Hop in Then!

by Ulla Bolinder

  It doesn’t happen every week, and sometimes he only drinks on Saturday if he and mamma visit others or have people at home, but for some periods he drinks every week. If he has gotten drunk by himself, he is always extra nice on Sunday. And then he can’t put his foot down against mamma, because of his bad conscience. Then he doesn’t think he has the right to get angry even if he has a reason for it. I think he often, when sober, holds things back if he is irritated, and then later, when he is drunk, he explodes. He’s possibly forced to drink to release his anger that he suppresses otherwise, and so it becomes as a vicious circle.

  Torkel called anyway and wanted to see me. He was going to come and pick me up at 7 p.m. I snitched pop’s Vat 69 and went out a quarter hour earlier and stood behind a tree and gulped down as much as I could before he came. I don’t know if he noticed, when I sat in the car, that I had been drinking. He didn’t say anything anyway.

  “You’re the only one left now,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “My pal also thinks I’m dumb.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes, dumb and disgusting. She said so when I ...”

  But I didn’t want him to know about the nail file.

  “How did your exam go?” I asked instead.

  “Well, thanks. How have you been?”

  “As usual.”

  I want to tear off my hair and stamp and puke on myself so that I can stop hoping that he will come back.

  “I’ve written a letter,” I said.

  “To him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was in it?”

  “I explained how I feel and what I have realized that I did wrong, and then I asked if we could try start all over again.”

  “And?”

  “I wrote that he could call or write, but he hasn’t.”

  “But you live in hope?”

  “Yes, that’s what I live in.”

  “But don’t you understand that he’s never going to change his mind? There’s nothing that indicates that he would.”

  “No, I know.”

  “You realize it?”

  “Yes, but it makes no difference.”

  When we got to his place and I found out that he hadn’t bought any wine, I wanted to pull out the whiskey and start to drink right away. I sat down in the easy chair by the window and he sat in the other one.

  “When I dropped you off on Sunday I decided to not see you anymore,” he said and put one foot over his knee.

  “Yes, I understood that,” I said.

  “But then I realized that I don’t have any right to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.”

  “I see.”

  “Yes, and it isn’t true that you use me. I’ve known all along how it is. I can’t put the responsibility for what I do myself on you.”

  “What are you doing then?”

  “I thought I could get you to forget the past.”

  “But now you don’t believe that anymore?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “Do you have a glass?” I asked and opened my purse.

  “A glass?”

  “Yes, for the booze.”

  Simultaneously as I set the bottle on the table I looked at him, and I saw that he stiffened.

  “No, I don’t have a glass,” he said.

  Then I screwed off the cap and took a gulp straight from the bottle.

  “Do you want some?” I said and reached the bottle towards him.

  “What are you trying to prove?” he said.

  “Nothing. Cheers!”

  Then I gulped down a little more.

  “I can’t make you out.”

  “I’m a hopeless case. It’s just to realize it.”

  “But I don’t think it’s as impossible as you try to make it seem.”

  “What?”

  “That you should give up hope about him.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “But why?”

  “Because I love him.”

  “But he demonstrably doesn’t love you!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t. And honestly, I think you are dumb.”

  “I’m going now,” I said and stuffed the bottle and the cigarettes in my purse. “But you can drive me to town.”

  “No, I won’t. And if you leave now we’ll never see each other again.”

  “But I want you to drive me.”

  “No, I said! If you want to go, you have to go by yourself.”

  And I have known all along that it would end like this. I got up and went into the hall and pulled on my boots and coat, and he didn’t come after me.

  “Bye-bye, Clas-Torkel!” I said and slammed the door shut.

  Out in the stairwell I gulped down as much whiskey as I could without puking. Then I lit a cigarette and started to go. When I heard a car come, I thought it was Torkel who had changed his mind and came after me, but it wasn’t.

  I stopped to drink several times. Finally, I sat down on a box which they have sand in during winter and laid down on my side, and then a car slowed down and stopped by the sidewalk. I heard idling and then a door opened and footsteps on the gravel. At first I was scared because I thought it was the cops, but it wasn’t. It was two guys and a girl in an Opel. I got to lie down in the back seat with my head on one of the guy’s lap. While we drove, they played “I Should Have Known Better”– with a girl like you. Torkel should have sung that to me before I left. He should have known better than to believe that I would be able to change.

  I can’t manage to tell what happened afterwards. Tonight I will stay at home and go to bed early. There’s no meaning in going out. I just want to sleep and not know. If it were possible to sleep to death, I would do that tonight.

  Sunday, 29 November 2014

  Yesterday evening when E-L was with Clas (or Torkel as he is apparently called) they fell out. She had a bottle of liquor with her in her purse and took it out and began to drink in his presence, and she said to him that she would never forget Lasse and that she wants him back. So Torkel probably got tired of her (and you can almost understand that).

  Today it’s decoration Sunday, and I went with mamma and papa downtown and watched the Christmas windows-displays. On Diagonalen, by the Forum department store, they have set up a Ferris wheel with Disney characters on board, and there were lanterns and garlands all over the place. Now snow is the only thing missing for us to have a real Christmas feeling.

