This afternoon I saw the man who has a mustache and red beret entering the gmina. He is short with a fierce look of arrogance in his eyes. He often struts, and more often he staggers. I seldom see him sober and I never see him without a cigarette. At the store he strutted in and threw down some money and said gruffly, “Daj mi Popularnie,” the cheapest brand of cigarettes at about 1.20 z a pack or about $0.44.
It got me to thinking about drunkenness and alcoholism in general. It seems that for a long time we either turned a blind eye to the problem or we laughed at it (as illustrated by the character Otis on The Andy Griffith Show). In America it is often hidden away, shuffled to the slums or closed behind suburban doors. But here, it is out in the open. People click their tongues and shake their heads, but they’ve become desensitized, I think. And since many of the women who click their tongues go home to alcoholic husbands, it’s hard [to imagine that they] feel much more than disgust. They are codependent in the original sense of the word, and when they see a man staggering down the street, they see him in their own pain, and the only reaction that seems logical is revulsion.