My first Polish Wedding; OR someone agreeing to only have sex with Mateusz forever.

To view the slide show of the wedding that is a much more interesting tour through these events than my words, click here. If you want to view as a slideshow, click here.

Prior to the day we left, I had been scouring areas all around the cities of Poland that I had already visited, searching desperately for anything that may even remotely resemble wedding attire. Seeing as the one-backpack-per-international trip rule, didn't exactly accommodate carrying an additional dry cleaning bag; it meant I had to assemble something cheap, disposable, and not ENTIRELY offensive to the Polish sense of wedding decorum.I arrived at the conclusion of ill fitting shoes, brown pants, a short sleeved black shirt, and a pink striped tie.

SO, now that you know what I will be wearing to the wedding (obviously of the utmost importance) we fast forward to our van of Mateusz family, along with me, Brendan, and the hired Polish driver of the van. The driver had difficulty finding the tiny hole in the wall hotel and reception village, which was about 45 minutes out of Warsaw. We finally arrived at a series of seemingly condemned buildings, that served as our lodging accommodations, well hid from the windy main "road". We all check into our respective rooms, as our trusty van driver shines his shoes in the shoe shine machine by the front door. This was the first and last time I had ever seen anyone use one of those. The room was a state of the art, classy, tongue in cheek homage to the common prison cell. Our entertainment was a small am/fm radio resting quietly below a dirty mirror. The radio doesn't work. We quickly prepped, two men trying to look their finest for the big show; someone actually agreeing to only have sex with mateusz hawasceiviz in front of the disbelieving eyes of god, as well as a church full of concerned spectators.

There was a bus we all took from the hotel to the church, we we reunited with nikolai Martin, and very few other people that spoke english. It definitely felt as though me and brendan were interlopers in an alternate universe. We got to the church and witnessed the wedding itself, of which I remember very few details of, other than it was pretty much like any other service at a church I have ever attended, only it was all in polish, and it ended with someone being stuck with mateusz forever.

The most interesting part of the service was actually outside of the church, when there was the usual assault of rice throwing and light flashes, but in addition, an unfamiliar practice of spectators also throwing change at the newlyweds, and the pristine white clad bride, was also expected to scrounge around around the ground to gather the various polish currency. I wasn't too clear on the meaning of this tradition, but think it had something to do with Polish people accepting any currency that others were to offer them.

We finally go from the wedding to the reception, and are inducted into the hallowed halls of a true polish wedding; in through the 2 large wooden doors, revealing an elaborate courtyard, with women servers dressed in traditional polish wench garb, assisted by younger girls with flower garlands braided into their hair. As a 4 piece group in funny costumes played polish music, the servant girls took care of the guests milling about on the exquisitely rustic, stone paved grounds. There was a ceremony where Matuesz and his bride were supposed to release these pigeons together, but mateusz let go of his bird too early, and the whole thing was fucked. Once it was finally time to enter the reception area, we found ourselves inside a beautifully crafted wood cottage, and every element of our environment, seeming to reference a simpler time before industriulistic tendencies, reflected in the aesthetic of natural materials, retaining the culture of an entirely unique, and totally foreign place. Entering the innards of the banquet hall, we entered tables adorned with spreads of the most delectable morsels that any commoner could ever hope to consume. It was also something unique to a Polish wedding that each place setting also contained a shot glass and an entire bottle of Stoli Vodka. The fun progresses and really gets underway with a long series, of almost consecutive toast, all spoke in a language I didn't understand, that also resulted in me getting progressively more wasted.Thank god there were about 7 full courses of food, and constant serving of minor courses, that definitely helped to soak up gluttonously copious amounts of booze. I begin to understand the nature of extremely heavy and lard soaked polish cuisine, as being the perfect accompaniment to drinking extraordinary amounts of booze. The heavy must be there to just soak up the excess. Still, I got wasted.