  It’s fun to do things together with your parents sometimes. When I was younger I went with them to Knäppupp’s tent varieties. I thought it was fun. Nowadays we don’t go out together that often but we sometimes have fun at home. Mamma and I can have a jocular dialogue if we feel like it. Guben i låddan, for example, is something we often do. We have it on a record and we know it by heart. It can also be small snippets of some things that we have heard on the radio or TV and that we remember. We have a full store of expressions that come from monologues we’ve heard. (“Hold hands?” “Nighty, nighty!” “Shall we take it from the beginning?” “Damned Fläskfia!” “It’s sound and fresh!” “We are here now, Ester!” und so weiter.) We are on the same wavelength, so for example if we see something on TV that we especially notice, we look at each other and know exactly what the other one is thinking. But papa doesn’t get it. When we start to laugh he perhaps looks up and says: “Uh, what?” He doesn’t get it. And mamma sometimes says the wrong thing. She can ask for example: “Kicki, will you go and turn off the radio?” “Yes, I’ll go and close the balcony door,” I say, if that’s what she was thinking about. She says it all wrong, but mostly I know what she means.

  This newspaper clipping is about an unconscious girl who was rescued by the police.

  That won’t happen to me.

  “Police intervention” saved 16- year-old from rapist.

  GÖTEBORG, TT. A 20-year-old youth from Göteborg has been taken into custody suspected of raping a 16-year-old gi
rl. She could also have been forced to eat tablets with an abortive effect. The girl is now under care of the hospital. The girl’s father contacted the Göteborg police on Saturday for assistance in rescuing the girl, who he knew was at an apartment in Gamle-staden in Göteborg.

  According to the so called “raggarparagrafen” the police had no right to intervene because the girl was not suspected of any crime nor had she escaped from a juvenile detention school. However, the criminal police intervened and entered the apartment. In doing this they made themselves guilty of misconduct.

  The girl was in a deplorable state. She was almost unconscious and was taken to Sahlgrenska hospital to have her stomach pumped. According to her disposition, the 20-year-old youth had forced himself on her and thereby injured her vagina.

  Afterwards, he forced her to eat tablets with abortive affects. The girls lost consciousness.

  The youth, who refused to allow the police officers entry to the apartment, has made some confessions.

  The police officers made themselves guilty of misconduct when they entered the apartment, but the crimes they discovered inside clear them from any suspicion for abuse of power with all certainty, according to criminal inspector Nils-Sture Trädgårdh, who believes that the so called “raggarparagrafen” in the law ought to be repealed.”

  I don’t know what to do to make the pain go away. Smoking, sleeping and drinking only help while I am doing it, and I can’t do it all the time. The only thing that could make things better would be for Lasse to come back. I feel so ugly and disgusting when I think that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. It would be better if I were dead. Why doesn’t he want me? What have I done? I love him and can’t live without him. So why can’t he come back? I would do anything, if only he wanted to try again.

  If I died, Kicki wouldn’t have anyone to be with. But it probably wouldn’t be such a long time before she found a new pal. She could start being together with Solan, for example. And she would get out of listening to my harping on the same string if I didn’t exist.

  I don’t know how mom and pop would react. They seem so distant. But Lasse would probably be glad and feel relieved. Or would he have guilty feelings and think that it was his fault? I don’t know. Anyway, I wouldn’t do it to punish him. I would do it because I think it would be better for everyone if I disappeared.

  Friday, 4 December 1964

  E-L has just called. She was at the train station and sounded very strange. She talked about her purse and said she would pluck everything out of it and go away. I didn’t really get it, but I was worried and said: “Wait there, I’m coming.” But she said it wasn’t necessary. Sometimes she kind of implies that she will kill herself. Mostly, I don’t take it seriously, but this time I became a little hesitative because she sounded so strange. Anyway, I find it really hard to believe that she would go so far as to commit suicide.

  I went to town and thought that I would try to find someone who had booze. But I never went to Svartbäcksgatan. It felt so meaningless to go there. The guys who drive there want to have girls to talk with and have a fun with and not one that just sits there, down in the dumps, and only is after to drink herself drunk. I would trick and use the one I rode with, if I went there and let someone pick me up. And it felt wrong to go there on a Friday evening. I just went to the railway station and bought some cigarettes, and then I walked home again. There was nowhere to go. Everyone was busy with their own business and nobody was interested in me.

  I walked on the roadway in the dark and felt the cars sweep by. I could come too far out in the lane and be run over at any time. But what if I were just injured and didn’t die? And it would be bad for the person driving the car. So I kept myself on the edge.

  Sunday, 6 December 1964

  Last night when E-L and I walked in town we saw Lasse with his mate and two girls in the car. E-L went completely cracked and it wasn’t possible to talk with her anymore. I don’t get mad at her very often, but then I got that way and told her that I would leave if she didn’t get hold of herself. And there was no change, so I went away and hopped into the first car that stopped. (The boy was called Hasse and he gave me a lift home. I think it was strong of me to leave, because I have a hard time following my feelings and thoughts when she carries on with things that I actually don’t want to be a part of. But yesterday, for once, I managed to say no. I didn’t care what she thought or what she would find for dumb things to do when she was alone.

