Jörgen wanted to see Kicki again, so he’s coming to pick her up tonight. They are going to Ängby Park to watch “The Swinging Blue Jeans”. I would also like to go there, but I won’t see Roine. He said he wanted to see me, and it’s true that I liked him, but you can’t break up with the one you are going steady with just because you meet someone else you like. It’s Lasse I am together with, and he is the one I love, so I’m not going out and meet others anymore.
I feel sorry for Lasse who won’t get to lay me tonight. Yesterday when he called, he said that he missed me both in mind and body, so I know that he is hoping for it. But I have my period, so it can’t be done.
When Lasse came, he hugged me and said:
“This week has felt like a whole year!”
Then I started to cry.
“But what is it, my little one? Are you crying?”
Forgive me, forgive me! I thought.
He asked me what it was, but I couldn’t say.
“Cry, little one, if it helps!” he said and held me tight.
Then he tried to comfort me.
“It’s alright, it’s alright… I’m here… I’ll be here as long as you want.”
Why is he so kind? I don’t deserve it.
A little later, when we were on our way to his home, he said:
“So how was your week?”
“Fine.”
“Yes, you were probably out on Wednesday and raved it up!”
He smiled when he said it, and I smiled back.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Ah, you admit it! Now tell me what you did, and don’t try to cram me with lies!”
“I was in town cruising and drinking.”
“Yes, just what I thought! And did you meet any nice guys?”
“Yes, there was one guy in particular. But perhaps you saw me when you were out yourself?”
“No, I was at home studying.”
“Math?”
“No, English.”
Now he thinks he’s going to be rewarded for this week’s effort, I thought. Now he thinks he’s going to lay me soon.
But he wasn’t as disappointed as I had thought. I don’t know if he was disappointed at all.
“You’re not in shape? he said. Then you should rest and take it easy.”
We played cards with his mom and dad and watched a little TV. Once when his dad happened to put his hand on my knee, Lasse got cross with him and said:
“Hands off!”
But it was only a friendly gesture on his dad’s part.
Why does it have to be like this? Lasse was supposed to pick me up at 7 p.m. but at a quarter past six he called and said that his car had conked out and that he couldn’t come.
“But can’t you fix the car?” I said, because I didn’t know how to stand it, if I had to stay at home.
“Yes, but I won’t be able to have it done this evening.”
I became totally numb by disappointment and was almost without words.
He doesn’t care about me, I thought. The only reason he isn’t coming is that he knows that we can’t frig.
“Are you still there?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t be sad. We’ll get together on Saturday.”
I wanted to say that it didn’t matter, but I wasn’t able to.
“You?” he said appealingly. “Time flies. And I’ll call you on Tuesday.”
“You don’t have to call if you don’t want to.”
“But my little one! Just because I can’t come this evening doesn’t mean that I don’t care about you!”
“It doesn’t?”
I knew I was going too far, but I couldn’t help it.
“What can I say so you’ll understand?”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“But you know I want to get together with you as much as you want to get together with me.”
No, I don’t.
“Promise that you won’t be sad. And don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid?”
“Yes, but you do what you want...”
“No, I’m doing what you want.”
“What do I want then?”
“Avoid me.”
“But don’t you understand? It isn’t that I don’t want to come, but that I can’t make it.”
“Right. See you on Saturday then.”
“Yes, but I’ll call before then. Goodbye, Star Eye! And don’t be sad.”
I didn’t know what to do after that. The bus had already left, so I couldn’t go to town, and I couldn’t call Kicki, because she was out with Jörgen. There was nothing at all I could do.
Once when I asked Lasse why we can’t meet more than twice a week, he said it is because he can’t afford it. But if he really wanted to see me he could afford it! When Kicki and Gert were together they met four times a week, and he probably didn’t have more income than Lasse has, and Gert also had a bigger car, that sucked more gas, and an apartment of his own, and he lived farther from town. Lasse says he neither can afford it nor has the time. First he works all day, and then he is studying in the evenings, and then he helps his father with bookkeeping at the family firm, and then he must do repair work on his car, and then he reads all of the latest books, and then he listens to music, and then he follows the world events. After all that, if he has any time to spare, he meets me. That’s the order of his priority list. He is first on my list and I am last on his.
Tuesday, 29 September 1964
“Have I the Right” by The Honeycombs, which is in third place on “Kvällstoppen”, is rather good, I think. (“Have I the right to kiss you, have I the right to miss you ...”) “Such a Night” with Elvis remains in sixteenth place. I like that song. (“It was a night, oh, what a night it was really such a night!”)
On Saturday Jörgen and I were at Ängby Park to see The Swinging Blue Jeans perform. On Sunday we were at his place. He lives in Eriksberg (or Sommarro as it’s also called) with his parents. When we came in they sat in the kitchen, and they greeted me and I greeted them. He had his room right behind the kitchen. It was small and rather narrow. I believe it was actually a dining room that he had gotten as his room.
