churches in the city. It was either a church of Brothers Redemptorists or the Church of St. Michael's, which was huge 14th century gothic structure sitting in the middle of an empty field cleaned from the ruins of an old town destroyed by the Soviet bombs.
Today the Old Town is there. Citizens of Elblag decided to reconstruct it and returned it to the city. I haven’t been to my City in 39 years and frankly I am thinking about moving back there. Of course not to the house I was born in and not even to the street the house stands on. It could bring so many emotions and memories I am afraid I'd not stay there at all. No, I would be afraid to move to Beniowski St. and live there in the shadows of my old house where I met the world for the first time.

With the eyes of my memory and my heart I can see the street and the houses of our neighbors. I know that Mr. and Mrs. Kowalczyk are laready dead but I know that their son Andrzej lives there and I am pretty sure he lives in the same house, which stands next to ours on the south side of the fence. On the north side of our fence was the house of Major Wisniewski whose son Tolek was my best friend until the day I moved out. I have heard he is still living there with his family and children. I am not sure if his parents are still alive?
So many memories and so many emotions. I do not know if I could move to Elblag without big heartache and tears in my eyes.

I have to write about it because I am feeling good while thinking aboit it. At least I am able to revive my memories of happiness, which I can’t find today.

Elblag was and is my city of happiness and love, clean, innocent love of a boy who trusted his little world, which surrounded him. Later the world he loved tumbled down and became erased by his family, which decided to part for ever and never be the same again.

My parents seemed to be happy when they had to leave the house on Beniowski Street and moved to a small town near Warsaw. My mother left the city much earlier when she decided to go to a school for midwives. She left me and my Sister with our grandparents who were taking care of us and did all the parental work. My father did not care about us at all. I do not even remember his presence there. He usually spent his time drinking with his friends. He was still young and irresponsible. Later my mother decided to move from Gdansk where she was in school all the way to Warsaw. She did it and o course we did not see her for next two years. One can only imagine how much of sorrow she inflicted on us and especially on me who thought that all of this was my fault.

When my mother was gone, fighting at home subsided and erupted very seldom only when my grandmother wanted to show my granddad who is the boss. I do not remember my school very much because I hated my grade school very much. After my parents took me away from the music school because of my heart problems and when my journey through the hospitals of the city ended with the cure, I was not able, according to my mother, to go back to my beloved school to continue playing the violin. To my dismay they also took my sister away from the school although she was not ill at all.
I was the kid in the family who was sick all the time and my sister was the one who was as strong as I should be. We were twins and I was born 15 minutes after her. Perhaps I was a weaker one and all the crap was falling on me instead equally on both of us.
I can’t say I did not like to be sick. When I was sick I was loved and taken care of the way only a son of a Queen Elisabeth II could be.
This kind of love never happened to me since.
I can't stop from mentioning the books. Plenty of books, tons of books, which my grandmother showered me with and inflicted eternal love for them since my early childhood.
She was the one who new what I needed. She was the one who kept buying me all the newest books. We even had our private bookenier who brought the books once a month to our door.
I also remember very well my name days and Christmases, those were the dates which I as a child and I am sure my Sister too, were waiting for like every kid in the world. We were not poor. At the time I did not know who was poor and who was rich. We just had all we needed and in many instances all we wanted. No, we were not rich in any meaning of this word. We were comfortable and safe. I felt it as a child.

When I am writing about it I feel such pain for the time, which will never come back. I am sure I could experience such feelings if I only were straight a man had my family, wife, children and grandchildren. Fate did not give it to me. Why fate deprived me of this treasure? Why should I become gay?

Now I do not have anyone. Just like my sister who does not have any children and does not have any husband. She is not lesbian.
Why such fate?
Who is responsible for all this?
I know that many people will say we are responsible for our lives. But I can’t agree with them. We indeed are responsible of our lives but the way our lives go is directed from the day one when we are born.

My first thirteen years of my life were the happiest years and since then I only tried to find same happiness and never succeeded.
Even when I taught myself how to sing and play guitar and when I started singing not knowing if I would ever sing on real stage, I wasn’t happy that much. My parents did not support my love for the music. Moreover they kept discouraging me and even tried to put me down every time I was doing something, which led me to my success.
No, it wasn’t my happy time but it was my time of “I show you.”
Yes, I think I wanted to show my parents that my calling was the most important calling in my life and that I was able to do it even without their help. And I did it.
I showed them but they showed me too. They showed me how much they hate me. They showed me how much they despise my success.
Even when I was invited to the one of two music theatres in Poland to perform and was on my way to the top, my father never went to see me.
Never!
I have no idea why he hated me so much. I was good as an actor and singer, I was good looking, I was talented and I know today that his encouragement and his love could do what nothing and nobody could. If he loved me and showed me his love I would never stayed in America. I would know that I have my home and my loving parents who waited for me with open arms.
But their love did not exist so I looked for somebody who could love me.
And I found him in Chicago. And I found death there too.

I can’t live anymore. I can’t live like that. But I am trying to travel into the abyss of my soul and search my memory to find the feeling, which today is long gone.
I want to feel it before I die. This feeling lives in me still and I can almost touch it. I can recall my grandmother and the feeling of our living room in Elblag. I can recall summer evenings when the door of our living room was opened to the garden and the scent of my favorite flowers was filling up the room. I remember the day when my grandparents bought our first TV set. It was in the fall of 1961 when our own TV arrived!
I remember how all the members of our family were excited. I do not remember who placed the antenna on the top of the roof of our house? I think it was my dad with his baby brother. All the commotion ended when the picture showed up on the silvery screen. We did have our own TV and my Sister and I did not need to go to Mr. Kowalczyk to watch “The adventures of Robin Hood” or “Zorro”.
Our TV program in Poland was only 8 hours long and there was only one channel. Nobody cared, it was our own TV and we were in XX century.
Happy times. Very happy days. I can feel them and this is the best feeling I was able to find in me in a long time.

I am old, I am 55 years old man whose death sentence is already marked in the book of Fate. I am curious if my suicide was written in that book too?
How am I going to end up?
Dead, I know I will die. I know that there is something beyond the breath. But what is going to wait for me when I end my own life?

My happy times ended 40 years ago. They won’t come back but in my memory. Am I crying over them? Yes I am.
My pain is unbearable and I must end it.
When?
I do not know exact date, but I know it is going to be soon. Very soon.
Forgive me my dear Sister. You love me, I know it, but you are not able to change my fate.
Live good and live well. You are the only person I love and will always love. I hope God won’t punish me for my decision and I will meet with you when your time comes.
I love you Hania. I missed the time when were not together when you left home in Piaseczno, when you could not stay there for our parents did not know how to be parents.
I missed the time when we could be together and did not have a chance because we did not have our own home. Our father who could fix that problem did not do it. He cared less about his own children.
I hope I won’t meet him up there. I would like to meet my grandmother. I would like to play chess with her and play cards and board games and be a small grandson to her again as I always was there in Elblag.

I loved her and I believe we meet again up there. I want to believe she is waiting for me and she can see my pain and my life and she is sad.