RANSVESTIA

and went on to talk about some of the Nazi atrocities and we got into quite a conversation. He said he was a retired member of the Warsaw Central Committee. He asked me if I would have tea with him as we were having a very interesting conversation. I said yes, expecting to go to some little coffee shop-like place. We walked down the street a couple of blocks, turned into a building and went upstairs. We arrived not at a tea room but at his apartment on the fourth floor to have "tea." I hadn't bargained for that, but I couldn't gracefully get out of it. It was a barren little apartment, but he made some tea on a hot plate and then came over and sat with me on the old beat up sofa.

We talked about various things and then in trying to emphasize a point he said, "Yes, but Virginia..." and put his hand on my knee. I'm enough of a woman (and a man) to know what that could lead to so I turned around side ways with one knee up on the couch and my purse in between. Nothing happened but I thought this was really a far out situation to be in-me an FP, dressed, in a strange man's apartment on the fourth floor of a residence building in a foreign country and a Communist one besides. If anything did happen I would lose either way so I played it very cool and cautious yet friendly because he was a very interesting person. Eventually I indicated that I had to get back to the hotel before dark but he said he'd walk me back. At which point he wanted to give me a present. It was a series of little paper cutouts that the Polish women make in various designs. He had it framed behind glass and I told him that I could never carry that home because the glass would break so he took it out of the frame and gave it to me. It wasn't much but it was a gesture of friendship. So I accepted it but with some reluctance knowing that when a man gives something to a woman there is usually a price attached to it. I told him, "Okay, I'll take it and I thank you for it, but, as we Americans say, 'Don't get any ideas.'" So he walked me home, the tour group came in later, the trip continued, and his gift hangs on my guest room wall today.

I met the group and we went through Poland, to Bucharest, Sofia, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, Budapest and East and West Berlin. It was all very interesting and I learned to look at things through my own eyes and not through the preconceptions placed in our minds by American anti-Communist propaganda. We are just as guilty of perpetuating misunderstandings and ignorance about them as they do about us.

91