SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME – the book

CHAPTER ONE

Sweden is weird. The whole thing. Weird. Gothenburg is on the southwest side of Sweden. It’s weird, too. It was the summer of 1985. The nighttime temperature felt the same as the daytime. Although, in summer, there’s not much nighttime in Sweden. The natives were very quiet. Everyone drove a very well-maintained Volvo.

Well, it seemed weird to me.

One Swedish cultural characteristic I quite liked was women were not second-class citizens. Women were as close to equal footing as men. This could have been a hallucination, but I saw a peculiar level of cooperation and respect between husbands and wives. Often, it was the husband pushing the baby carriage.

Remember, this was the mid-1980s, when, in the States, a working woman in the corporate world was usually a secretary. Her job was to have all the men at the management level squeeze her bottom and listen to them tell her what she needed to do to get a pay raise. In many cases, a woman was stuck being a schoolteacher. Her job was to babysit the students, have the students’ fathers and upper management squeeze her bottom, and listen to them tell her what she needed to do to get a pay raise. Sometimes, she was relegated to being a housewife where she had to babysit the children, have all the men in the neighborhood squeeze her bottom, and listen to them tell her what she needed to do before her husband got home. And, once her drunken husband came home, her job was to get beat up by the hubby and listen to him apologize the following day even though, as far as he was concerned, it was all her fault.

To me, these options don’t sound uplifting. The positive side was police could quickly find perpetrators of most local crimes by dusting the woman’s bottom for fingerprints.

Then there’s Swedish food.

If you’re from The States and need to lose some weight quickly, consider Sweden as a practical first choice. The most popular dish is “Surströmming,” Swedish for “War Atrocity.” The smell could sterilize frogs within one hundred paces. Surströmming, from what I could understand at the time, is herring that has fermented for a few years in fifty ounces of pickle juice having sixty-five hundred tablespoons of salt. The natives will tell you the smell is deceiving and that Surströmming is delicious.

They’re lying.

Let’s say you’re an American and you enjoy the standard American diet of: 

– Fat burgers 

– Deep-fried Oreos wrapped in bacon 

– Cheesecake with chocolate sauce + whipped cream + caramel sauce + ice cream + fudge + peanuts  

– Baked potatoes with butter + sour cream + chili + cheese + salsa + more butter + pepperoni + guacamole 

– Chocolate-coated doughnuts with a glaze that’s an inch thick and covered with M&Ms + Snickers bars + sprinkles + coconut pralines.

– “Milk” shakes made with six pounds of sugar + extra sweetener + brown sugar + burnt sugar + maple syrup  + sucrose.

Let’s say you’ve just woken up in Sweden and are staring down the barrel of a plate of Surströmming for breakfast. Your eating habits are going to change.

If Surströmming doesn’t flip your pancake, then you can try their moose balls (sautéed in snot), fish balls made of rubber, smoked sheep’s head (no, I’m not kidding), fish paste (still not kidding), or blodpudding. Blodpudding looks like burnt sausage covered with a lumpy red substance (origin unknown) and has, among other things, pig’s blood. Eat any of the above, and those extra pounds will go away fast, as you won’t want to go near food for months. The smell of toast from your neighbor down the street will make you violently ill.

The country screamed, “Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder.” Everything was too neat and orderly. The grass with frightening precision. No litter. Not even a gum wrapper. Multiple empty and pristine trash cans on every street corner. Meticulously cleaned shop windows. The official psychiatric diagnosis from the World Health Organization as it relates to the Swedish population is as follows:

“Dear People of the Swedish Persuasion Who All Live in Sweden Except for Those Who Don’t,

“Y’all have, like, the worst case of CDO ever. CDO is a lot like OCD, except the letters are in the correct order because it’s Sweden, and it must be exact. I’m serious. All of you people have issues. Besides, your whole country is weird.

“You should start taking drugs.

“We gotta go back to sleep, so let us know how it’s working for you.

“XOXO, W.H.O.”

