“It’s fine,” I said. “I went shopping.” My visit to the corner market had been harrowing. Polish grocery stores foregrounded alcohol and hid the food in a narrow case in back. I’d picked my way through prepared pierogi and butter molded into trees, had purchased buttermilk instead of milk, clotted cream instead of yogurt, false hot dogs instead of real hot dogs. I’d trembled as I claimed my selections, terrified someone would address me in hissy bursts of Polish or bang my head with a pipe for being gay. “I went to the post office.” I’d sent a postcard to Rosie in Belarus—I was too scared to visit. Bodies had turned up stabbed at pensions, trans people murdered, pride parades outlawed. Or at least that was my understanding of the situation over the border—I couldn’t read about any of it without being sick. The dangers of Poland, in comparison, were manageable. “I can pronounce do widzenia.”

My shoulder was struck with a hot crack. I lurched forward. Marek had slapped me. My eyes burned—what had I done wrong, so quickly? Was the farewell called by proprietors some hideous swear?

But Marek was chuckling. “You’ll be fluent in two minutes,” he cried. “In one week!”

His handprint burned sweetly on my spine. I’d never been thumped in a comradely way, by a man. It was nice.

“Now. Why are we waiting?” He leaped up, his shorts rising with him, threatening to reveal more than his creamy thighs. “Don’t you have a bathing suit?”

I hadn’t removed my T-shirt or sweatpants, didn’t relish the idea of stripping down. You’d think, as someone whose toehold in femininity was flimsy enough that a surgical mask converted their gender, I’d be protected from the advances of men, but Marek had one girlfriend and one boyfriend, and I often caught him watching me. I’d recently mail-ordered a queer-friendly bathing suit that promised to suck flat all the lumps of the female form, but only so much could be asked of any fabric.

Marek gazed upon me as I struggled out of my clothes, as did neighboring men. I hurried to undress faster but only got tangled in my pants. I hated removing pants to swim. There was no way to make it not sexual. I did so in a series of queasy jerks, elbows and knees thrust dangerously toward the body beside me, until I was in my boxy black outfit, the dense elastic abusing my breasts so badly that they should have been flatter. I hadn’t shaved my bikini line. Marek’s eyes lingered on the ragged hairs.