Some people might be afraid of admitting to their fear of developing a sexual attraction to animals, but Malwina Andruczyk ’08 is not one of them. You’ve seen Malwina tear up stage in Punchline and maybe you’ve even read some of her work in The Pedestrian, but only here in this exclusive interview will you learn all of Malwina’s deepest hopes and fears. And more.
Annalee: Since you’re the Editor-in-Chief of Wesleyan’s literary magazine, The Pedestrian, and an avid writer, I think an appropriate question to ask you to really get to the core of who you really are is, if you could be any literary character, who would you be and why?
Malwina: Oh God, um, that’s a good question. I don’t know, I mean, I’d probably try to be someone in a J.D. Salinger book, but not, like, Holden Caulfield. I’d be in the Glass Family who’s like very deeply discussed in a few of his books, because he’s like my favorite writer when I was 13 and I’m probably still stuck in the that time period or something. But they seem like a really nice and smart family. So I’d probably want to be in that family.
A: Someone once said that your writing involves “magical realism,” and another person said that your work is very autobiographical. You must have had a crazy childhood. Could you tell me about the weirdest story that you’ve ever written?
M: I wrote a story where, like, a girl almost had a relationship with her dog. But…it was only like a little sexual tension. But they were like best friends.
A: Kind of like how you talked about in Punchline how you have sexual tension with your cat. I see a theme going on there.
M: I think a lot about sexual tension with animals.
A: Wow, why do you think that is?
M: [Laughs] I don’t know…I think it’s a just a fear of mine, that I’d be sexually attracted to them.
A: A little psychoanalysis going on here.
[Malwina interrupts to offer me tea. She tells me to continue recording her as she makes us tea. Oh, and raisin toast, too. As we sit down again, she tells me about her cat named Fernando I. Valentino, whose initials, FIV, stand for the feline form of HIV, which he has. Sadly, I was not recording this.]
A: Okay, where were we?
M: I think where we were was like me being weird about animals.
A: And telling me about how your cat has feline HIV. So, beyond your talents in writing, you’re also a comedian. I’ve seen you a bunch of times in Punchline and you’re usually one of the only female comedians. What’s it like to be one of the only women among a bunch of men who make lots of jokes about penises?
M: It’s not that bad, I think that my jokes about penises get some good airtime, also. And I think they feel more comfortable telling their abortion jokes with me in the room. So that’s good for them, I guess…[Laughs]
A: Now for the portion of the questions completely unrelated to your many talents. So, you’re from Poland and I’ve been told that there you had a “mishap with poppies.” Please tell me more about this unfortunate incident.
M: [Laughs]. I’m glad this is going to finally reach print, maybe. Um, when I was in Poland, I was very hungry all the time or something.
A: You lived there?
M: I lived there until I was seven, then we moved here to, like, “do it right” or something. So I was just hanging out with my friend in, like, a field. And we didn’t eat anything for lunch or breakfast, or dinner yesterday and were really hungry, so we just, like, ate these poppy flowers, which we hadn’t read on wikipedia, or like “Polipedia,” that they make you feel like you’ve had opium and stuff. And so, we both just got kind of high, I think. When we got home, I was just like, “Hey mom, what’s up?” And then fell. I think she just thought I was drunk, even though I was five or six, that I had just somehow gotten a hold of alcohol. When I came to, she was like, “Oh good, now I don’t have to take you to the fucking hospital to go get your stomach pumped, ’cause I had no idea what was going on with you.” So it, like, felt pretty nice, but kind of woozy.
A: Um, so I’ve also heard you have a weird thing about feet…and pet’s anuses, but mostly feet. So, why don’t you like feet?
M: [Laughs] Um, I wrote a Wespeak about feet.
A: What did you say?
M: Um, I was just like, “Feet are really gross and the weather’s warming up, but we have to fight our temptation to wear sandals. There are other ways to let heat out of our bodies, like just stop wearing hats or something.” But, I don’t know what it is, I think probably the smallness of the toes makes me uncomfortable or something, it just seems like too cute. So much so that you just want to smother them or kill them, but you can’t ’cause they’re feet. So I don’t know, maybe it’s just that I’m looking at something that’s too beautiful when I look at feet. But I don’t know if that’s quite it [Laughs]. It’s like looking at a fetus, which could grow up to be a good-looking person who you’d want to sleep with, but right now it’s fetus and it’s totally gross. Like feet-us, you know?
A: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know if I get that correlation, but okay.
M: It’s really difficult to explain because it’s not based in logic, at all. And the animal’s assholes…I don’t know why I don’t like looking at them.
A: So here’s a random question, if you were stranded on a desert island, what three items would you bring with you?
M: My iPod, my cell phone, and my iPhone.
A: What do you want to be when you grow up?
M: Probably a writer, for real, but probably a magic carpet for fakes, ’cause I wanna take people higher and higher. I wanna fix society up through my magic carpetness.
A: Good aspirations. If the story of your life was made into a movie, who would play you and what would be the title of the film?
M: Christina Ricci and the title would be “Black Snake Moan.”
A: [Laughs]. And finally, when you graduate this May, what would you like your Wesleyan legacy to be? If there was a building to be named after you, what would you like the plaque to say?
M: Oh wow. My English teacher was just talking about a church that Voltaire built that he, even though he was really against Christianity, it said, “Voltaire built this for God” and like, donated it to the Catholic Church. So I guess I would like to have another campus center built and it would say that Malwina built this for Wesleyan, and then the walls are covered in iPhones that no one can use but me.