 
### NIILES PUNKARI

### AUTOBIOGRAPHY

### BY A FORMER UNDERAGE SEX SLAVE

### Autobiography by a former underage sex slave

### By Niiles Punkari

### Smashwords Edition

### Copyright 2014 Niiles Punkari
This is the Third public version of this book – January 2014.

Cover photo, "self-portrait", is taken by Niiles Punkari.
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This book is written as I remember my life; others might disagree about the events I have written about.

Niiles Punkari

### BOOK ONE
### Letter One

I am a Finn, my family comes from Finland. My father and his ancestors come from rural West Finland. My mother and her ancestors come from Southeast Finland, just one stone's throw away from the modern Russian border. My fifth or sixth great-grandfather from my father's side was a peasant, something that didn't prevent him to propose to a landlord's daughter. The marriage was allowed but only after this great-grandfather of mine promised to change his surname to the surname of his fiancée, which was Punkari.

I assume that it was this mentioned landlord himself, or if not, then at least his father, who had acquired the surname Punkari by working as a bag maker in the Swedish Royal Court. He changed his name because the bags fashionable in his time where called pungs in Swedish, therefore as a producer of pungs, he renamed himself to be Pungmakare (Pungmaker in English). Later Pungmakare turned to Punkari by 18th century spoken Finnish. His fame became so great that the Swedish Royal Court rewarded him with some land in the eastern frontiers of that day Sweden. He happily accepted this offer, and in good spirit backed his travel crest so to move to this newly acquired land, which is – today – in West Finland.

To note: I have forgotten if this ancestor of mine was a Swede moving to Finland or a Finn who had moved to Sweden in pursuit of a career there, and then when becoming wealthy and famous, he had moved back. I feel remotely to remember that it was the former rather than later, but I am not sure about this.

### * * *

In the 1860s the little ice age had its last major effects in Europe. In Finland this change of weather caused a series of hunger years, which killed about 150,000 people – about 8 percent of the nation. During that time my great, great grandfather named Niilo was a manager of a local branch of a nationwide co operative hardware store. (This is in the same village where Punkari the 1st had settled down, and also where my father would later be born and live his childhood in.) When the weather turned cold, the land entered a stage of near permafrost, this made farming obviously pointless. In this situation the hopeless farmers fed their stored seeds to their hungry families, this caused poverty, which caused the famine.

My great, great grandfather, being too good-hearted of a person, bared not to look as this disaster unfolded, he therefore accepted the pledges of the people to sell "his" supplies in debt. While emptying the storage without getting an income, the account records reached the company headquarters somewhere in South Finland, he was fired on the spot. But, furthermore, by court order he was personally held accountable for the losses he had made, and by that, he then lost all of his land and property, and so once again the family became penniless peasants.

### * * *

I don't know much about my grandfather's father, except that he once asked his neighbor if he could have his unused millstone for himself. The neighbor replied, "Sure, but you have to carry it yourself, but that is, not straight over the ditch but via the road to your property."

Because having nothing to lose, one summer day he tried to move that millstone. He tried but he failed. Where he dropped the stone, there it still is – close by the ditch that separates the two properties, still on the neighbor's side some meters away from the road, and more than halfway left to go to the grounds of his former house.

The reason for this play might have been my great grandfather's reputation as being the village strongman. Thus, we can guess that his strength had become an object of jealousy and an issue that had overcome the universal passion for sharing.

But truly imagine having that symbol of selfishness laying there on your ground year-in year-out, all to the day when you finally pass away in your own bed. That you never were able to say, "What the hell just take it."

Weird people, indeed.

### * * *

My grandfather – whose name I have sadly forgotten – was born in early 1910. Finland is now part of Russia not Sweden anymore. The mentioned frontiers were lost to the Tsarist Russians in the early 19th century. Finland gained its independence 1917, as an aftermath of the chaotic Russian Revolution. On the record my grandfather was the first drunk of the family, suitably to this he chose a career as a timber man in the North Finland wilderness. Though a draft obligation into the Second World War interrupted his vagabond escape.

All in all the full five years in the army as a machine gunner: "He had to have shot 2,000 men or none." an old neighbor, and a past friend-in-arms, once told my father.

He continued by saying that he personally had to guard the platoon machine gun against men like my grandfather, "Because they would drink the cooling liqueur from it, if they were not prevented."

After the war, this neighbor, who I remember also, returned back to his wife and their small farm – a slice of a field in a timber landscape – and stayed there until he died in the late 1980s. Opposite to my grandfather he was a sober man and therefore he could do that. Though of course, I hesitantly say so because one cannot demand sanity out of such insanity as war.

I don't know much about my grandfather and my grandmother's relationship, but as far as I know neither does anyone else know much about it. My father was born on the first week of December 1939, just two weeks before the first Soviet attack on Finland. This is _Stalin's_ totalitarian Russia trying to conquer your nation and your village, so to kill or enslave one in two of those people who you know. After many years of not telling my father where he was born, my grandmother eventually told a false story that she gave birth to him while traveling west with a refugee caravan on the frozen Arctic Ocean. She further told a detailed account of giving him (my father) his first bath on the ice sheets of this frozen sea.

It sounded exotic and was a good story to share, but around my father's 60th birthday my late grand aunt debunked everything. She told my father, that he was instead born way south in the very same village where he had been raised up in, which by the puzzle pieces fell together:

A beauty pageant contender (my grandmother) got pregnant and married an alcoholic, a man who before being drafted to the eventual war escapes his marriage with the help of the endless northern wilderness. After five years of war and five years of waiting, and after the birth of one more child, the husband comes back from the bloody battlefields: but, doing so only to tell his wife that he will not stay, but will instead go back north again. What else can one do, than to get a divorce? My grandmother never remarries again, but had, as far as I know, five more children with two more men. Though, because of poverty, she gives her last child, her son, to her childless married friend.

In the early 1960s, my grandfather comes back to his village of birth but only to die of lung cancer there. Does he love his village so much to do this, or does he simply want someone to bath his ailing body? I leave you to decide that. He had spent the past 20 plus years up in the north as a raving drunk, with a motley crew of men who on their vacations were not surprised to be caught selling their shoes or tools for more booze. So please imagine yourselves seeing this scene of drunks hiking up the road, back to work, deep into the deep frozen forest without the bare necessities to survive. In the north, the hospital record shows that my grandfather signed himself off from the cancer ward while spitting blood, against contradictory recommendations.

"Assumable wanting to leave so to get his next drink," the supervising doctor wrote down in the medical files.

My grandfather died in 1964. At the time, his son (my father) was living his own derailed alcoholic life somewhere in Sweden and therefore was not willing to attend the funeral ceremony.

### Letter Two

My father had lived a penniless and fatherless childhood and as a consequence to that he was bullied by the whole village.

"My childhood is not something I remember dearly." He once confessed to me and continued with this following story:

Once, in his early teens, he had made a small rowboat, which I remember he had named in the most adorable boyish way – a name I have sadly forgotten. He knew he had to hide his boat from the jealous boys of the village, so he somehow dragged it up upon a cliff – a cliff that he pointed out while driving the car and telling me the story – so to hide it there under some bushes. But that day the boys had been following him and doing that all the way to the top of that cliff. And there, after having found the boat, they destroyed it into small pieces. His childhood seemed to have been a continuous stream of similar kind of struggles, which reflected in his broken and apathetic character.

By being the oldest child and oldest son in a fatherless household, eventually he seemed to have appointed himself to be the man in the house. He had this following story to share about this:

Being irritated and frustrated by the continues nightly visits of the father of his younger brother, one night he sat himself down behind the front door with his loaded shotgun. And just as he had predicted this man then came, and when he opened the door, he was indeed surprised to be greeted by my young father pointing a shotgun straight at his face.

"One more step and I swear to god I will pull the trigger."

After a moment of silence, and after couple of thoughts, this man took a step back and walked away to never come back again. The couple of times my father shared this story, he usually ended it with a chuckle. "Imagine if he would have taken that step, I would have shot your uncle's father."

But after a short brake, with a graving and respecting tone, my father usually continued to share more about this man from the village: "He was a wild man. Once with his own knife he pulled a tooth out from the back of his mouth, all in front of us. White scum and red blood ran down his wrist, but he did not blink. After the rotten tooth fell out, he burned the wound with a piece of red hot iron. He never blinked. Sometimes he ate glass, too, all in front of us."

Out of all the aunties who helped this rigid poor family, I got the feeling that this man was the only man who allowed his spare time to be bothered by the silly questions of the fatherless children. But being the oldest child my father had to have seen enough to question the truthfulness of that friendship. See, just as his father had done, now this village man too was turning his back to his fatherly duties, wishing for a more causal and distant relationship. Thus undoubtedly leaving my father feeling angry and betrayed.

So see who taught my father to careless about his family, and to fear the most to be a father to his sons.

### * * *

In 1954, age 15, my father is in South-Central Finland, doing timber work in some lodge with battle-hardened men. One evening in the lodge he remembers dodging a flying ax meant to cut one of his fellow co-workers in half, but, also a humorous situation where the men had been bullying the stay-behind cook, a lad like him. One evening half laughing the gang talked about redeeming themselves, this because, on their behalf, the lad had proved himself to be worthy and thus should be well treated from now on. To this the lad had said in a cold tone, "Okay, fine by me," and after further thought continued, "I guess this means I should stop peeing in your soups."

Yes, my mother too questioned the truthfulness of the story, but my father swore he spoke the truth.

Back home in the village, through all of his childhood, my father had been friends to some neighbor girl who was from some wealthier family. (Though probably just some regular farmers. See, both of my parents had an obscure view on wealth.) When the couple reached their teens the father of the girl set an ultimatum to their friendship with a pair of shotgun shots shot in the air. My father backed off and the relationship ended there, what was there to fight for? Is he going to stay in this village of merciless memories, to sort of settle down and have a career there, while being surrounded by these back-stabbing people? Not a change, and besides is there anything more shameful than to be the village drunk in one's own home town? Though to his defense, the public work agency was handing one-way tickets to Sweden so to get rid of the unemployed masses. At the time, Finland was still wrecked after years of fighting and massive war reparation payments. Compare this to the all industrialized Sweden that had become, by its non-aligned stand, the wealthiest nation in the world in the eminent moments of the post-world-war world.

### * * *

After several decades on the road, coming back was hard. In 1990, my father moved his family – us – back to Finland. Not exactly to the same village where he was born and raised in, but close by. My father got this welding job in a neighboring third village, but there his foreman turned out to be one of his past childhood bullies. He quit his job the next day and was conveniently unemployed more-or-less from that day, to the day he reached the national retirement age of 65.

So you see he was a drunk and a fool through all his life, after which he returns back home to be – relatively – sober, but unemployed. What words should I use about someone like him? Maybe he has a different story about himself, but personally I never saw him as a laborer, for me he was rather a dreamer and a drunk. Maybe once or twice he might have had a job for a full year, but not much more than that I would never believe if told otherwise.

### * * *

My father claimed that he was one of the best drivers around, although he had to redo his driving license four times. The first time he smashed the driving instructor's car into the back of a timber truck. He was a frequent drunk driver too, if he had a car that is. A topic barely discussed, was that he had been incarcerated maybe even up to four times, all due drunk driving as far as I know. The one time this topic was spoken about he defended himself eagerly, that he had not been the one who had been driving. I scream in confusion and disbelief, about his stupitidy of taking the blame for someone else's drink driving, and go to prison for that? His excuse was based on that this buddy of his was a professional driver and thus needed to hold on to his driving license. Not to be one-sided, as a retrospective defense one might say that my father might have needed shelter for the winter cold or simply a warm soup for a couple of days. See, one should not underestimate the hospitality of Swedish prisons. Though truly, one cannot truly know what delusional justification his alcoholic mind had offered him.

My older sister holds firmly on to her belief that our father was at least in some level an alcoholic wet-brain, and therefore irrational and simply a stupid fuck. I, on the other hand, see him as one more lost soul who had no clue whatsoever on how to live his life.

### * * *

Mid-1960s, somewhere south of Stockholm, the police is banging on his door. Now it was a baby boy whose fatherhood he denied. The police, being fed up with this bum and his act, dragged his ass into their van and drove him 200 kilometers west to the town where the mother of the baby boy was. Their intention was to force him to sign the birth certificate, but he stubbornly rejected that. Neither I or anyone else in the family has met this bastard son of his, we only know that he was later adopted by the future husband of the mother.

But please read this story of his bastard son with highlighting the word 'son', and ask yourself, after having read this book all to its end, what my father might have done if the child would have been a baby girl? See, the outcome might have been very different. Also, around the mid-1960s, my father met my mother. Though before that rainy day something about her.

### Letter Three

I don't really know much about my mother's family saga as my mother barely shared anything about it, but I tell you what I know. The family comes from South-East Finland, some from the now excessed Southeast part of Finland, some right there from the spot where they live now, less than one hour's car ride from the modern border to Russia. It is a harbor town but not a significant one, as the nearby towns and counties captured by the Soviet Union have always been historically much more important to the region and to Finland.

The short version of their family saga goes something like this: they used to be rich, maybe even landlords, but the guys drank it all up.

My young grandfather – my mother's father – with his clearly destructive aura already shining bright, was not welcomed into the wealthier family whose daughter he had proposed to. But the young love could not be prevented, therefore my grandmother was given an ultimatum, either it is him or them. She chooses him. Hence, they spent their honeymoon in a self-made mud hut.

My mother was the youngest one, born in the spring of 1945, in a refugee camp in central Sweden. Her mother had been sent there with her children, like some many other women and children, in reserve if the nation would perish under the full Soviet assault.

To note: though peace was signed with the Soviet Union in the summer of 1944, skirmishes were still fought against retreating Nazi troops, though only high up in the north.

My mother was preceded by a bounce of brothers and couple of sisters. Her father died of lung disease in the late 1960s, and he too had spent full five years on the Eastern Front, and he too was by all measures a raving drunk.

My mother never really told stories about her family or about her childhood, we visited the uncles and aunts once a year during our summer holidays, after which we went back to Sweden to live our own mad lives. I only know that her brothers once blew off the head of her favorite dog with a shotgun shot, and that her father always made clear that she was never wanted, and that her brothers abused her. That's pretty much the only thing I know and, of course, the abuse is something I made up. But I did it so I can highlight the reality that it is more likely older brothers who abuse their younger sisters than anyone else in the family, not to mention if compared to strangers.

### * * *

I want to note, that when we were living in Sweden my mother never really called her family by phone, especially after her mother died in the late 1980s. This is the opposite to my father, who called his beloved mother about every second week, maybe even once a week, and regularly stayed in contact with his brothers and sisters and other known people. And by clear average, during our summer holidays, we usually also spent more time at my father's village of birth rather than at my mother's home town – they are about 500 kilometers apart. And, of course, my father builds the family cabin next door to his mother, not nearby to his wife's home town. This cabin became a bizarre 20 yearlong project with countless self-made obstacles, just so it can now lay unused and half rotten in the woods.

### Letter Four

At some point these two tortured souls met each other in some city in central Sweden: It was a rainy day and my father was getting pissed at this lowlife bar, but, to his surprise, two young ladies walk in. It was love at first sight the storytellers always wanted to remind their children. Though, my mother's friend rightfully saw the place and its occupants as no good and therefore made a U-turn and forced her girlfriend to come along with her. When my father realized the lost opportunity he ran straight out to chase the ladies down the street, but only to be greeted by a defensive umbrella onslaught by my mother's wisely reserved friend. But the two love birds have none of that and therefore they were somehow able to exchange their contact information with one and other, something that might have been prevented by couple of more blows with that umbrella.

I don't really know the exact chronological order of things, so I start with their wedding day, which was in Sweden. The day begins with the bride dragging the hiding groom out of the basement, so to be on time for their wedding. The drunken groom surrenders to the will of his bride, though only to loudly affirm himself, for several times, that, "In the end of the day you can always get divorced!"

So without family and friends, without their own witnesses, and as immigrants in a foreign land, they are now walking towards the church altar to marry each other, so to stay together until death do they part. Something which they seem to have done amazingly. Ask yourself, would you have done the same thing in these circumstances, and what made them make this ultimately foolish and destructive decision?

### * * *

The psychoanalysis _C. G. Jung_ and his followers have developed this idea, that on the unconscious level every man and woman is occupied by an opposite sex entity. For women that would be a masculine force called animus and for men that would be a feminine force called anima.

In our patriarchal world, where the man is the king and the woman is somewhere else, woman in leadership positions adapt to a masculine role in order to ensure themselves further success. This they do because they have learned that although Fortune 500 companies accept women in leadership positions, they do not accept femininity. Therefore, there in the sky high buildings the admiral woman leashes out her animus and suppress her anima so to battle her male co-workers. But who will she marry, the next door generalissimo or the across the street world renowned artist? How will she accept the strong anima of her lover, the famous painter? Will she attack it as the female lion she has learned to be, or will she let her guard down and allow herself to be worshiped for one more painting?

When speaking of the results of suppressing and neglecting one's anima or animus, _Robert Johnson_ – one renowned Jungian psychoanalysis – comments the following:

"[When] man insist in upon making some outer figure, generally a flesh and blood woman to bear his anima for him [...] he mediates the outer world by way of his anima, instead of using the inside where she belongs. This produces more suffering and more upset and more pain than any single thing I know about."

### * * *

In a world full of

nuclear bombs,

chemical weapons,

and factory-plants producing tools of torture.

There is one man out there who claims that the most destructive thing men can do to each other, is to marry each other in the intention to project one's own neglected anima or animus with the help of their chosen partner.

Better off to make it understood,

that my mother was the murderous dictator,

and that my father was the dreaming drunk,

and our family was the torched village.

### Letter Five

The big romance continues and the newlywed couple moves back to Finland, so to live about 100 kilometers north-west of my father's village of birth. There my mother had a job at a local kiosk and my father was happily unemployed. There they have a son, but he dies at birth. This is the late 1960s.

In 1972, still in this same Finnish town, my mother gives birth to a daughter – my older sister – after which they decide that they would be better off to immigrate back to Sweden. After all, that's where all the jobs are. In Sweden, my mother finds work at the national money printing plant, a job she holds for nearly 20 years. My father, too, got a job at the local heavy industries, the big automobile plant in the town where we lived. But he decides that he doesn't want to join the working-class masses, but instead wishes to stay with the self-pitied ones. Therefore one day, with one of his buddies, he walks out of the factory line to pull down the national flag from the company flagpole, so to paint a swastika on it, to then pull it up again. To further celebrate this magnificent day, the two fools walk away to build a makeshift sauna in one of the nearby containers.

I guess it becomes too obvious for all parties involved that the husband in the family is sincerely a drunk and a fool, someone who has no intentions to financially support his family, thus the divorce is agreed upon. The divorce was signed somewhere around mid-1970s.

Saying he's a drunk and fool is putting it mildly. Why not say the truth: that he was, a well-fed parasite feeding off his poor family.

Personally I suspect that they ever split so to live in separate addresses. I rather suspect my father simply gone to cool himself off on the streets, or gone to do something meaningless somewhere else for a short period of time; more than that I have hard time imagining them formalizing their divorce. But they never remarried again, this they didn't do. The topic surfaced briefly in the late 1980s, during one of my father's brief sobrieties. It would have looked nice to all parties involved, but my mother couldn't do it. She was too bitter of the past, she could not forgive.

