I was supposed to be questioned, and when we got to the police station, pop was there. It felt disgusting, because what I am up to is none of his business.
Damned frigging dream.
Monday, 30 March 1964
I’m listening to ”Det ska vi fira” now. I wonder what E-L is doing? Well, I suppose I’ll find out when she (or I) calls, what she has been up to.
Yesterday and on Easter Eve we were out. Yesterday evening nothing special happened. But on Saturday we wound up in a house in Norby with two guys who had picked us up on Svartbäcksgatan. They had a Plymouth, which I guess actually belonged to one of their fathers, because such cars must be rather expensive.
When we got there, E-L disappeared with one guy someplace, while I went with the other one into a little room beside the kitchen. And he was mannerly and offered me a cigarette (a Lark) instead of drawing me onto the bed immediately. But when we had finished our cigarettes we did not leave there; instead we placed ourselves in a lying position on the bed and devoted ourselves to petting. Or he devoted himself, because I didn’t do very much. I just lay there and let his hands go on a voyage of discovery, as it says in short stories and things like that. Oh, yes! But they had a bloody gorgeous car, and it was cosy to ride in it. This was the first time I rode in a so-called battleship. It was exactly the kind of car E-L and I once said we would never cruise in, just because we thought that guys in big cars were worse than others. But that’s not the case. You can’t judge a book by the cover and not a guy by the car, either.
We got picked up by two guys in a Plymouth. The one I was with was called Sten, and we went to his home. He and I were in one of the rooms, and Kicki and the other guy were in another. When we had lain on the bed and made out for a while he jumped up and rooted around in a desk drawer and came back with some typed pages that he wanted me to read. It was a porn story. When I had finished reading, he asked me if I felt anything. He perhaps had thought that I would be excited, so that he would get to lay me afterwards. But I think it’s a difference between boys and girls, because I’m not turned on by porno. I can only become excited with a guy who is tender and who I really like. But I have never been that way. The only time I have felt something was when I was with Hasse, whom Putte said is married. But I didn’t like him, and he wasn’t especially tender, either, so it can perhaps be that way anyway, if they just do the right things and are not too hard handed. I don’t know.
Sten was only busy between my legs the whole time. I don’t know why I accepted it, because from that he could believe that I was going to let him lay me. But I couldn’t make up my mind to say no. He didn’t seem especially turned on, either, so I thought I could wait a while and see what he would do before I said something. I just lay there, until he suddenly stuck his finger inside me and I felt a twinge of pain.
“What are you doing?” I said and jumped up.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes, you bet it did!”
After that I didn’t want to lie down again, even though he tried to get me to. I got dressed and went out to Kicki and the other guy who were sitting in the other room, smoking. He probably hadn’t got to do as much with her as Sten had got to do with me.
Pop started to complain again, that I’m out too often. But we are on Easter vacation now, and it’s none of his business what I do.
“Are you going to gad about again tonight?” he said at dinner.
Then he began to complain about the potatoes.
“Cook the food yourself, then, if you aren’t satisfied!” I said.
He can’t even boil an egg himself, but moan and complain, he can! I get mad as hell just thinking of it! But I was as angry with mom as I was with him. Why does she just sit there holding her tongue and taking it? Why doesn’t she divorce him? But she is completely dependent on him, both emotionally and financially. I will never be that way for anybody. And he has no power over me. He might have had it when I was little, when I didn’t dare to make him sad, but now I don’t give a shit about his reactions.
Yesterday evening when Kicki and I were out, we got picked up by three guys in an Opel Kapitän. They had a room in a basement on Bangårdsgatan we went to. We sat there and talked and smoked, and then they gave us a lift home. Tiger, Allan and Nisse were their names.
