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  “Stop now.”

  “More than five, that is!”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “How many then?”

  He was so badgering. It was none of his business, I thought. Finally, I almost got angry and stopped answering.

  In back they had started rubbing and groaning so it could be heard over the music. Putte stared at me, as if to see if I understood what they were doing, but I pretended not to get it. Then we went out. We walked down to the lake and out on the ice. The moon shined through the clouds and brightened the snow, and everything was so cosy. Up on the road, the Dodge stood black and silent with fogged up windows.

  “My little Swiss nut!” Putte said and lifted me up and held me above him. He must have been really strong to be able to do that. Then he let me down and pressed his lips against mine before I could stop him.

  Monday, 20 January 1964

  Saturday night E-L rode with two boys and a girl in a Dodge. A Dodge is more like a real raggarbil, and we said before that we would never ride in one, but she thought it was cosy. The guy she was with was called Putte, and he wanted to see her again yesterday evening and was going to come and pick her up at the bus stop. But she regretted that she had agreed to it and got off the bus earlier and went to the movies with me instead. We went to “Crows Neighborhood” with Thommy Berggren.

  After the movie, we rode with two guys in an Opel. Unfortunately, they didn’t meet our expectations, so after a while we hopped out again. When we passed Nybron afterwards, we saw Sivan and Kerstin there, in the duffel coat gang. Actually, they probably have a rather boring time, and their appearance is boring as well, with their duffel coats and parkas. I also have a duffel coat (a black one), and I wear it to school sometimes but never when I go out in the evenings, because it’s unlined and sticks to my clothing when I walk.

  In the gang on Nybron there are no big differences between the sexes with regards to clothing. Not with regards to length of hair, either, because the guys have such half long Beatles hair. Our boys have hair more like Elvis or else short.

  Then Greger came with his mate and asked if we wanted to ride with them. I didn’t want to, because I thought that Gunnar, or whatever the hell he was called, was so disgusting. I said to E-L that she could ride with them herself then. The first time we met them we both wanted Greger, but he chose her, and I got Gunnar. We switched seats so that she went with Greger in the back seat and I was in the front seat with Gunnar, and I wasn’t interested in him at all and didn’t want him to get closer to me. But I could see that E-L liked Greger, so for her sake I didn’t reject Gunnar immediately. And when we sat there he suddenly pulled down his fly and threw himself all over me. I had no time to react before I was half way beneath him and felt his… between my legs. I was so disgusted that I just heaved him off, and then I saw his pink, disgusting… He was a pig, that’s what I thought! But on pigs you scarcely see it, so it was more like on a bull. (It wasn’t like on a horse anyway, because it was something long and skinny.) Ooh, I thought it was so disgusting! Or if it just felt that way because I didn’t like him. I don’t know. In any case, it was the first one I saw in that way, because before I had only seen my papa’s.

  It was wonderful to ride in the Dodge, but I didn’t want to see Putte again as we had decided, so I got out a bus stop before when the bus got to town. Then Kicki and I went to the movies. We saw Putte and Becke later, but fortunately they didn’t stop.

  The first guys we rode with dropped us off at Fyristorg, and when we went over Nybron later, we saw Sivan and Kerstin there, hanging about with the Mods. It was obvious that they saw us, but they pretended not to recognize us, and we did not greet them, either. A long-haired guy in a parka held his arm around Sivan, and when we went by he kissed her. It was fortunate that they saw us there, anyway, and not on Svartbäcksgatan. But they probably never go there.

  On Drottninggatan a guy named Greger stopped with his buddy. Kicki didn’t want to come along, but I really liked Greger and didn’t know what to do when they asked us and she said I could ride with them myself if I wanted to. And Greger badgered me. But finally, I decided not to do it, because I thought it would be nasty to her.

  It was fun to walk on the street and notice how they all stared, but nobody else stopped, and finally I said to Kicki that she could go home, because I thought it might go better if I were alone.