Almost everything I ate or drank that evening was incredible, asides from a mystery food that looked like an overturned cup of jello, jiggling on a plate, only the jello was lard, and there were floating pits of meat and vegetables in the congealed center. This may have actually been delicious, but I was afraid to give it a try. Me and Brendan learning dirty polish words was humorous to other guests, until they realized I was going to pretty much yell the polish word for pussy (cheapka) every 5 minutes; much to my tutors dismay. As the night wore on, barriers in communication were easily usurped by the social lubrication of shot, after shot, after shot, after shot, of straight vodka. The polish quartet played while the main courses of food were consumed, before the dance floor opened up and the real party began. Polish people were generally pretty bad dancers, with the one shining exception being littleLeo Trotsky (Mateusz'es Dad) who spun his wife loving about the floor- after having yanked her from my eager arms, as the it was his first, last, and truest love. It was truly redeeming to see a couple, advanced in years, that truly exhibited such a healthy and compassionate love for one another. �

My First Polish Bachelor Party

Authors Note; the correct spelling of my friends name is Mateusz Halaczkiewicz, but since I would never in a million years remember how to spell that name, every time his last name comes up, I just type the letter "H" and for the rest of the word, just smush my hands on the keyboard to finish up the rest. I could have just kept copy pasting the last name, but this was more fun. Note #2, if you click here you can witness the slideshow of these events, which is probably far more interesting.

So, we start where Brendan and I grab a train from Krakow (Krakov) to Gdansk, to meet mateusz and his brothers for the bachelor party. The train pulled in to a cold and rainy station, and I immediately got the impression that I was going to get extremely sick by being woefully under-dressed for adverse weather conditions.

One backpack for 2 weeks= not alot of layers.

We had a loose, but seemingly reasonable arrangement to meet Mateusz at a certain time, then go to the hotel, but somehow it got all fucked up, and me and Brendan ended up sitting around a fountain of some god throwing a trident for hours.

Despite Mateusz fucking up our plans, and the temporary shitty weather, Gdansk is actually really rich with character, and was one of my favorite cities I visited in Poland (Krakow being #1). It is similar to old town in warsaw, due to the fact it was pretty much obliterated in ww2 by the germans (yay german ancestry!) and rebuilt again from its original design- almost made to look as if nothing had ever happened. The effect of these places being relatively-recently-rebuilt gives a strange "Disneyfication" to the whole thing, and it feels more like a theme park than a living breathing town. Its hard to say whether it is better to rebuild as nothing happened, or to accept the loss of the place as you once knew it and begin to build again. Although.. seeing the soviet concept of reconstruction in downtown warsaw.. I would absolutely take rebuilding according to the original design. The post ww2 soviet communist influence on architecture in warsaw makes the place feel like a square, concrete tomb.

*Extraneous History; After poland had just endured a decade of devastating German occupation, they then had to stand idly by while russia quickly occupied the vacuum of tyranny that had been left after germany lost the war. Poland says goodbye to hitler and says hello to an almost-equally-more? brutal Joseph Stalin. Work camps and the gulag were no picnic.. even relative to the holocaust. Poland is the kind of country that completely changes your perspective in regards to world history. For average Americans, World wars and occupations have been abstractions, notes in history books. Poland is a place where it all happened, again and again. There are so many reminders of all the awful things that happened throughout the country (which could also be considered triumphs of human spirit) that it is no wonder the citizens of Poland didn't seem to smile a whole lot. Except for polish babes... at me.

Back to Gdansk:
Me and Mary (brendan while now be referred to Mary for the duration of this writing) took turns looking for something to eat, while one of us stayed put with all of our shit. For me, it is really bad to be exceptionally hungry in a place where all of the food is new / interesting / and readily consumable. Outdoor food stands and beer gardens are ubiquitous in Gdansk, and throughout the more populated cities we visited in poland. Do you want pigs knuckles with Saurkraut (my mouth just watered) Bread with lard spread and pickles on top? Sausages? Keilbasa? Pierogis? These weird things like a longer Stouffers french bread pizza called zapiekanka? or EVERYTHING AT ONCE? I actually decided on a sausage from one stand (delicious) and a piece of this bread with a salmon? spread on top. All I know is that it was some kind of salty fish, and surprisingly satisfying.