When remembering this era of my father's severe drunkenness, she always had a bitter tone to share. When my father was reaching his mid-60s and losing his vitality related to that, she now-and-then reminded him – and others also – not to count on her pushing him around, in his wheelchair, when he would get old and frail. Her plan was to move to her childhood town when she reaches the national pension age, and he would not come with her. That he would stay in his cabin and survive there as he best he could. But this was a wish based on the foolishly unexpected, that I would not speak out about my past, about what had happened in my childhood. When I finally did this, it caused my mother lose her fragile mental health and thus for the first time in her life she became dependent on others, instead of being the warrior woman. Therefore instead of what had been planned, in the late 2000s the aging couple moved together to my mother's home town, and there – I assume – my father is taking care of her, instead of the other way around.

* * *

Mid-1970s – too sick to live together, too sick to live alone, the coin has two sides.

Can you imagine my mother as a single mom, to be the needed working-class hero to raise her daughter after work while counting her pennies to make ends meet? She has no friends, no back up, she is too nuts for that. The only one who somewhat seemed willing to share his life with her, was this drunk man from the streets. Contrast that with my father and ask yourselves where he is: drunk on the park bench or in prison, incarcerated warming up from the cold weather outside? I bet too, that he gave it a thought, that maybe he would be better off acting that family play after all. Free food and free rent, only a stupid person would say no to that? Stop by couple of times during the week, especially during paydays, so to snatch whatever the hungry family has.

Indeed, too sick to live together but too sick to live alone. The coin has always two sides, and thus suddenly and accidentally she is pregnant again, and voilà, they have to get together, because I am to be born.

* * *

Sometimes when feeling fit, my mother shared some of her fond memories of being pregnant with me. One story was about an afternoon when she was traveling with her big belly on the bus: behind her back she overheard some teen girls saying to each other, "Oh my god, I would never want to be as fat as she is."

A comment she seemed to have taken with much grievance, because she was still hanging on to it after all those years.

So I was foretold to become a huge-size baby. At birth when I finally came out from my mother, my head was so big that I was loosely diagnosed to be suffering from hydrocephalus (i.e., water head). Awkwardness in its purist form, the nurses went off to call each other by the corridor, so to have a look at this freakish baby. The story always continued with the emphasis that there I was lying on the table as a laughingstock, until some doctor passed by to bless me as a baby with normal head and normal health.

When hearing this story in my childhood – for the longest of times, all to my early teens – I believed that one day my head would somehow explode and I would die as a result of it. This because my mother never disclosed that it wouldn't.

* * *

I remember my mother often sharing with us that my older sister was so good when she was a baby. She was barely any problem when compared to me, that I cried every day from day one to the age of 12. This is all true, I admit it. I too remember the day when I stopped crying, it was the day I was raped for the last time. I vividly remember it.

### Letter Six

I want to keep my first memory as cheerful and enjoyable as possible. It is a fuzzy memory from a small boy who is maybe 3 or 4 years old. In my memory I am being led out of our project house apartment by some strange man.

I look at him and I feel exoticism about him: a foreigner, maybe an immigrant from some faraway country, maybe one of the Chilean refugees with their strong cheeks, narrow eyes and black hair.

I don't know what his intentions were or where he intended to take me. I only remember being happy and seeing his visible smile. A forced memory for the sake of sanity, what is forced is to make this man someone else then my dark-haired father.

* * *

My second memory: I was 5 or 6 years old when I realized that my father actually was my father. The story to this revelation begins by reading _Jean Webster's_ 'Daddy-Long-Leg' in kindergarten – a kindergarten that I attended all through my pre-school childhood. During that gathering with the other kids, the kindergarten staff makes a comparison with the story read and with my tall father's long legs. I didn't really understand what they were saying and instead interpreted them saying that I had a father, a distant father somewhere who is eventually coming to pick me up just like the other fathers do. Yippee, what a excitement! Because isn't it great to learn that one has a father, especially after believing that you didn't have one? The Swedish staff caught onto my excitement, but because of my underdeveloped speech abilities they interpreted my excitement as being caused by the story. But when I saw their further excitement, this verified my belief that this excitement around me was indeed all about that, that I had a father who was somewhere waiting for me, and who would someday come and pick me up from the kindergarten.

Later, around 5 p.m., when my mother came as usual to pick me up, the staff shares with her what had happened during the day, about all the excitement around the story, and they therefore suggest that I should borrow the book for the night. But primarily because my mother is to the core a dull person she initially resisted the idea, but, undoubtedly after had giving it a second thought she had to have known what the true cause of my excitement was. But the staff's insisted and therefore – I guess – she saw herself better off to take the book, rather than stand there arguing about my recklessness when it comes to things.

During the walk back home – about a 2 kilometers long route – I kept talking about the story and continued so at home too, and doing this with all of my excitement. I don't really remember all of my silly thoughts that I had regarding this belief that I had a father, but I remember building up some false promises about the whole idea.

Eventually my mother concluded that it had to be said. So while stewing the dinner by the electric stove, she broke it down for me that my father is my real father, and the story is just a story.

"Do you mean that the man, who is sometimes here, is actually my father?"

I asked, though of course using my child vocabulary, words that I don't remember now.

"Yes," she answered.

The initial feelings were disappointment and a relative sadness, but something more than that, a taste of that regular apathy and dullness also crept in. I lay down the book somewhere and went off to my room to entertain myself with some new silly thoughts. Only to wonder now, 30 years later, How does it feel to have a family you love? That, I experienced nothing but misery this hasn't crossed my mind before I wrote this now.

* * *

My third Memory:

But an earlier memory then this is me being alone with my father and his gang, dancing with my pajamas on, on the kitchen floor, pretending to be drunk just like them. A semi-fictitious memory like my first memory, though contrary to it I remember this memory fully in third persona – in other words, I am looking at myself as an observer. I see the scene, but I can't be sure is any of it is real. I see that I have a glass in my hand, but I don't know if there is there anything in it, and if there was something in it, did I drink from it? These things I cannot in anyway confirm.

* * *

My fourth Memory:

The following memory is a more vivid and more concrete, and it is half in third persona and half not. It is a scene that happens in the corridor of the project house where we lived.

It is a summer day, we are heading downwards with the elevator – we being, I, my parents and my older sister – everybody is sort of happy. We are going to the out-of-town summer colony; which in itself wasn't the cause of the joy, the enjoyment came from the car we had to take us there, that we didn't need to endure public transport today. There in the elevator my father asks me what is my earliest memory? I tell him, while my sister and my mother are listening, that it is me playing in the family car the past summer in Finland. My father responds by claiming that I say so only because I have seen a picture of it, which was true.

### Letter Seven

My next memory is one from an early weekday morning. It's late December or early January. I assume so because its pitch dark outside and I am wearing heavy clothes.

I am in the nearby woods within the Kindergarten premises, there I am chatting about something with the Swedish boys – we are a group of about five boys. From somewhere one of the girls walks down to us. She is a Korean. She had just come from the hospital. She had pushed a pea or a raisin up her ear and she did that without telling anyone about it.

By time this "raisin" began to rot and itch to the level that her adopted parents had taken her to the doctor, to have the doctor figure out what is the problem with their daughter. Earlier that morning, when the adults had told us that story, they also firmly reminded us not to do something similar.

There in the woods, now having a girl with us boys, some of the Swedish boys asks her to pull her pants down so to show her vagina, but she declines by telling us that her mother had forbidden her to do something like that. Somehow from this we – or they – began talking about who has played with poo and how in various terms that too was bad compared to pulling down one's own pants in front other people. Standing there listening on this I felt confused. I didn't know you could ask the girls to pull their pants down, or do something as dirty as play with one's own poo.

Some days later – home alone with my mother – after having pooed in my pot, I started to pick on my poo either with my fingers or something that I had taken hold on in the bathroom. I don't remember my initial feelings about doing this, but I do remember the sight of my mother when she eventually stepped into the bathroom to see what I was doing.

I see her staring eyes and red face, and I know this it is time to stop smiling. While taking her furious steps towards me, she says "I have forbidden you to play with your poo, haven't I told you that."

Then after have reached me, she lifts me up from the floor, up to the level of her chest, so to slam me at the wall, so to hammer that wall with the back of my head.

By every blow I wonder why I don't feel any pain in my head, but instead only feel pain from my left leg, the leg that I scratched at one of the sharp corners of the laundry machines when my mother had violently lifted me up? But pain or not, I do recognize that I am out of every blow losing conscious for a bit longer time, and doing that – I assume – to the level that I pass out. Next thing I remember is about me being on the balcony and having my mother offering me my favorite toys to play with. I smile as a beaten puppy and I try to play with the toys that I was offered, but only for a short moment until the next seizure takes a hold of me and I pass out again.

We can guess when seeing this, that my mother had to have been panicking. In the heat of the moment, she decides to call the hospital to ask what to do. They on the other side of the line tell her to bring me over there. Having no intention to get other people involved – in other words, to ask some neighbor to drive me to the hospital – she therefore walks me to the bus stop – about one kilometers or more – so to take the next bus to the local public hospital.

I have pieces of memory from the walk towards the bus stop and more from the bus ride itself. Does this mean I gained my consciousness on that journey to the buss stop or already earlier when leaving the apartment? I don't know this, but I do remember that at the bus stop and especially on the bus ride itself, I start to recover, and in the hospital while waiting for my doctor to arrive, I have recovered as much one can.

But of course the hospital staff asks what has happened.

My mother says to them, "He was playing on the kitchen table and fell down head first on the floor."

Those who believed, believed it, and those who didn't walked away.

During the doctor's check, we are both cleared with the help of a humorous warning of not playing on the kitchen table anymore, and with this news my mother takes me back home again. On the bus she keeps saying in a motherly relieved tone, and with a worried facial expression, "Please, don't play on the kitchen table, you hurt yourself. I been telling you about it. Please, stop doing that."

I guess I said, "Yes, I will stop."

* * *

But this isn't the end of story, what about the rest of the family? What will she tell them, or will she tell them at all? I am sure she ponders about why not just forget this? You know, who would know, if she wouldn't tell? Indeed what a terrible dilemma to be pondering about, and all the way to the family dinner she ponders about this, which is by all means her last chance to say something about the main happening of the day.

After having chewed and swallowed some potatoes that she had found on her dinner plate, she cough and says: "Hey, by the way, guess what happened today? Niiles fell off the table and hit his head on the floor... he lost his conscience for a while, so I had to take him to the hospital."

This obviously changed the dining mood severely.

I am 4 or 5 years old and therefore I say nothing. I look at my sister who is 8 or 9, she is silent too. She is looking at our father, waiting for a response from him. And I look at him, too, he sits next to my sister, but he says nothing. He stares with an emotionless look out of the big window. He swallows the story similarly as he swallows the pale dinner offered tonight.

And that was it, nothing else was said – until I write it now for you.

### Letter Eight

My sixth memory is also a preschool age memory, and to note it is a memory which was reminded by my older sister some years ago.

It is winter time, so heavy clothes and dark mornings are the norm. Our father in somewhere, who knows maybe even at work, one does not know. Our mother is alone with her two children. I am heading towards the kindergarten, my about 10-year-old sister is heading towards school. The transportation hub that my mother will use to go to work is in the same direction as my kindergarten, my sister's school is not, it is in another direction. Therefore, the plan is as usual that my mother will take me to my kindergarten, and that my sister will walk by herself to her school.

I am fully stuffed with winter clothes. I am sitting in the corridor strapped in my baby carriage. Something is holding us up and therefore I start to cry, it is getting too hot for me, it is uncomfortable. I stress up the situation by crying louder and louder. I cry so much, that's she snaps.

Now pause and break to guess what is going on in her head, because I for sure don't know what it is. Maybe it is an irritating buzzing sound or boiling raving anger? But whatever it is:

She comes from the kitchen to turn towards me with her fierce angry look. She tears me up from my carriage and throws me through the air onto the living room floor – maybe four or five meters away. She then runs after me, to jump on my back, so to violently choke me.

I have my suspicions what would have happened to my life if my sister would not have rescued me, by leaping to push our mother off me, so as to grab me into her safety? My sister told me years later that the scene continued with our mother walking into the bathroom, to sit down – on the toilet seat – to stare numbly and speechless at the floor. Therefore, my sister took the initiative to walk me down to the kindergarten, to tell the staff there that our mother is sick and therefore could not bring me over this morning. My sister continues the day by walking to school, as if nothing has happened. Can one recover?

* * *

In my – third persona – memory, I see this blurry scene from about four feet above ground level: I see myself on the left – left from "this" third persona – set there in my baby carriage, dressed thoroughly in my winter clothes, ready to go, close by the front door. I look straight towards the kitchen and out of somewhere, out of a sort of fog, my mother comes with her fierce steps, turning in towards me – in the carriage – after which I see only flashes and pieces of happenings. I barely see that she rips me out of the carriage so to throw me through the air. I sort of only know that it happened. I can feel it.

For longest of time I lived with that, that that was it, that nothing else happened. That is until my sister later tells me that my mother had – literally – run after me, so to jump on me, so to position herself to choke me.

Before hearing my sister's experience about this morning, I did have a slight memory of walking to kindergarten with her, and her distress of what she had witnessed, but, I could not distinguish that walk from some other possible mornings when she might had walked me over there too. Though, as I said, it was something she rarely did – her school was in a different direction compared to my mother's bus stop which was not.

* * *

One or two years later my sister fell in love with this _Hulk_ college shirt which she had begged for herself somehow. ( _Hulk_ , the superhero character). The shirt had this distinct face of a big angry green man on its front. She was told that it was not a girl's style to wear it, but she didn't mind, she loved the shirt either way. That she was to become the fighter in the house was being foretold. I bet she already then knew that one day she grows strong enough to beat the living daylights out of our mother.

### Letter Nine

I don't remember how much this beating went on as I was so young at the time. I only remember these two incidents, but I do remember that this beaten eventually ended. What happened was that my bruised body had been discovered by a certain member of the kindergarten staff, a long-haired brunette Swede. One day she took me aside to show my bruises to the other staff, which she did in a very small, almost closet-type of room. Her co-workers weren't thrilled about the topic, who would be? But she insisted her case and its severity and therefore argued for a personal permission to confront my mother, which she was granted, but wisely she also demanded a backup person for this event. A request her red-haired friend knew she could not say no to.

So that day, as any regular day, my mother arrives from work to pick me up, but to be greeted by these two young women who asks her, "From where does [my] bruises come from."

Is it her guilt or that my mother senses the accusatory spirit in the air, because she straight out mumble something silly and pointless.

After listening to this stammering, for its required amount of time, _The Brunette Swede_ lays out her suspicion that she, my mother, is the cause of these bruises. I remember the stiff face my mother makes. She is not trained in the art of lying, at home she just screams and roars until she get what she wants, but now she doesn't know what to do.

I am under the arms of _The Brunette Swede_ and so my mother is all by herself, to be accused for the first time for some of her numerous horrendous crimes. She can only do one thing and therefore starts defending herself whit an act of bewildered astonishment at such accusation, which of course works because there is no evidence. And so she saves herself and walks away with me. Outside, during our walk back home – about a 2 kilometers long journey – she repeats herself by saying, "How can she say something like that? I would never hurt you, you know that, I would never hurt you."

A statement she continues by the family dinner. By the dinner table, she tells about her daily adventures were she has been accused of abusing me by this one evil-eyed Swede, a staff member of the kindergarten. Something she denies by telling us that she would never hurt her children, that she would never do something like that. Hearing this, the audience of the dinner table responded with a dull silence.

But since then my mother never laid her hands on me, instead she would just stand there and scream, screaming so long I would submit to her order.

I end this story with telling you one thing: That she, the long-haired Brunette Swede, was the only one who ever stood up against my mother. She said, she is watching. Nobody would do that the years to come.

### Letter 10

Before all this happened there was a time,

when I wasn't beaten,

when I wasn't broken,

when I was just like all the others

this is because, similarly to us all, I too was born with courage.

I have a memory of one summer day at the small beach nearby the family owned summer colony. I am 6 years old and I am standing knee deep in the water. I shout to my parents who were on the beach, "But, I don't know how to swim!"

They shout back, "But you swam last summer!"

And I could recall on that, that indeed it is true, that I did swim the last summer, but not just that, I wasn't scared of the tarpaulin laid on the bottom of the beach – laid there to prevent the reeds to outgrow the beach – but neither was I scared of the reeds last summer. Last summer I was brave to follow my father deep into the reeds, if I was caught by some of the leeches that inhabited the reeds, I just swept them off my back, just like I had seen my father do.

Now – while standing there in the water it dawns on me that all that had changed. I was now scared to walk on the uncomfortable tarpaulin and as well as the painful stubs of the reeds, and not to mention the leeches, the leeches were the worst. If I was caught by one I cried like a girl, just like my sister did. Something had happened, I knew it, but I didn't know what?

Now I say that I had lost that boyish courage that I too were born with, and once lost, gone forever. Since then I have been spit on, the boys have held piss on me, pulled my clothes off, tied me in cables to drag me around the classroom floor, and at my face or behind my back have said the most horrible things about me. And I never fought back, never did. On the contrary, I often thought that I was now part of the group, that I now had friends, that I now was recognized and accepted.

Once at kindergarten, one of the Swedish boys slapped me on my face related to some argument that we had. I didn't know what to do, so I started to cry and ran to the long-haired Brunette Swede to tell her what had happened, but obnoxiously she replies, "Slap him back."

I was awe struck by that comment. Nobody had ever told me to stand up for myself. It was all submission at home, to fight back was something awful and horrendous. Violence was trademarked by my mother, "To be used only for defensive purposes against your father."

So you see, I never learned to defend myself, or others for that matter. Some years ago I saw this one doped up lad in his late 20s, in his suit, bashing this random teen girl at the local bus. I saw the whole thing. We were sitting in the back of an empty bus when this lad showed up. The girl was now surrounded by three random teen boys and me and this wacko. She rightfully decided not to engage with this nut case who tried to talk to her, but when he was turned down he instead started to insult the girl. I looked at the scene and turned my back to it, to rudely think for myself, Now it's your turn to suffer, I've done my share of it.

### Letter 11

On May 5th, 1984, Sweden won the Eurovision song contest – with the _Herreys_ singing 'Diggiloo Diggiley'. My father was not around that night. I was watching the show together with my sister and my mother. I was in my pajamas on the floor two meters away from the TV. My sister was hysterical, while our mother tried to be part of her daughter's joy. This is preschool era.

* * *

In the August of 1984, I had my first day at school.

It's a nice day. The mothers have brought their children to their first day of school. At the schoolyard my mother talks to one neighbor of ours. Her son is at same age as I am, and will be in the same class as I am. With these circumstances we became best friends during our childhood.

One thing to mention is that although this is in Sweden, this is a Finnish-speaking class. It's a policy enacted due to the big population of Finnish immigrants in that area. Though one should note, it's a Finnish-speaking class in a Swedish-speaking school. Further, the school had about two dozen classes, all sized to be around 20 students big, and, because this is elementary school the pupils are between 7 and 12 years old.