The natives wore tucked-in, wrinkle-free shirts. All pants (including jeans), skirts, shorts, and dresses were all ironed and fitted. Hair: perfect. Baby’s hair: perfect. Beards edged with the same tool they used for the grass. The teenagers didn’t even have zits.

There was a dichotomy between Swedes being very shy and good-looking. Some stereotypes are fact-based, such as the one about Swedish women. I mean, whoa. Stunning. Yet, quite reserved. Even the heterosexual men looked ridiculously handsome but, again, timid to the point of stupidity.

Hell, if I looked that good, I’d be passing out resume pictures to strangers, knocking on random people’s doors, and saying, “Aren’t I cute?!?!”

There are some things folks might not like about Sweden. I’m told Swedish winters are brutal and dark. Additionally, you’ll have no idea where you stand with Swedes, as they will never tell you. Conformity was the form, and that was what I found weird. I felt surrounded by benign robots. Granted, I live in the US, where we all act like fools. Still, it was a little unnerving watching obsessively shy people look and act the same.

However, all these potential negatives are categorically mitigated by “fika.” Fika is, in fact, a magnificent gift from God. It’s a national tradition that will compel me and my most excellent Better Half to move to Sweden. It’s a simple equation. “Fika” = “Coffee Break [or something close to that].” Swedes do this twice daily, which is not negotiable. It’s not an American coffee break where you run down to a cafeteria, grab some coffee from a vending machine and a package of doughnuts that died of old age five years ago so that you can run back to work.

Uh-uh. No way. You leave work. You sit down somewhere, drink good coffee, eat a pastry, and chill for a while. It doesn’t matter what you do for a living. You could be a heart surgeon performing life-saving surgery on a five-year-old. The kid’s life may be meaningful, but he or she ain’t fika. Fika-time is gone-time. The child may bleed out in the operating room all alone because the parents left for coffee, too. Little Lars or Astrid may be dead, but everyone will understand. It’s, well, fika time.

Sweden’s economy was weird, too. It was a product of a massive government with representatives from four or five parties who created a half-baked pile of conflicting policies. The government did a world-class job of not explaining, which suited the Swedes just fine. 

Some utilities were in the private sector, and some weren’t. Many industries were regulated to death. Others could do whatever the hell they wanted. 

The country was perilously dependent on exports to cover the bills. The cost of housing looked out of control, and banks were lending money to anyone who looked Swedish. Sometimes, market competition was encouraged. Sometimes. 

It was a welfare state. Sometimes. 

An economic policy was likely in place. There was only one copy, and someone left it on the bus. 

Most Swedes I spoke with felt they lived in a socialist country with some controlled access to a free market. That was a guess on their part. 

It was an indecisive mess run by an obscenely bloated government that went out of its way to make sure neurosurgeons were paid the same as the guy who works as a part-time doorstop, which caused all the neurosurgeons to move to Minnesota, which, I think, is page one of the Socialism for Dummies collection.

Socialism…mostly.

This is the same country that couldn’t pick sides in World War Two.

The Riksdag is Sweden’s national legislature. The Riksdag is like the drill sergeant in “Full Metal Jacket.” If you want a happy life, do what you’re told, be as inconspicuous as possible, and don’t get caught with a jelly doughnut in your footlocker because if you do, the entire country must do push-ups. The Riksdag felt strongly about providing all its citizens free health care, college, collective bargaining, housing, and unemployment insurance. The Swedish government could give these free benefits by, of course, taxing the hell out of everyone and everything. One native told me, with a straight face, that the tax rate was close to 60% on any income. Once I got off the floor, I asked him how he felt. His view was, while it may seem high, it’s really for the best. Swedes seemed pretty understanding and generous to a government that views them as ATMs instead of citizens.

Socialism’s record over the past hundred years leaves little to be desired. Socialism is the 1962 New York Mets of political systems. You’ve got the Soviet Union, the Czech Republic, Cambodia, East Germany, Poland, North Korea, Egypt, Venezuela, India, Cuba, Hungary, and Nicaragua. You’re zero for twelve right there. Throw in almost every country in Africa and the rest of Eastern Europe, and you have a severe dumpster fire on your hands.