Sunday, 5 April 1964
Svartbäcksgatan, that’s a pleasant street to walk on! There isn’t anything special about the street itself, but it’s because of the car traffic. To go there and know that at the same time the guys are driving their rounds… If they are in a hurry they turn already at Skolgatan and drive up Sysslomansgatan and come quickly back, but it can also happen that they cruise all the way down to the train tracks past the BP gas station before they turn around. Yes, and then they drive up again, past Radiohörnan, where E-L and I usually stand, and on to Stora Torget. On the way they pass a lot of stores, which are closed at that time of day but which often have a little window light on, and everything is so bloody cosy! There is like a shimmer over that street! If anything is going to happen, it’s going to happen there!
Yesterday we went to the movies first, and then we rode with two guys (Tony and Bladde) in a black Volvo PV. Tony was the one who looked the best, but E-L was the one who got him. They drove away to an apartment in Salabackar, and we entered, and we drank coffee, and we did some other things as well. E-L and Tony lay on the bed and I sat on Bladdes knee in the armchair. (Well, I often sit on knees in armchairs, I think!) No, it wasn’t anything special. I didn’t like Bladde very much. He was kind, possibly, but somehow that wasn’t enough, because it never is. There has to be more.
I love cool spring evenings when the sky is blue and the air is clear and you feel a draw of yearning to just get away someplace. It feels like the whole world is laying open and waiting for you to come out. On Sunday when Kicki and I got to town it felt that way.
“Indulge yourself and have a good time, with Mmm… Marabou milk chocolate!” we sang, while we ate our own chocolate rolls that we had bought. An old man we met glared at us and looked sour. Why is it that all the elderly think you are disturbing and rude as soon as you raise your voice a little? Why don’t they get it that you sing and roar just because you’re happy? But they are perhaps envious because they aren’t young themselves anymore.
To stand at the square when it’s dark outside and see the rows of shiny cars slowly gliding around in the street lights’ shimmer feels so wonderful. There are red and white lights from all the headlights that are lit, and the paving stones glimmer. Then you go in between the cars that have stopped in the line and feel the warmth from the exhaust pipes on your legs while the headlights light up your coat and purse and the guys in the cars stare. And on the other side of the square you start walking along Svartbäcksgatan… Just thinking of it makes me long to be there. I will probably never be able to stop cruising. Because the way it feels then, I want it to feel all the time.
First we rode with three draftees who thought we should hop in and warm ourselves up for a while. It was pleasant to get in and thaw out our toes, but guys who are here just to do their military service you can’t take seriously, because you know that they will soon disappear again. Some of them surely go steady with a girl back home, as well.
Then we rode with a guy named Torgny and his buddy. We went with them just to warm ourselves again. We got Chico from him and we gave him cigarettes. He is big and fat and the type you just talk with. I would never let him do anything if he tried. Guys don’t have to be handsome for you to want to make out with them, but I don’t like it when they are fat. And they can’t have a beard or long Beatles hair. But there aren’t any on Svartbäcksgatan with hair like that.
Then we hung about in town again. We saw the guys we rode with on Saturday, but they didn’t stop, and we wouldn’t have gone with them either, if they had asked us, because Kicki didn’t like the guy she got very much. But Tony, who I was with, was rather handsome.
There weren’t any more who s
topped before Kicki had gone home and I walked alone. Then Göran and his buddy Uffe, whom Kicki liked before, came. Göran was driving, and Uffe sat beside him and Uffe’s brother, Bogart, was in back. Uffe leaned forward, over Göran, who just sat there acting like he didn’t notice me, and asked if I were going home. Then he climbed out of the car and opened the door so that I could enter the back seat. I said hello to Bogart and glanced at Göran, but he still ignored me.
“What have you been up to this evening?” Uffe asked as he turned himself around.
“Have you earned four hundred and ninety kronor?” Göran said.
I don’t know what I have done to him that he has to be so nasty. Uffe noticed that I became sad and started to talk about Restaurant Ugglan, where they had been the previous evening. Then he asked what I had done, and I said that Kicki and I had been to the movies to see “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.