He could play the guitar, and he played it for me. It wasn’t at all like I’m used to when I accompany someone home, like now we’re going to lie down here on the bed. He just played, and then we talked and listened to his Jim Reeves records. After a while his mother came and asked if we wanted some coffee, and then we went out to the kitchen and sat down with his parents and had it. When he gave me a lift home he asked me if he could see me again, and I said yes, of course.
Thursday, 1 October 1964
I have been with Jörgen, and he played guitar again. (If someone wants me to fall for him, he should play something melting on the guitar!) He played and I sang. I think it’s so cosy with song and music. I wish that we could have kept Söderberg as our music teacher, because then my singing might have come to something. When we had her, I was attentive during the lessons, but when we got Bosse instead, there was no discipline anymore. He is possibly 25 or 26 years old and he has no idea how to keep track of 15–16-year-old-girls. There is no order, and as soon as a teacher can’t manage the classroom, the students don’t care about the subject matter. The only thing we think about now is that we can smoke before our music lesson. (We smoke in YWCA, in the washroom there, before we go in for our lesson.) So nothing will become of my singing, either, I guess. Bosse doesn’t care if someone happens to have a good singing voice. He possibly notices it when we sing individually for him, but it isn’t anything he gets enthusiastic about and encourages. Why must everything be so lax in school? There is really no point in going there when you have teachers who are so uninterested in their job that they come last to class and leave first from their lessons and in between just sit and sleep at the teacher’s desk while we get to listen to some old tape recording. (I’m thinking of Frasse now, because if you want to find someone who is
less interested in French and teaching, you have to look really hard! How much French do I know? Je suis une jeune fille. Tu es un garçon. Je t’aime. (But that’s possibly enough, because that’s what life is all about, actually.)
And Bergström who is blind and who we don’t give a damn about! We sit there and do our nails and lips and eyebrows, and God knows what else, during his lessons. Everyone carries on with something. Some girls change seats. It’s cruel actually, because he has made a seating chart in his head and almost no one sits in her correct seat. When he asks a question, the one he mentions by name answers from a different location than he expects, or if another girl in that seat answers, he can’t recognize her voice. And some girls do each other’s hair or study homework from another subject or just write notes to friends. Not to mention the girls who sit with their books open and answer all the questions. Sometimes he says: “You don’t have your books open now, do you?” “Of course not!” they say, but they certainly have. It’s so sad. But even if he weren’t blind I believe it would be difficult to seize much interest for his lessons. He is so dry and boring. A good teacher should engage the students to feel interest in the subject and support and encourage those who are in difficulty so that they won’t give up and quit. The teacher shouldn’t neglect how things are going and leave the students to their fate if they don’t manage to keep up.
When I waited for Lasse, I was so nervous that my pulse was one hundred and twenty before I saw his car coming up the road. I wouldn’t have been able to cope with it if he had called one more time and canceled. It was so difficult and took so much time to get out of the petrification that I don’t want to go through that again.
We went to the cinema and saw a Swedish film called “Marriage Difficulties”. I thought we would go to his place afterwards, but he drove around in the country instead, along a lot of small roads, before he stopped in the woods and started to fondle me. After a while we got out, and he pulled my skirt up and my panties off. I bent forward and held on to a tree trunk, and he grabbed me from behind and pushed it in. It felt odd to have all my clothes on, except for the panties, and to do it outside. Afterwards, he pinched the rubber together and checked that it hadn’t leaked, before he took it off and put a hole in the moss with his shoe and shoved it in. Then he moved moss and dirt over it.
I wish I had something to drink. It’s true that I don’t want to be with any other guy than Lasse, but I wish I could get drunk sometimes. As soon as I think of spirits I want it. It never goes away. If I dared, I would take some of pop’s booze in the basement. But it won’t work, because I have nowhere to go. I can’t sit at home with mom and pop and drink.
I went out Wednesday evening. When I was waiting for the bus, a Ford Anglia drove by and pulled over a little farther on. It was one of them with an inward sloping rear window.
“Are you going to town?” I heard someone call.
I thought it was a guy, but when I came up to the car, I saw that it was a middle- aged man. I don’t like to go with older men, because it becomes so awkward when they try to strike up a conversation and you realize that they don’t understand anything. And you don’t know what they imagine, either.
“Nasty weather this evening,” he said when I had sat down beside him and he started up with a jerk. “But that’s probably just what you can expect this time of year.”
It smelled hair-lotion and wet wool in the car, and something else that I didn’t recognize.
“What are you doing this evening then?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You are going to town to enjoy yourself, of course.”
“Perhaps.”
There were flecks on his face from the rain on the front windshield when light from oncoming cars shone on it.
“Well, I’m on my way home,” he said. “I live in Luthagen. Perhaps you would like to follow me home and stay for a while?”
Why do all old men think that you want to be with them? Don’t they understand that you think they are disgusting?