However, if Socialism can work anywhere, then it’s in Sweden. Swedes seemed good at going with the flow, staying within the lines, and never complaining. It’s called “Stockholm Syndrome” for a reason. We’ve all seen the signs in some offices that say, “The floggings will continue until morale improves.” Well, that’s true in Sweden. Cheered them right up. During a wedding ceremony, the bride and the groom don’t say, “I do.” They say, “Thank you, Sir. May I have another?” And, if you want Socialism to work, it will help to have all the citizens ask, “Thank you, Sir, may I pay more taxes?”

I mentioned taxation since the person I spent time with in Gothenburg, Daniel, was very bitter about the whole thing. He had his undies in a knot about it. Conversations between the two of us usually started something like this:

Me – Hey, Daniel, how you do…..

Daniel – Why do I work like hell just so this government can waste my money on a bunch of deadbeats?

Me – I’m fine. Thanks for asking.

Daniel – People don’t wanna work? Fine. Don’t work. Leave. Right? I work so these people can go to college for free. And what do they do?

Me – I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.

Daniel – Steal car stereos. They take my money so they can sleep all day and steal car stereos at night.

Me – Well, it’s a trade they learned in college. So, your money wasn’t wasted. Look at the bright….

Daniel – Take MY money….

Me – So, come over to the good old USA of America, where Amber waves her grain and….

Daniel – Americans all suck. Buncha sheep. Idiots.

Me – And, we think highly of you, too….

Daniel – Sweden’s going down the toilet….

Me – Speaking of excrement, did you dump little what’s-her-name?

Daniel – Yeah. She just wanted me for my money.

Me – It sounds like Sweden. Did you know they take 60% of your earnings? Isn’t that rid….

Daniel – I don’t want to talk about it.

He was better once he got it out of his system. The annoying aspect of all this who-ha was Daniel was quite wealthy and didn’t work much.

Even though he lived in America until age eleven, Daniel believed, with extreme fervor, that all Americans were twits. He was bitter about this. He was bitter about everything.

Besides being bitter, Daniel was condescending but had one resounding quality:

He had Bruce Springsteen tickets for both nights’ concerts.

On Daniel’s passions, Bruce ranked a distant second to a local football team called Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna Göteborg Änglarna. That was the name. I don’t know, either—Sweden’s weird that way. The team logo wasn’t much help. It was a poorly drawn picture of a lion with multiple tails, Satan, or Bart Simpson running somewhere looking to stab something with his knife.

The locals and Daniel revered this ridiculous drawing. I laughed aloud the first time he showed it to me. It remains a sin for which I’ve never been fully forgiven.

We’d met in the States a few years earlier while he was on some work visa, which I never understood. His charmless girlfriend knew my girlfriend. He and I hit it off. We had a good-natured back-and-forth.

“Yew lack it here ‘n America, doncha boy.” I enjoyed egging him on.

“Loser Americans suck. Whole country. Sucks.”

“You’re just jealous. We get all the good drugs here. Ha-ha. Loser”

“Yeah, this place still sucks. Go back to your bologna and mayo on white bread with a slice of Velveeta. Right? What concert are you dragging us to? John Denver? Pat Boone? The Monkeys? Music in this country sucks.”

“You’ll see. Oh, and I have just one word about Swedish music.”

“What?”

“ABBA.”

“Shut up.”

It was a Bruce Springsteen concert we attended, and four hours later, Daniel was a convert. From then on, we took care of each other in our home countries regarding Bruce concert tickets.

Daniel liked me, and the feeling was, to a particular consent, mutual. Daniel was supremely full of himself. Psychotically so. However, he could be very charitable and kind when it suited him.

His charitable urge must have struck as he went on an extended aid trip to distribute food to an impoverished part of Africa. He returned to Gothenburg about three weeks before my visit. A Jen and a Victoria, both aid workers, were tagging along with us to the concerts. Their presence affected Daniel’s behavior. He was being suspiciously attentive and respectful. No swearing. Very odd. Plus, he hadn’t yet gone into his standard primal whining about socialism ruining his life, completely out of character. He had adopted their American accents. I figured he had designs on one of the women. Both. So, I wrote it off.

