Wojciech - Voytek - Wojek.... fuck it... Frykowski.

Some say it was December, 1967, others say January, 1968, either way at some point during this period, Abigail Folger met Wojciech Frykowski. It was to be a love-affair that would come under the microscope for the next forty years. No one really knows just how deep their relationship went or whether they had grown weary each other and wanted out. That's the fact, everything else is pure speculation.  

Here's what we do know: 

Gibbie and Wojciech were introduced by their mutual friend, author Jerzy Kozinsky, in New York. 

At the time, neither of them was familiar with the other person's native tongue; Wojciech's English wasn't exactly littered with a variety of expressions, instead just a courteous greeting. It was left to Jerzy to act as the go between. 

Pictured in NY, 1968

  Wojciech had brought from Poland only a small suitcase and little money. Gibbie, on the other hand was roaming around New York with an unlimited supply of cash courtesy of her Daddy dearest and his credit card, although she was working to support herself, while living in the ground floor apartment on W 69^th Street. Wojciech's home was whichever sofa he landed up on of a night. Usually Jerzy's, his friend from childhood.

  Jerzy and Gibbie had met through his ex-wife, Mary Hayward Weir, an heiress to an American steel company. When Gibbie made her way to New York in the summer of ‘67, it was Mary, 28 years her senior, who was there to greet her and who chaperoned her round the city. She was a pleasant distraction for the older woman, who would have usually been emptying the contents of a liquor bottle before lunch.

 From very early 1968, Gibbie and Wojciech lived together in New York at her apartment. There is no official record of him ever having a paid job to support himself and so the twice-divorced father of one, who could barely speak English, was being supported by his 24 year old lover. 

More to follow, as Gibbie and Wojciech make their way to California...