Saga’s lounge on the way to Goteborg - Sat aft June 29, 1968
Swedes in suits read magazines, French mother plays cards with her bald children – ordinary life Goes On. This is the first class lounge; there is a second-class lounge (which I’ve also been in.) Think its weird of the democratic Swedes to submit to this kind of thing. Looked in mirror, realized I was thin, bought an enormous chocolate bar to celebrate (ate half of it.) The food around here is all “smorgasbord” – no bread, only crackers, lots of cold fish and blood pudding (which I sampled. More honored in the breach than the observance.) Plenty to eat – slept ten hours!!! Pouring rain. 5 PM – After a good stiff walk and staring at the wake for about an hour, crawled into my upper berth of our 4 berth cabin where I lie picking at my toes like a baboon (two other snorers are oblivious.) Feel ill for some reason. (Pudding.) Took aspirin. Brooding about all the ways our Wedding Week might not come off. If Mom invites someone to live in the house, par example, as she has been wont to do of late (and a lamer assemblage of ducks you’ll seldom see.) If Toss has to work in his wretched park, if there are workmen hacking up the kitchen (Mom has remodeled the kitchens of every house she’s ever lived in) but my optimistic brain fights back. Won’t bother us! We’ll never leave the third floor! Sleep in each other’s arms. Memories…me lying beside the pool, Toss with the sun behind his shoulders pulls off my sundress and kisses my jutting hipbone…ah. Wish I could stop worrying that the peach ice cream goddess he is in love with does not exist. What will happen when he finds out some people think I’m positively ugly? Toss’ face, too, is inexhaustibly interesting. Dig toes into sheets, pant and wail: Juliet in search of Romeo. Finished Miss Murdoch for all the good it did me. (Would have made a SHORT compelling story in New Yorker. At least 200 p. it didn’t need. I think the most important thing an author can know is When To Fall Silent. Reserve blathering on for sketchbooks like this one – aphrodisiac exercises for future consolidation.) But what about the Demands of Poverty, asks the ghost of Balzac. Well, Byron lacked that excuse. (Flourish.) Prefer to re-read Jessica Mitford’s Hons & Rebels after brief detour through Don’t Tell Alfred. Sweet Nancy of the Pursuit of Love has gone stodgy on us (as of p. 81). Stockholm – Tues. 2 July 1968 A lovely, lovely day! Gorging myself on pastry in the breakfast room of the Hotel Continental waiting for my train. Seems I could not easily live in any country of my choice as I used to assume – I am begging directions from strangers on street corners here, hoping they understand English. (Which they all do.) Got homesick last night for hard rock – all they have here is Dylan (and some Jimi Hendrix) seems my mush is flavored with Sheffield longing. Met a bearded architect on the train from Goteborg. We chatted about Frank Lloyd Wright, then he got off at Kristinholm Watching Sweden hurry past, it seemed to me the landscape looks like Minnesota – no wonder the emigrants stopped when they got there. I had a nauseating lemonade at the station – then asked my way to the Youth Alliance address. When I got off at Kristineberg I was studying the map when a tall mustached Swede asked if he could be of assistance. He had already hoisted my bag to his shoulders when I realized he was drunk. He tried getting chummy but I was standoffish. (He asked if he could smell me. I said No.) We found the address all right but the office was shut till Mon! Thomas Angulin (for it was he) told me I could stay with his mother who had taken in Finnish children during the war! I asked for a phone booth – he declared there were none – I burst into tears. He promised to find me a phone booth. Really, it was too much, a drunken letch and no place to stay. I called every Youth Alliance number – closed closed closed. We had tea – this seemed to improve Thomas’ condition. (I paid. I bought him cigarettes, too – anything to sober him up.) He offered to take me to some Sweet Swedish Girls who would comfort and succor me – I accepted this. (Sounded interesting.) He took me to a tall apt house where he let himself in with his own key. His girlfriend Anna (for it was she) was taking a nap and was less than thrilled to be confronted by her drunken wastrel boyfriend and Some Girl He Pulled In Off the Street. (I did my best to look Not Rich and in need of succor.) As they talked in Swedish (and I took a shower) she seemed to like the situation less and less (she really needs to take back that key.) I fell asleep on the sofa – Tomas fell asleep on the floor – Anna announced she was Going Out. When I woke up there was a freckle-faced red head looking at me. Her name was Ingalil or Ingalin or something I can’t pronounce (they called me Liz.) Thomas seemed to have sobered up so the three of us left the apartment in Search of Sweden. We took a bus downtown and looked into several Student Cafes that were action-free. (Afternoons last forever here.) Went to a small restaurant for dinner – Coeur de fillet and three bottles of wine. Thomas – broke before – had