I couldn’t make much sense of Daniel’s new best friends. One had long brown hair that covered her hips, and the other had an unfortunate haircut in the shape of an American football helmet. I wasn’t sure which one was Victoria or the other thing. I labeled them “Butt Hair” and “Helmet Head.” They went out of their way to look unattractive, although they failed. Neither wore make-up or jewelry. Neither had seen a hairstylist ever, probably, and they were both dressed like crap: oversized sweatshirts, long jean skirts, and sneakers.

Daniel and the girls never strayed more than a few inches apart. They kept an invisible three-foot barrier between them and me. Another reminder that my life had always been spent outside, looking in.

Butt-Hair was six feet tall, slender, and statuesque with military-perfect posture and stride. Her facial expression showed she hadn’t been to the bathroom in a month and a half. She reminded me of Nurse Diesel from the movie, “High Anxiety.” While we walked, she kept 360-degree surveillance and scowled at people she disapproved of.

She’s one of those clowns who dedicate every waking hour to announcing someone’s sins before they’re committed.

When we stopped to talk, she crossed her arms and leaned back while her eyes continued their anxious look for suspicious activity. She smelt funny, too. Floral body spray mixed with Lysol.

She spoke in a very fast monotone with perfect grammar. I thought she might have been in the army. She wanted me to step back about four hundred yards, which was fine. She was stinking up the place. Her eyes continued darting around, looking for someone to kill, which didn’t exactly exude much warmth. She would occasionally give me a look as though I just pooped on her cat.

Was she feeling threatened? Paranoid, maybe? Angry? Hard to tell.

She’s constipated.

I thought that. I didn’t say it.

Helmet Head had issues. With the haircut, she was 5′ 3” or so. Her sweatshirt was eight sizes too large. The sleeves extended well past her hands. And she was happy. Frightfully happy. Bubbly, giggly, energetic, and eager to take part in any conversation, even ones where she was not invited. Her naïveté was nauseating. She showed signs of being a little light in the lobes. Anything approaching irony, acerbity, or sarcasm flew way over her head, probably because she was too busy being happy, friendly, loving, Buffy Cheerleader, and “I’m so cute” and Up-With-People and caring. It was too much, and I strongly wanted to tell her, “Just shut up, Cupcake, you are killing me.”

“The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.” My father once told me that. It was applicable here/ She was trying to exude so much positivity that it was negative. Something was seriously wrong with her picture. The eye of this girl’s hurricane was jet black. I looked at her wide-eyed wonderment and joy about everything, her laughter at jokes that weren’t funny, her golly-gee speech, and concluded her dark side was something I wanted no part of.

Besides, in my observations, people aren’t that happy unless they’re supremely stupid or highly medicated. I thought she might have been coked up big time. Coked-up people can be unbelievably and annoyingly delighted.

That’s another one of my observations.

An added observation I had at that time was when it came to Helmet Head, Butt-Hair and Daniel were highly respectful. As a rule, Daniel interrupted you after you’d gotten one word into your sentence to explain that whatever you were about to say was wrong. However, when Helmet Head spoke, Daniel politely listened while Butt-Hair’s steely-eyed intelligence gathering increased to Def-Con One.

Among the three, Helmet Head was in charge. Anything she said went unquestioned, and all decisions went through her, which I considered unfortunate because any decision she’d make would be fatally flawed by the fact that, as far as I was concerned, she was a thoroughly free-associating, hyperactive two-year-old.

Instead of walking, she liked to skip. I didn’t like that. During one of her cutesy diatribes, she said, “Okie dokie, Smokey.”

I wouldn’t say I liked that, either.

Another observation: Bringing up the subject of their Africa trip was verboten. Whenever I asked about it, I got 2 seconds of silence before receiving a way too casual one-sentence answer and a sudden topic shift. I couldn’t even find out what country they were in.

Something, I guessed, didn’t go as planned.

