A Fairytale - Beginning with Jealousy and Ending in Murder

Once upon a time there was a boy. He was a blond, big-muscled boy who lived in a small town in the middle of Sweden. The boy’s main interest was naked girls and since he was a shy person with problems getting to know people in real life, he spent most of his time online finding pictures of nude girls and chatting to girls who would agree to undress for him on a webcam. Not an unusual hobby, completely normal.

The boys biggest dream was to find THE girl – a nice girl with a perfect body and a good appetite for sex, create a family with her and maybe even buy a house in the country.
And finally one warm spring evening he found her and fell in love. It was all very sweet and after six months of sparkle and bliss the boy and girl decided to share a home.

This is where the story really begins for only a couple of weeks before they had a chance to try the “happily ever after”-ending of fairytales, there was a twist.

The pretty perfect girl had been hiding a secret and the secret was her own extremely low self-esteem.

Little questions started to pop up in their conversations and the girl investigated the boy’s every move. Looking suspiciously for any one near or far who could be a threat to their perfect couple heaven.
It was all very sad really but the boy thought it was cute. It was a token of her deep true love he thought to himself and smiled at her demands. These were: No more nude pictures; No more online chatting with other girls and; Do not talk to other girls even though they are just colleagues at work.

But it was cute – right?

One day the boy came home from work and found the girl by his computer, she was so engrossed in her actions that she didn’t hear him as he stood behind her admiring the nice shape of her back. The girl was busy going through the history of Explorer and visiting all sites that he had used. She then proceeded to hungrily look through his computer files searching for nude pictures or other incriminating documents. This is when the boy awoke to the startling realisation that it was not cute any more.

Things got worse. Not only had the girl checked all sites that he’d been on but she had also become a member of dating and porn sites that he had used just to see if he was online or if he still was out “hunting”. Oh dear.

Now if this true story had a good ending - because it is a true story - it would have been something like: The girl realises she has a problem and gets professional help, the boy supports her and they lived happily ever after…

But alas, the boy who had been hurt to the core of his heart decided to take a precaution, one could say get an “insurance”:

One warm autumn evening after sharing a bottle of wine the boy lovingly persuaded the girl to be photographed by him in the nude. After the pictures had been taken he told her that if she ever started checking on him again or if she ever lied to him about anything - he would spread the nude pictures of her on the internet.

This is the end so far of the true story about the big-muscled, timid boy, in the small town in the middle of Sweden.

If this exciting story would continue, my guess is that the following dialogue would be:

The girl: “If you spread the pictures on the web then I will trash your beloved car”

The boy: “If you trash my car then I’ll throw acid in your face - scarring you for life”

The girl: “If you throw acid in my face, I will castrate you with a fork!”

The boy: “If you castrate me with a fork then I will bury you alive under the floorboards of the cellar and let you be eaten by rats!”

And then silence.

And the moral of this story would be: Doing an immoral act can justify another immoral act.

Relationships

They say that in a kiss one closes ones eyes out of feelings of great tenderness, a person who doesn’t close his or her eyes isn’t being sincere. But I am now going to admit that in my first kiss I closed my eyes out of extreme terror and nausea. I’m sorry but it is true. There was nothing tender about it, my eyes were shut because I was desperately trying to teleport myself to an entirely different place, the top bunk bed on a ship at stormy sea, inside a dirty prison cell in the middle of a scorching hot desert or even surrounded by crazy men with chainsaws ready to chop my limbs off – I wanted to be anywhere but there on a street being kissed by my first love.

I won’t even go into the details of making out on a bed the first time - but if you can picture a body alternating between being stiff as a dead piece of wood or jumpy like a yo-yo with a strong urge to escape head first from the bed then you’ve sort of got a feeling of what I was like.

Then from this first introduction to relationships I went straight into the next:

Married – ok, I wasn’t really married but things sure felt that way. It sneaked up on us, first buying homely stuff like teas and candles to enjoy together, then changing our style of dress, I became a more “mature”, wearing cardigans, pressed trousers and the colours varied from beige to tan to dark chocolaty brown, he stopped wearing his leather vest and patterned knitted jumpers that mama gave him for Xmas. Wow! How we must have turned each other on in our sober grown up clothes!
In the end we shared a flat and used the kitchen ware and towels his mother had saved for our marriage. She even had my wedding dressed planned and the names of our kids to be!!! I don’t blame him for freaking out and kicking me out and I am grateful he did because by then I had been deeply brainwashed by The Sect of Devout Polish Mothers.

So after being reprogrammed I decided to do something quite the opposite I would be a Mistress!

