We spread our towels. Marek removed his T-shirt and hunched on his rectangle of pink terrycloth, spine against the rock, legs generously spread. His positioning left little room for me, consistent with the Polish attitude thus far—the men who didn’t stare walked through me like I was vapor. I wedged myself in, leaning against the cliff too, which allowed an inch-wide strip of air between our hips and shoulders, two inches between my legs and the flopped-down spine of the old man beside me. In the water, teens piloted a rubber mattress.

“Well,” Marek said. “It’s been some time since we’ve spoken.”

Four days had elapsed since our beer in a basement pub in Kazimierz, the old Jewish quarter, where he’d taken me because, alongside polishing my dissertation for publication, I’d professed a desire to study my Jewish roots in the country. The suggestion of my heritage had struck Marek silent, shaking his head, lips working over nothing. I’d squirmed under his scrutiny, hoping that beer would be our sole encounter. Though my grant proposal had bragged about “productive cultural exchange,” I’d only chosen Krakow because it was the safest spot near Rosie, but not too near, where I could determine my next steps. She doted on my body and I was afraid that, if I altered anything, she’d bail.

The Polish life of my imagining featured hunching in a concrete café with a pączki and a bad espresso, a blocky proprietor squeezing rags as he loomed behind the counter, me journaling furiously until I decided, yes, I’m going to do this. Yes, I’m going to slide under the knife and fill my body with hormones and change my name to Something and become a boy, honor that earnest impossible childhood wish garbled by a two-decade smorgasbord of female-specific joy and trauma.

If I’d known I’d instead lounge by the water with several dozen naked bodies, ass to ass with a polyamorous, pansexual queer studies scholar, I might’ve selected Antarctica.

“How have you enjoyed our city?” Marek asked.