you only live once

En gång såg jag en man med en lejonhund i Gamla Stan. Då blev jag fruktansvärt glad, för det såg ut så här förstår ni.

"It was an old man, in grey, saggy clothing, on a grey, saggy bicycle. A banana bunch hung across the parcel holder, two brown bananas on one side and two yellow on the other. Mounted onto the bike's front was a wooden box, and in it sat the biggest dog I've seen in my life. It looked like a big fuzzy lion, but rather than terrifying it had a look of calm on its face. There was a small dog on a leash on the opposite side of the road, which began to bark a sissy-bark as soon as it noticed the liondog. The orange beast yawned. The old man riding the bike sensed that the small dog was beginning to feel indignant, so in a kind effort to save its equanamity, the old man in grey clothes began making dog-like sounds. This pleased the small dog.
Yet again the liondog yawned."


Jag älskar människor. Och djur med självinsikt.

Jag kan tycka att det är lite pinsamt att läsa typiska tonårsböcker ibland. I egenskap av att vara sisådär en 41 minuter från 19 års ålder. Men mest för att jag själv dömer andra efter böckerna de läser. På något sätt vill jag inte att folk ska tro att jag är en "sådan där som läser Twilight". Ändå är jag såpass ivrig att läsa vidare att jag inte gärna åker kommunalt utan den. Så för att undvika de där blickarna ni vet, om jag skulle stöta på någon litteraturälskare, så prydde jag mitt ex med ett litet meddelande.



För att det ÄR klyshigt. Den ÄR ganska illa skriven. Språket är detsamma som i en sisådär 7000 andra amerikanska tonårsböcker.
Och ändå kan jag inte lägga den ifrån mig.

Jag har alltid varit en knubbis. Alltid hatat mig själv för det. Ärligt talat mår jag sämre över min vikt NU än när jag var som djupast nere i ätstörningsträsket. Nu tycker jag att jag väger så himla mycket att jag inte ens FÅR HA en ätstörning. Jag FÖRTJÄNAR det inte.
Fan vad sjukt.

Igår natt satt jag och en kompis i flera timmar vid facebook och kollade igenom bilder på smalt folk som går i min skola. Och vi mådde så dåligt, vi var ju inte alls lika snygga som HON, hon smala fina flickan. Hon råkar också ha de sötaste pojkarna, coolaste vännerna, och har dessutom bott, ibland flera år, på de ställena vi allra helst vill till, vi med. Och vi tänker, att du om man var SÅ smal så kunde vi också ha allt det där. Vi skulle också kunna vara fantastiska, om vi bara vägde lite mindre.

Det är stört. Men det är inte konstigt. Det avviker inte från normen, eller hur? För i vårt västerländska samhälle är det numer närmast en självklarhet att vi kvinnor blir värderade efter vår vikt.

Men när nu alla andra går omkring i sina storlek XS och klagar på sitt "fläsk" så är det väl heller inte så jävla konstigt att man står där i sin M och känner sig som vilken afrikansk flodhäst som helst.

Idag höll jag mig hemma, förkyld och jäklig som jag är. Då hittade jag en gammal (dvs rätt så ny) fin liten skrivare. Oanvänd i ett skåp fann jag den, stackars tyckte jag då och installerade honom genast. Sedan lade jag en massa fina saker och mig själv ovanpå honom. Han verkade gilla det.
Jag tror vi kommer trivas bra ihop, skrivarn och jag.

"Så fort jag förstod att det fanns fler språk än mitt modersmål, har jag varit intresserad av engelska. Det var språket jag oftast hörde, på tv och i musik och så. Jag satt och repeterade alla ord jag kunde snappa upp i tv-serier, memorerade den textade översättningen och började så småningom sätta ihop orden jag lärt mig till meningar.
I alla fall. Jag lärde mig engelska självmant, eftersom det var spännande och nytt och för att det irriterade mig lite att inte förstå det. Så fort jag såg en ny text kastade jag mig över den och försökte så gott jag kunde översätta, ord för ord. Jag började till och med översätta min svenska tankeverksamhet till engelska. På alla sätt jag kunde tänka mig, vände och vred jag på det nya språket, som ett barn vänder en död kråka. För att se det ur alla perspektiv möjliga. För att förstå."

Så skriver jag i ett halv-slarvigt mejl till min lärare. Hon som ska skriva mitt rekommendationsbrev. Åh, det där sista ordet. Det är så stort.
Svindlande.
Men vill man till England så anstränger man sig för att komma dit. Och jag vill dit.
Fan vad jag ska ta mig dit alltså.

HAN HAR EN MYSTERY JETS-TSHIRT. JAG ÄR DEN ENDA SOM HAR HÖRT MYSTERY JETS. varför har han också gjort det för?? varför måste hans musiksmak vara så jävla bra??? så irriterande. jag är inte ens kär i honom.... MEN. han har en mystery jets-tshirt.
men fuck i helvete jag har större chans att bli ihop med robert pattinson än jag har att bli lycklig med den här killen.
lika bra att gå och spamma herr pattinson, då.

"I want to be amazing," I said to him as I spilled onto the bed and coffee fell onto his head.

"You're quite an act," was the reply and his thoughts soared out the window, his heart was soured out of control.

His lashes were slightly longer on the left eye and he took advantage of that, held it against me and used it as revenge.

I was sorry for my being so lumpy clumsy around him and he was too.

"Look," I begun but he turned and the anger glistened on his lips and sparkled as he flipped,

"You are a Disaster, and lookit my eye what have you done to it."

A bleak-black coffeestain had etched onto the cornea of the eye-with-slightly-longer-lashes and it was blinking frantically at me. Blue-eyed accusation.