Hmm… I suppose you think I was heaped with gifts of furs and perfumes, had amazing sex and walked around at home in sexy ravishing lingerie just waiting for “Him” to come after work before going to his little wife…
It wasn’t really like this. First of all I didn’t know I was a mistress until it was too late. Secondly I didn’t get any gifts but he did make three-course meals for me which was nice when he didn’t try to kill me by putting nuts in the food. Then the sex…ahh yes…well I’ll give him one thing – he was the first person to make me feel sexy and beautiful and amazing so I guess the sex was out of this world – that is to say, when he could get IT up…

When he proudly told me I was his mistress I thought “God” would drop a tonne of bricks on me as punishment but that didn’t happen so I found a way to punish the adulterer. By getting a little Fuck Friend to commit adultery with myself - yes, I agree the logic centre of my emotions was slightly off at the time.
My little Fuck Friend, well he wasn’t little...and it was good, extremely amazing, out of this universe, filling in every possible way - I hope you get the picture? But there is line I think where sex only can get better if emotions are involved and emotions wasn’t a good idea.

So I went travelling and tried relationships that I never thought I would try:

“One night stands” – Really?! Sex is fun and great and but it only gets better with practise so what is the point with just one night?

“Mother-son relationship” – Cook for him, wash for him, send him to school (I mean work) and comfort him when he cries cause his penis is too small. No. I’ll never do that again

“Baby-snatcher” – I’ll just give you a memorable quote: “No, not there! Nearly…now what are you doing? Really?! Don’t you know anything about the female anatomy?! Look I’ll show you…”

The “Sharing relationship” – A relationship where he shared his love for me with the love for one or two substances of an intoxicating kind, real life soon turned into a rollercoaster of ups and downs. A declaration of love from him could quickly turn into a monologue of verbal abuse and vice versa. Not nice.

Well after testing a lot of different kinds of relationships I have now turned to the “Long distance relationship” and it is ok: I don’t have to deal with the entrapment of a marriage, I am not his mistress (am nearly sure), the sex is amazing the three weeks a year we have sex which is more than just one night and even though he still is a kid he is wiser than the oldest being on earth. Oh and he has the worlds best mother who cooks and cleans for him.

So I think I’ve got a great thing going, don’t you?

Dreamed Kaleidoscopic Reality

I have a fuzzy feeling that reality is not real anymore; or maybe it is that dreams no longer are dreams?
When I get a quiet moment with myself, images like short cuts of film show up in my head - pictures of me doing something, saying something or interacting with somebody. The problem is I don’t know if I really have done or said these things; or even met the people.
My mind has become haphazard.

At work my colleagues are beginning to whisper and tread softly around me, I’ve had too many “Little Miss Bitch episodes” - sudden outbursts of verbal abuse, just to 5 minutes later become the kindest “Chubby Cherub” and not know a thing about what just happened.
And the amount of times I’ve responded with “I don’t know, I don’t remember…” in a bug-eyed dazed kind of way has become ridiculous.

My friends whisper the names of people I’ve forgotten when at a party and I’ve started to introduce myself by saying: “Hey! I think you seem like a great person but I will not remember your name in 2 seconds even if I repeat it 10 times and please don’t take offence if I see you on the bus tomorrow and don’t say hello - because I won’t remember who you are even supposing we speak for 4 hours tonight”

Twice in the last few months I have not recognized very close friends of mine:
Once I told a friend that her seat in a bar was taken when she got back from the toilette – it took about one minute for the jigsaw piece with her face on it fit with the rest of the puzzle in my head and I recognized her!
Another time this stranger waved to me from across the room, I stared angrily back and thought: ”Who the fuck is he?!” Just moments after, when I looked back to see if the bastard was still waving, reality shifted around me and I saw that it was my best friend’s boyfriend, a person I meet everyday - a guy I actually had been speaking to just 10 minutes before!

A kaleidoscope - that’s what my mind feels like these days - you know one of those tubes with sparkling colourful pieces of glass inside. Each time you twist the tube the pieces reveal a different pattern. It’s a perfect description – time, place and colour shift constantly and there is no way of knowing which the correct pattern of perception is.

Anyway, my bosses have booked a doctors appointment for me now - they are concerned…

I was told it is a specialist in a nice hospital with rooms of pink cushioned walls and floors; and a trendy kind of white jacket for me to wear.

Or was that also a dream?

“So what?! You complain that your head is hurting but you keep hitting your head with a hammer? Why don’t you quit your job?"

My job - a thing I complain about constantly, something that I’ve blamed for not being fulfilling enough and running me down. I try not to talk about it but it is very hard in Sweden where it is of great importance to know what everybody is doing with their lives. Are you a fucking failure or are you not? That is the essential question.

I work for a company that provides other big companies with facility services, i.e. everything from janitors, receptionists, restaurants to property administration. I’m the only employee of 3000 who works as a sort of consultant on longer or shorter projects in different departments and companies. The projects are reorganising or changing work routines within groups making them more efficient and also teaching people about being more service minded.