suddenly become “rich” – he paid for everything and lent Inga money – I can only assume Anna paid him not to sleep with me. (It’s only fair that I should benefit from a deal like this.) Sounds like he’s found a cushy berth for sure. Of course we all want what we can’t have. Inga decided to throw a last minute party so she bought some food and left in a taxi for her apartment near the Tunnelbana. Thomas and I took another taxi and went pub-crawling to pick up people, which was a lot of fun. One of the pubs was next to the Swedish Royal Theatre where the men dress wonderfully – burnt orange wool trousers and blue yellow and gold scarves. At the party (Anna was there – turns out she looks like that all the time) I was lectured about napalm and forced to promise to stop destroying Vietnam. It seemed easier to agree instead of trying to explain it’s really not up to me. Several students declared that they are communists. I was more than ever glad of my Not Rich persona of Girl Locked out of Youth Hostel and apologetic about my monogrammed luggage. A Chinese guy named Gordon (!) fell for me in a big way but I spent the night talking mostly to John who wears little violet-lensed glasses, has long blond hair and is trying to be an artist/writer. I liked him. He stroked my cheekbones and said “I like your face”. Good time had by all. Inga and I woke late in the AM. We talked long over tea about her hitch hiking experiences (with friend) through Poland and Germany. She is an enormously attractive person. Then we went to the Tetley to meet Inga’s boyfriend – an Irishman from Australia - who hadn’t been able to come to the party. Thomas and Anna showed up – he was cranky. (The problem with his “deal” is he is stuck with Anna, who wanted to explain to me the anti-American comments in her anarchist paper.) They are impressed that I’ve read Sigrid Undset. I tried to imagine Toss with this group – seems to me he would fit right in. In fact he is much more social – I am pretty much content to listen. They would be happy to sit in the café all afternoon – but I wanted to see some Stockholm. Inga’s boyfriend told me I was very boring, I said too bad. But had fun walking the cobbled streets of the Old City playing Mrs. Robinson in my head. Coo-coo-ka-choo, Alysse. (Ended up feeling deliciously lazy, sitting alone in a café on a little island off the King’s Palace. Which looks more like a prison. Which the King obviously thinks also because he no longer lives there.) At the Youth Alliance office they gave me all my materials and told me I had missed the morning train to Emmaus and would have to go Tues. AM. I was not distressed by this since Inga told me I could stay at her apt. Unfortunately Inga was not there and her boyfriend Ralph was. He asked me to cut his hair and tried to kiss me. He took no for an answer but refused to let me play Inga’s Dylan records since he was reading Khalil Gibran. I told him I thought Gibran was saccharine and pseudo-Biblical and he became enraged. He wanted to talk about: guess what? Sex! Ralph is a proponent of the Moment of Ecstasy Theory. He worked hard to convince me that Chaste American Girls are the laughingstock of Europe! Bodies must merge without hang-up or ado! Or memories it seems – a strange idea as outlandishly “romantic” in its own way as anything found in True Love Magazine. Sexual amnesia [laying awkwardly to each generation more self-conscious than the last. I told him he’s denying a million years of human evolution. How well will “jungle sex” really accord with a skyscraper lifestyle? We are going to need more interdependency and not less. Gave him my copy of Machiavelli’s Prince (I finished it.) Poor Inga! I don’t buy Ralph’s “theory” but I don’t have to – fortunately Toss is a very romantic guy. I put Unchained Melody on the jukebox and brood. 3:20 - On the train to Nassjo – Sitting in the Old Ladies Compartment of a feeble little train rattling Emmaus-wards. (This Swedish landscape looks like Canada.) The old ladies keep speaking to me in Swedish even though I’ve told them I don’t speak it – staring deeply into my eyes – gripping my arm and speaking slowly. They are making me want to SAY I get it when I don’t. Went to the restaurant car where a plow salesman from Varsavik wanted to make labored and guttural conversation. Re-reading Toss’ letters is making me all gooey-eyed. I am afraid to write him my neurotic monologues. Better not to contrast the intellectual exaltations of travel with the romantic discoveries of love. Can’t we have both? Which is more rewarding – finding one’s place in the world or following the unraveling skein of sensitivity and insight wherever it may lead? I know what I think. But every man I’ve ever told this to gets mad. The more ways I put it the worse it sounds. It always turns into a referendum on my “selfishness”. All I can say is look at the poetry Emily Dickinson wrote. She had the whole world within her – never went anywhere, never saw anybody. She found it all within herself. In a half hour we’ll be at Aseda.
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Alysse Aallyn
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