  Nobody stopped later, either. I had to wait for over an hour before somebody came. Finally, some of the guys started to toot and grin when they drove by and saw that I still remained there. I was mad as hell when a guy in a gray PV at last stopped and asked if I would like to go with him. He looked to be about twenty-five years old, and I don’t like to ride with guys that old, but he could give me a lift home anyway, I thought, and hopped in.

  From Svartbäcksgatan he drove to Stora Torget – Drottninggatan – Ågatan – Munkgatan and Sjukhusvägen and on to the Students’ Sports Ground. There he turned into a parking lot and stopped.

  “Do you smoke?” he asked and took out a pack of John Silver and smacked some cigarettes out against the steering wheel and offered them. I took one, and he lit it and pulled out the ash tray.

  It’s rather difficult to smoke cigarettes without a filter, I think. The paper gets moist and the tobacco falls out. You have to compress your lips round the end of the cigarette and try to suck in smoke.

  “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Eva-Lena.”

  “How old are you, then?”

  “Guess.”

  “Seventeen, eighteen.”

  “No, I’m fifteen.”

  “Fifteen? I thought you were older.”

  His name was Alvar and he was a concrete worker.

  “Can one have a kiss, then?” he said and put his arm over my shoulders. His mouth tasted sour. I don’t know what it was. And his tongue felt hard and disgusting.

  After a while he unbuttoned my coat and tried to get closer, but it couldn’t be done because the shift stick was in the way. Therefore, he said we should get in the back seat instead. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t know exactly what he had in mind, but finally I went along with it. And then, when we sat there, he pulled up my skirt and took out his thing and sat me over it so that it was between my thighs. I almost felt shocked when I felt it, because I hadn’t seen him taking it out.

  “You are so fucking fine”, he said and started to move me up and down.

  I thought he was making a fool of himself and said that I didn’t want to do it, but he didn’t care.

  “I’m not going to be rough to you,” he said. “I promise that I won’t be rough!”

  And after a while:

  “I’ve got to get it! It can be done quickly. And I won’t play without it.”

  Without a rubber, he meant. He had stuck his hands under my jumper and held them over my breasts.

  “Soon I can’t resist any longer!” he said.

  But he had to, because I didn’t intend to let him do anything more. I wouldn’t have gone along with anything at all if I had known in advance how he was going to be.

  When we sat in the front seat again and he began to drive I asked him how old he was.

  “I’m twenty-eight,” he said.

  So he was almost twice as old as I am. I was crazy to ride with him and let him carry on with me! But I hadn’t expected him to be so excited. How could he be? Can they be turned on as easily as ever? He didn’t seem to be ashamed of himself either, though he behaved so foolishly. And how could he believe that I would want to do it with him? After all, he was old and ugly.

  Tuesday, 21 January 1964

  It says in the newspaper that there is possibly a connection between smoking and lung cancer. In Uppsala 47.8 % of men and 28 % of women are cigarette smokers. And papa smokes, as well as Stig. But not mamma and not Anita. Actually, I shouldn’t have started, either. It was in connection with that E-L and I began to go out that I did it. Then we shared a little pack of Newports
a week, because then we didn’t smoke on weekdays. Now we do it both in school and when we go out for coffee, as well as on the weekends. But not at home. Mamma and papa are aware that I smoke, and they haven’t forbidden me to do it, but at least papa thinks I’m too young. And nobody wants to have lung cancer. But if you smoke as little as E-L and I do, there is no great risk.

  Right now I’m sitting and listening to “Kvällstoppen”, the radio program that ranks the week’s most popular songs from worst to best. In eleventh place there is a newcomer called “Go Back to Daddy”, and in tenth place is “Bossa Nova Baby” with Elvis. “Five Hundred Miles Away from Home” with Bobby Bare has gone up from seventeenth to ninth place, and “Be My Baby” with the Ronettes “She Loves You” by the Beatles.

  Today we got our math tests back, and I had seven correct answers out of twelve. I did better than E-L, because she had just three. I think that seven out of twelve is well done for being me.