One other thing to mention is that my mother sticks on her believe that I started stammering when I began my school career, all because I was too afraid. Personally, I can't recall this, I remember stammering and having a slur language already in kindergarten. But this doesn't mean that I wouldn't have been afraid of school, because I feel to remember that this might very well be true for the first couple of years. See, I barely remember a thing from the first two years. I only remember having a female teacher, a tiny little woman, and that I had no clue whatsoever what I was supposed to do there at the classes. It took me five years to understand that one ought to do ones homework. It was all just chatter that I heard during those first couple of years. I remember from my first year: Seeing the girls in the front seat being eager to raise their hands to the questions of our teacher, and me being mind-boggled about what they were so eager about – I never got it, I never did. I remember once raising my hand just like the girls did, but when I was supposed to say something, I simply stared back. Funny.

After some few years I remember becoming more comfortable about school. I saw that I was pretty well put with my small-sized class and with my homogenous peers. I understood that here I was allowed to stammer as much I wanted, without being much bothered by anyone. But this doesn't change the fact that I have much grievance towards all those years spent in public schools, which I have, but I will spare you from them except from one, which is that I failed it all. From that first day to my last day of engineering studies, it all went under the table, simply as that, and I end my sore testimony there.

Finally, when I stopped searching for acceptance I began enjoying learning and education, though this was in my early 30s when doing my post-graduate studies. I have this following dream, which expresses that change of mindset very well:

Dream:

A relatively dark room, its autumn darkness outside but the ceiling lights have not been turned on, therefore it is visually uncomfortable inside. The room is identical to one of my class rooms at the university that I was attending at the time – in Reykjavik, Iceland. But the tables and chairs were seated in a U-shape form and awkwardly away from the whiteboard and instead towards the windows on the right side of the classroom, maybe to grasp the last remaining light from the big windows. There in the classroom were more or less the same class-mates that I had from real life, so about 20 of us there.

This is the future, near future. One active female student has become the guest lecturer and now has her first full scheduled class. The class starts with a small ordeal from her part because she doesn't have the class attendance list with her. Meaning, she can't testify who is present or not. But no worries, she comes up with a brilliant idea of scanning us all with her RFID scanner. (Radio Frequency Identification). See this is the future, especially the future of Iceland – a country were one cannot get a gym membership or borrow a DVD from the kiosk without a social security number, at some places not even without having your eyeball scanned (I am not lying) – therefore she assumes that all of us have an implanted microchip in our bodies.

She starts the scanning process from her end of the U-shaped class, and without much trouble she goes through the class, all until she reaches me at end of the line. When she approaches me with her scanner, I look straight into her eyes and give my middle finger right in front of her face and say, "Fuck you, I don't have a microchip."

The whole class says nothing, but they all, including herself, knew I was right, that they had gone one step too far with; not just by having implanted microchips in itself, but also by allowing themselves being scanned so publicly.

The end of dream

So you see I was no longer the docile me, but instead a free agent.

### Letter 12

The movie 'The Never Ending Story' was released and as everywhere else it became a massive hit in Sweden, too – this might have been during the 1984 Christmas market. On the local top-of-the-chart TV program, the theme song was played all through the next spring. I was so fascinated by the music video itself, that my mother could relate to my wishes to go and see the movie. Something I knew would never happen, all because of that drunkard father who I had and the financial troubles he caused.

Was it related to this or not, I don't know, but the family went to the movies somewhere during the winter of 1985, so to see the motion picture adaptation of _Astrid Lindgren's_ 'Ronja Robbersdaughter', which then became my first movie seen at the movie theater. I remember the movie didn't impress me much; as a matter of fact, it had the opposite effect. I had sensed that we were watching my father's childhood dreams rather than anyone else's. Wasn't he, after all, the one who had brought us here?

For him the kids on the screen had made it (financially) and that's why he now adored them, and to be like them, that was indeed an admirable goal for anyone. But he gave no support to reach these goals, though neither complaints if you failed, he just shrugged his shoulders. He had, after all, this stammering grey duck, an athletically clumsy weakling as his son.

As a consequence of having that bar of success – always – set so high, and most of all having no support to reach it, it all became an impossible class struggle. See, in my father's world view one was to counter poverty with talent, but with a talent I didn't have, so wasn't I then stuck in poverty?

"The Swedish kids on the screen are kids from the suburbs."

Roughly said this was how my mother defused my father's enquiries to have me and my sister put in the out-of-town art school after that movie.

That I am of the untouchable class.

That I am of the alcoholic, unemployed, incest class.

That is how I perceive myself, whatever you claim is the color of my skin.

" _Is Niiles going to be a poor train mechanic?"_

My sister had once wondered when I was a toddler.

A comment to which they laughed at for many years.

### Letter 13

Saturday evening, May 4th, 1985, we were watching the Eurovision song contests on TV, a show which is now held in Sweden because the last year's competition was won by Sweden. The show shocks the whole wide world, or at least Sweden, when the hostess played a trick upon her audience by allegedly accidentally ripping off her skirt so to expose her long bare legs, but then after a second or two she saved herself with pulling a pair of pants out from some hidden pocket of her yellow dress. The audience responded with a loud bawl. I remember my mother and my sister being hysterical, while I had no clue what had happened, and so I kept asking and asking about what had happened.

* * *

In the August of 1985, I began my second class at school. The Finnish-only classes at that school were constructed in three separated groups; classes 1 to 2 together, classes 3 to 4 together, and classes 5 to 6 together, and each with their own individual teacher. Now in my second year of class, not much has really changed; it's the same classroom, the same teacher, same pupils, except of course that the one year older pupils left and new one year younger pupils came in.

From this period I remember once coming home from school to find both of my parents having an afternoon nap on their bed, perfectly set, so I could enthusiastically tell them that I had learned to spell my name during the day. I showed them the piece of paper on which I had spelled my name, which I had done with the help of big letters and a hyphen. But my father instantly bashed it by saying, "Who the hell writes like that!" and points at the hyphen.

My mother had by now gotten off the bed to have a look at my school-work. She defends me and my spelling by cursing my father, which then leads to the two warring parties fighting one and other again, after that short truce they have had.

* * *

On Tuesday, January 28th, 1986 was the day when the NASA space shuttle Challenger exploded. Not that I saw it live on TV, but I remember the aftermath and the constant replays of it. My fascination of this happening was dually based on the explosion, but also on the commentators, the world travelers who they were spoke a proper language that I had not yet heard.

After been called to come and eat my dinner. I turned off the TV to forget the incident, because no one was discussing it in-depth in our household. Forgotten, but reminded. Next day at school, our teacher brought this topic up so to discuss yesterday's traumatic happenings. But encouraged by one of my classmates, I start laughing at the incident claiming it to be an imitation of fireworks. Thus, instead of sharing our testimony of grief and sadness, we together say in loud voice, "3, 2, 1, and soon after a big bang."

Our ridicule of tragedy continues to the point where our teacher decides to raise her voice so to end our mockeries. She says, "That [we] should instead think about those who had died during the accident. That there was a teacher on-board just like [she], that it might have been [she] instead of [her] who died on that space shuttle."

Regardless of her remarks, though with a small doubt, I continue with my laughter and ridicule.

Now when our teacher feels herself – somewhat – helpless to get order in her class, she tells us – me and my classmate – to look at the other students, to see what they feel about the topic we've been ridiculing.

Sitting there in my right-upper corner of the class, I turned myself around to look at my fellow classmates and I saw that they all are silently sitting by their desks, and doing that with an acquired serious look, which is turned towards me on my front seat. So I silenced too. But I recognized there, at that moment that I silenced because of them and their sentiments instead of my teacher wishes to do so.

I don't truly know, but I assume so, that because of the enlightenment of the power of the collective against one's own will, charged and booted by the slave-state of a mind that I have been brought up in, I took this social critique extremely seriously, extremely indeed. Because as I saw it, I had now been caught red-handed to not to salute _Kim Young The Second_ well enough and therefore I was extremely nervous about myself.

Back home, after my walk from school, I find my mother (to my surprise) sitting by the kitchen table. In my believe of her omnipotence, I begin thinking that she knows everything that had happened during the day, and is therefore sitting there by our fifth floor kitchen window, so to be ready to interrogate me. Hence, I start explaining myself and my actions by trying to – in as favorable ways as possible – put the blame of my laughter and ridicule on my friend. But she doesn't understand me, she has no clue what I am talking about, and so she changes the topic to something else, which leaves me astonished but not relieved.

See, this all could have been forgotten if not for that slave mindset of mine been whispering in the back of my head. See, I knew the scheduled teacher-parent meeting to soon arrive, thus I was – mildly said – on the edge of my nerves for those next couple of weeks. I feared, in particular, my mother and her reaction when she would hear what I had ridiculed.

When the date of the appointed meeting arrived and we were walking to school to meet my teacher, I tried again in all possible ways to explain my actions; but she again had no clue what I was talking about and therefore she gave me only a smile to think about. And, of course, the whole incident was forgotten by my teacher; and only now I could let the issue go to rest, now when I recognized that there was nothing to worry about.

I guarantee you that it is really eroding to live your life in that slave mindset, to be weeks later, maybe even months later, be in fears of such a silly thing. My classmate who I mocked the explosion with, he straight out on the schoolyard ridiculed our teachers sentiments. But I didn't listen on him, I was already in fears of what I had done, and so I could not join his criticism anymore.

But what interest me now is how intertwined was the fear of my mother with the tragedy of the masses? What if my family would have lived somewhere in North Korea and some _Kim Yong The Greatest_ would have died, and I would have seen all the nation weep on their knees, but I, the foolish me, would accidentally have ridiculed them all, what then? By this introduced story, wouldn't I be more scared of my mother finding out about this, rather than the all-knowing state knowing what I have done? I mean in North Korea the state kills for sure, so why would I fear my mother more than them?

I hypothesize further and argue that, that wouldn't it be easier for one who has such absolute fear of one's own parents to erode that culture and dogma that they sold you from your early age, rather than straight on criticize them as parents. I believe that this might very well been the reason why I followed my fascist wrong turn for so many years, and why I still ridicule and insult the nanny state which Sweden is.

See what else can I do, when I am ruled by all those fears,

then to do anything else, except what is necessary to do.

### Letter 14

On February 28th, 1986, the Swedish Prime Minister _Olof Palme_ was assassinated while walking home with his wife from the Saturday evening movies. I remember the Sunday morning when the nation woke up to this shocking news. I remember watching the early emergency news broadcast from the TV. Though I don't remember the broadcast itself, I do remember my alert father walking around our apartment, while making himself ready to take me to the local hockey rink. Every time he stumbled on my mother, he would share more of the latest news feed. But she really wasn't that interested, she was more interested in going back to her bed, rather than to listen on the theories of the motive behind the murder.

It was still nearly pitch black outside when I and my father left towards the hockey rink, there I would take part in a minor track-and-field sport event. My father's senses had been awakened by the shocking news, but I was too young to be bothered about what was going on in the adult world. Thus, instead he changed the topic to some hockey player on the local team, someone who on his spare time drank heroically with the street bums. When closing in on the hockey rink my father literally pointed at some dumpster, and said, that he would be drinking behind it before training sessions.

"He was one of the best; they tolerated him for a long time... Though eventually they had to let him go."

Saying those last words with sense of acceptance, after having idolized this sportsman's trash lifestyle.

The teaching of the story, as I took it then, was, "Son, you might make it with sports, but you might want to go with booze too, if so, so be it."

At the hockey rink, my father spread the news of the assassinated prime minister to all those who were still unaware of it, which was almost everybody. Therefore I am sure he felt himself important, about being the appointed messenger of these somber news.

* * *

Maybe when I was 8 or 9 years old, sports were still fun when it still was that play, but when that sense of competition took over I lost my interest and went along just because my parents told me to do so. Not that I am against competition, not at all, but what is the point to compete in something that you are terrible at? That was my issue. So I suggested a change to boxing or martial arts, which were to my mother, of course, horrible and unimaginable activities to engage in; truthfully said, it was horrible and unimaginable to even think about wanting to engage in something like that. That's how she processed her thoughts, that's how she punctualized herself.

But we shouldn't fool ourselves about how it might have ended with having a 220-pound fighter, or a 16-year-old black belt martial artist in the house.

"Could you please stop running away from me, so I could take hold of that face of yours, so I can smash your head through that darn wall!"

But please note, too, my father's alliance with my mother. For him my interest in boxing, wrestling or martial arts was something to be laughed and ridiculed.

"You, my son, a fighter? Stop kidding yourself, look at yourself."

That was sincerely his comment. Therefore what else could I do then to sit and wait until I turn 19, to then move out of my family – after my military service – and join the kick-boxing club of my choice, which was exactly what I then later did? But no pities accepted. But rather take this short story as a parable of my mother's omnipotence and my father's unbreakable alliance with her, to be a constructed obstacle preventing the materialization of myself.

* * *

But sport or no-sport, it didn't matter because at 6 years old, I had already chosen what my goal in life would be, which was to be filthy rich. The story to this, not yet to have been materialized destiny, revealed itself the following way:

It has to have been spring or early summer because it was nice and splendid weather. I had to have been 6 rather than 5 years old because I remember the following episodes so vividly. It all started with that the whole kindergarten was planning to go for a daytrip to Stockholm, but a daytrip that would cost about $1 for each child. My mother when informed about this trip said, "No," because in her view the family didn't have money to pay for it. (I remember the fee being equivalent to one liter of milk.)

When the scheduled day was closing in, the staff of the kindergarten repeatedly asked my mother about my participation and reminded her of the necessity to pay the about $1 fee. But my mother kept her stubborn act by saying, "There is no money, so I can't pay."

To this the staff replies, "We all are going, so the kindergarten will be closed."

My mother counters this by saying, "Okay, no problem, I understand, I'll take sick leave from work to look after him."

And the dialogue ends there, because what can you say to that?

Now later I wonder did she ever tell her boss why she had to stay at home, and if she would have told him that, would her boss have volunteered to pay that fee so to keep her at work for that day?

Eventually the day arrived, which was this nice day as I previously mentioned, and as planned my mother takes her sick leave from work so to stay home with me. But somewhat surprisingly – that morning – the long-haired brunette Swede calls from the kindergarten to ask my mother whether I am coming or not? My mother answers, "No. The fee is too high, we have no money to pay for it."

Okay, fine with that, I guess, but surprisingly she says that she is coming over to to talk this over, at our apartment.

My mother with her act of having-nothing-to-hide says, "Sure why not," but informs _The Brunette Swede_ that it won't change her mind about the matter.

After a short moment, after having walked the bit over 2 kilometers route from the kindergarten to our apartment, The Long-Haired-Brunette Swede arrives so she can in person enquiry whether I am coming or not?

But my mother comments her final time that, "No. There is no money, he is not coming."

I remember my mother even opening the door of the fridge to show how little food we have in there. The sight might have been couple liters of milk, a box of butter and some onions and some garlic as leftovers. They continue the discussion, but I was sent off to the balcony to play with my toys. From there I then listen to an honest wonder, how come $1 is too much? And to my mother's reply, that the father is like this and that, and et cetera and et cetera so therefore. But while listening on this from the balcony, I start to pity my parents for being financially so wrecked, but I sensed further that I would do much better than them if I just would be given a chance to try.

Now – I saw my parents trapped in some evil circle from which they were unable to get themselves out from. They continuously fought each other because of a lack of money, but then when they had some they made a stream of bewildered decisions in the matter of personal finance. So it was revealed by higher powers, at that moment, at that balcony, that money was the solution to all problems one could have, and therefore I was to dedicate my life to have it. A dedication I have, of course, utterly failed in, but that fixation is still there, no question about it.

* * *

But subsequently I soon saw all adults in this similar bewildered state. On TV adults cheated and stole at every possible turn, and they seemed to go to any length to do that. My innocent child mind was speaking to me, but soon I was in that same whirlwind myself.

One evening when I was about 7 or 8 years old, I was watching some drama from the TV with my mother, some detective story of an unsolved murder. As the plot of the story was revealing itself and the murderer was found behind his trail of lies, I asked my mother why do people do these things? Supposedly she wondered too.

Some years later, maybe at 12 years old – so still in Sweden – I was watching the news with my father. The story was about some kids who had mugged an elderly man, but not just that, but also had stumped this gentleman into a near-death condition. Who knows, maybe it was done in our neighborhood? My father expressed his hideous feelings towards this crime and warned me to never be involved in something like that; and as the TV show continued with showing some kids in a skate park, he too compared these muggers with these skater kids, that how much better they were then the muggers. But I duly replied to my no-good-father, "At least the muggers made some money."

He was, of course, astonished, and so he became angry and upset. He made me take back my words, which I did, though only half-ways.

* * *

In my adult life, with one of my counselors, I have discussed morality during some of our monthly sessions. The problem was that I secretly admired the ruthlessness of one of the two rapists, the younger one, the Swede. He was the cold-blooded killer, the systematic torturer and surely a member of the local pedophile mafia. I found myself wondering, whatever problems came across his path, what else would he do than to kill them?

To me he was the on top of the food chain beast of the Jungle, the creature that we all are scared of. What a perfect ally to have in this cruel world of ours. If I could be just like him, how different would my life be? In my late teens in my deepest despair, I saw no other outcome than to become a serial killer myself, just like him, though I never knew that our paths had crossed.

So about morality, where did my justifications for nihilism fail? My counselor suggested I look into the maturity of the moral and the childlike demands of the criminal. The sage in the Ethiopian highlands – is it Prophet Muhammad, or some of the Christian wise men – tried their best through devotion and discipline to produce an order in which morality could live by. Compare that to the angry gang of thugs riding towards your village to pillaging it for sport and personal greed. I could resonate on this. Compare any of Hitler's speeches where he justifies war with _Tolstoy_ 's search for peace, the intellect is easy to find and the... is easy to spot. The self and its demands became the angle of destruction, and the unselfish laborer found its place as the only true sacrifice one could offer.

So morality in itself wasn't any more a complicated question to ponder about, but was rather a choice. To answer who to blame of the collapse of ancient Rome, was it the men who had sex with their horses or the Christian masses? I now understood that I simply had to choose from whom to ask that from, id est, the men who has sex with horses or the Christian masses.

_Leo Tolstoy_ , the discoverer of the five commandments of Jesus Christ, pinpoints word by word that the sermon of the mount to be an explicit message to abandon the old god with the old laws, and that when it comes to morality one ought to follow one's heart, that in there, inside oneself, is the unbreakable compass which won't tilt although heaven and earth would pass.

1. Never be angry, never be violent, always be in peace with one another.

2. Don't break marriage and don't engage yourselves with plural marriage.

3. Never prosecute, don't give oaths, and don't give sworn testimonies; in other words, don't judge, don't swear.

4. Don't resist evil by evil, don't resist violence by violence.

5. Love thy enemy and forgive in all manners.

There in a nutshell one has the uninstitutionalized spiritual journey all hidden in plain view for about 1800 years. It sounded good for me, so I accepted it.

### Letter - continue

How it all ended that day with the day trip was that _The Brunette Swede_ asked my mother for her permission to pay that $1 fee herself, so I could join the rest of the kids for that day. My mother, of course, could not say no to that.

