Exactly. Pride was canceled in Warsaw this year by the mayor, but Krakow was another story. Krakow has always been an artistic kind of city, and so they organize the event completely independently. They don't take funding from corporations, although I do think some western donors have sent money. But basically it’s these young people who are so brave. They organize this march and they know they’ll get attacked by the skinheads - they’re used to it. Yet they still go out and march, and the fascists swarm on them. There used to be 800 fascists up on just 30 of them, but now the numbers have shifted. When I was there, there were only 200 or 300 of the fascists.

--Even so, 200 or 300 is pretty scary.

Well, yes. But they're such idiots. I went to interview some ahead of Pride. The city had given permits for marches to both groups at the same time, which is crazy. Generally speaking, though, they're not really fascists. They just look like Nazis and call themselves "the All Polish Youth". They had one flag, which is supposed to represent their pride in Polish towns, but they chose a flag saying “Oświęcim”, which is "Auschwitz" in German. Anyway, I wanted to interview them beforehand, just to get a feel for who they were.

--Did they know anything about you?!

They didn't have any idea who I was (laughs). That’s pretty hilarious, isn’t it?

--Did they know you were a girl?

(laughs) They knew I was a girl, yes.

--Did they think you were straight? How did you arrange to get an interview with them? 　

You know, I don’t think they even thought about it. I went along with a cameraman - a Polish man who works for the local news-channel. He set up the interview and I only talked to them for five minutes. They just gave us all their usual stupid lines about "tradition".

--It’s pretty ironic that you would be interviewing a skinhead (laughs). How was the march itself?

It was a powerful experience for me - to be back in a city that I had walked around in before. A lot of the people who are gay don't march. Usually more straight people march because the gay people are afraid that being seen could losing their jobs and things like that. But there are straight people marching in solidarity. There were a lot of families marching, too.

When I had lived in Poland, I’d fallen in love with this one girl, my friend's little sister, who is Polish. We started going out but never knew any other gay people, which was really hard - both for our relationship and for her. And it was hard for me to understand what she was dealing with. Especially since she was someone who had never seen a gay scene or a gay society. When we traveled to the west we found some places where being gay was accepted, but then there were issues of people around us being nationalistic or xenophobic. Since my girlfriend's Polish, we didn’t feel particularly at home there either. Anyhow, when I got this invitation to go support the march, it meant so much to me. And then it just so happened that my ex-girlfriend, who is one of my best friends, was in town too. So we went and marched in the march together! It was really amazing.