  Before, when Holmberg sat and went through the absence certificates, he started to laugh and said: “Ha, ha, this one here makes me think about those at home!” Because somebody had written something that reminded him of his wife nursing their new-born son. Ooh, I don’t like him! Bearded and thin haired with such ugly steel framed glasses that he pushes up. (He grabs his nose with his thumb and long finger and pushes them up with his pointing finger.) I don’t understand E-L’s special liking for him at all, but I guess she has a weakness for his style, that if you have a problem, come and talk with me! But at first, during the first year, I thought he seemed good. I remember once when we had geography that he sat on a bench instead of in the teacher’s desk, and I thought it looked so relaxed and cool. But later I liked him less and less. I have such mixed feelings about him. On the one hand, I think he is funny, on the other I think he is a bad teacher. He is too indulgent. When you have such a teacher you must have discipline yourself, and if you don’t, things might go to hell. But you are unable to think: Oh, I’ll ignore the teacher and study myself. I will disregard him! You are not able to do that. And you would preferably have teachers who do their job.

  Kicki and I thought about going to see “West Side Story”, which recently has begun at the Fågel Blå cinema, but then we didn’t do it, and I regret it, because then it wouldn’t have been the way it was later.

  In the beginning of the evening nothing special happened. At first we rode with two blockheads who sat there and said “keep on talking, damn it” the whole time, and then with a couple of draftees who invited us to coffee out at Svista. It was later, when Kicki had gone home and I rode with three guys and a girl in a Chrys- ler that it happened. The girl was together with the guy who drove and sat in front with a guy on each side, and I sat in back with the third guy called Kent. At first we rode around and played records. They had “Oh, Carol”, “Great Balls of Fire” and “Lucille”. Then the guy who didn’t have a girl was supposed to go to a buddy in Stabby, and when we were on our way there, we crashed. It was at the intersection of Sysslomansgatan and Järnbrogatan. I don’t know whose fault it was, because I didn’t see how it happened. I only felt the jolt and heard the smash before the car stood still and a silence came over everything.

  “But what the hell!” Kent said and raised himself out of the back seat.

  We had collided with a Volvo PV. One of the front fenders and a bit of the door on the driver’s side had been dented, so we must have hit it from the side. The guy in the Volvo came out to us, and Kent and the two others climbed out and inspected the Chrysler while the girl and I sat still in the car and waited. I didn’t know if I should stay or go off to Svartbäcksgatan again and try to find someone else who could drive me home, but before I had decided what I should do Kent came back and slang himself in the back seat.

  “Damn, it’s cold!” he said and rubbed his hands together.

  “How did it go with the car?” I said. “Is it possible to drive?”

  “Yes, we’ll drive you home. When the cops are done, we’ll pop off.”

  I had not thought that the police might come. The rear window in the Chrysler had fogged up, and I hadn’t noticed the police car that had stopped behind us on the street. I got nervous when Kent started talking about them and I saw that they were there. But by then it was too late to leave, and then it wasn’t long before the door was opened and a policeman in a black leather jacket stuck his head in the car and asked for our names and addresses. I felt odd the whole time while he was there. It felt like I had a breathless, empty room within me, and the feeling didn’t disappear until he had left again. Then I felt disappointed.

  Kent had a cold and fever. When we sat in the car at the BP gas station later and waited for a buddy of theirs to come with tools and spare parts for the car, he froze so much that he shivered with cold. He lay with his head on my lap and tried to sleep. I would rather have pushed off, but there were almost no cars left in town, and because they had said they would drive me home as soon as they had fixed the car, I stayed.

  It was frigging cold to sit there, because it was over an hour before their buddy came, and then it took another hour to fix the car. When Kent and I were alone for a while, he began to paw me. It seemed like he thought he was going to get to lay me, and when I resisted him he got angry and tried to force me. I don’t know why I didn’t leave then. Well, it was because I felt sorry for him, and I didn’t think that anybody else would come and pick me up if I went to Svartbäcksgatan again.

  I’m so afraid that the police are going to call, so mom and pop will find out what I’m up to when I’m out. Why didn’t I leave right after the collision as I had almost decided? Then I would never have had to be involved. But I didn’t think that the police would come.

