“Take it easy, take a Toy!” he said. “If they don’t come you can sleep here overnight.”
“No, I can’t.”
“If you lay here I would not get a wink of sleep all night.”
Then he asked if I am a virgin.
“Why do you ask?” I said and felt a desire to laugh.
“I’m just wondering.”
“Which would you prefer?”
“What?”
“Would you prefer that I am or that I am not?”
“That you are not.”
“Why did he prefer that, do you think?” Kicki said when I told her what he had said.
“What do you think I am?” I said.
“I don’t think you are one.”
“Why not?”
“Because it shows.”
“How?”
“By your movements and such.”
“But I am.”
“You are?”
“Yes.”
Then he hugged me and said:
“You may sleep here anyway!”
But at half past one they came. We went out in the kitchen, and just when they came in, Uffe started tucking in his shirt in his pants. Bogart sat down at the table, but Göran remained standing in the doorway.
“What the hell have you gotten hold of for a fucking raggarbrud?” he said and glanced at Uffe.
I turned away so that he couldn’t see my face. In the window, that reflected the kitchen, I saw that he lit a cigarette. Then Uffe came up to me and put his arm around my shoulders.
“Don’t pay attention to him,” he said.
But I did, because I don’t understand why he has to say something nasty every time we meet.
Saturday, 25 April 1964
There is something special about Saturdays! What, I wonder. What can it be?
In the morning you wake up, wash yourself and dress and eat breakfast and go to school... Nothing unusual there, in other words. Then you sit in your school desk and wait until it’s time to go home again. During the 25 minutes’ break, you go to the bakery and buy half a longshaped wheat bun. (They know it’s going to be a rush, so they have already divided up the buns and put them in bags, so that they can just toss them over the counter and receive the money.) And you just scoff that fresh wheat bun because you are so hungry and because it is so good. If you haven’t bought small buns with sugar on instead, that is. That’s what I do sometimes, when I think that half a long-shaped wheat bun will be too much.
Yes, and then it won’t be long before school is closed for the week and you are permitted to go home. At home I listen to “Sveriges bilradio” while eating something, and then it’s “Tio i topp” at three o’clock. (When you hear that mentometer rattle you know it’s Saturday, if you haven’t realized it before!)
Now what is different with Saturdays gets closer, because afterwards you take a bath, wash your hair and decide what to wear. You perhaps iron a blouse and put your hair up in curlers. And why do you do that? Yes, it’s because you are going out again in the evening.
When it’s time, I take the bus downtown to Stora Torget, and in front of the Tempo department store (with those much-discussed cake-doily walls), E-L is standing, waiting for me. I jump off the bus and go up to her, and we take each other by the arm and start walking on Svartbäcksgatan, Uppsala’s cruising street number one! Mostly we stop at Radiohörnan (Svartbäcksgatan 24), but sometimes we go all the way down to the BP gas station and Stugan on Repslagaregatan before we turn around. We walk there and feel so happy and full of expectation, because just about anything can happen! A really nice boy could come by, and then you fall in love and begin a relationship. But just getting out and meeting boys is fun. It’s fun from time to time to see what will happen just that evening. Yes, it’s just these things that make Saturdays so special!
On Saturday we rode first with two guys in a VW Beetle. As soon as we had entered the car I smelled alcohol from the one who wasn’t driving, and then I saw a heap of empty bottles on the floor in back. Kicki saw them too.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” the guy on the right said and stared at us. “I thought broads of today only wanted to ride in Yankee cars!”
“Everybody doesn’t have to be the same,” Kicki said.
“No, obviously not!”
He looked like a real raggare with greasy, slicked back hair and a duck tail, and he would have fit in a lot better in a big American car than in this little asphalt bubble. But he probably didn’t have a car of his own.
They were totally screwy. When we drove around town the guy to the right rolled down the side window and stuck out his head out hollered “Yabba-dabba-doo” loudly as hell, so people on the sidewalks turned around and stared at us. And the other one said:
“Do you know what similarity it is between a gal and a fox?”
“No,” we said.
“Both speed up the cock!”
They stopped behind the Central Dairy and wanted us to change places, but we didn’t want to do that, so we pretended that we had just remembered that we were supposed to meet a pal and left them.
Then we went with three guys in an Opel. The guy driving also wanted a girl, so he first asked one he evidently already knew. She had blond, backcombed hair, and she was heavily made up with white lipstick, black mascara, long drawn eye liner, blue eye shadow, brown cream and powder. When she leaned over and looked into the car she blew a big bubblegum bubble which she allowed to pop and then drew back in before she said:
“Who are these others, though?”
Kicki and I both hoped that she wouldn’t come along and she didn’t.
“Another time, possibly,” she said and righted herself.
“If there is another time, that is!” the guy said as he simultaneously began driving off.
“Did you know her?” Kicki said.
“Yes, who doesn’t know that fucking tramp!”
I wonder why guys stop for girls they think are worthless. But perhaps they don’t. I think he said that about her because he had been turned down. Other guys probably say the same thing about Kicki and me when we don’t want to ride with them.
