That book and you

You looked at the book, your ex had lend it to you, and you read it, you liked it, it was a real good book, you knew that you should give it back to her. But in some sort of twisted way it felt so much better to bring it to Half Price Books and sell it. For those three dollars you would buy a cheap beer, of the brand that she drank, and pour it out on the ground. Bitterness is a strange feeling, and you seldom would submit to it, but once in a while you had to, because it made you feel better. You hated that she had such an impact on you, bitter that she had left any feelings behind; we all knew it was the total lack of closure that made you hurt.
She had told you loving words just a week before, just to turn around, as if you meant nothing to her. You cried when no one saw you, you treated women just the way she had treated you, but it never made you feel any better. You moved almost a continent away from her, but the thoughts of her would come and knock on your mind, as unwelcome as any Jehovah Witness on your door. Selling her book and pouring that beer out made you strangely happy and filled you with a strange calmness but you would always wonder why she lied to you so deeply, and never told you why.

Stranded and me

It was the middle of the day, they had been driving for quite a while when Petra started to swear. I was used to Petra’s moodiness and didn’t really pay any attention to the sudden outbreak; I just leaned back in the cool car and closed my eyes. There was only miles and miles of burnt desert outside the windows, I had seen it for hours already, and I was dehydrated and hungover.

“What the fuck Mia, the freaking engine just stopped” Petra looked at me, as if I knew something about the expensive car we had borrowed slash stolen from her father.

“Seriously Petra, you are the butch one, aren’t you supposed to know things about cars” I half jokingly said to her. Petra did not seem to appreciate my comment.

“You are such waste” she declared with a frown and kicked the cardoor open, the hot Nevada desert instantly invaded the car. I gasped, ever since I was a kid I couldn’t stand heat. I was thinking about something to reply to her when I saw a car far away on the highway, so I turned my head over and suggested that maybe Petra should flag the oncoming car down for us and please shut the door, so I at least could try to save some of the last cold air in the car. She ran her hand thru her short dark hair and exited the car with a grace, which was the reason I had fallen for her in the first place. Petra had the grace that few people were born with, when she walked she reminded me of a cat. Her olive skin glistering in the sun and the lean muscular body made me miss the days when we first met and we were both mysteries to each other.

I saw how she was waving her hands at the oncoming car, I also saw the car pass her, pissing her off, stomping the ground and kicking the dirt around. Petra was not the patient type, and nor was I, the car started to get hot and the Nevada June sun was just about to reach zenith. Fuck this, I thought to myself and opened the car door, just to regret it at the same second, the air was dry but hotter than in an oven, it sucked the moister out of my lungs and made me gasp. “Fuck this” this time I said it out loud, and it made Petra turn around, glaring at me, I shook my head.

“Why the hell did we think this was a good idea?” I don’t even know why I asked her the question, we both knew the answer, we had been high, on life, on coke, on wine on gambling on anything that Vegas had nurtured us with the past 42 hours. Showgirls had danced around us in VIP lounges where Petra had used her father’s credit card, and I had merely followed, with an amazement and excitement that I didn’t know I was capable of. Petra had invited strippers to our room, she did not seem to think that anything was over the top, and I was never the girl to turn down some fun. Sometimes I saw a strike of sadness in her eyes and I would lay my arms around her, for a second she would rest her head on my shoulder, just to seconds later shake her head and order a bottle of champagne.

Early mornings in the city and me

As a city wakes up, I walk the streets, while the sun slowly follows my step, one of the largest cities in the world, still the slow pace and the lack of bustling life suprise and amazes me. It is still spring in hte air, and an old man is cleaning his storefront and I stop to watch. A woman dressed in traditionally african print compliments me. Slightly underdressed for the crisp morning she lets me know that I look stunning.
I continue to walk, I smile at two police officers that pass me while I slowly guide myself to my nest. Early mornings in the city, the smell of asphalt warming up, the sound of stores unlocking, and the few ghosltly walkers, in last nights make-up, finding their way from warm bodies and last nights promises.

It is almost summer and me

I spent the day in the day in the sun, close to men on bikes and sticks, men that I suprisingly found attractive. A canadian tall boy caught my eye, he was taller than me, leaner, but oh so muscular, he rode his bike with precision that I would like to ride him. The thoughts of this happening passed through my head, tapped on my mind as a possibility, but I knew I didn't want to. It would be to easy and too hard at the same time, I just wasn't interested at all, I wouldn't mind his muscular body wrapped around mine, but I knew how fast I be bored, how my lust would be gone and I would have to find out a way to ask him to leave without sounding rude.