In real life this means:
I tell people they need to be on time for work (and I can’t wake up in the morning);
I tell they need to dress “appropriately” (I HATE dressing “appropriately”);
I tell people to look nice and neat (oh, dear I haven’t brushed my hair in a month or worn make-up in three);
I talk about the importance of sometimes acting a part to be able to always smile and be professional (but I LOVE telling people off and being rudely honest?!);
I also teach people how to make their days more efficient and fill them maximally (and I can’t even make my personal life tick, spending most weekends in bed, staring at the dust balls in the corners of my room);
I draw plans on creating ergonomic workspaces and solve logistic problems by having practical things built. (But solving my own logistical problems - not having a driving license - is practically impossible);
I tell the staff it’s important to exercise, have a healthy lunch and real breaks. (And here I am getting an ulcer from not eating lunch and working overtime);

It is a surprise to me that I am as good at my job as I am - somehow I am a success, I seduce them, I impress people and the bosses lick my toes; and I couldn’t figure out how or why I coped with it - until just now.

What I just realised was that it is all a play for me - an act at the theatre.
I grew up in the theatre - backstage working with props, as a stage technician and later a stage manager. Its 8 years since I did a play and I miss it terribly - there is a special smell of burnt dust backstage that I dream about and the tense silence the second before curtain goes up is magic… (Can you hear the violins?)

So what I’ve done instead, is make my own little theatre in the office environment I hate so much. The office has become my stage; the staff is the stage crew and the audience is the customer.

And theatre reality is:
One needs to be on time for the opening curtain;
It is easier to tell the audience you are a dog - if your make-up and dress is that of a dog;
You need good routines to keep the show going;
One needs to build a good set and be efficient for the best and safest possible stage environment;
And if you are a success the audience will lick your toes or at least applaud.

So back to the question a friend put to me last night, after I complained of the worst head ache in ten years - which was “Why don’t you quit?!” He is entirely right of course - I am bludgeoning myself with a sledgehammer - but at the moment, the job I have, is the closest thing to doing what was my dream.

And I am great at it - so I am not a fucking failure.

Trees

Monster in Malmö

My company has sent me to Malmö to work on a “special” project - just for a month or two.

The Prison

I was taken to my company flat by a plump ditzy lady. ‘The flat’, she told me, ‘is in the “posh” part of town and close to the beach’. Oh la la! We stopped outside a very flash cake-like building with a nice lawn – but of course - this was not where I was staying. Opposite this palace of flats there was a dirty yellow brick block. It looked like a mix between a prison and a high school – shudder. A tiny slow lift took me up to the fifth floor. The plump stressed lady had left me maybe she knew what was waiting and didn’t want to be made responsible.

The Cell

The flat has a hallway with cupboards that haven’t been dusted since the sixties, leading into a small square room with a pocket-sized kitchenette. At first I thought they’d forgotten to put a bed in the room but then I found it - behind the door. A microscopic thing! Could a midget have lived there before? Or maybe people in Malmö are smaller than the rest of the world?

All the furniture is from Ikea (of course), a mish-mash of styles and eras, but the one common factor is – extremely bad taste. There’s a HUGE television and a microwave, neither of which I use! And the worst of all - NO internet! Life suddenly became so lonely, without my virtual life.

The Monster Lair

The bathroom… oh dear the bathroom has (if you can get into it cause the door gets stuck) dirty yellow walls, brown floor, a leaking toilet, a shower curtain which is greenish black from furry mould and impossible to use because it has ‘glued’ itself together.

But the worst is the sewer in the floor; which b.t.w. must be the largest in Sweden. Usually a drain or sewer will have a metal sieve-like thing to prevent stuff from clogging it up. But this sewer has something more like a net with large holes, the only thing it prevents from going in, is the person standing on top of it!
It also gives you the best ever view of the dirty black-brownish sewer. Every time I go into the bathroom my eyes are involuntarily drawn to this dark abyss and I wonder what kind of monster will come out of there in the night when I am sleeping sweetly. My biggest fear is that the door will get stuck for real whilst I’m in there with the Sewer Monster!

"Basket cases"

Today Easter Saturday we blessed our eggs in church which is a Polish Catholic tradition. My sweet mother becomes very religious twice a year: Christmas and Easter. In between these two holidays, life is religiously uneventful and even contradictory to the teachings of her Christ.
This day my sister and I have to accompany her to get blessed along with a basket full of eggs. The ceremony only takes about 10 min. and it is cute to see, young, old, men, women and children, even super trendy teenagers carrying little decorated baskets full of food - every person trying to outdo their friends and neighbours in design, quality and colour. The priest says a few words and then splashes holy water on the baskets, people and “basket cases”.

My cute little mother wants to start a blog. A blog to God (remember she is religious today).

I can well imagine her posts:

“Dear God, thank you for giving me two such wonderful, beautiful and talented daughters. They are truely amazing; I only wish that they would be happier, maybe if they became doctors or lawyers? Or if they found a nice rich husband? Not an artistic bohemian man – even though they too have their positive sides, sexually, I mean – no what I think would be good for them would be a “nerd”, a quiet man who would do anything for them… Please God, help my daughters fulfill my wishes of finding the perfect man!”