—“Little Herman” was the better man …
— Yeah, he had a certain something … Called everyone idiot, thought animals were smarter than people … fought assholes with his cane and made himself a cardboard hat … His cynical little brain didn’t even weigh a halfkilo … he was like a windup toydoll …
Tempo and Domus, the department stores, were right in front of us … but we weren’t welcome there … Grandpa had pinched a lawnmower and a freezer, once … The building was so tall that I got dizzy and reached for Grandpa’s hand … but he didn’t tolerate that kind of touching …
— Let’s go down to the citypark and look around … if nothing else, there’s probably someone sleeping it off on a bench … a stolen fuck with a comatose drunk can’t go wrong …
Video Lime had moved … it probably hadn’t gotten any better, so we spared ourselves the headache … they never had what we wanted … The best they ever had was Salö, Caligula, The Omen, The Evil Dead, The Silence of the Lambs, stuff like that … a little on the light side, but not half bad … You’d never find Suspiria, Trauma, or Tenebrae by Argento … no Cannibal Holocaust or The Texas Chain Saw Massacre … Grandpa had gone in and begged them to buy some quality familyfilms like The Children from Frostmos Mountain, Shiteating Teenies, Ass in a Virgin’s Ass, Carcass Rapist, Grampus Fucker, Marmot Mayhem … But no such luck … A photo shop had set out a truly merciless display of color pictures showing ugly mugs and corpses in varying stages of decomposition … Sluts in whitegowns and graduationcaps preened coquettishly … It was a goddamned menagerie … Absurd bridal pairs … the last couple out … the bride’s I-got-the-ring smile, the groom’s studied selfcontrol … Toddlers with moist, pouting mouths … Rundown, dressedup fortysomethings … Four generations, each worst than the last … All trying to smile and act like everything’s normal … One photo was cool, but unbelievably gross … a little mayqueen with terrified eyes sucking a goldbrown cock so hard she had grooves in her cheeks … it looked like Mishima’s … or maybe Issei Sagawa’s …
The Bay Leaf Bookstore was advertising the newest titles for fall … a stationary display … New releases from our folkhun-griest graphomanes … Ivar LOB Johansson’s monumental Only a Whore … Mora-Martinsson’s gripping Grandma Gets Married … Vilgot Mobergs fit-for-the-fire masterpiece Your Piece of Ground … And then some stale leftovers they’d oh-so-lovingly left out … Jesus Gardell s Mel Mermelsteins Hen Party … Claus Östergrens Bleda … Maran Kandre’s Baby’s Baby … They had Povel’s and Tages Love Letters … Taubes and Cornelis’s Love Letters … And Tages and Ainas Hate Letters … They were tryingto push Kjell-Olof Fälts memoirs, All These Fucking Shitdays … and Lazar Kaganovich’s childhoodmemories … And Traci Lords’s Inside My Cunt … The window on the other side of the door had books that were more to my taste: Boforprizewinner Eliot Cannetti’s lively novel The Confusing … Bruno Skult s crisp Cinammon Shops … And Robert Walser’s cocky Jakob von Gunten … Sven Hassel’s Kommando Reichsführer Holmlund … Tolkien’s Lord of the Cockring … Lovecraft’s Cthulhu (a true story) … and the Tintin comics, the best thing the worst terror on earth has brought us …
— Hergé Bashevis Marquéz puts out some good stuff … compared to the folkstuff … Humanism’s a monstrosity … One frightened look in the mirror should be enough to convince you that mankind is an abomination …
Grandpa didn’t bother to kamikaze his way into the bookstore … were banned from both there and the library … they think we lick our fingers too much when we browse … make all the pages stick together … The library’s got us blacklisted … we use friedeggs for bookmarks and tear out what we consider to be extraneous pages … As we made our way to the city park, we heard some preppy neoliberal grandstanding out on market street:
— Mandatory abortions! Three cheers for female circumcision!
So far so good …
— Blinking yellow traffic lights 24/7, let the people decide … More girlyman matches … Easier to grab a quick one whenever you want! … Social Democrats must stop their cuntgrubbing! … Tax exemption for highincome fags! … Castrate the unemployed! and everyone else who gets a freeride! … Sterilize women! Slaughter all underperforming and overage athletes! like we do with racehorses! Ban relapsingornothologists! Grade adults on everyday life! Put it on your todo list: fapp-fapp! … All statesofmind to be ratified by the EU! … Nip ontological questions in the bud! before they blow up in your face …
You caught fragments from passersby … a conversation of sorts …
— But seriously … I think I drive better drunk …
— You sure fuck better … you feel less, you can hold out longer …
Isolated soapbubbles drifting on the breeze …
— I think he’s just shittysweet …
— Too bad his dicks so tiny and Hard on Hard in Helsingfors is the only book hes ever read …
— Did you really sleep with him …
— I think so … I don’t really remember … but I think he was with us up in Piteå … dragracing …
— You have to trust in the Malleus Maleficarum …
— When did he say you should come back …
— When I feel like that again …
— Like what …
— Like I did last night …
— Do you think so … are you ready …
— Hey … that wasn’t yesterday …
— Thanks …
— Are you out running errands …
— Nah, we’re just cruising around … talking shit …
— We’ve got our plates full just trying to look honest …
— Were looking for a jacket …
— Fuck Trisse …
— Did you just get out? …
— So I joined the “Semitic Society for Painful Animal Experimentation” …
— Have you tried it on the Old Man …
— That guy at the mens clothes shop is never going to die … why, he almost looks alive …
— So listen here, whatshisface said he wasn’t going to do it at first …
— Or “Bella,” you know, the guy who centrifuges cats out in Getberget …