In Stockholm while walking around some park, this old man saw us kids and approached the staff wishing to buy an ice-cream for each one of us. This he was allowed to do, after which we were handed our individual ice creams from the nearby street vendor. The staff made us say, "Thank you" in person, and so the boys bowed and the girls curtsied in front of him. But I walked to the man and curtsy, too, something I regretted as the backlash to that silly joke became too serious.

### Letter 15

On April 26th, 1986, the nuclear reactor of the Chernobyl power plant explodes, a catastrophe that further escalates to a nuclear meltdown. The explosion was internationally admitted May 1st of that year. The meltdown is denied to this day though can be proven with the measurements of the Xenon isotope ratios.

Spring 2011 – The nuclear explosion(s) in Fukushima, Japan, and the following nuclear meltdown(s) at that site, brought my attention to the day the Chernobyl disaster was announced, but as well on other historical incidents that had occurred during my childhood. This because I knew I had gained a device by which I could put dates on those ailing childhood memories.

To note, the Xenon isotope ratios are strictly classified information when taken from the Fukushima nuclear site, one can easily hypothesize as to why this is so.

* * *

In the August of 1986, I began my third grade at school. It was now a change of class and a change of teacher. Third grade was considerate more or less real school. For example, in third grade one begins the study math and English. English I learned, but math I never did.

### Letter 16

Wednesday – early morning – August 31, 1986, the former President of Finland _Urho Kalevi Kekkonen_ died of old age. My mother broke the news to us kids during breakfast, though I barely remember it. At my school it was a different story, there my senses awoke to hear the headmaster's surprising speech via the internal speakers. He told us that a great leader had died in Finland and therefore he felt a necessity to express his condolences to us Finnish kids at his school. I was indeed surprised by this message, because I barely knew the president or the headmaster. The strange atmosphere continued by lunch when some of the Swedish boys gave their condolences regarding what had happened – they even politely recognized the dead man's great leadership – and if I rightfully remember it, even one woman of the kitchen staff reminded us of her condolences about this sad and somber incident, all while handing out the daily soup to us children.

* * *

For Swedes, Finns are stereotypically a bit poorer, backward and maybe a more brutish folk; alternatively for Finns, Swedes are stereotypically a bit silly and cheerful and sort of a gay population. Related to this the two nations have often a fierce, but a well-mannered competition about whose culture and habits are more glorious than the other's.

My family lived in Sweden my first 12 years. During that time Finland was an alien nation for me. The Finland that I was used to was my grandmother and her house in the woods and the small culture around it, which were sincerely only one or two houses. There the family spent its summer holidays and from there, when that was done, we drove the about 400 kilometers road back to the ferry, which would then take us back to Sweden. Finland with all its daily life was the nation I saw during that 400 kilometers car ride, I knew I had no connection to it.

Back in Sweden our Finnish language class was a bubble in a Swedish immigrant enclave. Nobody really bullied anybody; everyone was more or less friends with each other. The Swedish classes, on the other hand, had their one-or-two wacko Swedes and the bewildered immigrant kids, I knew I was just alright in our "bubble". It was good because at home I was in no way prepared to deal with challenges of everyday life; I knew, too, that the eventual change from our small elementary school (classes 1 to 6) to the bigger secondary school (classes 7 to 9) would in short kill me. I knew without doubt that I would not survive that war zone. There the immigrant kids would have eaten me alive, while the Swedish kids would have been laughing at the spectacle. And I wasn't the only one to see my perish to soon arrive, therefore the family moved to Finland in the summer of 1990.

### Letter 17

My childhood has a moment of happiness; I squeeze it here because otherwise you would not believe it ever happened. Somewhere around December 1987 or '88, my sister suggested that I take part in this scheme that some Finnish language radio station was doing (a station that operated from Stockholm). It was about being part of their weekly pop chart program, by listening to it, to then giving points to your favorite artists. This scorecard of yours you would then send over to the radio station. The catch was if you did this long enough, the radio station would give you a prepaid ticket for a music record of your own choice.

After I had done what was told, I got that prepaid ticket as promised. My mother was suspicious about what had arrived, and she assumed there would be an eventual fee down the line. But my sister insisted on the legality of the received ticket and argued to at least ask the record shop about its validity. This we decided to do, and so off we went to get myself my first music record – a cassette – doing this all while my father, the designated driver, was cursing his dry state in the parking lot, wishing for sure to greet his buddies by the nearby main street.

At the record shop, I was overwhelmed by all the different albums, therefore my sister suggested that I would pick _Bon Jovi's_ self-titled album 'Bon Jovi', which I did. What an honor because isn't it one of the greatest rock album ever made?!

_Bon Jovi_ , _Mötley Crue_ , and why not _Skid Row_ for that matter, too, are all part of the soundtrack of my childhood. Listening on 'Kick Start My Heart' by Mötley Crue – the greatest rock song ever made after _McCartney's_ Helter Skelter – was the only thing that brought me true happiness so far as I remember it. Though the album 'Theater of Pain', which had the song 'Kick Start My Heart' was released 1989, so I would have been 12 years old by then; so I don't know can I be considerate a child at that stage any more.

### Letter 18

In the August of 1987, I entered the fourth grade of school. Nothing special about this, as it was the same classroom and same teacher compared to the previous year, but by October 10, would my 10th birthday arrive. Previously to this my mother had been a follower of the Jehovah's Witness church; thus, while still a member our birthdays and Christmases were celebrated in the smallest manner, if at all.

Christmas was traditionally held around traditional Finnish food (ham, sausages, different kinds of homemade puddings, etc.), all while presents where economically modest. A visiting Santa or a Christmas tree was off-limits. But one cannot solely blame the church for this pale version of Christmas, because of course the financial strains that we continuously were living under had its role as well.

I wish to note the compromise of challenging traditions – i.e., the church traditions and the contemporary ways – fitted fine for my penniless atheist father. Therefore, see again the alliance of the two opposites: my holier-than-thou mother and my bum father.

Birthdays were more problematic. During our involvement with the church, no presents where handed around, but neither was much given after our separation with the church, and again because of the lack of money. But don't doubt our hidden dismissal of one and-other. Might been on my 16th birthday my parents gave me a toothbrush, toothpaste and a lollipop as birthday present. And, of course, I took it as an insult and expressed it to be that. My parents went back to the city and bought me a towel for compensation. You know, why did they even bother?

### * * *

But around 1988, my mother had by time disconnected herself from the church, and doing this all to the level of an eventual breakup. Therefore now when my 10th birthday was closing in, for some honest good-willing reason, she wanted me to celebrate it by inviting my classmates for a birthday party. The plan became to trust my older sister with her new found friend to organize this party. This new found friend of hers was a girl who had recently moved from Finland. She was held as something pristine and fine and not seen as a ghetto Swede, and thus my mother tried to pit her to resurrect her daughter's to-have-taken-off trash life. But the plan didn't work out, the friendship broke off eventually.

When the Saturday afternoon arrived when the party was to be held, my mother then went away so as to leave the two teen girls run the party. If this sounds too functional and enjoyable, then I would note of the reality what my father's accidental sobriety meant for us all.

For the party itself my mother put down some rules; birthday presents are not obligatory and if bought have to be moderate in price; but most importantly everybody from my class has to be invited. I said, "Sure, why not?" After all, aren't these universal rules for such an occasion?

But the next day at school when handing out the invitation cards in my class – cards that my sister and her friend had made – I was caught unprepared of the joy and happiness of the gypsy siblings in my class, when they heard that they too were invited. (This is gypsy as Romany.) I had always thought that they – just – somehow didn't make it to the parties of the other kids had, but now I understood that nobody was inviting them because they were gypsies. Some of the boys were even talking over my shoulder – when I was handing over the card – that not to invite them, that I was making a mistake, that they will steal stuff from me, and so forth.

But the – gypsy – older sister was having none of that, and instead proudly promised to buy the best present ever and to keep her younger brother under her leash.

At the party the siblings gave me domino pieces, the only present that I remember been given to me for that birthday. But can you imagine parents being like that, to stereotype children in negative manner? And can you imagine not being invited to your classmates' parties because of your ethic background? This was someone's childhood just across from my desk.

* * *

I slightly befriended with her younger brother after my birthday. He was wild, he were often in fights, which were always blamed on him. The boys irritated him also at my party, but his older sister restrained him as she had promised. I visited him a couple of times when they lived close by. I remember them moving around a lot, though always in the same neighborhood. At home he had a bunch of young men living there; he called them his cousins. The apartment had only basic furniture, really nothing on the walls, no art or pictures. He didn't want to show me his room because he was sharing it with his cousins – a gang of loitering young men. I stepped in only once. We were there to pick up some money of his, money that he had squeezed in between a kitchen drawer. He told me, "Otherwise, they'd just steal it."

By they, I assumed he meant his cousins.

Soon after that their family moved back to Finland; their rich aunt had died and left a small fortune for them.

The older sister had a crush on me. Once in school, because of some game we had, she kissed me on my cheek. I couldn't handle it. I can't handle someone kissing me, not back then, not now. I got visually stressed and this was seen by the others too. Some of the boys felt this to be a reason to fight her young brother and the younger brother was eager to defend his sister's honor. What a mess, I just wanted to leave, which I did but the fight followed me even beyond the school yard. I stammered and tried to explain what had happened, but nobody understood, so it was again blamed on the younger brother.

### Letter 19

Sure that whole experience around my birthday taught me something, and sure I am proud of being part of a family that expresses solidarity towards all men. So I have to admit that my mother had after all a good side in her, and equally to her, so did my father too have as good side about him.

I remember the one – the one and the only time – when my father by his own initiative invited me to come along to some of his own hobbies of interest, which turned out to be a union meeting. This happened in Sweden, around 1988 or 1989. He was sober at that time, but because of his general insecurity he had a small hesitation to invite me; so he asked my mother first if this was a good idea. She replied, "Hey, please go ahead. Don't ask me, he's your son too."

I feel to remember the meeting was out of town. I have a slight memory of sitting in the back seat of car while my father is in the front talking about taking me with him, so to teach me the ins-and-outs of union activity. The driver of the car responded with a rote nod, as a sign of his acceptance of my presence.

We arrived at some typical Nordic community center, which might consist of a library and some public offices under one roof, included with couple of shops. We found ourselves walking into a 500-seat auditorium, so it was relatively big; but the crowd did not fill all the seats, maybe 80 souls arrived. After I had taken my seat, I fascinated studied the arriving crowd. Among them were no Swedes with brown skin from there resent Spanish holiday, or someone wearing a college shirt bought from the London metropolitan opera, as this one teacher of mine occasionally did. I recognized that – pretty much – all who arrived were immigrants, and that the young guy sitting next to us had also a worn out union branded college shirt on him, just like my father always had. There where one Swede, an older man in his brown old suit opening the meeting, but that's about it. We were all immigrants, and I with my father where about the only Finns.

That life that my mother and my father could have offered me never materialized. Who knows how it could have turned out, if it had been offered to me? But it never was; they could not live up to themselves. They were too sick, too stubborn and they lived without compromise. Example, the Siberian prisoners interviewed in the bi-monthly pro-soviet magazine, that my father kept ordering during the 1980s, were bathing in ice-filled waters because it was, "Healthy for them".

"At least everyone had work there," was my father's comment about the USSR long after it had collapsed.

### * * *

My mother on the other hand, the self-proclaimed working-class hero, was reeking of false pride everywhere she went. I could list thousand of examples of her chosen rituals of poverty, from our countless public transport experiences to our occasional joint adventures to collect recyclable bottles and the big black plastic bags that went along with it. It was all staged so to blame someone else for our poverty. I knew this straight away. I knew we were poor because they – my parents – were stupid, not because we were poor. The parents of the other kids, they didn't fight, they discussed; and therefore they owned cars, which we most of the time didn't.

Once a girl at my class had her birthday party, it might have been her 10th birthday. She lived bit far away, maybe 5 kilometers, maybe more, but nevertheless because the issue became how to get there. My mother made some phone calls to the family living next house to us – whose son was in the same class that I was, and for sure was therefore about to go to the party – but they didn't answer. Now she ponders what to do, and decides to walk me over to the house where the family of the girl lived. (My father was not around that day, I assume he was simply drunk somewhere.)

But after this long march, and after we had reached the house of this family, of course the parents of the girl were a bit astonished that we walked all the way. I don't remember they're exact comments, and I don't remember how it turned out for my mother, because I went straight off to play our games with the girls and the boys. She might have gotten a ride back home, which she was offered, but which she firmly refused; or she might have hung around somewhere nearby for the time of the party, which sounds most plausible because that would have been the cheapest alternative. But either way, when the party was over she came back to pick me up, from wherever she had been.

The father of the house recognizing her situation, and so he insisted that he should now drive us back home. But my mother says, "No," and firmly so, after which we walked away. After we have left the doorsteps and after being out of sight, my mother talked about how rude the father had been of being so insistent on offering us a ride back home. I remember asking why she didn't take it, but I don't remember gaining any serious reply, probably because she didn't give me one.

The next day I had caught a cold because of last night's walk, maybe so, so to remember this all more thoroughly. But to me all that was false pride. I am not anyhow thankful for her sacrifices that evening or any of the other, supposed, countless times. I sacrificed my life for her, not the otherwise around.

### Letter 20

Continuing on my 10th birthday, because to honor that day, my mother ordered my father to take me out for a small hike into the nearby forest. An order he reluctantly surrendered to. I can't remember what he named the problem to be, but I remember there to be something. But bad spirits aside, the young boy in me thought, and happy I was that my father finally decided to take me out for a hike, haven't I been wishing for this for a long time now?

We lived on the fifth floor, in a six-floor house, in a house set on the edge of a housing project area. We had an open view to the nearby forest, both to north and to east. Stockholm was behind the horizon on the north side, and the Baltic Sea was behind the horizon on the east side, in-between the so typically thick coniferous forest. Today we would hike north.

After we had walked down the hill past the small wealthier suburb and to the end of the paved road, we reached a forest opening. The landscape continues with nearby counts wheat fields. My father makes the decision to cross the field, and as a true peasant can't resist joking about it; although our presence shouldn't have been a problem because this is after all October and the wheat has been harvested, but also because this is Northern Europe and we don't have a culture of private land being barred from wanderers; it's all open all the time, to all the people.

At the end of the field we spotted two deer just when they were about to jump and run into the forest, not an uncommon sight at all. After that flat landscape, after the fields, was a new rocky hill, which we estimated to take us some effort to climb up. But after that effort, on the top of this hill, we decided to enjoy the scenery and set our camp.

To the south you have the project houses where we came from. My father points out our house and our windows. But I am just a young kid and therefore I can't really rationalize anything what I am looking at. I can see the white houses – were we lived in – but I can't spot the corner where our apartment is.

The plan was to fry some crêpes by the fire and eat them there, after which we would head back home; but when my father digs in into his backpack, he realizes that he has forgotten the milk and this develops to an overwhelming irritation for him, because what kind of crêpes can you fry without milk? I didn't mind this problem, I was having a jolly good time. But my father couldn't let it go, he just couldn't, and so he began cursing himself about forgetting the milk, and about being forced to make the dough out of water only. And the more he did that, I then finally understood that there was no escape from the burden and negativeness my family represented, that it always going to be like this.

That life here outdoors, or anywhere else, will always look like the life we had up on the hill where we came from; and that life would be an endless stream of misery, whatever happens, and that there were nothing to change it.

And during the years I was to learn that my father always had a reason to spoil our trips and journeys. This he did because end of the day he didn't want me to be around him: at the end of the day he didn't want to have a son, he wanted to be left alone.

After having done and eaten our obligatory crêpes, my father decided to pack it in for the day, and to head home, but while doing that he tells me that "we would be better off to not say anything to you mother, about forgetting the milk, because she would endlessly nag about it, if we would."

But when we arrived home my mother greets us with the milk bottle he had forgotten. It's not really a fight. She's is nagging about, that this was, about how important day this had been for me, "So why couldn't you least remember the milk?"

I'm sitting on living room couch listening to this all over again; nothing really goes around my head, not even acceptance. In my child's mind there is no other possibility than this numb reality, not even a world of fantasy, just an irritating moment. So I questioned myself, why do I need to be here?

* * *

November, 1987: I don't know how it all started. Was it something I had heard at school or seen on TV or was it a spontaneous thought that I had produced myself, I don't know this? But one day walking back home from school, doing this with my friend as usual, I started to talk about suicide. Openly I pondered to my friend, was it allowed and how to do it, and such like things. I took it as nothing, just random thoughts that I had been thinking about. But it seems so that my friend was shocked enough to tell his mother about this conversation, who then called my mother (that same day). I remember that phone call, but not what they talked about. I take it so, that it was my friend's mother who suggested my mother to call my teacher so to hear what he has to say about this, because this is what she then did. I don't remember that phone call, and I am a bit doubtful about how she expressed herself to my teacher, but nevertheless this teacher of mine concluded that I should seek professional counseling; which I then did.

The sessions started in December of 1987 and ended in July of 1988, the official reason was, "As suggested by my teacher, as my studies was doing so poorly." In other words, my mother had whitewashed my psychological ills, with my teacher´s remarks about my poor studies. To further note, I visited this same counselor in late 1988 or 1989, but the staff at the government archive center – who I visited in 2008 – didn't find anything about these visit, only the earlier sessions. And the counselor herself – who I called by phone in 2010 – has no memory of me, non-at-all, though this isn't that surprising because of all these years.

During the winter and that spring (1988), most of the counseling focused on me, but some session were spared for my parents, so to deal with their bigger than life relationship. My suicidal thoughts were not written down, but rather my stuttering was an issue, as well as my possible low intelligence and my drawn back character. (Referring now to the papers I acquired from the archive center, year 2008). The question was asked, as to whether or not I should be transferred to some special needs class, but I beat the odds on the I. Q. test, so that never became materialized.

The topic of my suicidal thoughts, as far as I remember it, was discussed privately with my counselor and went the following way:

Counselor: You are not allowed to kill yourself.

Me: But adults do it.

Counselor: But you're not allowed to.

Me: When my sister turns 18 she can move out; when I am 18 can I kill myself?

Counselor: Hmmm.

And that was it. I was now waiting on my 18th birthday so to have the right to kill myself. Although I was confused by this message because I had heard on TV of Japanese children killing themselves, which then didn't fit this picture. But I dared not to discuss this topic any further because I saw now that it was taboo, so I kept it all inside myself. 

### Letter 21

At our school the Finnish classes held their own Christmas Show separate from the Swedes and the other immigrants. Traditionally the fourth graders were assigned to conduct the main performance of the evening – the three wise men – and obviously it was considered to be an honor to be chosen to play one of the main characters. At that time I had a lot of stage fears related to my stuttering and pitiful self-image; but no worries, my lousy memory skills and even lousier singing voice caused me to be kicked out from the show on my first day of practice. But I can assure you that I had no complaints about this.