“That’s the one with Jerry Lewis, isn’t it?” Uffe said.
“Yes, it is.”
“What was it like?”
“It was funny.”
“And what did you do after that?”
He sounded teasing in his voice and not angry like Göran, but I didn’t want to tell him that we had walked on Svartbäcksgatan when Göran could overhear it.
“We went home,” I said.
And that wasn’t exactly a lie, even though it took several hours to get there. After all, we were with those guys in the apartment also.
We went to Central Station, because they were going to pick up a girl there who needed a lift home. Uffe and Bogart went in, while Göran and I remained in the car, waiting. I hoped that he would say something while we were alone, but he didn’t. He just sat there and seemed reserved. I saw his hair, which reached his shirt collar in back, and a little of his profile.
“Have you started driving a free taxi?” I said.
Then he looked at me in the rearview mirror and said:
“Payment is made in kind instead!”
When Uffe and Bogart came back they had a girl in shepherd’s plaid pants and a black leather jacket with them. Uffe and Bogart sat in the back seat and the girl in front, right beside Göran. Uffe had purchased a hot dog, and I got a bite from it before he ate it up. Then he put his arm behind me on the backrest. I checked in the rearview mirror if Göran saw it, but he sat there and talked with the girl beside him and didn’t pay any attention to me. He could talk with her, so he obviously didn’t think she was a whore, anyway.
I don’t understand why he has to act the way he does. What have I done to him? The only thing I know I have done is that I didn’t let him kiss me the first and second time we met, and that I started riding with other guys when he didn’t want to see me anymore. He thinks it’s wrong to go with raggare, but when I think about what he did on New Year’s Eve, when he was drunk and was together with two girls at the same time, I think that is even worse. And if he can’t stand it that I am walking on Svartbäcksgatan, he should try to figure out why I started doing it.
Tuesday, 7 April 1964
Ooh, I think that my hair is so awkward! I put it up in big curlers and comb it flat, but as soon as I come outside it begins to retract and become frizzy. Otherwise I’m not directly dissatisfied with my appearance. I think that I have a bit small bust (but not so that I have a complex) and I have never liked my nose very much. It’s broad, and I have a tendency to have pimples around it. Mamma and granny have even broader noses, so mine will probably become even coarser when I get bigger, because that’s how all noses are. They grow with the years. No, not when I get bigger; when I become older, I mean, because I won’t get much bigger, I suppose. But I’m rather satisfied with my eyes, and there isn’t anything wrong with my legs, except that I’m a little knock-kneed.
A guy in Prallan has died in school. He just collapsed during a gymnastics lesson, they say.
After lunch when I entered the classroom, Siv turned around and said:
“Well, raggarbruden!”
I pretended not to hear it, but I realized that many of the other girls did. Kerstin and Siv laughed and stared. I don’t understand why they have to carry on like that. I wrote to Kicki about it in our notepad during class, and she wrote back:
Oh, she said that? What should we call her then? The dancing ape? But actually, there is no big difference between going out to dance and going out to cruise. When you dance, you take a turn on the dance floor to music, and when you cruise you take a turn around town while you listen to records. There are only two different ways to meet the opposite sex. So I don’t understand why those of us who hang around in town have to get such a bad reputation!
I think that those who don’t know how it is believe that we lay all the guys we meet and that’s why. Some raggarbrudar possibly do that.
There will perhaps be five day weeks in school, so that we will be free on Saturdays. Therefore, we must go longer during the other days and have a shorter summer vacation. There aren’t so many who want that.
After school, I bought a white blouse with flounces and pin tucks for 9.90 kronor at Hennes. If it’s warm outside on Walpurgis Night I’m going to wear it then with my light green suit.