When we got to town it was pouring down. He let me out on Kungsgatan, near Bredgränd, and from there I walked to Svartbäcksgatan. My stockings were grey spotted in back by the dirty water that splashed as I walked.
And then I was there again. It was so cosy with the lights from the store windows and the neon signs that reflected on the rain-washed street and with all glistening cars that glided by the sidewalks. I stood in a gateway and smoked. After a while a couple of guys in a Chevy stopped, but I said no to them. Then a guy in a black car drove by and braked and backed up to me. When I looked at him he tossed his head, requesting me to come closer, and I put down my umbrella and went up to him. He had dark hair and a black leather jacket and was rather handsome.
“Hey,” he said and stared at me.
“Hey,” I said.
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing special.”
“Are you coming with me then?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
When I sat in the car and he had started driving he took out a pack of Lido cigarettes and offered me one. It’s so cosy to sit in a car when it’s raining and watch the wind shield wipers go back and forth and listen to the sound of the tires hissing on the asphalt.
On Vårdsätravägen he pulled over and started to paw me. I knew I only had myself to blame because I had come along with him, but I still didn’t want to let him do anything, because he was in such a hurry and so rough. Why are some guys like that, that they can’t take it easy and want to carry on immediately? They just lose when they act that way.
He tugged at my pants and tried to force my legs open. I got so tired fighting him off, and he was so hot that steam was coming from inside his leather jacket. Why couldn’t he just let me be? He wouldn’t be able to do anything in the car anyway.
“If you don’t stop I’m going to report you to the police,” I said.
“Don’t fool around! You came along of your own free will.”
But I still don’t think they have a right to force you.
I don’t know how long it went on. The rain pattered on the roof and the windows steamed up. Finally, I slipped out of my shoes, and when he let his guard down I pushed myself free, threw the door open and got out. I heard him shout something, but I just left without paying any attention to him. The asphalt was full of yellow leaves and the rain spattered. Then I heard him turn the car around and come after me.
“Stop all this nonsense,” he said through the window. “You’ll get soaking wet if you walk like this.”
But I would rather be soaked than let him carry on with me. I was walking on the wrong side of the road, and he let the car roll beside me as slowly as I walked.
“Come and sit here in the car now,” he said. “I promise not to mess with you. I don’t know what got into me. It’s true. I usually don’t behave like this. But it was like I couldn’t think any longer.”
At first I didn’t answer, but he just kept on trying to persuade me, and finally I said:
“Do you think I’m dumb? You are just afraid that I’ll go with somebody else and tell him what you have done.”
“But nothing happened and nothing will happen, either, if you’ll just come with me.”
I was freezing so that my teeth were chattering, and I wanted my purse and shoes, so when he had begged a little more, I did what he said and climbed into the car again.
“Damn, what an ordeal,” he said and stared at me.
“Just drive!” I said.
“Yes, I just need to take a little breather, first.”
I was mad as hell and didn’t want to talk with him anymore.
“You have a right to be upset,” he said. “But you were so sweet that I lost control and didn’t know what I was doing. This has never happened to me before, and after this evening it will never happen again. So every cloud has a silver lining, as they say.”
But I don’t believe this was the first time he behaved violently. An
d saying he lost control because I was sweet was only bullshit. I don’t think this was the last time it happened, either.
“Do you live far from here?” he asked.
“Not really. But I’m not going home yet.”
“You aren’t? What will you do then?”
“Why?”
“Well, it isn’t any of my business. But you’ll get sick if you walk around in your soaked clothing.”
He said that just because he wanted to give me a lift home, so that I couldn’t go to the cops and report him, when he had let me out. I knew that he was afraid of that and sat and brooded on how he could find out if that’s what I was going to do. But he could just as well worry, I thought.
When we came back to town he stopped in front of the Central Swimming Bath, where the Gamla Uppsala bus used to have its end terminal.
“You aren’t mad, are you?” he said as I climbed out.
“Yes, I am!”
“But you won’t do anything hasty, will you?”
Then I bent down and looked at him and said:
“I’m not going to the cops, if that’s what you mean. So you can sleep well tonight!”
Then I slammed the door shut and walked away.
When I got back to Svartbäcksgatan I began to freeze and didn’t know what to do.
Forgive me, Lasse, I thought. Forgive me, forgive me! I’ll never do like this again. Please Lasse, forgive me!
I went into a gateway and checked in my pocket mirror how I looked. All my lipstick was gone, and my hair was wet and flat and couldn’t be backcombed again. I lit a cigarette and waited for somebody to come. My feet and knees felt like pieces of ice, and I froze so my teeth chattered. Finally, a car stopped with a single guy and he drove me home.
The guy from Wednesday gave me a hickey on my neck, and it didn’t go away before I was supposed to meet Lasse, so I put a plaster over it and thought that I would tell him that my cat had scratched me if he would ask. My bruises weren’t gone, either, but if I turned off the lamp when I undressed, he might not notice them, I thought.
Hop in Then! Page 19