Fast forward to when we actually meet Mateusz and go to this ridiculous suite we rented for the bachelor party, themed after someone named Don Kichot..
"who the fuck is Don Kichot?"
you ask me?
"no fucking clue"
I answer.

Once we check into the suite, Mary pretty much immediately gets Mateusz into the bathroom and starts giving him a back massage.. nothing weird about that!















Then just a casual meeting in a hallway that lead to some groping and heavy petting.. nothing to see here!!



















Oh right, then the full on wrestling match, that was decided by Mary forcibly throwing matuesz ass on to his own face... NOW THATS A BACHELOR PARTY!!!














Then we go out to eat after we meet up with the rest of the Hawaskesivesrs brothers, and as we wander through the main strip, Mateusz recommends a restaurant that he had actually been to before. I would have assumed that this would also mean that this was a restaurant Mateusz had LIKED, but no, Matuesz readily admitted it wasn't that great last time he was there. Why would he recommend it then? I do not know. Service sucked ass, and we around getting shitfaced for way too long, but thankfully, when the food DID come, Mateusz got something to eat he hated, and everything else was pretty good.

During the course of the meal, I felt compelled to apologize to Nikolai, because, back in the day, at the lunchroom where we all went to high-school (won't mention the name of it out of spite) I threw Nikolai down on the floor of the lunchroom, and relentlessly humped him as part of some weird personal highschool ritual to gain peer acceptance.

After I say "Sorry about that" Nikolai says..

"well, I always thought I kind of deserved it"
"what?"
"I had a class with your girlfriend, and I would stare at her legs so much, that the teacher had to physically move me to a different chair where I didn't have such a good view.."
"mmmk"
"so i just kind of assumed I deserved it for that"

That seems like such an appropriate catholic sensibility, to feel so guilty about something like staring at a leg, you assume it merits being publicly shamed by a dickhead.

THEN, we go to a Polish hooters, and its called "the rooster" and its a chain in any of the big cities in poland we visited. It was pretty embarassing. Then everything gets blurry, and happens fast, and lots and lots of shots of vodka, and getting really into some foreign dancing. I meet a girl who asks me how old I am, and I watcher her job drop when I say "30". Then she makes my jaw drop lower, when she says that she is "18". Then Mateusz blows it for me, and we end up roaming the streets in a drunken fashion, and a horrible, horrible next day hangover. THE END.

Kendal, Texas Vegetarian

At the laundromat, met a girl from dallas named kendal. Pink thong through the hole in her jeans. Invite her to dinner, frustrated with tortuous conversations in broken spanish to strangers with such a stronger grasp of the language. I would be lying if I didn't say "I invited her because i wanted her". No phones on this trip. so I tell her to meet me at the hostal at 7.

I sit on the balcony chain smoking strong spanish cigarettes, knowing in my gut its stupid to care so much about something in my head. I get ready to drown my sorrows in a night of liquor, when i see her turn the corner of the calle.

We meander about, talking about nothing while i want it to mean everything. we go to the botanical gardens and i want to take her clothes off there. Go to the place I have been going everynight since I got to spain, where they have the cheapest and most incredibly delicious wine I have ever had. She gets tipsy and tells me she broke up with her boyfriend on this trip, that she was from dallas texas, and he wasn't worth her time. Judging by the fact she was even remotely interested in me, I assumed that she was (in-truth) devastated by the break-up. We walk to try and catch the late flamenco show. SOLD OUT. go get a later dinner than I have ever had in the states with a bottle of wine. somehow impress her with shitty spanish. Texans. Drunk now. We have a shitty waitress who makes kendal mad. I say "who cares". as we were leaving I handed the aforementioned waitress a 5 euro tip and say "tu tiene mi corazon". Kendal said she had never seen a woman light up like that before. I felt the stage of life before me, presenting my best performance to people who didn't know that I wasn't really this clever, or daring or interesting. I am just on vacation, so I wear the costume of my ideal.