Wednesday, 15 April 1964
I hate it when papa drinks and becomes loudmouthed and rough (as mamma says), but at the same time it seems that he knows more about life than mamma. He has said it himself, and he has been through a lot, so he gives me that feeling. Mamma, on the contrary, has not experienced anything special. They were poor when she was little, but she lived protected with grandma, while papa was in an emotional hell with his mother. That’s why I think he is the wisest. And between the two of them, he is the one who is big and strong and she is the one who is little and weak. When they were on their way to divorce when I was twelve, I preferred to live with papa, but that was out of the question, because he was not a person you could depend on. He was a drinker, so I knew that if they divorced, I would have to live with mamma. At the same time, I knew who papa should be married to. He should be married to somebody like me. Someone like me, and not someone like mamma was (and is) the right one for my papa.
Sunday, 19 April 1964
Yesterday I stayed home from school because of menstruation cramps. I get them sometimes and it’s so difficult, because it’s almost like having colic. I’m in a cold sweat and ready to faint and don’t know how to keep on my legs.
When you are having your period, you don’t have to attend gym class. I don’t care very much about gymnastics, but when we have dancing I think it’s fun. We have learned to dance the jenka, and we can dance other dances also, such as the schottis and the polka, and I think I’m pretty good at it, but I’m bad at regular gymnastics.
Soon I will watch “Lucy Show” on TV. Mamma and papa purchased a telly as early as 1958. Then I watched the ice hockey world championship with papa. (This year Sweden won silver in the Olympics.) After that there was “Hylands hörna” and various series, like “Raw Hide” with Clint Eastwood and Eric Fleming, for example. (“Movin’, movin’, movin’...”) Papa always has a book at hand in front of the TV, so that if there isn’t anything he is interested in, he can read instead. He sits on the couch with a book before himself and looks up now and then. “Is there something? Nope.” And then he keeps on reading.
Kicki didn’t come out with me, because she wasn’t feeling well. She always has a bad stomach ache when she is having her period.
First I went to see a Swedish movie called “Three Days in Jail” with Thore Skogman and Anita Lindblom. It played at Slotts, and when I went by the movie theater street afterwards Uffe and Bogart came driving, and they stopped and asked if I wanted to go with them.
Bogart was smoking Astor cigarettes and offered me one, and it was so cosy to sit there in the front seat with Uffe, smoking and swishing through the night. Uffe asked me if I wanted to go home with him while Bogart and Göran went out dancing, and I did. I thought that Göran would come to the house and fetch the car, because Boga
rt doesn’t have a driver’s license, but he drove anyway, so I didn't have to meet Göran.
When Uffe and I were alone we went into his room and turned off the lamp. A street light shone on the opposite wall, but where the bed stood it was dark. He hugged me and pressed his nose against my neck.
“Oh, how good you are,” he said. “I could eat you up!”
I like him, but I could never fall in love with him, because he isn’t my type. It’s a shame, I think, because he is kind. He didn’t do much, either. He was almost asleep, while I lay there listening to trains and cars that went by outside. When Bogart and Göran came back with the car he was supposed to give me a lift home.
“When are they coming?” I said.
“You never can tell!”
“It can’t be too late, because then pop will go mad.”
“Yes, I understand that. If I had a daughter who looked like you, I wouldn’t dare let her out during evenings!”
We lay there listening to music that he had put on.
“You think you’ve lost your love, well I saw her yesterday. It’s you she’s thinking of and she told me what to say. She says she loves you,” the Beatles sang.
“You were in love with Göran, weren’t you?” Uffe said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Are you in love with anyone now?”
“I don’t know.”
I couldn’t tell him that I’m possibly still in love with Göran, because I didn’t want to make him sad. Besides, I don’t really know if it’s true. Maybe I’m just sad because he appears to be angry with me and seems to believe that I lay all the guys I meet. Does he believe that? I don’t know what the hell he believes!
After “She Loves You”, Uffe played “Can’t Buy Me Love”, which is number one on “Kvällstoppen” now, and afterwards “I saw Her Standing There”. The longer the time went, the more worried I was, but he just laughed.
Hop in Then! Page 6
