Bogumi Pacak-Gamalski

At the very beginning, we understood the immense power of our feelings. We felt it even if we couldn’t comprehend the substance of it.

Yes, we were dating, as many young couples always did. But the dates were like an ocean, like a massive waterfall from the peak of a high mountain. The power of it was immeasurable. I think that, at times, we were overwhelmed with it. Oh, we knew that we liked each other, that we were very attracted to each other. Dear god! we were so young, especially John, hardly a man yet or just on the cusp of beginning to be one.

Life and dating for young gay men in the 80ties and 90ties was the same as for any other young people and yet, so fundamentally different from the majority. Apart from very few and very cosmopolitan cities, they couldn’t just stroll through parks and streets in a warm embrace, stilling happy kisses from each other.  Even there it was acceptable only in very few parts of the cities and still with a degree of personal risk. By the time we met, it was already much easier. That was that time of history (happily) that John belonged to. Mine started earlier, in darker times and places. The age difference wasn’t as big, but the difference in experience – huge.

Young gay man life in Warsaw in the late 70ties and early 80ties was like a minefield for a blind person. Very dangerous physically, perhaps even more emotionally.

By the time we met, I had already a long string of one-night stands that seemed and felt like it was a norm, a standard expected. My young, boyish innocence was gone or hidden somewhere deep and secretive.

Not that I was his first sexual partner. But comparing our experiences he was the Virgin of Orleans, and I was the courtesan of Babylon. LOL. But we were both innocent in the taste of huge, big love. A feeling we longed for: the torments, the powerful currents. And when they came for both of us – they swept and carried us to lands unknown. Lands of Dreams, Desires stronger than any notion of relationship, of dating.

Thus the dating was short. It was pointless. We had to become one: completely, permanently, fully.

Music was part of that beginning. John had strong, established musical tastes and I did, too. They were very different. We shared them, learned from each other. My love of opera and classical music, his of powerful traditional country music of North America, music full of longing, hardship, and dreams often unfulfilled. Thus our two songs and two melodies began. One that we often came back to through our long union in Calgary, Vancouver, and Halifax. The ‘Flower Duet’ of mezzo and soprano from the French Romantic opera “Lacme” and North America’s amazing country singer Patsy Cline and her famous hit ‘Crazy’ composed by Willie Nelson.

The ‘Flower Duet’ and ‘Crazy’ become our songs.

I was born on the fifth of Match, and Patsy died on the fifth of March very few short years later.  Although I truly was a child, a little boy on the day Patsy died in a plane accident – John often devilishly suggested that I was behind her death. That this particular song was his idea and dream of true love – and once I came into his life, that song stopped being a dream and become reality. Thus the song had to die too if a dream becomes reality. Therefore I must have orchestrated the demise of Patsy Cline! Machiavellian, indeed. LOL. 

But love is a strange thing. It blends reality and dreams. Blends life and death. That blend become my new land now, my homeland. Found it today on some isolated and desolate long stretch of sand and rocks stretching for miles, somewhere in the equally desolate and removed community of East Chezzetcook.

Talked to Patsy Cline, to Lacme and her student, to the ocean, to John. There was no one else in an eyesight. Just them and me. And love. No one was angry, no one was sad. Everything was a dream and the dream was reality.