Friday, 1 May 1964
“Beautiful May, welcome to our countryside gain!” There is something special with spring. It’s a lovely season, I think! And Walpurgis Night is a nice celebration.
We went to Svartbäcksgatan, as usual. To walk there when it begins to get dark and to see the car headlights turn on and feel the expectant atmosphere is bloody agreeable, I have to say!
We rode with two guys from Västerås. They had a big car (a Ford Customline), and in that car we were sitting, cruising around... It was cosy, I thought, because they had a record player and played Elvis and some other music. Tord and Johnny were their names. (“Johnny L, Johnny O, Johnny V, E, S, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, oops Johnny loves me!”) Tord had a bottle of pop (Zingo, exceedingly good!) and asked if we wanted some, and we don’t require pressing, so E-L took a swig first and then I did (or if it was the other way round), but then we realized that there was something more than just pop in the bottle, and we thought it was really fresh of them to try to trick us with spirits.
We went out to the woods, but we didn’t change seats (we refused to), and then back to town again and out on Svartbäcksgatan to, with renewed strength, try to find some other, and hopefully better, boys! We were a little bit afraid that they would get angry and throw us out into the woods (you never can tell what raggarna in Västerås have for manners and customs!), but we were allowed to go back with them to town, and there we met two other guys who we rode with for the rest of the evening.
On Wednesday when papa began drinking, mamma set off to Stockholm. She usually does that sometimes, when she thinks it’s becoming too damn difficult at home. She travels to her girlfriend, and they go dancing and have a good time while papa sits at home and is jealous. Later, when she comes back, they have a row. Last night when I came home, papa was drunk and had got more and more excited an
d wanted to have a hearing with her. He tried to force her to tell him what she had done. I heard already out in the stairwell how he yelled and screamed. “You fucking whore!” and everything else he blurted out. So then it was really cheerful to come home.
Friday, 8 May 1964
Soon I’m going to watch “Drop in” on TV, and E-L will probably do the same, if I know her at all. Tomorrow evening, we are going to the movies to see “Blackboard Jungle”. It was after this film “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets became number one in America and rock’n’roll had its big breakthrough for real.
So we are going to see that film. Then we intend to let some nice boys pick us up in their car for a drive. And then... Well, nobody knows what can happen! That’s the great fascination of raggarlivet!
For tomorrow we have Swedish and religion homework. Religion is the most boring subject there is. I almost never read my religion lessons. That’s dumb actually, because Christianity knowledge is a subject that you can get a good grade in if you study properly. But I can’t sit there and go on with things that I’m not a bit interested in. I don’t believe in God, either (though there is no requirement to do so), but I think there is some kind of life after death. I believe that man has a kind of spirit survival, because I find it hard to imagine that there is total darkness when you die. Though I don’t believe in heaven and hell.
But grandma believes in God. She is a member of the Pentecostal Church, and they can be a little like Maranatha Believers, because they also belong to the Free Church Movement. I think it’s so fine with grandma, because she doesn’t try to impose her religion on others. She never talks about it, but she believes in God and always goes to church on Sunday. And she pays her tithing. She pays one tenth of her retirement income to the church even though she has very little, and then she sits there and eats cowberry jam and potatoes because she is short of money.
Once, when I stayed with some of grandma’s acquaintances in the summer, I went to a Maranatha Believers meeting. Agneta and I were allowed to go when they went to a Camp Meeting. But it wasn’t the well-known Målle Lindberg (called “Pop-Målle”) who was preaching, but somebody else. “Do you want to be saved?” they asked at the meeting. They came up to us and asked if we wanted to surrender our lives to Jesus. “Nope,” we said. We thought it was fun to sing, but we actually didn’t want to be there, because we didn’t come home before 11:30 p.m. and we became so tired. We would rather have stayed at home, but we weren’t allowed to be at home by ourselves.
Later we played revival meeting in their old washhouse. We had bibles, prayed prayers, played on combs and sang. “Peace,” we said and “God bless you!” because that’s how they greeted each other, the believers, when they met.
I dreamed that I went to some kind of a military school and had a strict man for a teacher. He was about forty years old, and he had black hair and stubble. I felt sad and put myself in a corner by a door, and he came up to me and let me lean my head against his chest. I thought it was strange that he, who was so strict and hard, could know what I needed and wanted. After that, there was nothing more. When I woke up I felt sad. Because, in reality there are no such persons.
Tuesday, 12 May 1964
Gosh, how tired I am! I just can’t bring myself to write about last Saturday. We rode with some different guys (but they are all the same). First they kiss, and their lips feel either like an octopus (wet, pulpy and flabby), or else they are dry and hard. Sometimes they press so hard that your lips get pinched against your teeth, and sometimes they drive in their tongue and move it here and there. (It can be long or short, thick or thin, so it’s the same difference there as below the waist!) Some of them are so disgusting that you almost feel sick. It’s very seldom that you meet a boy who kisses well, I have to say!
Yes, and then their hands sneak in under your sweater or blouse and open your bra in the back. If they are having problems unhooking it, you never help them, because you aren’t that eager yourself, but finally they manage to loosen it and begin to press and knead. Some of them have a grasping style, just like they are milking a cow, and some kiss and lick or squeeze and massage.