My mind, as it genuinely enjoys, wandered as we walked. I started thinking about what may have happened:

While in Africa, one of two lucky ladies got unexpectedly pregnant.

Helmet Head was probably so annoying that no one could take it anymore, and they threw them all the hell off their continent.

They’re both pregnant.

If they are pregnant, then they may as well skip the maternity ward and give birth at the local psychiatric hospital so the kids can immediately go into family therapy.

These women are bizarre.

They don’t know who the father/fathers is/are.

We meandered around the city until we came across a giant statue of a very muscular and chiseled Poseidon standing proudly in front of some university while holding a large fish in one hand. In the other hand wasn’t his fishing spear. It looked more like a bowl of cereal. Poor guy had no clothes on. If I remember Greek mythology correctly, Poseidon was always angry. Looking at the statue, I discovered why.

It had nothing to do with his father eating him and then throwing him up. Or, with whatever king told him to pound sand instead of letting him take over Athens. Or, with the guy who stiffed him on the bill after he built a wall somewhere. It had everything to do with his little, itty-bitty, teeny-tiny weenie. The entire apparatus didn’t even qualify as “junk.” More like “waste.” I’d be in a bad mood if that’s what I had to work with.

Dude was known for getting jiggy with lots of nymphs. I can’t image any of them bothering to come back for more.

As we approached, Butt-Hair looked at the statue and said, “Who’s THAT?”

Daniel explained it was Poseidon, “The Greek god of [pause]….”

“The sea, among other things,” I chimed in. “Also, the god of attitude problems. And earthquakes, I think. Not the god of second dates. Sorry.”

Dead silence. I kept going. “Were it me, I’d have gone with gym shorts. It was cold the day he posed for this. Standing there with all his shortcomings in plain view is courageous. He just got out of the pool.”

Still, nothing. We kept walking.

Tough crowd. Sometimes, they salute. Sometimes, they don’t.

We stopped somewhere to eat something horrendous. I asked if we might find a coffee shop after “lunch.” Daniel’s response was, “I knew you were going to ask. There’s a good place near Rydbergsgatan and Kungsportavenyen across the street from the Stadsbiblioteket Gotaplasten.” I’m serious. That’s what he said.

“Jolly good. Let’s all go fika ourselves. That is what one does, yes? Go fika him or herself. Sorry. Do I have that right?”

Daniel responded, “Fika isn’t a word. It’s a state of mind. Right? It’s spiritual. It’s a way to remind yourself about real priorities.”

What are you talking about? “Real priorities?”

“Right-O. Well, as spiritual endeavors go, this sounds completely doable. I’m sure coffee in the ethereal world will help you with those annoying priorities.”

Off we walked to enjoy fika with all its transcendent glories.

So, we strolled some more. The city was pretty. The pedestrians, although polite, avoided eye contact at all costs. The young ladies peppered me with questions, which I politely answered.

With Butt-Hair, it was more of an interrogation. She wanted to know where I came from, where I’d been, what I’d been up to, and why I had made certain life choices. Choices that, based on her tone and inflection, showed my remarkable moral ineptitude.

Helmet Head wanted to know how I felt about life, love, children, candy canes, flowers, sunshine, happy-happy-joy, and just shut up, Honey Child.

“Oh, wow. Look. Cool, cool, cool. Can we go in? This is awesome. How cool.”

That was Helmet Head talking. She then started skipping towards a large church that looked 250 years old. Daniel and Butt-Hair picked up the pace. I continued meandering, glad for the space between them and me. The church was open, given that Helmet Head barged right on in with the other two stumbling in behind her. As I approached the place, I had a sinking feeling.

I hadn’t set foot in a church, at least a traditional-looking church, in a very long time. I went to church as a kid, but the experience was overwhelmingly negative, so I stopped and decided never to return. The place looked like a version of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. I approached, waiting for the gatekeeper to leap out of the shadows and onto the doorway to say, “We don’t like yer kind ‘round here, Boy.”

There was no gatekeeper. Just a few dozen people walking around or in the pews.