My face was getting hot in the spring sun, later that night I would also discovered how my nose, cheeks and shoulders all had that pinkish suntan, the first tan of the year. A slightly stining feeling, as a new beginning of a new summer.

My friend sat beside me, she love the boys, I saw in her eyes how she like me appreciated their bodies, but how her appreciation was different from mine. I wanted to touch, experiment and leave, she wanted something more substantial, I already have my substance.

Later we went for beer, and I had already forgotten the tall boy with dimples and slightly tanned skin.

Summer in the city and me

Summer was hesitating, and the rain poured down outside my window, and it threw me into a sad, sad mode, made me want to hurt myself, and by hurting myself I would usually turn to the bottle. I was just too lazy to do any other damage to my body, I think my laziness have saved me at tines. If I wasn’t as lazy as I am I probably be a heavy drug user and be covered of tattoos and scars by now. But me being lazy just made the whole thing to get to a needle place so far fetched and scoring drugs always seemed like such a task, when I could just lay in the rain and drink one, two, three, four, five beers and just watch the world melt away outside my window.

Occasionally I would draw on myself, I have someone draw on me, and then I would sometimes submit myself to really bad sex, but that was about it. Bad sex and fake tattoos. Sometimes friends would feed me drugs, and during one hot summer I actually took it upon myself to hang out with a speed dealer. Well, I admit he was in love with my little Asian gay boy, and Asian gay boy would giggle and say he loved me, so I never felt bad about sitting in a park snorting free lines and once in a while rummage my pocket for some spare change to give to the strung out guys.

My German really improved that summer, and so did my desire to get away from myself, to stop riding the U-bahn in rain thru the outskirts of a former war torn city. The structures around me where new in one sense but ancient in another, there were the impressive parade streets with a whiff of Communist glory glaring at me, and there was the few houses that outlived the RAF furious bombs, It fascinated me, I went to all the well known clubs and danced myself away, I drank too much, I smoked too much, and to drink more I popped tiny pills that made my feet move faster. I fell into a world that lived hastily during the nights and in slow motion during the days. I hid my eyes behind sunglasses, I learned the lesson, if you go out in the night, and you still need the sunglasses for the morning.

"Essentials!" my roommate Kaka would tell me and fill my glass up with more cheap fake Champagne. When we couldn't afford that, we would just drink wine with sparkling water that was almost the best. We would first order "Sect auf Eis" just to switch over to "Wineschorle" as the night progressed. Kaka was ten years my seniors and grew up in East Germany, she had glorious stories about her first blue jeans and climbing the Berlin wall when it fall! I think Kaka might have worked as a real estate agent, but I was not really sure, she was gone during weekdays, and in the weekends she would dance the nights always with me, she seemed to know half of the city and she would drag younger men to the apartment and take baths with them in the bathtub. I would long for something, but most of the time I would spend with gay boys, because they had the drugs, they had the connections and they always knew where the party where. I think I might have impressed people, I don’t know if it was my long legs, my bleached hair or my constant smile. But I never got turned away and I had a thousand numbers in my phone, numbers I did not remember how they gotten there, numbers I never called.

I met a male model who I had mutual friends with, I think he was getting drugs from a friend, I met an amazing girl and tried to talk her into skinny dipping in the polluted river. I might have forgotten what the sun looked like, if it wasn’t that I had to make it to lectures once in a while. I bought a striped dress that hung sexy of my body, and I felt like Blondie when I danced another night away and Kaka dragged home a new guy, swearing that he was the one, and I kept on sleeping on the couch in the living room.

One day it all came to an end, that was probably for the best... for all of us!

De få och jag

Åren har gått, men viss magi falnar aldrig, deras kraft att binda min innersta längtan, att fängsla mig, att få mig att återigen längta är obruten. Prinsen hade länge den kraften, men efter duster med drakar, eldvatten och sena nätter, så har falnade den glöden. Prinsen är en vän jag håller kär, men inte långre åtrår. Jag längtar inte längre efter att han skall lägga armarna om mig, krypa närmare och kyssa mina läppar tills de domnar.

Men mannen från lägenheten bredvid, hans magi är fortfarande stark, nu är han tillbaka i landet. Men i en annan del... och jag är manad att åka...