Later on the turn comes to the skirt, which they, after more or less difficulties, open in the side or pull up from the bottom. They can, for example, begin a little carefully by touching the knees and in an upwards direction, and then they let their hand glide in under the skirt and shove it upwards with their wrist until they have reached their destination. But then they bump against a new barrier that must be forced, and this they do either from the top, in under the elastic in the waist, or from the bottom with their fingers through the leg opening. But I haven’t allowed very many to go that far. I don’t want to, but it does happen that they take greater liberties with you than you had imagined from the beginning.
Mother’s sister Margit has been with us. She always comes when I have my birthday, because when I was little and mom was sick, Aunt Margit took care of me, and since then she has almost regarded me as her own daughter. But I don’t feel that way.
I got three charms for my silver bracelet as a present. It’s a cross, an anchor and a heart which means faith, hope and charity. Actually, they have the same meaning as those dots some guys have between their thumb and pointing finger.
I got 100 kronor from mom and pop. I have bought longs at Hennes for 45 kronor and a Shantung lipstick for 4.75, Spray Net Regular hair spray for 9.75 and VO5 hair shampoo for 4.75 at Forum. That’s a total of about 65 kronor and so I have about 35 kronor left that I can use at the movies and to buy cigarettes.
Monday, 18 May 1964
On Whitsun Eve I went with my sister, Stig and Anders to Skokloster and Sigtuna. We went by boat, round trip, on M/S Torsund. It’s a special boat you can sail with now during the summer.
In the evening E-L and I went out, and yesterday we saw “Fun in Acapulco” with Elvis. (Just think that he had the time and interest to come with us to the movies!) No, he wasn’t with us, but in the film. The movie wasn’t especially good, but his films seldom are when you consider the plot. Though you don’t go to his movies because of the plot, but to watch him and hear him sing.
I have a picture of Elvis on the wall above my desk. There is something special about his appearance that I cannot explain. There is a sort of attraction that isn’t only because he is good-looking. It has something to do with his charisma, because he has sex appeal.
There is also something special about his voice. It can be soft and it can be hard (ha ha!), and it can sound sensitive as well as sexy. In “Such a Night”, which I sing and dance to sometimes, these qualities are very distinctive. (“Well, she’s gone, gone, gone, yes, she’s gone, gone, gone. Came the dawn, dawn, dawn, and my love was gone. But before that dawn, yes, before that dawn, and before that dawn: Oh-ah...oh-ah...oh-ah...oh-ah... such a night!”)
I like both his peaceful songs, such as for example “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and “Love Me Tender” (Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go! You have made my life complete, and I love you so!”), and those in the rock style such as “Hound Dog”, “King Creole”, “Jailhouse Rock” and “Blue Suede Shoes”. (“You can knock-a-me down, step on my face, slander my name all over the place, do anything you wanna do, but uh-uh honey lay off of my shoes, don’t you step on my blue suede shoes!”)
“Jailhouse Rock” was one of Elvis’ first films, and in that film, he was still the way he is when he performs, but since then they have made him more buttery. For a while he was almost forbidden in America because they were afraid of the bad influence he would have on the youth. Once, when he was on a TV program, they only showed him from the waist up, so that nobody could see the movements of the lower part of his body. They thought he was too provocative and that he moved himself too sexily. A police officer who had seen him in a show said: “If he behaved like that on the street, we would arrest him immediately!” But I do like him! I can almost see him in front of me, the way he enters the sce
ne with tight pants and a blazer on, and with the collar of his shirt turned up so it touches his hair on his neck. His guitar hangs by a strap around his neck and he goes forward and places himself with spread legs in front of the microphone while the public cheers him (or scream, as they often do, the fans), and then he strums a couple of smart chords on the guitar and begins to sing. (“Well, since my baby left me, I’ve found a new place to dwell, it’s down at the end of Lonely Street, at Heartbreak Hotel.”) If it is a rock song he might begin to shake his legs so his pant legs flap, or he grabs the microphone stand and bends himself forward with it. Sometimes he makes a jump so that his knees touch and he comes to a halt with one shoe tip to the floor. And his hair (which mostly is rather greasy) falls over his forehead, and sweat runs down his temples, but you don’t think it’s disgusting, though you would if it were someone else.
First we were at the movies and then we went into town. When we came out of the movies, a Ford Consul stopped. It was Tony and two other guys. Tony sat in back and didn’t have a girl.
“How are you these days?” he said and looked at me.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Have you hit the bottle yet, then?”
“No.”
“You haven’t? Well, that’s probably just a matter of time…”
“That’s what you think?”
“Yes. But you can always hope that you’ll manage to stay away from it.”
Guys don’t like girls that drink, and I would never like to be like Ankan, for example, who also walks on Svartbäcksgatan and who is drunk almost always. I have never been drunk, and I never want to be that way either, but it felt strange when Tony asked me about it.
“Just because some drink, doesn’t mean that everyone does it, I said.
Then he pretended to get angry.
Hop in Then! Page 7