  She called today and wondered if I were angry, but I’m not. Not in the way that I don’t want to talk with her anyway. I just don’t want to tolerate everything.

  She had ridden with some guys that had liquor and later one of them had laid her. (She was so drunk that she was barely aware of what happened.) How can it be enjoyable to lay someone who is completely out of it? And it couldn’t have been anything for her, either. No, I really don’t understand the youth of today! Booze and sex are apparently the only things they think about!

  Kicki came along, and first we rode with a couple of guys in a very crummy Amazon. I wanted to wait for guys with booze to come, but Kicki didn’t feel like drinking, and then I regretted that I hadn’t gone out on my own instead.

  We saw Lasse’s car in town. He was the one driving, and Leffe sat beside him, and in back there were two girls with blonde hair. I don’t know what happened when I saw them. I became as if petrified and couldn’t talk. Finally, Kicki got angry with me and said that she would go home if I didn’t become normal again. But I couldn’t make it disappear. I just thought that I must meet some guys that had booze. So Kicki left, and when she had walked a little bit, I saw that a car pulled over and that she jumped into it.

  I was afraid that Lasse’s car would come by again, because at the same time as I wanted it to come, it felt like I didn’t dare to see it again. After a while two guys in a Buick stopped. One had a girl, but I went with them anyway, because the other one sat and drank Explorer vodka, and I hoped that he would offer it.

  When we had cruised around town for a while and had played “You’re No Good” with the Swinging Blue Jeans twenty times, we went to the home of the guy who drove. He lived in Björklinge. He and the girl disappeared somewhere, and the other guy and I sat in the kitchen and drank. I sat on his lap, and he made smoke rings that I tried to stick my finger in. Then I don’t remember what we did before we were lying on a bed and he had started to take my clothes off. It was odd light there, because there was just an orange Advent paper star lit in the window. He took off my pants and I was just about to say that I had my period, when he saw the string that hung out from my tampon and started to tug at it.

  “What is this?” he said. “Are you on the rag?”

  I didn’t care what he did. I felt that he put something under me on the quilt and took out the tampon, and then he laid himself on top of me and started fucking.

  “I have my period,” I said though I knew that he already knew it.

  “Yes, this is just like the Stockholm blood-bath!

  “Don’t you care?”

  “No, it’s fine anyway.”

  He didn’t use any protection and he didn’t pull out, so now I may be pregnant. But I don’t believe so, for this is supposed to be a safe time.

  When he got up from the bed I saw that he was bloody below his stomach. He dried off the worst part with a handkerchief before putting his clothes back on. Then he helped me to the bathroom.

  I also had blood on me. I sat on the toilet and tried to wipe it away with wet toilet paper. Then his semen ran out. I put in a new tampon and pulled my pants on. The soap on the washbasin was called Camé. Nine of ten film stars use LUX. A cleaner wash in an easier way with SURF. Yellow gunk, as it’s known, is brushed away with PEPSODENT. I was so ugly in the mirror. I’m always that way when I’m drunk. And I didn’t feel clean, but I only washed my hands before I went out.

  The others sat in the kitchen and drank coffee. The guy that had laid me pulled me down on his lap,
and I leaned against his shoulder.

  “Is she tired?” the other guy said and grinned. “Don’t go so damn hard with the broads, Lasse!”

  “Your name is Lasse?” I said and tried to fix my eyes upon him.

  “Yes, you’ve got it.”

  “Once I knew a guy who was called that,” I said. “But he’s dead now.”

  I wish I could sleep and sleep for all eternity. I don’t want to wake up, because as soon as I remember how things are, it starts to hurt. I don’t know what to do to make it go away.

  I wonder where Lasse and Leffe had met those girls. Were they some that they knew, or some they had met at a dance, or some they had picked up in town? And had Lasse fondled one of them later? It feels like I can’t understand how he would be able to kiss and caress another. But of course he can. If I can lay someone else, he must be able to kiss someone else. He perhaps laid her as well.

  That Lasse from Saturday wanted to see me again, but I said there was no point. I don’t understand why he wanted to, either. I didn’t think that guys liked girls that get drunk and let the guy lay them on the first evening.

  Yesterday evening, I was in town again. Everything felt so meaningless. I didn’t want to go with anyone, so I just walked around. Nobody stopped, either. I wished that Kicki had been with me so that I would have had someone to talk with, because when I talk with her it doesn’t hurt as much and doesn’t seem as hopeless as when I’m alone. But she was at home. Finally, I let a guy in a Volkswagen Beetle give me a lift home.

  I called Lasse. His mom answered, and when I asked for him she said he wasn’t home. I don’t know if it was true or if he just had told her to say that if I would call. If I had got to speak with him, I don’t know what I would have said. I just wanted to hear his voice. But he’s perhaps together with someone else now. He may have continued to see one of the girls he had in his car on Saturday.