Just the night and me

The light in their bedroom window was on all night. I just sat watching them, they seemed so in love, and I was jealous, I wanted to be just like them. But I was sitting in the apartment across the street, alone, as always. I would once in a while join an Internet dating site, in the hopes of a man or a woman to contact me and ask for a date. It never happened.I went out to the bars, wearind something nice, hoping for someone to ask for a date, it never happened. I followed tips from Glamour and Elle, on how to get a date, it never happened.

I guess I was not the average woman, not the woman that anyone would just approach and ask for a date, I was the type of woman that drunk men at bars would asked to fuck, but in a more sincere and in a slightly more polite way. I did not look like any of the plastic blondes in Playboy or Hustler; I just had this air of sex around me, maybe because I so seldom submitted myself to the activity. It mostly bores me, the act of pretended love and worlds of lies and untrue feelings.

I watched this couple, how their love was so genuine and still so raw, it surprised me, since I long ago had given up on love. I sat and drank expensive wine and watched their hands found each other, and how their bodies melted together. I saw how they lay face-to-face, just talking hours and hours away, while I was just getting more intoxicated. I sometimes thought that I would be better off if I left my apartment for other things than grocery, work and the gym, but I did not want to miss my nights with them.

The couple slowly became an obsession, the nights when only the man slept there, I was greatly disappointed and I would slip myself a sleeping pill or two, otherwise my mind would continue to ask, why, why, why the woman was not there. Even if I very well knew that the man was the owner of the small studio and she probably had another place she called a home.

It made me more and more depressed when I noticed how their loving glances became fewer, and how their love seemed to change. I watched how they turned away from each other in their sleep, I noticed how they no longer stayed up all night just to talk, and how she never gave him coffee in bed anymore. I noticed how they no longer came home late nights to drunkingly undress each other and I noticed how she no longer smiled in her sleep.

And one day it came, what had I feared. I saw, how their eyes were filled with boredom, but also with tears, how the end was near. Her eyes with anger and slight regret, I saw how her mouth opened and shouted, I saw his tense back, how he pointed towards the door, or where I thought the door must be. She threw something at him, something small and glimmering, turned her back and walked out of my life. For many nights I sat and stared at him sleeping, lonely, hugging his pillow, I hoped that she would come back, but she never did.

(Art by Nathalia Edenmont)

En sen konversation med vin över internet och jag

En gammal vän (som jag nog inte sett på fem eller sex år) frågade mig över internet efter en lång IM konversation om hur man skulle kunna komma innanför mina trosor.
Det är svårt, skrev jag
Det har jag förstått, svarade han
Jag skrattade lite för mig själv, eftersom allt är relativt...
men svarade:
Man är lätt och svår på samma gång, ärlig och rolig, sexig och kul, nonchalant och sarkastisk men öm och mjuk... något sådant brukar funka...
Eller så proppar mig mig full med MDMA och viskar saker med fransk brytning i mitt öra (fast den har bara funkat en gång, så jag lovar inte att den har någon effekt)

Fast ibland räcker det med att jag bara är kär...

Vodka Tonic och jag

the tired light of the early autum sun trickles into the room

her arms around him
his legs around her

her hair knotted into his
his breath in hers

naked bodies, snuggled tight

a lack of knowledge of who he really was
of who she might be

she knew how he tasted
he knew what her tounge felt like

he knew she had a witty mind - last night
she knew he had a funny laught - last night

vodka tonic
vodka water
the night went on

-let's drain our brains, let it be tonight, they said

now the early moring wakes them up, a new day came around,
they kissed
he smile
she smiled

and that was it

När det regnade och jag

Four days of rain
it's like God decided to cry
forever
over the armpit of Washington State

It's grey, it's dark, it's fantastic
but depressingly great

I listen to music
and doodle
I wish I could sing
because then I'd write a song

it would be finnish techno

(November 2006)

November 2007 och jag

i am what i always been
still night smells
like day
and day sounds
like night

i am what you forgot i am
i was what you expected
and more
i have time

hell freezes over
and i will laugh
heaven melts
and i will cry

did you know

Nattliga samtal och jag

- Jag önskar jag var där med dig, viskar han över telefonen...
- MMMmmmm, mumlar jag lite avståndstagande
- Få känna din varma kropp mot min, hans röst börjar lite otålig
- Åh vad trevligt, svarar jag glättigt
- Jag vill känna din läppar mot mina, försöker han med en lätt erotisk underton
- Oh, vad trevligt säger jag frånvarande men med en lätt sarkastisk underton
- Hörru, trevligt är inte precis ordet jag vill höra, jag hör irritationen i hans röst
- Jamen duuu... jag har ju redan sagt till dig, jag är ingen du borde tycka om, det kommer inte bli något. Det var jättetrevligt, tack och hej, jag hör hur gammal bitterhet sipprar in i min röst.
- Faen ta dig! Varför låtsades du ens, om du inte brydde dig ett jävla skit, nu här jag att han är riktigt arg... klick... och han har lagt på.