WE got to the park with only her, and the sprinklers throwing lights everywhere, and the excitement of a foreign country, and each other, and i kiss her. again. and she is so light. wo go back to my room to get bags that she had left at my hostal, I am a huge pussy, so we grab her bags and I tell her I will walk her home. We find a mannequin leg in the trash, she drunkenly picks it up, and looks drunkenly adorable. look at her just right there in that moment, the white leg slung over her smooth bare shoulder, her hair coming out of its neatly tied little pony tail as she laughed from the belly and out through the mouth. wild eyed with the evening.

We get back to her hostal, up several flights of these dark gothic stairs, like nothing i can justifyably describe. She slings the mannequin leg on the couch in the lobby. is this real? and she opens the door to her room. kiss, touch, wet. she says "There isn't a chance if you spend the night we wont have sex together... is there?" I weigh my responses... "theres a chance". we are naked and she says i love you, which confuses me, but she comes, which is nice, and she asks me, when we are lying quiet, smoking cigarettes "will you go to san sebastien tomorrow? do you surf?"

I lie and say "yes, I surf"

I wake up and leave her hostal, going to get my things together for an adventure in pretending to surf, and when i came back, i came back late, and she had gone.

Lazer Karaoke of Madrid

Madrid is exactly I imagined, old, beautiful, sun bathing the warm toned stone buildings on small, windy, cobblestone streets. The slow smoking old folks enjoying each others quiet company- in the empty haze of late morning.

The Hostal Lopez is where I am staying- found after an obnoxious journey, because I didn't realize that the names of streets don't exist on street signs, but rather on little ceramic indicators on the sides of buildings. I notice a bar on the way to the hostel lopez- , dubbed "Lazer Karaoke"

Go to the hostal and encounter a kindly older woman adorned in a moomoo, exuding a very motherly prescence. I stumble through my awful Spanish in a language they dont understand, before being given a small room with its own bathroom (with a butt cleaner), and doors that swing open to the day, light linen curtains blowing in with that warm breeze of foreign opportunity, the flamenco melody from the guitar studio across the street providing the soundtrack.



Wake in the afternoon to the life on the streets and savory scents of Spanish cuisine. Go grab a glass of wine that becomes a bottle. I remember lazer karaoke after awkwardly talking to the most beautiful waitress I have ever seen, who has a boyfriend- everyone here is small and wonderful looking. I Enter lazer karaoke at around 11p Madrid time. No lazers, and songs i dont understand being massacred by spaniards (if pizarro could sing). Meet a phillipino guy named frank who politely offers me a "boy, girl, anything you want, just let me know". Frank was a waiter working in a Madrid hotel, and was at lazer karaoke with some other English guy with an obnoxious attitude, who speaks better spanish than me. Frank was poor and I had vacation money so I bought him a drink, and immediately made a friend. He says "Jason, if you come to my work, I will serve you". He makes me depressed talking about how much he wants to return to the phillipines, and we get exceedingly wasted.

Buy more shots for Frank and his female companions, the english guy, and another quiet spanish guy I liked. The the tequila hit the loud English guy fast and he immediately started accusing me of not taking my shot because he was so much more drunk than I was. Little did he know my blood had been replaced with Spanish red wine.I bought us both another shot we did at the bar so as to prove his wrongness.

Sang my song in a labored and scratchy booze soaked voice. ROXANNE. Frank and his English friend are screaming the words along, Frank occasionally screams my name as well. High notes are a problem. Go back to the table, one of the spanish girls who speaks no english, offers an awkward dance, where we turn in eachothers arms and neglect what one another is saying out of lingual ignorance. More shots, english guy is tanked, things are getting weird with Frank- I am beginning to suspect his intentions. Go to a late night food place and forget what I ordered.
Go home and sleep like the dead. I love Madrid.