But either way, whether you were good or bad, everybody was assigned at least one minor individual part in the show, which when announced was enough to scare me for a couple of days. Until I realized that it was only one or two words that I needed to say, so why bother myself with these fears; one or two words that a girl was assigned to help me out with, so indeed no worries. (The girl who's birthday party I wrote about). But my parents didn't know this, in their view I was still part of the big show of the night. So when the date was closing in, they enquired me about what part will I play. They asked whether it would be the main act or something else. I don't remember our discussion in detail, but I do remember sensing my father building up his own set off fears about the coming evening. This because he foresaw himself, seeing his son on stage choking and stammering in front of a big audience, undoubtedly a too painful sight for a man like him.

Eventually the evening arrived and the local Finnish community took their seats in the lunchroom at our school.

The shows of the younger kids' proceed by the planned scheduled. I am watching them from the table where my parents have sat down, far away in the farthest corner of the schools lunch room. The evening moves on and my class is called upon to get ready for our performance. I jump up to take the stage with my classmates, something which we all do enthusiastically. But there on the stage before much has happened, I see my father standing up from his back-row seat. I see him taking long steps towards us, passing the families of my friends and our stage, so to disappear behind the corner; to undoubtedly go out for a smoke and predictably not to come back before our show is over.

I remember thinking – at the moment – nothing but acceptance and predictability.

After have said my one or two individual words and after the show was finished, I sat again at our table with my parents. There my father, who had just come back from his smoke, can't look me into my eyes, and can't say anything about what he did, or why he did it. Therefore my mother, in an acceptingly tone, plays with the fact that he couldn't bear to watch his son stutter on stage and therefore had to go out for a smoke so to escape that sight.

* * *

About my father:

1989 – During one father-son trip to Finland, he managed to stay sober the 3h drive to the ferry, but after which he relapses. At the ferry he walked around the tax-free shop as if he owned the world; he poured beer and booze in his trolley and loudly said to me, so everyone could hear, "Pick any candy you want."

I restrained myself, knowing that the money given to us by my laboring mother would not be enough for this shopping spree.

Back in the cabin, he puts me in the bed and leaves to the bar, only to tell me, "Don't open the door to anyone, I'll be back soon."

He comes back, but filthy drunk. He pees on the carpet and passes out on the bed, only to wake up couple hours later with a nasty hangover and visible fears of how to drive through the customs check. Luckily he makes it, or we do it, I am, after all, right there by his side. He needs a beer to make the long drive to his mother's village, and after that one beer couple of more. Finally at home with his mother, he most had thought, Safe out of harm, therefore he jumps up and leaves to get himself a drink. I don't know where, the car laid in a near-by ditch for two nights. He comes back penniless, to drive me back to the ferry. But first he had to borrow gas money from his old mother. At the ferry exhausted of this spectacle of madness, he reminds me that we would be better off, if we would not talk about this to my mother. I notch my head.

* * *

One other father and son trip, this time during the summer of 1992. Now living in Finland, we are heading towards North Finland to enjoy ourselves. Though he barely manages to drive out of the village borders, after which he – literally – turns in at the next gas station by the road to buy himself a six-pack of beer, and it starts all over again. Prelude to that he was sober about a year or more, thus it makes you wonder what caused that relapse when I was the only person besides him in that car?

* * *

He reduced his drinking around the mid-1980s and finally "quit" in 1989, after which he only had couple of not-to-be-mentioned and severely embarrassing relapses. But sincerely, after we had moved to Finland – 1990 – he seemed to be happy. He was unemployed, he had a steady welfare check, and he had free time on his hands. He spent the weekdays doing carpentry in the basement and the weekends by fixing his cabin, and in-between he visited his beloved mother. The older he got the more accepting he became about himself and about the life he was now living. But the older he got he also became somewhat reconciliatory of his past. To this I said nothing, I dismissed him. Reconciliation was not my plan, I wanted reconciliation from my mother, but I knew she would not respond. Besides reconciliation how come, why so, so bygones would be bygones, so you can die in peace? Sorry buddy, this is not my plan. My plan was all along a future where neither he nor she would know of my whereabouts, and therefore I would be doing whatever I wanted to do, and they be doing whatever mad stuff they wished to do, and I would careless about that.

* * *

In the early 2000s my father called me about his plan to buy a holiday cottage in Greece, and was now asking if I would come along with him to have a look at it. He said, he would pay all the fees. As usual I was unable to state my true will; therefore, I twisted and dodged his enquiries to the point where he finally asked me, "Has over trips been done?"

I told him, "Yes, they have."

### Letter 22

In the spring of 1988 I was seeing my counselor twice a month and doing that all to June, at the same time certain international news broadcasts became unforgettable because of their violent nature. Although I don't have interconnecting memories to these two memories, I feel myself able to connect these news broadcasts to further abuse that I experienced from my mother.

* * *

Around the autumn of 1987 or the winter of 1988, the cruelty of Canadian seal hunts were finally exposed on an international level. Similarly as these horrendous scenes were broadcast all around the world, they too were broadcast in Sweden, and I too was permanently shocked about what I saw. My horror focused on these men who did this, the ease they had in doing their cruelty. To drift with their boats in this faraway place, only to – when being close enough – simply jump off and run after these helpless seal cubs, so to smash their heads with their clubs. This was absolutely horrendous and absolutely shocking to look at, something I did all by myself. I never spoke to anyone about what I had seen and how the scenes had bothered me; and so I became troubled for many months to come. It was too inhumane and so unnecessary.

* * *

In the December of 1987 began the first Intifada of the occupied Palestinians. _Yitzhak Rabin_ – Israel's Minister of Defense at the time – responded by giving his infamous order, "Break their bones," so to curb that ongoing resistance. Armed with batons and sticks, the Israeli soldiers then systematically broke the bones of the captured Palestinian youth. One out of the numerous incidents was captured by an American cameraman – _Moshe Alpert_ – he had been granted permission to film the coming hideous act, though only from a distance across the canyon. On this footage one sees four Israeli soldiers breaking the bones of a small group of tied down Palestinian youth, and doing so with the help of rocks, kicks and awkwardly twisted limps, this was in February 1988.

When this footage reached our TV sets in Sweden, the Zionist state was despised and hated by both of my parents, who rebelled what they saw in the deepest and most utter objections. My father walked around in circles and planned a beating to fall upon some Jewish co-worker of his, but my mother calms him down of this act of despair.

To me it was again adults who had done this, a feared breed of species that looms in the dark to assault the unlucky ones who accidentally pass by. I was shocked to learn that someone could engage in taking turns in twisting some tied-down poor-fellow's arms, all in the intention to then break them with heavy rocks and kicks. Indeed, nothing but evidence of the madness of war.

* * *

June, 1988 - My mother is about to stay behind, while I and my sister leave to Finland with our father.

The idea had to have been that she, being the breadwinner in the house would be better off to stay behind so to labor for money, while this husband of hers goes to work on the family cabin in Finland.

In this circumstance, in our joyful farewell spirit, its starts to boil inside her and doing that in some pretty serious fashion. As we are about to leave she then finally explodes, and doing that beyond her own normal rage.

Maybe because it's daytime and not nighttime, and I am sitting on the living room couch rather than lying in my bed trying to sleep, maybe so maybe not, but this fight feels truly awful. Because what happens there in the kitchen is something mad, something disturbingly insane. I can hear my mother reaching some sort of bewildered rage, and I can also hear my father being more passive compared to all the other times I have heard them fight.

Now in broad daylight and sober, he has to see that his wife is utterly sick in her head; there cannot be any doubt about that anymore.

Their fight goes on and gets physical and out of all the insanity I remember this one cry made by my mother, "You're exactly the same as the ones who kicks people on TV!"

Doing this with the reference to the Israeli soldiers she had seen on TV.

So this is June of 1988, or maybe May, and I believe the fight was about me, not about anyone else or anything else. It was not about her ridiculousness warrior act that she had put herself in – that she, the single mom, in all obnoxiousness, now has to stay behind to sponsor her cancerous spouse holiday trip – even this was not enough for such an insane scene, which she now pulled off. Something else, something more extremely disturbing was the root cause for her bewildered rage. I therefore believe that the fight was about me, and that she was scared to let me go out of her sight. She had calculated that she needed an absolute disaster to lobotomize any possible souvenir brought back home; that she needed to be the talking point of our summer, nobody else.

* * *

Earlier that spring, some random morning, I was sitting on the living room couch waiting for the day to start. In other words, I was waiting for my mother to get out of her bed, so to order me what to do next.

For some reason of another nobody else, except I and my mother, was in the apartment. I don't know how come, maybe this was a weekday morning and I am sick and therefore she stayed behind to look after me?

But sitting there while doing nothing special, I heard this special type of sound coming from the bedroom. (The bedroom has two doors, one to the living room and one to the kitchen.) I remember being puzzled of this sound and being that to the level that I called my mother about it; but without getting a reply. After some further pondering I eventually decided to peak into the bedroom to have a look where this sound was coming from. Something which I did, but I also stepped in through the open doorway.

Now - standing by the left side of my mother and looking at her lying on her bed, I can't formulate what is going on, but instinctively I knew it is something wrong and therefore I choke and freeze and my memory becomes unreliable.

I don't know what leads to what, but I find myself at the bottom of the bed. Standing there, I am looking at my mother who is lying on the bed with her night dress on and her legs spread wide so as to expose her vagina. Although rationally in front of me, but because of its repulsive powers, I see instead colors of piss yellow, blood red, and black narrowing down at that slit. Then undoubtedly by her orders I step upon her.

Did I pull down my pants before that, I don't know, or if so, did I have an erection, this I don't know either. I can't answer these questions in detail, but I do live by a belief that I was at that moment, on top on my mother, rubbing myself on her – in one way or another – and doing this for the sake of her sexual pleasure and doing that to the point she had an orgasm.

It's hard to write this as a memory when I barely remember this, I only see those bits and pieces: First, me on the couch being puzzled of a sound coming from the bedroom; then walking into the bedroom to figure out what that sound was about (which was my mother masturbating); then standing by her left side, but then – suddenly – standing at the bottom of her bed so to see her vagina in that sexual state and the metaphoric expression of it; and to be there pondering, Why can't I walk away... why I am in a such frozen state? Then the final piece of my memory is about me being on top on her, so to one-way-or-the-other rub myself onto her – I think pants down, but I am not sure about that. But rubbing myself on her so long so to recognizing her sexual climax, which further scares me and therefore I stop. But she replays, in some wording of another, "Continue to the end," which I then did.

* * *

The reality of doubting one's own memories for something as insane of an experience as the past story told brings the will to shield the truth with the coat of denial. Your cognitive memory cannot be reconstructed, it is all shattered. Therefore in the end of the day it is the experience in itself that validates the pieces of memory that you feel to remember.

Sometimes I start to doubt myself of all these things, usually it is, or always it is, when people around me dismiss my suffering and tell me to sort of move on with my life and to stop bothering myself with my past. This sinks-in later when being unguarded and unprotected, and so I start to think: what if my dysfunctional life is a projection of my extravagant childhood – which I claim, but which is criticized – isn't it then very likely that the memories that I live by are also extravagantly assumed? It's a rationale that can only be concluded that I am completely mad, because why else would I have created this life based on false memories and false drama? So you see, nothing assures insanity better then denial.

### Letter 23

What happens next? During the autumn of 1988, there is the Seoul Olympics and the unforgettable fiasco with the 100 meter men's sprint finale took place. A bizarre moment in sport history which continues further when it was later found out that _Carl Lewis_ himself was caught doping earlier that spring. On April 1989, a mass hysteria and police neglect led to the death of 100 spectators at Hillsborough soccer stadium in Sheffield, England. Resulting is horrific scenes being shown on our TV set again. November of 1989, the Berlin wall comes down, but personally it wasn't as fascinating as the invasion of Panama a month later – there one saw trace-bullets crisscrossing the night sky and soldiers maneuvering under the moonlight, this was much more fascinating indeed. If I say that by December of 1989 the torture of me was finally over, it is surely true, but it might have been earlier than that, maybe Christmas of 1988, or maybe even 1987, though I doubt that.

Is it not that my memory is all blacked out, it's more about that I cannot put my memories in a chronological order.

* * *

I do remember my father relapsing out his brief sobriety. This happened during the summer of 1988 or summer of 1989. It began when the family was traveling back to Sweden with the ferry. Onboard my father began nagging about being allowed to at least buy one bottle, "It is after all tax free."

My mother was convinced enough of his pleas and so allowed him to buy one bottle, something that I don't remember to have led to any significant skirmish, though it might been kept out of my sight.

Okay, I can understand that my father cannot see himself as an alcoholic and therefore cannot resist the next drink, this is understandable. But please see my mother looking at the spectacle. She knows exactly what is going to happen; she has seen it thousand times before. Therefore I see no other option than to say, she graves for him to take the drink.

From secondhand sources, I wish to tell you about a woman who is married to an alcoholic man who physically fights her now and then. The only confusing thing in the story is that the man is visually impaired; in other words, he is blind to a significant degree. Therefore, one can only wonder how in hell does she allow herself to be caught by her husband? I mean, he can't see her!

For generations men can play the part of the raving drunk husband, but for generations, too, the wife is there to take all the shit. But this doesn't mean that the wife is the victim, on the contrary she is the perpetrator, too, whatever crocodile tears she is now crying in court, now after her boyfriend has been found guilty of molesting her children. She set the stage for the crime to happen, she should also be held accountable. I dare you to blame your mother, too.

* * *

After that relapse one drink was for sure not enough, but what could my father do to get that next bottle when he lived under his wife's strict economic rein? Indeed not much more than to whine and beg again for that second bottle. Something he successfully did once at the grocery store, and so he was all smiles after been allowed to bring back home a six-pack of beer. In all smiles he drove us back home. A smile which caught my mother too, two sick lovebirds indeed. They talked about enjoyable things, the past and the future and other lies. At home, pleased and humbled, he opened his first beer, but soon after when the six-pack was gone, the fights started again. He wanted more, but he knew he could not have it. Now listening to his wife nagging, that she knew it would come to this, in his burst of anger he smashes his fist through the kitchen window (the first inner layer). When I heard this, I was of course scared about what had happened. I peeked through my door, but my mother told me to go back to my bed.

The next morning I see the effect of the fight and so I ask about it. Busy while doing her morning chores my mother simply answers, "Do not get too close to the window."

I thought it was because I might fall out from it.

I ask, "Who did this?"

She says, "Your father did it."

I take it as my father has jumped out of the window.

Outside of the house, before walking to school, I bring my friend over to have a look at the immediate area under our fifth floor kitchen window, so to have a look if we can find my father or anyone else who might have had jumped out last night. But we could not find anyone, or anything, and therefore with the helpful suggestions of my friend I saw also, that we are better off to walk to school before we were too late for our morning class.

Indeed, back home the chaos have started all over again. He drinks, they fight. He drinks, we have no money, and they fight about that. Once while coming home after a long day, around 8 p.m., I ask my parents for something to eat as I am starving hungry. But heck there is nothing to eat. My mother says that the couple of eggs in the fridge are to be saved for the tomorrow's dinner. My father expresses his sympathy towards me, but my mother won't give in. It is like she plays my hunger card against him, it's like she is saying, "Look what you have done."

My father asks for mercy, which my mother gives, but only with a deal, "One fried egg now to your son, one fried egg less for you tomorrow."

He accepts it and so I get my one piece of dry rye bread, with a fried egg and a glass of milk, included with a message, "Remember from now on to eat more at school."

I have learned my lesson, and so I go hungry to bed to count the hours to my next school meal. That hunger equals pain, I have been neither the first one, nor will be the last one to experience.

* * *

My mother never made any real breakfast before we left to school – she was a bad cook in general – it was always cornflakes with milk, assigned under a strict economical supervision of course. We never got to eat oat meal, boiled eggs, or anything heavy like beans and bacon during breakfast – bacon and beans, or at least bacon, was saved for Sunday dinner.

She told me later that we didn't want to eat porridge, I don't remember it so. I remember around age 10, when I was allowed to enter preschool care – preschool care, as childcare before morning classes at school, a scheme made to allow parents go to work earlier – that this one Swedish man – a new employee – began making breakfast for us kids. We had boiled eggs, oatmeal, and bread with slices of ham on it. I ate like a horse, I loved it! I never had a slice of ham on a slice of bread before, never ever.

This one old Swedish woman – soon to retire, soon to be ex staff – told us kids by our heavy breakfast table, "We always told you, that you can eat breakfast here, but that you have to make it yourself."

Saying this with a crocked smile of hers, which unmasked her true intentions to be laziness rather than goodwill.

At least some of the more mature girls were able to critique her statement.

When my mother heard about that we were eating breakfast before going to school, she prevented me to eat breakfast at home and argued that I instead eat my breakfast there. I complained about this, because I rightfully predicted that there would be mornings the man would not be there, therefore there would neither breakfast. But, as so many times before, my mother's insistent will suppressed my stammering argument.

I remember the kids at class sometimes mocking me about my appetite towards the grey hash offered to us at lunch. During one daytrip I stared so long at one of my classmate's homemade pizza that he eventually gave half of it to me.

### Letter 24

So my father's drinking continues. I bet he has lost his job by now, and I bet that one way to get easy booze is to drag the drunks from the streets up to his home. One night I woke up to my sister screaming in her room – the next room to me. One of the drunks has tried to give her, by his own words, "A goodnight kiss," but my mother runs to her rescue and kicks the drunk out. Where is my father? If not passed out, then believing the drunks excuses, sincerely this is who he is, a spineless scared piece of shit. I have plenty of stories of his cowardliness, but I'll leave them for some other time. But for now on, for some period of time, when the drunks are around, my sister and I sleep with our mother in her bedroom.

About the same time:

One day while walking around with my friend,

close by the local mini-market, doing that without any special purpose,

we crossed the path of an unknown man who was carrying his groceries

(a lean dark-haired man)

who suddenly said to me in Finnish:

" _I know whose son you are. Your father is a real pathetic drunk."_

After which,

(after had said those couple of words)

he walks away, minding his own business again.

What he really meant, or what the real translation is, is that my father is a miser, a real whining drunk who has nothing to share to others,but is always there to beg from you.

* * *

When my sister got older, she became a real fistful of a rebelling teen daughter, and she began to stay away from home more and more. I remember her doing this quite extensively, though I can't really say how much, so I'll stick to her words that it was pretty much.

I do remember that couple of times my parents made a lost person notification about her, but she just wanders back before reaching the 48h deadline, after which the police would only act. A couple of times she was caught wondering the streets too late and therefore was brought back home by the police. My mother tried to discipline her but her daughter has grown too strong; so she needs to pit her husband against her daughter, which works but its gets really ugly to look at. One night during one more fight, my mother confesses to her that she has been reading her diary; but, of course, it's all for the sake of her own good. My sister boils on this and during the night attacks her mother in her bed, but our father intervenes and so she – my mother – survives without serious harm.

My sister learns from this, she calculates the simple command structure in the family, which goes downs from her mother down to her father and that's it. So obviously she concludes, she only needs to catch her mother unguarded and undefended and it will all be solved. Age 16, one surprising day, she sees her moment to have arrived. She takes her chance to beat her mother down; and a moment later she sees her all bloody on the floor, and who knows maybe even begging for mercy. I feel to even guess what my sister is thinking when looking at this sight, what else that there is no mercy in this house. Therefore, she gives her a couple of more kicks and a couple of more punches, to make sure the message is clear: "You ask for this, you get more of this."