Jag sitter med mobilen i handen, sträcker mig efter vinglaset, känner ett jag längtar kanske lite, men vägrar att egentligen känna efter. Orkar inte bry mig, för jag vet att om jag skulle bry mig, så skulle allt falla samman och bli precis som det brukade vara. Och så länge han har flickvän orkar jag inte bry mig, för jag är för bra för att bara stå vid sidan om.

Utan problem och jag

Hon var min första riktiga flickvän. Vi var så lika och så olika, båda så rädda för ensamheten, men ännu räddare för relationer, att verkligen våga. I en tysk studentstad föll vi för varandra.

Jag visste att hon var en del av min framtid. Mitt hår var långt, jag köpte lurviga moonboots och vandrade runt i ett tyskt vinterlandskap i ylleshorts. Vi turades om att se till att den andra åt och inte enbart levde på vin och fernet, det var hon och jag mot världen. Vi utmanade varandra i att dricka en meter öl, i vem som kunde flest tyska verb och vem som kunde få vår tyska lärarinna att skratta eller rodna mest. Vi kysstes offentligt, för att i nästa minut vända oss om till någon annan stackars student och ge uttryck för hur illa vi tyckte om homosexuella. Vi var ett motsägelsefullt par, men vi båda ägde en sällsam charm.

Vi reste till min hemstad, hon kysste någon annan på ett stökigt dansgolv, grät senare mot mitt bröst, över att hon alltid skulle förstöra allt. Jag älskade henne redan då, jag visste att hon aldrig skulle lämna mig, jag trodde att vi alltid skulle får varandra att skratta.

Tills min svartsjuka och hennes rädsla sakta drev oss isär. Men det var många månader senare, vi tynade bort i varandras närhet, jag vägrade äta och hon vägrade äta eller prata med mig. Jag drack kaffe, kaffe, vitt vin och tänkte att jag lever nog inte länge till, ville inte leva länge till. Smärtan när hon och jag inte längre var hon och jag, var som att förlora en del av mig själv, och det självhat jag närt i så många år fick blomma ut till fullo i två långa år.

(bilden är från Fuck yeah dykes)

Fjolljollen och jag

Det var den sommaren efter hon hade krossat mitt hjärta, hängde en sen natt på Fjoljollen med vännen Saura. Drack med den självdestruktivas goda minne inte Jäger utan Fernet. Jag stod och vinglade i baren och drack varannan vin, varannan Fernet, vi var aldrig de som spottade i glaset utan vi snarare tömde dem snabbare än de kunde fyllas. Vi drack med dne redan fyllnas törst. Det fanns en hel massa glömska att dricka att i ett försök att skapa nya minnen. Jag var totalt gay, jag tittade på flickor, men ingen aning om hur jag skulle ragga. Jag log blygt mot de andra flikkorna i baren, men Fjolljollens utomhusbar verkade enbart vara fylld av faghags och ingen fångade mitt intresse. Om jag nu egentligen hade något intresse av någon, jag var tömd på livskraft och nyfikenhet. Alkoholen höll mig vaken, men det var allt den gjorde för mig. Jag längtade bort, bort från min hemstad som jag egentligen hade lämnat, bort från vad jag ofta kallade mitt liv, och bort från ensamheten som egentligen bara existerade i min egen verklighet.

Jag minns den natten, hur svetten klibbade, hur det var sommar i Sverige och natten blev aldrig natt, och jag levde i ständig skymmning och bakfylla.

Email och jag

Jag lever så långt borta från verkligheten, jag lever i en bubbla, i en storstad som aldrig sover. Jag lämnar staden och kommer åter, i en ständig känsla av att vara påväg någon annanstans. Folket jag inte känner stiger på tunnelbanan, stiger av och försvinner ut ur mitt liv innan jag ens har hunnit registrera att de ens fanns där intill mig.