“Oh, my goodness! So amazing. Cool. Sooooo, pretty. Look at this! And over here. Doves.”

That was Helmet-Head again. And, well, she had a point. It was gorgeous. Grandiose and gorgeous. However, there were no doves in sight. I wondered if she was hallucinating.

I whispered to Daniel, “Doves? Fuckin’ doves? Where’re the fuckin’ doves?”

Daniel shot me an immediate look of rage. “You can’t talk like that in a church.”

I whispered back, “Well, shit-fuck. Who knew?” I walked back outside and sat on a bench, wondering why Daniel, the King of the F-word, would be so frosty about me using it. I sat for a while, got bored, and went back in. I spotted the three huddled in the front pew, mumbling impassioned praise to their Maker.

Oh, I see. Right-o. Well, that explains that. My boy got religion.

I figured Butt-Hair and Helmet-Head were of faith. They cast quite a spell over Daniel.

So, the lovely ladies steered him towards the path of righteousness. They may specialize in lost souls. We won’t be bar-crawling after Bruce. We’ll all return here and recite the sermon on the mount. He’s just playing the part to get in their knickers.

With guys, you never can tell.

We had a quick dinner before the show at a place close to a fast-food place. I had about given up on Swedish food, so I ate a couple of paper plates and the tablecloth. Dinner had to be quick because we all had to hold hands for a long time and pray about….EVERYTHING. And be thankful. Oh, man, were we ever thankful. Thankful for the extra toilet paper in the public restrooms. Thankful for the matching napkins at lunch. Thankful we weren’t afflicted with hemorrhoids (we had to take each other’s word on that one). On and on and on. Thankful we all weren’t doing 10-to-20 in Rahway State Prison, although, having been to Rahway, NJ, I agree that is something we could all be thankful for.

Now, I have Catholic relatives who pray before dinner. They pick someone to say Grace. That person does not clown around. Grace takes three seconds and sounds something like, “GodIsGreatFineGreatWhateverBlessThisFoodGottaEatJesusChrist.”

There’s no handholding. There’s no time for handholding, riffing, or discussing current events or whatever else is on one’s mind. Just get to the point and then shut up.

With these three, not so much. So, we had to hold hands. I wouldn’t say I like holding hands with people I don’t know. Nothing to do with germs. It just seems weird. Butt-Hair’s hand was soft and, well, lovely. I couldn’t tell you about Helmet-Head’s hand. Her grip was so tight that I lost feeling in that hand entirely while she went on and on and on about all those things she was thankful for. And it was a long laundry list.

Honey, it might be quicker to list the things you’re NOT thankful for so we can, at least, catch the encore.

Seventy-five minutes later, when she finished, we only had time to pay the tab and rush off to the concert at an old, dumpy football stadium with 60,000 very quiet, dignified, serious-looking Swedes. Plus, a few thousand loud, low-brow, obnoxious Americans, of whom I was one.

The crowd was enthusiastic during the shows to the degree that the stadium broke. I’m serious. It almost collapsed. The repairs cost a few million Krona, which the Swedish government funded by raising taxes.

Springsteen must have been very proud.

Breaking the stadium wasn’t Bruce’s or the audience’s fault. Someone decided it was a clever idea to build this football stadium on clay soil, which is fine if the pillars holding up the stadium are embedded in bedrock under the clay soil. That little detail slipped past the crack engineering team, and the pillars only extended to the clay.

You see, this is why Socialism works in Sweden. The government can do a complete horseshit job on a project, and no one will say a word other than, “Thank you, Sir. May I have another, and would you please raise my taxes?”

It took a while, but we finally found our seats. I ended up between Butt-Hair and Helmet-Head. I was stuck for a conversion starter. Fortunately, Bruce hit the stage.

There’s not a lot of froo-froo with Springsteen. There’s no elaborate introduction to his concerts. No dancing elephants, no laser light shows, no bubble machines. He and the band walk on stage. Bruce’s entire concert preamble consists of the following:

“One…two…one…two…three…four!”

And, off they go to fuck up your stadium.

—END OF CHAPTER ONE—

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