On a plane

The big metal bird is huge
full of noisy spanish girls i don't understand.

Sit next to an ex-navy man with bad breath and a desire to talk.
cant tell if he is gay.
Please go to sleep.

Trying hard not to think about the fact that I am in a big metal bird for 6 hours over the atlantic.

Defying natures denial of my wish for wings.

The Spain Series- King of Fuck ups

10-09-07
Philadelphia Airport- International departures.


I am truly the king of fuck ups.

Forgot that I need paper tickets for my flight, can't really remember if they had ever been sent. Maybe that was during one of those weeks I was drunk.

Pleading at the U.S. Airways desk again, searching for a heart beyond the stony exterior of one unaffected margaret J.

I didn't find one.

"you need paper tickets"

I didn't budge while my heart sank deeper into a well of despair that seems to only exist at a US airways departure desk. The sight of my most painful moments, in front of all the stone cold bitch Margaret J's that seem to find their true calling as U.S. Airways employees, realizing that the position of "Dark Lord of the Underworld" has already been filled.

She tried to shoo me, so she could shit on the face of the next traveler, but I stood there, stammering and shaking, begging fore mercy. She called some #, and bullshitted with a supervisior, trying to make me concede yet another defeat to the heavily favored U.S. Airways.

I found a chink in the armor- money.

Margaret fat Bitch- The only way your going to fly is for
(looks at screen)
$1,200

Me- fuck it, yes, book it

Throw her my card. Temporary eye contact stand off. Back on the phone to her dark master... time ticks. Every time she looks at the screen and says "whats this?" or, "never seen this screen before", my genitals crawl into my stomach to offer him comfort as he moans in anguish.
"there there", my genitals say.
"there is always next year"

Getting dangerously close to the scheduled 6pm departure, the end is nigh.
Suddenly,
Tickets print; heavens shine glory to the earth, and i bid that miserable cunt Margaret J adieu, to meet again when we are both burning in hell.

where I will be sure to greet her with a fiery kick to the puss.

but for now, I don't care. I made it.

New Writers

Sometimes, in these periods of extended boredom, I feel like my life is a show that has been extended for about 5 too many seasons.

Like season 24 has basically just been repeating itself for the past 5 years.

Maybe I just need new writers.

MURDER VS SEX (the FCC's perspective)

This weekend, I was gardening and masturbating, taking occasional breaks to watch terrible television.

One of the shit shows I watched featured Ralph Fiennes getting graphically shot in the head and the face. Shot in the face! In real life, I have never seen someone get shot in the head or the face. I don't think I have ever actually SEEN someone get shot. Television though, would have me believe that I am in the rare minority for not having seen someone punched, slapped, gored, or blown up in the past 24 hours. Like the Soprano's is based on most families in Jersey.

On the other hand, one thing I have seen upwards of 1 million times is my ding-dong. Most people have encountered their own genitalia quite a number of times during the course of their existence... and yet, somehow, it is more acceptable for us to see the most absurdist level of violence as not only acceptable, but hardly worthy any substantial debate, all over the airwaves.

Somehow nudity and sex is something that the Evangelical christian types tend to oppose, perhaps forgetting that Adam and Eve were naked BEFORE sin. In their most innocent and purest form.

I am by now means advocating dude wang all over my soaps, because I even have kind of a love hate relationship with my own noodle, and if I look at it too long I cry.

Seriously, think about it, you have probably had sex with someone, and you probably haven't murdered someone. It's like television is saying the violence is SUPPOSED to be a bigger part of your life than love, or sex, or whatever you like to call some of the old in-outing.

The FCC is a bunch of fucking fat fag tards that probably HAVE NOT seen their own tiny skittles under the layer of all that lard, so they go around shooting guns and complaining about how immoral penises and vaginas are on the weekend.

Basically, I am tired of paying for porn.