At the end of the day our mother was so dearly beaten that she dared not to go to her work for two weeks, imagine for two weeks, but more importantly then that, the message was accepted and my sister was now left alone. Good for her, bad for me, because I was now alone in hell.

* * *

The gang that my father brought home during the nights was a crew of anonymous drunks, none of them was family friends or anything similar, just some drunks who came along with my father and then left in the early morning. None of them was introduced as uncles or anything like that. As far as I remember they never stayed over the entire night. That is, I never remember finding them sleeping in the corners or on the couches. They always seemed to have left before dawn. Most of the times this crew consisted of Finns only, I didn't really hear them speak Swedish between each other, I never really heard them do that.

But this crew of drunks and their drinking was over our childhood. Still today my sister gets an absolute sickening reaction if she hears any of that rockabilly music, which was played during those nights. I don't remember the music; I remember the sounds, the banging of doors and the loud voices. If I am now awakening from my sleep by similar brawls and sounds, I am back in my childhood, not as a fearing adult, but as a fearing child. Although I know the noisy neighbors of mine are just computer geeks who are drinking Pepsi too late, I have no ability to go and bang on their door, to tell them, "Please be quiet, give me some silence."

But instead I am lying on my bed paralyzed without a solution, waiting up to 4 a.m., or later for them to go to sleep.

So there they were, brawling, drinking, laughing, men walking around drunk and boozed out. Sometimes accidentally walking into my room while in a quest to find the bathroom, or whatever excuses they had.

* * *

I don't really remember the time-line but after my sister went her own way my mother expressed pretty fast her true apathy towards me. She did this by not allowing me to sleep in her bedroom when the drunks were around – something I would have preferred to do – and therefore I was left alone and undefended. I don't know if the following episode is the first time I was raped, but I write it as it was.

One night when the drunks where around, among them was this one older man. He was a Finn, a filthy drunk, an old man with dirty clothes. He had a red face and white messy hair sticking up in the air. I don't remember how he forced himself to rape me that night, or what he did. But whatever he did, the struggle and the fight that had overpowered me had been violent and loud enough to wake up my mother's interest. Because she leaves her bedroom to walk over to my door, so to peek in into my room, to then of course see what _The Old Drunk_ is doing to me.

I didn't see my mother that night – she didn't step into my room and neither did I step out of my room – but I do remember the verbal clash that ensued in the corridor behind my door. _The Old Drunk,_ who has just been caught with his pants down in his act, takes straight on a whining and a begging position and on his knees – maybe literally – begs my mother not to tell anyone about what she had seen. And specially, "Please, please don't wake up anyone."

To verify, I don't know how many of the other drunks were around that night, (there always where 3 or 4) but at least my father had to have been somewhere passed out in some corner.

My mother responds with her astonishment regarding what she had interrupted. Undoubtedly it's a pretty honest act from her part, but an act she continues by saying "[My father] will kill you when he wakes up to hear about this."

This verbal clash shrinks _The Old Drunk_ to a whining beggar of mercy, because for sure it is about to wake up the rest of the drunks who are dozing out their toxic state somewhere in the kitchen. So what else can he do then to pull out his wallet, to flash his last remaining money as bribe for the inconvenience.

I don't know how much my mother gave it a thought or how much she was offered, but she took the money, and the whole clash was over sooner than one would think, considering what was being argued about.

I don't really know what happened next, but we can hypothesize it by asking ourselves how did _The Old Drunk_ bring himself to rape me again, because this he did? I would personally guess that he didn't have enough money for that first night, so therefore went out to fetch some more. But being left off the hook, why did he come back at all, you know who would do that? I bet he gave it a thought about coming back or not? And as I see it, the only plausible reason to come back to pay for the last time, has to be, to come back to pay for a second time. I don't know how much my mother knew this old drunk? Maybe there were some blackmailing option from her side, but still, coming back rather than leaving the country, it makes you wonder, doesn't it?

So there he was again, led into our apartment by either by my father or by my mother, to enquire my mother about being allowed to assault me again. I don't know the terms of this proposal, but I am sure he asked after everything had been settled, that "What about [my father]?"

"Don't worry about him," I almost here her saying. "So long you give him enough of booze, he doesn't care. Just make sure he passes out and you'll be alright."

For how long, or for how many times, _The Old Drunk_ follows my father to have him drunk and securely passed out, so he could have a chance to rape me. This I don't know, maybe once, maybe plenty of times. But there was an obvious fact about him, he was a drunk and a bum, and the charges whatever they were negotiated to be would eventually going to financially ruin him.

* * *

So one night he comes back with a new proposal, which starts with, "I know somebody."

It's a sentence which contains the final destruction of me.

_The Old Drunk_ had been figuring out this plan whereby he would be allowed to bring one of his associates with him, so to share the expenses. A proposal my mother agreed upon by saying, "Yes," or maybe, "Why not."

But _The Old Drunk_ points out, that, "There is a problem... It's going to get too obvious, it cannot happen when [my father] is around."

"Indeed"

My mother has to have had recognized.

Therefore the plan becomes to stop by during late evenings when my father is not around, to be let in by my mother so to gain access to assault me. I don't know all the details of this plan. Did they consider the possibility that my father could accidentally wander back home during the nights a danger or not; that had they arranged it somehow that this could not happen, or if it would happen, what would the planned excuses be? This I don't know.

But I want to note THOROUGHLY, that neither my sister nor my father was around when these men were assaulting me, and that my mother was the sole gatekeeper.

* * *

One night this short man arrives (less than average height). He belongs to the local pedophile mafia. He is not a drunk like the rest, his younger and a Swede. He has short black hair, though bald on his scalp. He doesn't belong among the drunks; he has a boring career job somewhere. He tortures children for no good reason at all, or if he has one he simply does it simply because he can.

If you didn't believe evil to exist, you are wrong because he is evil to his core. There is no remorse in him, no will for redemption, he was all bad blood. He is not human, as human is humane with compassion. No, he is the fullest opposite of humanity, he is full of cruelty and full of evil, he is pure evil, and now he had arrived to torture me.

_The Old Drunk_ told him the rules: There is nobody home, except I and my mother, and both of us are in our separate bedrooms. So you leave the money on the kitchen table, and you're free to do what you want to me. That my mother does not want to get involved, so do not disturb her, matter in fact don't talk to her at all, leave her in her bed, simple as that.

_The Evil One_ listens and shrugs his shoulders, he's having none-of-that, he's done this before. He tells _The Old Drunk_ to call my mother out from her bedroom, to come to the kitchen to talk to them, and equally tells him to grab me from my bed, so to bring me over to them.

_The Old Drunk_ , says "but" and argues against, to which _The Evil One_ says nothing and thus _The Old Drunk_ obeys his orders. _The Old Drunk_ calls for my mother again, but to only get a negative response. She says, "Just leave the money in the kitchen somewhere, and that's fine."

_The Evil One_ is not bothered of this; he orders _The Old Drunk_ to go and pick me up, while he continues calling for my mother in Swedish.

I arrive to the kitchen led by _The Old Drunk_ , but my mother is still in her bedroom. _The Evil One_ tells _The Old Drunk_ to call for her again, something he does, after which she finally steps out from her bedroom.

So there we are now, all four of us, to discuss the terms how this is to go about. _The Old Drunk_ on my left side, my mother sort of in front of me slightly on my right side close to her bedroom door, and _The Evil One_ is filling the left upper flank of this irregular circle. I don't remember what he said, but the negotiation was of course all about having my mother's consent to the coming crime. But I remember this moment not in the third-persona but in detailed first persona, a fundamental moment so to speak. There being the shortest one, looking up at my mother at her face, at her stiff numb look: I see her cheeks pulled by high nerves, I see her almost not daring to look at _The Old Drunk_ as he is holding me too close to him - by my shoulders. Once she glimpsed at me, this is when she turned her head slightly towards _The Old Drunk_ , because he said something about to trusting him that they won't hurt me. She glimpsed at me, with the corner of her left eye, at her son who she is soon about to sell to these beasts of men.

There is not much negotiation _The Evil One_ goes through the deal and my mother affirms everything that she hears. So when the agreed is agreed upon, my mother is let back to her bedroom. Not to sleep, but to listen on the horrors she had brought upon me.

* * *

It was arranged so that _The Old Drunk_ would be the first one to rape me, and that _The Evil One_ be waiting for his turn by the kitchen table. But somehow _The Old Drunk_ seems to have taken too much time upon himself, because _The Evil One_ becomes restless to the degree, that he walks to my door, to peek in and to ask, "When are you finished?"

When I saw the door open and heard what he said,

_I remember thinking,_ So adults are like this _._

_After which something clicked in the back of my head,_

literally, clicked,

and I knew instantly at that very moment,

that I would never be the same person again,

that I was now permanently damaged

and damaged indeed in a way that I could not ever heal myself,

and by time I have learned I was right about that.

Eventually _The Old Drunk_ finished his act and left me be, but of course to call in the eager evil one. While _The Old Drunk_ is filthy, sick and compulsive, _The Evil One_ is cruel and rational. He has no remorse, therefore there is no rush, he can take all the time he wants.

While standing in my room, he looks around at all the boyish stuff that I have, which after he turns his look at me. Now _The Old Drunk_ have arrived back, and to him _The Evil One_ comments that I'm too dirty, that I needed to be cleaned up. _The Old Drunk_ takes this somewhat personally and so begins arranging something to deal with this problem, but _The Evil One_ doesn't bother about that, he simply tells me to go to the bathroom to clean myself.

Maybe they pushed me off, probably so because it's hard to believe that I knew what they wanted me to do.

But there in the bathroom I am sitting on the toilet seat wondering why there is blood coming out of me and what to do about it. I look at _The Evil One_ who is standing by the bathroom doorway, and he sees that I don't know what to do, therefore he goes ahead to tell me that. Truly, there is no doubt about it that I am under his orders, and that I am his living dead sex slave, that I do whatever he tells me to do.

How the night continues I can't really say, because the bits and pieces of memories are not in any chronological order. The memories that I have might as well be from some other night rather than this night; but all together what I do remember about _The Evil One_ is the following:

Once he had brought his camera with him and that´s why he made me pose for him, but he got tired of this pretty quickly and therefore asks _The Old Drunk_ to come by so to take the pictures, while he forces himself upon me. _The Old Drunk_ is a bit puzzled at first about this request, but in the end what do he care? Besides, didn't _The Evil One_ pay for all of the expenses, or at least most of it.

One other memory of _The Evil One_ is how excited he was about seeing me with an erection. Ecstatic he went to share about this, _The Old Drunk_ in similar joy replied, "Yes I know."

* * *

The morning after that first torturous ordeal, I was supposed to go to school as if it were just another regular day. My friend lived in the next project house from us, on route to the school, so I usually walked over to him to pick him up. Otherwise, he'd wait for me outside by the front door of my house. This morning I was not coming out, so I guess he thought that I was sick and therefore went by himself – or who knows, maybe my mother called and said that I am sick?

I woke up at some point in the morning. My mother was still in her bedroom, but she did not respond to my calls. Somehow I got the impression that she wasn't coming out of her bedroom either. At some level I remembered the past night but consciously not at all, my job was instead to collect together the bits and pieces of myself so I could go to school. I am maneuvering all by instinct, and I do about everything I remember to be the necessity before leaving for school.

I arrive late to my class and I am a mess. The kids all start smiling at me and my teacher even broke a small laughter. See my pants are on the wrong ways, my glasses are upwards with the rim behind the ear facing upwards not downwards; my hair is, of course, a mess. My teacher tells me to go and have a look at myself by the bathroom mirror, which I do, but there from the mirror I can't see anything wrong, it's all fuzziness. I am still in a shell-shocked state, and will be for a long time to come.

* * *

It's like the Chinese Minge vase that someone dropped on the floor, and it broke in all those thousand pieces. Sure, you can collect all the pieces, maybe even glue them back together, but are you going to put that vase back on the table to display it for its supposed beauty, now that's another thing.

That I am the impaired and the disabled one, that is granted.

That I will not recover, that should be an established fact by now;

so don't ask me to do that, because it irritates me.

### Letter 25

Maybe all the following episodes happened during the first night, though I doubt that, the fact is that I cannot testify the time span of these following events because my memory is not – anyhow – capable of figuring out the chronological order.

* * *

Eventually _The Evil One_ too ended in financial trouble because of the charges laid upon him, and therefore he too wanted to share his expenses with somebody else.

So there he is now, the third man, a blond Swede who looked as any of my teachers at school. He had clean-cut blond hair, and wore a bit classy light brown overcoat; and by age I would say he was somewhere around his mid-30s or early 40s.

He is led into my room by _The Evil One_ , after which he felt himself fit to sit at my chair by my desk. When left alone he looked at me lying in my bed, then at all my boyish stuff placed all around; he might have even played with some stuff left on my desk. I wonder now what he had thought it was going to look like, and what right he thought he had to walk into my life just like that?

I don't know what deal he had with my mother, if he had any? As I remember it he was assigned to be the first one to rape me tonight. There sitting by my desk he started to talk, he asked how old I was? I answered him in Swedish. He asked about my stuff that I had in my room, the cartoons and the toys. I answered something, or maybe better said, I mumbled something back. He shared that he had a son or a nephew in my age; I nod my head to that. I didn't know what to say. He asked about _The Evil One_ and _The Old Drunk_ , about what they had being doing to me. I can't believe to have said much to that either, as I barely can formulate an answer to that today. And then he walks away with saying, "I can't do it."

What do I do, not much, other than to wonder what comes next? What comes next is a brawl, which I hear to have ensued behind my door. I feel the need to peek out of my door, because of course I knew what the brawl was about.

At end of the corridor, next to the front door, I see _The Blond Swede_ cornered by _The Evil One_ , doing that with the obviously intention not to let him go. _The Evil One_ , although smaller in size, doesn't let go of his grip. He is vicious, he wants _The Blond Swede_ to rape me, he knows he has to do it. And _The Blond Swede_ could compromise everything. "Blood and cement," as the SS soldiers put it – united be the spilled blood of others.

But _The Blond Swede_ doesn't budge, he's leaving, "Keep my money. I pay."

He might have thrown his money on the floor, I sort of remember him doing that. I am looking at this from the other end of the corridor, there _The Old Drunk_ holds me protectively by my shoulders. I tell _The Blond Swede_ to stop it, that "it is alright, you can do it, I don't mind."

_The Old Drunk_ , the fool who he is, says, "See, it's no problem."

_The Blond Swede_ counters from his corner, "Look at him, he's just a kid, you can't do it."

_The Evil One_ who cares only by himself, says, while holding his grip tight, "I'll kill you. I'll fucking kill you, if you go."

"Do what you want, I'm leaving," _The Blond Swede_ replies.

What can _The Evil One_ do, kill him right there on the spot? Of course not, so he has to let him go, and so _The Blond Swede_ runs off. _The Evil One_ is now really pissed off, he knows what this means. _The Old Drunk_ pushes me back into my room, after which I never saw _The Evil One_ again – in other words, he left and never came back.

What happens next we can only guess. Did _The Evil One_ chase _The Blond Swede_ to gain his revenge? Personally I doubt that since he wasn't that important, because I wasn't that important. I was just one of the many tiny bugs he was pleased to torture. So after a night like that, he just went off to murder and pillage somewhere else, and who knows how it all ended for him, or did it ever end. He might still be out there, planning his next move? Back then he was in his mid-30s or early 40s and that was late 1980s, which is only 25 years ago. It means he would barely be professionally retired by now. So who knows what he is doing right now?

* * *

For me the million dollar question has always been, how did _The Evil One_ and _The Old Drunk_ know each other? The bum from the street accompanying the severe sociopath with a career job somewhere, how come? They met somewhere, for sure, but where?

### Letter 26

The beginning of the end – though _The Evil One_ was gone there was not yet an end to the rapes, because at some point of time _The Old Drunk_ arrived again, and only by this the end would finally arrive.

At some point _The Old Drunk_ arrived again. I do not know if he did this with the regular drunks or by himself, whether he was he let in by my father or by my mother? I suspect the former. But to know this doesn't really matter, because for sure my mother had to have known that he was back again; and based on this reality it is hard to imagine that my mother and he did not have had some form of private communication about the recent happenings and about their wishes not to be locked up by the police in some near future time. I do have a slight memory of hearing my mother and _The Old Drunk_ formulating a new financial agreement about how the assault on me ought to be compensated from now on, and that's why it all could continue again: his kisses, his cuddling, and all the rest of the disgust that he stands for.

But the drunk who he is, causes that, that he can't pay for what he was asked for; therefore he masterfully solves this problems by asking for credit, which my mother offers. So now he was raping me in debt, paying only when it suites him, if at all. I remember hearing an argument about this, _The Old Drunk_ turned it all around and shouts, "Isn't this a strange house, when children are being fucked here?"

He understood, he was "inferior" in this race to the bottom, it was obvious that she had more to lose than what he did.

I have no reference point to know how long this period lasted.

### Letter 27

Some unsorted memories:

One night lying on my stomach, having _The Old Drunk_ on my back, I scream and shouted while trying to wrestle him off. He hushes me not to be so loud, and puts a pillow above my head to keep it tight there, so it would swallow my screams. But I scream and wrestle more, I do it now because I cannot breathe, and then I pass out. _The Old Drunk_ panics, he starts shaking me, maybe even slaps me on my face, so to wake me up, which I do. He is relived and so he continues raping me.

* * *

Once at home after school, my mother and my sister and I were talking about the drunks and that we kids had to protect ourselves by sleeping with her in her bedroom, and about why to do so. I caught that we were talking about sex, and about rape, whatever those thing meant to me at that time. So I said to my mother that during the days I was bleeding from my butt (i.e., anus) because of what the drunks are doing to me, she dismissed the whole thing and changed the topic.

* * *

Once _The Old Drunk_ forced himself to come in my mouth, I don't really remember how it all came to be, but having his load of sperm in my mouth, he saw that I was not swallowing it – something that he wanted me to do – thus he began bashing me and demanding that I swallow. But to see that I made him angry and upset by not swallowing this load, it then made me more stubborn not to do it. I don't exactly know how it all went or what he did, but I remember him standing there for a while, and bashing me and insisting that I should swallow. He maybe beat me with his belt, but whatever he did I didn't swallow. I felt strong and empowered when I did not apply to his demands, something I had always tried physically to do, but never succeeded at before.

Eventually he got tired of arguing with me, this he walked away with me still having his load of sperm in my mouth. But I was scared that he would come back, so I did not dare spit that sperm out, but instead I kept it all in my mouth so long I heard the sounds of the drunks behind my door. When this slime began to run down my throat, I coughed it up, but up to my nasal passages, so I had made it worse. Now this acid substance caused this stinging pain all around my throat. I was in pain, but I heard noises from the kitchen, thus I dared not to spit it out. Finally I heard the front door slam and the silence to arrive, now I dared to spit all that sperm and saliva out somewhere on my floor, maybe on my carpet nearby.

The next morning my mother comes to wake me up for school, it seems so that I'm late again. But while stepping into my room she recognized somehow the pool of slime on the floor, she responds to it with her regular delusional complains, "I told you not to spit inside, you have to stop it."