  Monday, 27 January 1964

  First we were at the movies, and then we went to Svartbäcksgatan, as usual. When we want to smoke or comb our hair, we go down to Radiohörnan and place ourselves in the entrance, because there you can go a little behind to get protection from the wind at the same time as you have a view over the street.

  E-L always backcombs her hair much harder than I do. First she lifts some hair and scratches it together with her comb to a tangled skein, then she combs some hair over it, so that it looks flat on the surface, and if she has hair spray with her, she sprays so that it will be stiff and lie still. And that’s what she was doing when a guy in a car stopped. Or guy – I thought he looked about 40 years old, and I thought immediately that he was of no interest to us. He was by himself, also, so what had he thought? Later it turned out that it was Alvar, with whom E-L had ridden a previous evening. I don’t understand how she wanted to, but she can’t be too choosy when she needs to be driven home. If she will manage to get home she has to take what is offered. And he wasn’t 40 but 28 years old. But there must be something wrong with a guy who is almost 30 and who drives around picking up 15-year-old girls! At that age you should have found other interests, you would think. The evening when E-L let him drive her home, nobody else was available, so she rode with him, even though she noticed that he was old. And at first there was nothing special, but then he stopped the car and proposed that they should move to the back seat, and when they sat in back he did about the same thing to her that Greger’s mate did to me, with the difference that she was sitting on his knee. He took it out and got himself excited and asked her if she wanted to lay him, or rather, sit on top of him in the car.

  We rode with two guys in a Simca, and they were not too bad, actually. They said, among other things, that we didn’t look like we belonged to Svartbäcksgatan. Many have said that, and I take it as a complement, because it’s nice to be perceived as a good girl even though you walk there. You want to imagine that you look like you have a little style, and I don’t think that you can see by our appearance that we are raggarbrudar. The other girls on Svartbäcksgatan look more that way, I think. In the way they are dressed, for example, because they use more makeup and wear shorter and tighter skirts and more high heels. And they are
probably different in their behavior, also. I guess that they go further than we do (not measured in meters, but with the guys, I mean). I think that of all the girls who walk on Svartbäcksgatan, E-L and I are probably the only ones who still are virgins.

  This morning it was Holmberg, our math- and geography teacher, who stood at the gate, checking the morning prayers cards. I don’t like it when it’s his turn to stand there, because I get so nervous when I’m about to pass him. At the same time, I always hope it will be him.

  In math lesson he told a funny story again. Everybody laughed except me. His darling Agneta was the one who giggled the most. I wanted him to notice that I kept serious, but he didn’t. He never notices anything. Previously, I fantasized about him, that he would come and talk with me and try to find out what was wrong, but I don’t do that anymore. It’s never going to be the way I want it, anyway.

  Saturday, 1 February 1964

  Rolle called E-L yesterday and wanted to see her this evening. They were to go to the movies. But now E-L has changed her mind, because she didn’t like him very much. She’s going to tell him when he comes that she doesn’t want to. Afterwards, she and I will go out instead. Otherwise I had intended to go dancing this evening or stay at home.

  Rolle’s friend Simon was not especially handsome, but he made an impression on me because he had volunteered to be a United Nations soldier on Cyprus. I think that’s admirable. It’s unstable down there, so it certainly isn’t risk free to travel there. And I thought we could have become pen pals if we had continued to meet before he left. But never mind! There are plenty of fish in the sea!

  One day Inger asked E-L how she gets home from town when she has been out. “I ride with someone,” E-L said. “Yeah, it’s convenient to have many acquaintances!” Inger said. But she knows that E-L doesn’t know all the boys she rides with, so she was just putting it on. And Solan, as I understand it, thinks we are terrible who do what we do. She goes out with me for dancing, but she would never take part in our activities in town (these horrible things!). Ooh, how could anyone want to do things like that? she seems to think. But it isn’t nearly as bad as some people think. Why does everyone believe it is so bad? E-L and I have been doing this for… let’s see… almost five months, and it hasn’t hurt us at all!