"Fuck, are you two completely arseholed?" the Brit chap would shout at times, sporadically. Making all of us wonder whether or not he was very right in the head, but it was his flat and if he considered laying face-down on the floor was a perfect way to spend an afternoon then who were we to question his decision. We were right at Frognal Street and the view was alright. Half a block away stood the house that Siegmund Freud had lived in for the last year of his life, hiding away from the ferocious Nazis of Austria.

"He didn't even want to leave for London," muttered the Briton boy and I wondered how he could possibly know what I was thinking of.

"You're a barking barmy," the other lad told me, the sored-eye soured-heart one. "And a duffer too."

The London sky outside was shouting at me to stay inside, so I obeyed rather grumpily. The boys in the livingroom were off each of their individual rockers and I felt like lobotomizing them both. I got up the bed and out the room into the kitchen, looking around for something sharp but the best I could conjure was a saggy toothpick. Couldn't be fagged to look further so I decided against trying to save what little sanity the loonies in the room next-wall had left.

Why were we here? Well, we had been in a band together a while ago but some weeks after our last gig we became very catatonic at the fame we'd face so we went away and smoked up for a bit and became depressed authors of nonsensical semi-autobiographies instead.

This was on my mind when I took hold of some hot, muggy paper and pursued my destiny back into the livingroom and my boys and my mess and the coffee on the floor and in the eye, and I wiped it off and I wiped the faces off the floorboards and the funny little birthmarks on Alfie's knees.

"This is not for you, it's for me," I would smile and Alfie would smile back with his coffestaineye and his bitter heart and the smile would be empty but it would be a smile nonetheless.

"Hunky-dory, hunky-dore, hunky-bore," mumbled the boy on the floor and his skinny jeans were loose on his skinnier legs and the white t-shirt proclaimed his love for obscure British electroindie, but you couldn't see that because it was on the other side of the shirt and the other side of the shirt was frenching the wooden floor.

"You've made a real hash of your life and I think we're bound to be miserable," blue eyes fired at me.

"I don't think being miserable is even half as bad as it's blown up to be," I claimed, "and I don't think we'll be that off being it."

 

Later in the afternoon, when evening was beginning to dye the sky pink, I went to take a smoke off the windowsill and as usual the lady across the street started screaming Italian insults at me.

Floorboy heard the signora and came to my side. He gazed at her in a dumbstruck dumb fuck manner and shouted insults at her in his own made-up, madness mother-tongue. After that he held out his tiny hand at me like a child beggar and I gave him a fag. He lit it while he climbed up onto the sill and crawled into my lap. The hair on his head was sooty even though I could still bring to mind a vague remembrance of it being a sandy yellow, a long time ago.

"Do you remember Lord Wotton?" he asked my thigh. I sucked on the Richmond Superking before I thought of a reply.

"At times."

"He had your eyes."

Inhaling nicotine and tar. Exhaling carbon dioxide.

"And your madness."

He laughed at this, and his lips were thin and pale. Inhaling calm. Exhaling worry and hurt.

"I wonder where he went," Floorboy remarked in a solemn tone.

"He's probably living high life chasing rats in the underground," I said comfortingly.

"He was the only one I ever loved," said the boy who spent most of his days on the floor, and at this confession I had a complex emotion.

"This place is in shambles," complained Alfie from under the bedsheets. He didn't really want to speak, he just wished for some attention. I had another complex emotion upon realising this. "We should do something about it."

"We could re-arrange the furniture," suggested Floorboy while crushing out the last glow of his ciggarette onto the windowsill, which was already quite blackened by previously put-out fags.

Alfie and I looked around the small room. There were two rickety old chairs by the other window, and a television set on the floor and an ashtray, and the big white bed that we all shared. There were two cardboard boxes in the small passageway leading to the kitchen, and these contained our clothes and other humble possessions. We also had a meagre safe underneath the bed, and in it lay only a few bags of benzoylmethyl ecgonine and a ruby on a thin golden chain.

"We have nothing to re-arrange," we said in unison.

I laughed because there was nothing else to do.

 

Life crept on much in this fashion for months on end until one evening when Alfie found Floorboy on the roof of my mouth and suddenly we weren't three musketeers anymore but more like one half of the Beatles and a Yoko. Alfie shouted like Floorboy used to shout when he was in his worst distress and we knew it was serious because he ran out the doors, down the stairs and out onto the summer street and off into the sunset and all the while we could hear him yelling out his agony.

"Will he be alright?" Floorboy asked, but it was no use because I was flat out on the floor, weeping my misery onto the wise old wood.

 

Alfie returned the next morning. I sat up in the bed I'd crawled up into, and I knew he was there before I saw him in the doorway. He stared at me without seeing me for so long that I understood that he was contemplating murdering us, so I gently sat back and waited for him to reach a decision. Floorboy was snoring next to the safe, and his nose was powdery and his cheeks salty.

He didn't kill us, but he looked at me and his entire being expressed a huge, hurting Why.

"We just wanted to numb the loneliness for a while," I explained.

And Floorboy concurred, "I don't think being miserable is even half as bad as it's blown up to be."

 

Jag tänker att det rycker till lite i huden precis under ditt vänstra öga när du påminns mig. Det ögat som är aldrig så lite större. Med kanske ett eller två stänk av brunt mer än det andra, det mindre. Och att det första andetaget alltid blir aningen skarpare än du tänkt, och att det förvånar dig eftersom jag aldrig betydde så mycket.
Jag tror att du tänker på mig väldigt sällan, men att du påminns mig ofta. Och att det är detta oförutsedda som gör att det gör ont.