* * *

Another crazy morning complaint – after another night of torture – was that I have to stop sleepwalking because my room was always in such a mess. This she also represented as one of the excuses to my teacher's enquiries why I had bruises once in a while. This was at a regular teacher-parents meeting with my 5th and 6th grade teacher. He asked my mother if that was my drunkard father who was doing this to me, or if I was getting into fights outside of school with some neighborhood kids? My mother firmly dismissed this because she didn't want any further enquiries into the matter, so instead she offered her own version that I was sleepwalking a lot; or that I was running in the woods too much, and that's why I had scratches and wounds all over my body. My teacher wasn't really buying this story and thus told her that if the bruises continue, he has to report what he has seen. That, that was his job as written by law. My mother is a bit shaken but nudges understandingly and says that there is nothing to worry, "Boys are just boys."

And so again, she gets off the hook.

While walking back home, in that dark autumn evening, she reminds me that for now on I have to stop sleepwalking and running in the woods, because I am causing all these bruises by this. I guess I said, "Okay, I will stop sleepwalking."

* * *

Once _The Old Drunk_ was beating me with his belt, as I remember it, he kept saying, "Don't tell to your mother about this."

I shouted back, "I will, I will!"

And so he keeps beating me until he gets tired and goes away. Maybe he needed a drink? But related to that night, or a similar night, at school, at the gym class, in the changing room, some of the Swedish boys noticed my red scars on my back. They ask me were they come from, that is my father beating me, sort of like theirs are beating them.

First it was hard for me to grasp what they were talking about, but my Finnish friend by my side translated what they were saying, but further he also pointed at the red cuts or wounds on my back. Though still confused about what was being talked about, I went to the mirror to have a look at my back and at myself, but there in front of it, this crazy thing happened. Every time I turned my back towards the mirror to look at the claimed cuts and wounds, the sight of my back at the mirror disappeared in front my eyes. I saw nothing, nothing at all. I saw not my back or the claimed scars. I saw just fuzziness or a cloud of something. I looked back at my Finnish friend across the dressing room and shouted through the locker room whirlwind, "I see nothing!"

I couldn't see the wounds, which they were talking about.

But he and the Swedish boys pointed at me and at my back, and so I turned my back again towards the mirror to have a look at the alleged cuts and wounds on my back. But again the same thing happens, again everything disappears. I see nothing, nothing at all, just fuzziness. I stand there, so to a couple of times, turn my back back-and-forth towards the mirror, which resulted always with the sight; my back disappeared in a cloud of fuzziness; but then when I turned my back away from the mirror I saw the reflection of myself again. I understood that this was really crazy, and that I am better off just to put my clothes on and walk away and leave it as it is.

* * *

Indeed, there was no escape for me, when I myself couldn't rationalize what was being done to me. I remember a couple of nights opening the front door of our apartment, to test myself, to see where I could go – 3 a.m. in the morning. I wanted to leave, leave for good, though I didn't know where to go. I was standing there in my pajamas, in this project house corridor. I looked east through the big windows to see nothing but the nighttime forest out there. That forest was my only rescue, but undoubtedly a rescue from worse to bad. Run where? Should I climb up some tree, and stay there in my pajamas?

I had nobody to turn to, nobody to talk to. Nobody cared of a stuttering foreign kid trying to say something that he himself couldn't formulate. I walked back in and closed the front door after myself.

* * *

My mother caught me by the corridor once or twice. She might had because of this come up with that sleepwalking thing, and maybe that was what she honestly believed it was. When I was 5 or 6 years old, I had a period of time when I ran off from the kindergarten premises. Once I walked with my buddy to the nearby train station (1 kilometer downhill) and asked there for a train ticket to Finland, but we were caught. (The ticket sales person enquirer from us about which kindergarten we attend, after which he, or she, called them.)

My parents complained to the staff that I didn't like it at the kindergarten, and that's why I wandered off so often. But _The Brunette Swede_ replied that I didn't like it at home, and that's why I take off. Both of my parents were astonished to here this, both of them refused to accept the comment. They even complained about it to our relatives later that summer.

Indeed, there seem to be fine line between schizophrenia and simple stupidity.

* * *

And what about the money? Remember our family was rigid poor: the father was a drunk and didn't like to work, but not just that, he stole from us, whatever little we had. My mother comes home after a long days work, comes home knowing it was not forth it, the husband will steal what she had earned. So when _The Old Drunk_ gave her that money, she took it with an anger, she wanted to even up the financial burden. Not that she wanted her children to "work", but she wanted the foolish husband to take some responsibility. If he drinks and brings his gang over here, so to bother us during the nights, why not have them rape his son - this she must have thought.

I remember once in the local grocery store: Just about as we are the next customers to pay for our groceries, I ask my mother about buying me an small toy car. And to my surprise, she says "Yes." I was astonished, we didn't spend money on toys, we spend money on food (as well on booze, of course).

But further what I remember was that strange look she had, the look I seen her have before. The same stiff look she had when sold me to _The Evil One_.

She had to have pitied me after all the troubles I had experienced, and therefore allowed me to have that small toy car. Troubles which allowed the family to buy several bags of groceries – now – end of the month. A strange slide of memory: me holding the car, looking up at my mother and seeing her with that strange stiff and pale look, and my father close to us wondering how come we have the money to buy all these groceries, AND the toy car.

This wasn't the only time she behaved like this: after the rapes ended, she boosted our social status by buying and new TV, VCR, and a Game Console, and some other minor stuff – perfectly for Christmas. My father asked, "Where did the money come from?"

She said, "I went thoroughly through our accounting and found this money forgotten."

My father remembered this miracle even some years later, I remember him telling about it to some of our relatives. While he was doing that my mother had that strange look at me again, though it was not pale anymore.

### Letter 28

The night I was raped for the last time came about the following way. Earlier that day, at school, we had this special day again. It was about, we the older kids taking turns in visiting the younger kids in their class, to sort of mentor them with their school work. Days like these always held embarrassing moments for me, because most of these younger kids where better at their school work then I. They could read and write and do their math, and they were 7 or 8 years old, and I couldn't and I was 11. But not just that, they would be sitting there staring at me until the eventual question, "Haven't you learned to speak yet?"

Asking this related to my stammering.

Indeed, unconformable moments, but unconformable to the level that these experiences eventually formulate my will to do my homework, so to I would learn how to read and write, which I finally did in my early teens.

Finally the end of the day had arrived, and we gathered for a group conversation lead by our teacher: One of the girls – of this junior class – shares with us that her parents are not her real parents, but they are instead her adopted parents. That, she doesn't know who her real parents are. She seemed to be all cool with this, and the teacher let her share this story without interruption. I on the other hand was mesmerized about this. I wondered to myself how this could be possible. I knew of African kids or Asian kids being adopted, but not a Finn, not someone like me. It really blew my mind.

At the end of the day, I then head home with my friend with whom I always walked the route with. As we walked, I began to talk about this adoption issue, which puzzled me a lot. I don't remember what my friend commented to me or what he knew about adoption, but I remember concluding already there, to him, that, "I want to be adopted to some other family."

It was a issue that excited me a lot.

At the end of our journey we separated with the usual byes and so went to our separate homes.

At home I found my sister watching TV in the living room, which was sort of unusual because usually she was not around at all, or at least she would be locked-in in her room. So I shared the story about what I had heard at school with her, and that, "I want to be adopted, and to move in to some other family." And in specific, that, "I will talk about this with our mother when she comes back from work."

But she replies, "If you do that, she'll go crazy."

But I didn't listen to her advice, I was too excited.

The time went by and with the evening my mother arrived home from work. She had had a long day as usual. After finishing her shift, she been commuting for maybe an hour, and then walked 3 kilometers uphill to get home at 5:45 p.m. My sister had made the food, but she has already eaten. This was her way of not spending dinnertime with us. The pale dinner consists of potatoes and fish-sticks with white sauce, one of the staples in our household. My father is nowhere around, and this caused a-sort-of quite before the storm atmosphere. I remember that calm from many nights, not just from this one. Though I sensed that storm, I am happy and joyful. I have, after all, a solution for my life. I want to be adopted. By the kitchen table I am the only one eating, but I am watched over by my mother who is sitting by my right side. Maybe she ate faster or ate nothing at all, I don't know.

Eventually I start to talk about the topic of the day about how one girl in the junior class is adopted. And how can that be possible? My mother starts explaining that some parents can't take care of their children, and that's why some children move to other families. I ask her, "Can non-African parents deemed to be so bad that they lose their children too?"

She starts explaining, that, "Yes, also children from Nordic parents can move to live with other parents."

"Also, Swedish parents, also Finnish parents?" I excitingly ask.

"Yes, they can be also," she answers.

I point out of the kitchen windows at the houses in front of us, "Even children from that house?"

"Yes," she replies.

"Even from that one," I point at some other nearby house.

"Yes," she answers.

"So how about me, can I be adopted?"

"What do you mean?" she asks.

"Can I be adopted? Can I move in with some other parents?"

I might have given some examples of some parents to move in with, like the parents of the girl who was adopted, though I can't remember this for sure, I can only guess that I did.

But obviously my mother is astonished of what I had just said, so she asks me again to repeat myself. And in my child naivety and in a no-worries-monotonic tone I tell her, "I don't like it here. I want to move out."

After which I continue eating my dinner as if nothing special has been said.

My mother gets quiet and numb and doesn't ask any further questions. She finally got what I was talking about, and that I have been sincerely serious about it. Hence, she stands up and walks into her bedroom leaving me eating my dinner alone. At the moment I didn't get what had happened, so why bother myself with it. I am after all in a happy mood now, which doesn't happen often.

I don't remember exactly how it evolved, but it might have been that after had finished my dinner I called my mother to help me with the dishes. Because eventually she then steps out from her bedroom and doing this in a bewildered rage. She immediately starts yelling and screaming as I never seen her before. With her big eyes and red face, she bends herself over me to scream, "So you don't want to live with us anymore, well fine, so learn to do your own dishes!"

I am backing off and tell her, "No, no... I want to stay with you. I want to stay here, I don't want to move out."

But she continues screaming by giving orders how to do my dishes. Orders that I'm trying try to follow, but I fumble and shake so I fail; so she screams more, and now I vomit because I am so disturbed by this scene. I have never seen her so angry and bewildered – maybe heard, but not seen. But seeing me vomit, she only insults me further, and thus roars that now I have to clean this disgusting mess up, too. Luckily I had aimed at the kitchen sick, but I still somehow fail when trying to flush it down the drain. My mother screams about this, until I am saved by my sister. She can't listen on this anymore, and so arrives to pick a verbal fight of her own.

"No wonder he wants to leave because you're so fucked up!"

My sister tells me to go to my room, to leave the daunting task of cleaning the kitchen to be. My mother tries to stop me, but my sister sort of pushes me to my room. She is about to leave for the night, my mother clashes about this, but does not have the ability to prevent her daughter's actions. Though before leaving my mother shouts to her that she knows what she is doing out there, her daughter replies, "At least I don't have to sleep with a filthy drunk like you have to do."

"Don't talk about your father like that," our mother can only reply.

I never saw my father drunk on the streets. He never hung around the project area where we lived, but instead wasted his time downtown by the main street. And that was where my sister is now hanging around. What I am saying is that there were more to her words then just the regular insults. She had seen who he really is.

I am, of course, shaken by my mother's screaming, of seeing her red face and boiling big eyes so close to me. It's an unforgettable sight indeed. Exhausted by the latest round of battles, I crawl into my bed without a future, to fall in asleep in a numb state.

But I wake up later that evening, which I wouldn't necessary preferred to do. I mean, is it late enough to stay in my bed to wait for the next day, or not? I chose so. Thus, I put on my pajamas and open my door to peek out to see if anybody is around. I see no one, as suspected, my sister is gone, my father is still out and my mother is bunked deep down in her bed. I tip-toe to the bathroom to brush my teeth, after which I head back to my bed to await what comes next.

* * *

During the nights when I couldn't sleep I had learned to play with my fantasy in a couple of ways. In that dark room of mine – from my bed – I would look out of the window to stare at the stars and at the moon, after which I would close my eyes so to let the stream of light stay in the pitch black background. Then when I would see these trajectories, after having sort of established them, I would open my eyes again. I'd try to have these lights float around in the ceiling. It was an ability that I further extended to have these trajectories of light autonomously produce different kinds of objects above me, often silly military hardware, like tanks and planes, etc.

During the nights I also heard the sound of people and things that weren't there. There were – and there are – two types of sounds; one that pop up close by my head (a "hey" here and a "hey" there, or some random children's voices); then there are similar sounds, which similarly pops up once in a while, but doing that inside my head. These latter ones are the ones that make you easily doubt your sanity, though their irregular appearances have saved me from any significant doubts. But in my childhood this might not have been the case, I remember complaining about these sounds to my mother. I expressed them to be – to my mother – something similar to a football game on TV, irritating meaningless voices. Once she had to prove to me in the middle of the night that the TV is not on, that there is no football game going on. This made my mother puzzled to the extent that she noted this phenomenon to one ear specialist who I was regularly seeing because of my often inflamed and painful ears. He rightfully suggested a mental evaluation, which turned my mother's face into that numb twist of hers; it was something that indicated a state of self-selective amnesia and that the topic ought to be forgotten and not be spoken about.

Now, without help, I began to counter this sound phenomenon with allowing music to play in my head. I imagined some black American band that I had seen on TV to play some random songs from the back of my memory; these songs then went on by themselves, and so long as they did, I did not hear that football game anymore.

This was how I spent my sleepless nights waiting what was to come, and then of course, to make it worse, sometimes I was impatiently hungry, too.

* * *

Eventually I hear the front door open and my father arriving with his crew of drunks. There lying in my bed listening on their heavy sounds, one bang there, some other somewhere else; I shivered in fear when listening what these giants are doing behind my door.

I was so scared that I saw this floating mist sneaking in beneath my door. I looked at it and there it was, floating about a meter above the floor, moving slowly but steadily deeper into my room. It was a one-dimensional layer without depth. Slowly it spread almost from wall to wall, that is, from my door almost all the way to the window at the opposite end of the room, but never above me and never touching the wall opposite to me. It had this distinctive and unforgettable color – black, red, brown and yellow – which were slowly shifting back and forth between each other – in other words, pure fear, right there in front of me. Every loud sound, every bang, every step behind my door, shook me to my core.

Lying on my bed, listening to this, I pondered on my mother's reaction of my will to be adopted, to move to some other family. Angrily she had shouted, "If you want to move out, then it is better for you to learn to live by yourself."

I took it all literally, and therefore from now on I had to be in charge of my own life. Not so that I can one day move out from the house, no that was too far away, but because I was now living alone without allies. As I saw it, my sister seemed to walk in and out as she wished – she is not home tonight either – my father, on the other hand was a drunk, and could care-the-less about me. And now my mother, too, had cut off her ties to me. So what was there left for me to do, then to try to run my own heroic life? Based on these thoughts, I get of my bed to open my door to walk into the world of these drunks.

It's night but the light is on for their convenience. I let my eyes get used to the light, after which I see my heavily drunk father sitting by the kitchen table with two other men. I take my blind-fated steps towards them only to be greeted by a meaningless drunken hurray, "Look who woke up!"

To note, this is all remembered in third-persona.

I don't recognize the man on the far left of the table, but it I see it is _The Old Drunk_ , the rapist, who is sitting by my father's left side. Sitting there to make sure my father drinks his booze to the last drop. _The Old Drunk_ is joyful to see me and happily remarks about my pajamas falling too low down my pelvis.

My father comments, "I keep telling him, if he didn't have a penis he would have his pants by his knees all the time."

I lift my pants and take a couple of steps towards them to deliver my message that they ought to be quiet; but before that _The Old Drunk_ welcomes me with his outreached arms, arms which I dodge by pushing myself closer to my father. My father is severely drunk, maybe the most drunk of them all, if not counting the man in the corner that I now spot on our wooden bench, sleeping off his toxic state.

To note, because the angle which my third persona is in, "it" cannot see the man on the bench, so I "see" his dark shadow in first persona. Strange.

I tell my father and the other men by the table, that, "I can't sleep; you're too loud, could you please be quiet."

But they just laugh it off.

My father who is in a snoozing state one moment and awake the next, manages to tell me in a playful and foolish tone, "Go and sleep with your mother."

See, this is all a joke for him.

But I counter, "She won't allow me, she's angry at me, she wants me to be by myself."

"Nonsense!"

My father barely manages to reply before passing out in a mumbling state.

While I learn to accept that he is not waking up, despite my wishes to do so, I recognize the two drunks by the table talking to each other. Undoubtedly, it's something about me, and undoubtedly something sinister on _The Old Drunk_ 's behalf. I leave them there – I don't want to engage with them, instead I turn around and walk to see my mother instead.

I walk to her bedroom door via the living room, not straight from the kitchen where the drunks are. But now standing there by her door, I ask myself is there any point in this? See, I know her well enough that despite my wishes, she won't let me in. But because my father had suggested for me to do this, I therefore go ahead and knock on her door, and then I open it. The lights are off in her bedroom, and because my eyes are accustomed to the light I see nothing. But I know she is in there, therefore I ask that darkness, "Mom, I can't sleep because of the drunks, can I sleep with you instead?"

I don't see her shape; I see nothing, though I hear her reply: "No, you don't want to live with us, so it's better for you to learn how to live by yourself."

I say nothing; I knew she'd say something like that, so I close the door.

But what next, I wonder? Where to go, to whom to turn to? I had no answers, I couldn't even ask myself these questions, I couldn't formulate the reality of what will happen when I go back to my room and lie down on my bed. Instead, I stand there to stare again at the night-time forest behind those big living room windows, if I would just dare to run to it, but I dare not.

I seemed to have feared death more than rape.

*

Caged by social norms and by my own fears,

I came to terms how life works,

that obviously in my case it didn't.

And so I was ready to hate life, hate you and myself.

The next morning in the wealthier suburb down below, the docile suburban flag was to be raised, all due the baby sleep they hade the night before.

I who wont sleep to nigh, will because of that, not be there to salute your flag.

I hate you all, and all the thousand nuclear bombs you have made.

*

My only option was my father. I walk back to the kitchen hoping he would be awake and able to do something, though the odds of this were slim. In the kitchen, I find the drunks similarity situated as earlier, though by walking closer to them I recognize my father being clearly passed out. I see him sleeping with his head on the table. I push him by his shoulders in intention to wake him up, but, of course, he doesn't.

_The Old Drunk_ questions me about my mother, I answer that, "She doesn't like me, she doesn't want me in her bedroom."

I wonder now what he thought about this, because he knew my mother better than many of us. He tells _The Other Drunk_ that he will take me to my bed and make sure I fall asleep with the help of some goodnight stories. To this _The Other Drunk_ simply nods his head, and so _The Old Drunk_ leads me to my room to close the door behind him.

I don't remember what he does, but whatever it was and however long it lasted, it lasted long enough to bring suspicion to _The Other Drunk_ , because he eventually comes and peeks into my room to witness the assault that is going on. (I have no other idea of who _The Other Drunk_ was, other than being one more drunk, so I excuse myself by calling him _The Other Drunk_.) He is, of course, shocked at what he sees and _The Old Drunk_ , as usual, instantly whines and begs for mercy.

