It's About A Girl

Simon Polski

Saturday morning, five hours of sleep - it is all right, the aftermath of yesterday's evening is still coming, I do not feel it yet. It is going to get much worse later on but now it is fine. I can feel an alcohol still circling in my blood system, so I am kind of... cool.

First thing I always do when I get up is switching on my computer. Then I go to kitchen, I turn a kettle on and I roll up the blinds of kitchens window. I like observing people who jog everyday in the morning. They never change. The same faces and clothes. When water is boiled I get some coffee and I go back to my bedroom to browse internet for news on British and Polish websites having music player on in the background and listening to my favourite album - Kind of Blue. I also check my mailbox, which is just a routine. I never expect to receive anything else than spam. I left my friends in Poland two years ago and I lost contact with them, but I still like to watch their profiles on community-like websites. I kind of care, who they are seeing and what they do. Yesterday's drinking was nothing else than looking for a cause of this drinking on the bottom of a glass, or maybe was it just a killing spree of another Friday evening. Anyway, now it is a thing of a past. I have to get myself together and go to work. The bus leaves at 8.12 am and its 8.00 o'clock already, but I am patient I know I will make it easily.

It is raining, what is pretty characteristic for Scottish weather. I remember reading comic books when I was 16 back in Poland about Scottish werewolves and although it was just 5 years ago I remember many of the stories I read at that time, pretty well. I have always loved this atmosphere contained in the comics - silent, dark, steamy forests in the Highlands, far in the north of Scotland and although I loved it I would never want to stay longer in such place. Great and interesting but not for humans. I would fear Glasgow if it was not so loud and bright, even at night. The bus is coming, 2 minutes late. I get in, pay a fare, get my ticket and quickly vanish off the sight of a driver. As soon as I realized that it is time to get a seat I take first available place trying to sit on somebody's scarf and bag. A girl sitting next to the window looks at me and takes her stuff off the seat. I am sat. I feel nothing, normally I would apologize her or never try to get a seat next to her, but I just did not care. I am kind of... blank. I am trying to get a book about Napoleon from my bag and I realized she is looking at me. I am ignoring it. 'Hello!' she says. Suddenly I feel like I am ready to run off or do anything just to make her silent. I can not believe what is going on! She is revealing me! The whole bus is going to discover that I am a foreigner! The bus is full of people and she is trying to chat me up! I can feel my face getting red. I look at her and... I just can not believe it. She is just beautiful. I not sure if I have ever seen such beautiful face, I can not think of any. She is talking to me and I just look at her like it was a dream, the sound of her voice is poems. She is shining. Small lips, curly hair and most of all her eyes were like something I have never seen before. There is no camera which would catch this one picture I got of her in my head. It was something else. I woke up when I realized that she is waiting for an answer from me. I do not remember what I said but she responded with the same enthusiasm and she kept talking to me but it was not a monologue, she asked me questions, she demanded a response, she wanted to know who I am. This attitude she was having towards me was unbelievable. She was like taken from my dreams but I did not let her to get closer. I showed her no interest. There is an old Polish saying, to be as cold as a stone and that is what I have became, cold, reserved person afraid to express any emotions. I gave her simple answers pretending to read the book I was having at my knees. She gave up but when she realized that I finished a chapter she started to talk to me once again but I replied even colder. I just could not cross over this gulf which I always see between Polish boy and British girl. I wish I sat with her alone, on a bench in the park, in the rainy Scottish weather under an umbrella which I'd hold in my hand. I remember I said 'bye' when I was leaving the bus. I went to job, I chased people to pay off their debts, I got back home and I fall asleep in the evening.