_The Other Drunk_ screams and shouts so everybody would wake up, but nobody responds; therefore he runs to bang on the bedroom door, to wake my mother up, he maybe even pulls a leg or an arm of her; but she doesn't wake up, its take a bit longer time to motivate yourself for a reality where your partner in crime has just been caught raping your son. Therefore, _The Other Drunk_ runs around the house screaming and shouting in an attempt to try to wake up the rest of the drunks – including my father – all while keeping an eye on _The Old Drunk_ who tries to leave without noticing. They fight and rumble, which leads _The Old Drunk_ is whining on the floor, crying about HIS sorry state: "I'm sick, you know that... I can't help myself."

After have been twice or trice bothered by _The Other Drunk_ , my mother eventually understands, that she has to come out of the bed and join the brawl. Though I bet, that both my mother and _The Old Drunk_ knew intuitively, that it would be best for both them if this rape is kept as a random singular incident, rather than anything else. So with this in the back of her mind, my mother joins the brawl in an accelerating phase, to eventually shout the obligatory: "Call the police, call the police!"

Or least someone did.

I was in my bed listening to this, I don't remember how long it took for the police to arrive, but I do have a slight feeling that during the brawl and chaos that ensued _The Old Drunk_ slips away, but was soon after caught somewhere nearby. Eventually I heard Swedish voices, meaning the police had arrived. By this I knew it is all over, that I will not be raped anymore. It couldn't happen again, now when people outside of the family have intervened, but lying in my bed I saw this fundamental scene in my mind.

I saw a portrait of the Swedish Royal Family;

the kids, the king and his German queen,

_all posing, smiling and happy._

Although I knew this would be the last time I'd be raped,

I knew also – in my guts – that nobody cared what had happened to me.

See, only when the king and queen share a tear, now that's only when someone cares.

*

Outside of my room the chaos continues and by now social workers of some sort had arrived – I think so anyway. Someone throws in the question, so how about me, how I am? A sort of silence falls, because who's going to open my door to have a look at me? Eventually a policeman of some stature opens it, but not to step in, but instead only to stand by the doorway, to ask from there how I am. I reply, "I am alright."

Though I am little bit confused because the only thing I see by my door is a headless man with red eyes, looking straight at me.

I don't know what he saw, but he closes the door and tells the rest that I am alright and so the chaos continues.

A translator tells the police that the rest of the drunks (maybe in singular) are planning to kill _The Old Drunk_. The police, on the other hand, are trying to figuring out where my older sister is, and what to do with her when she comes back? And to increase the bizarreness of this night, my father seems not to have woken up for the brawl, this will dawn on him tomorrow morning.

The time drags on and so someone gets tired of the chaos and so the whistle is blown – figuratively speaking – and an order comes. The drunks, including my father, all are ordered into the drunk tank, and nobody stays behind, except me and my mother. By this the brawl ends and the house quiets down.

### Letter 29

It's only me and her and this silence that the tide of destruction has left behind. The time moves on and I'm lying in my bed, not knowing what to do. The lights are on in my room, maybe the policeman had turned them on, or maybe I did it myself later. I ponder that I can't lie here on my bed forever, and thus I decide to stand up to open the door to peek out, to look at what is going on. The lights are on all around. I see through the mirror – hanging on the wall opposite to me – that the door to my sister's room is open, and I see her room is empty. Meaning that nobody is in our apartment besides me and my mother, who I see is sitting straight ahead by the kitchen table. Either she hasn't recognized me or doesn't dare look at me, either way I decide to walk towards her. Eventually she turns her all crying look at me, but not for long, and then again she turns her sobbing face down. The dreadful soul that she is, is for sure only thinking about herself and that's why she is now crying. But standing there by her side I feel the necessity to comfort her, isn't she after all crying? I tell her, "It's all going to be alright."

She doesn't respond, but instead gives herself one more moment to think.

That I didn't choke on some piece of a toy when I was a kid, that I didn't break my neck when I supposedly fell down from the kitchen table, that I wasn't strangled in my bed by some random rapist, that I wasn't dragged out from the house to be tortured, killed and dumped in some ditch. That your son didn't die, although of all of your efforts and wishes that it would happen, so what are you going to do about it? Are your going to learn to live and let live, or to do something else?

Crying there while holding me on her lap, she concludes that her best card to play is the savior-mother act of this all rotten family. In other words, she appoints herself to be someone who has battled this alcoholic husband all along, someone who ultimately brought his son rapist into his home.

"What have they done to you?" she says, and I can't remember it in any other way then in a plural term. "You smell just like them."

After holding me in her arms for a while she throws me into the shower. There I see myself bleeding blood down my legs, I take it as having a cut or a wound somewhere in my lower back. I ask my mother about it, that can she see it. She says, "Yes," but takes a couple of steps away from me, away from the horror she co-opted to take part in, the expression on her face testifies this.

I don't really remember much more of that night, then to be finally put into my bed with the help of my mother's kisses so to finalize this mad life of mine.

* * *

I wake up the next morning to see some glimpse of the sun, but, which by I knew I was late for school. I jump out of my bed to open my door, but to my surprise I see my mother by the kitchen table. I mean, shouldn't she have awakened me for school? Confused of this I ask her, "I am not late for school?"

She sort of nods, but says, "It's alright."

I wonder, "Am I sick?"

She says, "Yes."

Which puzzles me, as I don't feel sick? Thus I ask, "Is it my ears?"

She sort of says, "Yes."

"I am I going to the hospital?" I wonder further.

She confirms that, "Yes."

Oh, I think for myself, So nothing special about this.

Unsuspectingly, I follow her orders to go with her to the same old hospital where I been so many times because of my ears; but it's a different unit and suspiciously I can't see any other patients, matter of fact, none at all. I just see an empty corridor and a few staff people who are walking back-and-forth to the reception area and to my soon-to-become inspection room. Further, I see that these young women are looking at me with a new look that I haven't experienced before. It's a look that changes when they turn to look at my mother, who stares at the floor rather than to look back at them.

We are called upon by the receptionist. She is in a senior position, compared to the others – the others who have (been) walking back-and-forth – she is also has a different kind of aura compared. As if, she is a non-judgmental aunty, who has done this before.

Eventually I am called in by the doctor to enter the inspection room and I see a bunch of people in there, but I still have no clue what is going on. I see the doctor, a young guy in his 30s sitting on his chair. I've never seen him before. The young nurses, maybe four of them, all squeeze themselves behind the corner, which is behind the doctor. My mother takes her seat in the opposite corner of this relatively big room, by this she is all by herself.

I have no clue what they are talking about; their Swedish is too fast for me and besides my increasing suspicion of their intentions blocks it all out. With the help of my mother some nurse pushes me behind some curtains, which were set by the right side of the door that we had walked in by. There, I am ordered to undress myself and to put on the robe that was handed over to me. I do as I am being told, but I get increasingly nervous when it becomes obvious even for me about what is about to happen.

They order me on this awkward chair where one cannot sit anyhow. Therefore they tell me, to sort of lie myself on it, by my stomach, leaving me in a bent over position. I am very nervous about this, and I protest of being laid down on the chair. But one thing leads to another and so I find myself lying on it, in that bent over posture. I feel the doctor taking my robe off, so to look at my behind, and it all feels like I'm being raped again. I look at my mother sitting alone in that opposite corner of hers, and I scream to her, "Why are they doing this?"

Some nurses translate this to the doctor.

I don't really remember anything else, except the doctor trying to keep his cool while making his inspection, after which my memory blacks out.

* * *

Next thing what I remember, is about coming back home to an empty house:

I see blue colors down the corridor, symbolizing this new begging. The lamb has been sacrificed, and we have reached our bottom, even my father was finally ready to stop drinking, although not instantly.

I remember – strongly about – being alone with my mother for the next few days, though know thinking about it I can't understand where my older sister would have been during that time. Maybe she's with the family of her best friend, I don't know? But eventually she was there, too, but also wondering where is our father. My mother answered, but I can't remember what she said. Now I would guess that it was rehab he was put in.

At these same times we can safely guess that the authorities were all around my mother, this so because a court case was coming. I needed to be interviewed, but to do that a psychological evaluation of me was first needed.

* * *

I was, of course, surprised of being at my counselor's office again, see, I had no clue what was going on around me.

I questioned my mother at the waiting room about our business here, but without gaining a clear answer. (If it would have been given, I am sure I would have blocked it out for the sake of sanity.)

The client before us was a Finnish mother with her young daughter, who while passing us by shared proudly to her daughter that she is good enough to start her school next autumn, at regular age and not a year later. Does this mean it is spring, I don't know?

The receptionist calls my mother – sort of shouting from her room – that it'll be the same counselor that I had before, "As I trusted her!"

My mother smiles pleased, and I soon will tell you why.

When called upon, we walk into my counselor's office. My mother and my counselor have some casual chit-chat. I take it so that the question of who is going to evaluate me is still unsettled, which then becomes a topic for them. Not long after we had sat down, someone knocks on the door, and an older man peeks in. He has gray hair on his head and a humble pleasant look about himself. He asks us, "Is my help needed?"

I beg there silently that he would take me away from these mad women, and permanently so. But my mother and my counselor says in one tone, and with a remarkable synchronized short laughter, that "no" that they have it all set from now on.

And what can he say, then "okay," and so he walks away.

I had this gut feeling right there on that spot – and later my suspicions have been proved correct – that that was my final and last moment where some pieces of me could have been saved for my future life, but instead it was so ruled that this shouldn't happen. See instead of being healed and resurrected, I was to be sacrificed to the convenient and the plausible side of life; and my counselor didn't hesitate a moment about volunteering to be guardian of this ruthless ritual. That's why my mother could not be more pleased about having her associated with me.

Sitting on the right side of my mother in front of the desk, which behind my now-to-be counselor was sitting; there I had a splendid view to witness my cunning mother selling her plausible story of an alcoholic father causing all this trouble, and she supposedly been there all along heroically battling it. And my counselor, my mother's sister in arms, simply bought this. Though to her credit, she did remind her of the rumors that I might have been raped on other occasions other then this singled incident, and if so this would look pretty bad on her.

"Meaning?"

My mother enquired.

"That you could lose your son."

Hearing this, my mother loses her act somewhat and for a moment or two she begs for mercy and understanding, that, "This cannot be true... not possible at all."

Indeed, from a criminal perceptive my mother was never anyhow successful in the art of cunningness, especially if confronted by an authority figure, she would always stumbled and stutter. But my counselor was not a private detective that was someone else's job, her job was to evaluation the matter of whether I could I stand trial or not.

* * *

Not that same first meeting, but some other session, my counselor had arranged some naked dolls by her couch. She has this big room, and she had a couch set at the other end of this room, all which I had surprisingly not noticed before. This one day, when I sat there by her desk, as usual without worrying she tries in different ways to lure me in reflecting on my past, but I said nothing and so dodge any serious topic. But eventually she tells me to get up and walk with her towards the couches. The couches behind us, which are turned away from us and set to form a small square. I do as been told.

In my boyish unsuspicioness I walk fast enough to leave the counselor a couple of steps behind me; maybe she stayed behind on purpose. Still, I haven't recognized the dolls, placed on the main couch, but the counselor sort of calls me and I turn towards her. Now I see the dolls and I freeze straight. This is because now I know that they know, and they know that I know, and they want me to talk about it. But I didn't want to do this. I freeze. A horrible feeling sets in, a state of panic or something similar. For a while I say nothing, or maybe just mumble. She keeps asking about the naked dolls in front of me, but I don't answer, if I did, I only mumbled. By time the shock eases and now I catch my thoughts again, but I consciously decide I am not going to talk.

I knew what she was talking about, she was talking about sex between adults and children, but I could not formulate that topic to fit my experiences. I had experienced something else; I had experience horror and terror. I don't really know what would have helped me at that point? Maybe if she or someone else would have put the spotlight directly on my mother, maybe then I would have told "them" something, I don't know? Or maybe if there would been anyone else rather than she, maybe then I might have also – talked? See, I knew very well that my counselor and my mother synced together, maybe not much, but just enough for me to be suspicious.

* * *

They were both almost identical in age, both Finnish immigrant women in Sweden, only some years of student dormitory life put them a light year apart of each other. She had written during our earlier sessions that my mother was in one way taking care of three children, me, my sister and of her childlike alcoholic husband; my mother, too, had partly confessed that this had put a toll on her. Thus, the aim of the sessions had turned away from my mental health to my mother's growth towards the ultimatum, "sober together or not together." A message she could only deliver if she actually meant it.

My counselor saw right there in front of her that the drunk father was the problem and that his drunkenness has to be dealt with one-way or another. This wasn't in itself a wrong observatory, especially when the passive father at the sessions had allowed her to draw any picture of him. But by putting her focus on my mother's growth, my mother became an overworked working-class female hero, disempowered by several generations of alcoholized masculinity. In her feminist core, my mother was the poor man's poorer wife, who was disempowered and trapped by past cultural norms. Eventually the parasite husband needs to be confronted, so why not start with feminine class empowerment straight on.

Bad luck for me that this is based on a Marxist believe that the disempowered individual has no accountability about his or her situation. See, the warrior woman who married the alcoholic man is as sick as the man she married. There is no-way around it, how else can you make such a foolish decision? Remember you don't love somebody because of who she or he is, you love him or her, because of who you are. And so my counselor was blind to see my mother's true alignment in the family; and by this she became one more of my mother's criminal follies, and thus I dared not to say a word to her.

* * *

So what else could my counselor conclude when seeing me there speechless, with no apparent recollection memory of being raped? Thus, the case was closed from her part. When my mother was called from to corridor to hear this, she was visually relieved. It was not just because I would not stand as witness at the coming trial, but of course also because now this mayhem was to be white washed as one singular incident and to be blamed upon on _The Old Drunk_ solely. On the same relived breath she questioned my counselor about my future, and how will this all fall upon me? She sort of answered, "You know how children are, they just forget the bad days, but this will eventually come up later in teen life, especially when interest in sex arises."

My mother acted sympathetic and interested a mood that rapidly changed when being suggested to call my teacher and inform him about recent happenings, because this all might surface surprisingly at anytime, anywhere. My mother initially resisted this and tried to steer her away from this duty of hers. I don't really remember what she argued the problem to be, maybe just that it would be too much of an inconvenient thing to do, because I feel to remember my counselor volunteering to do this phone call herself, which of course led to my mother's eventual agreement to do the requested call. Remember the same teacher that she was about to call, had some months earlier asked my mother why I am coming to school with bruises?

To note, my mother never went again to parent-teacher meetings, but sent my father to meet my teacher instead. Humorously to make my father do this, she smooth talk him numerous days in advance – she made the dinner and cleaned the house with a smile on her face, not with that angry resentful look that she usually had – but then when the mission was accomplished, and the meeting was held, the endless wars could start again. A sort of sinister Roman truce one could say.

I was booked for some more sessions then this, but my counselor eventually deemed any future appointments fruitless because I was not sharing anything meaningful to her; and so my meetings were canceled. But she told my mother, "To call her anytime if anything comes up."

I remember my mother specially wondering, "Anytime?"

To which my counselor affirmed, "Yes."

* * *

I was relieved of this new phase in the family. I was cleared of the trial, the rapes had ended and the atmosphere in the house was peaceful, and eventually my father came back. I can't say for how long he had been away, but I would guess that about a week or so, but not more than a month.

Compared to the other similar evenings when he'd pop up out of somewhere after being away a couple of nights, I remember this one special evening when he arrived specially reserved about himself, not surrounded by that drunken foolishness. Now when he stepped in he hung his coat up, but instead of greeting me he turned straight into the kitchen to see my mother; although I was sitting on the living room floor straight in front of him. But neither did I jump up to greet him, no way, why would I do that?

See, the feeling was mutual apathy:

Who is that, oh, the son who I could care less about?

Who arrived, oh, the father who didn't want to protect me?

And why did he even come back, why didn't he just leave to never be seen again? I would probably have done that. You know, men have left their families for less.

To note my father never came back from the kitchen to greet me or to support me, he was as distant as he had always been, or will be in the future.

I heard my father asking my mother about how I have been and what had been going on. I don't really remember the exact words that my mother offers to him, this so because my mother had taken my father one step farther into the kitchen to tell him the news that she is the new savior mother in the family.

And this act became a serious thing for her, almost as she wanted to help me. The phone call that my counselor asked her to do, if something comes up, she did. She called my teacher and her sister in Finland, about what has happened in the family, also as advised by my counselor. She ordered that I should have special attention in the family as advised by my counselor, and to prevent me having any abnormal association with family bondage or love; it was advised that my parents would regularly give me goodnight kisses, something which had not been done before. This lasted maybe couple of weeks, until my father became too rebellious and shouted during one of their fights, "I can't French kiss my children every night, it's too abnormal for me; it hasn't been done in my family."

When my father stopped kissing me, eventually my mother stopped as well.

To have me associating with my suppressed memories of being raped, my counselor suggested my parents to look at this one foreign movie together with me. The story was about a young girl being abused by this one older man – a neighbor of hers – someone who had this cute small dog, which the girl had been taking out in the afternoons. None off the adults around her knew what was going on, and thus they couldn't guess why she is acting so numb and sad. The movie ends with the girl tying the beloved dog to a pole by the beach, to have it then drown by the incoming tide. And my father, the child who he is, loudly cries and asks, "Why is she doing that?"

My mother tries to explain to him how come, so to calm him down. Indeed, the single mom with her three children.

### Letter 30

This savior act of hers had to have been pressured a lot when my father relapsed again. I remember this episode the best as I was a bit older by now, although still childish enough to suggest to hide our valuables – money saved for food, pennies that we the kids had saved for candy – in the desk that the small black-and-white TV was standing on. This I suggested because I assumed the small TV being too heavy to be lifted off the desk and therefore our money being safe inside the desk. But my mother and my sister politely denounced the idea and hinted that my father will have no problem with lifting the TV off the table. Although their polite suggestions I never really understood how come the money would not be safe inside there. I felt my idea was superior.

But this "last" relapse was different than the others; it had a different aura around it. Partly because of my mother didn't fight him, but instead within the limits of her abilities tried sincerely to discuss with him what his options were; but in equal importance was my father and how the recent happenings had affected him. The whiney drunk who he had always been, was now also the man whose son had been raped, and who knew, if believing the rumors on the streets, several times so. Therefore, in this perspective, how was he about to squeeze himself back into his gang? How to do this, when to the point of my last rape he had a running tap of endless booze because this had ensured the rape of his son? Compare that to where he is now, with his last paycheck and the pennies he stole from his poor family? In other words, he was a nobody even among the nobodies, and therefore he had to come home so to be wasted in front of his family. What a fool, what a waste of booze he must have thought, or at least should have thought.

My mother was disappointed rather than angry, therefore she doesn't start with a fight, but instead she tries to talk to him; though, of course, she is cursed away.

My mother who had been listening to every word that the local authorities been saying, for sure knew what was at stake: either it was he drunk and they divorce, or further engagement with the authorities, or he sober and they staying together, and case closed. Needless to say she wanted that case closed scenario. Thus, she asks my sister to go out for a walk and to take me with her.

It's about 9 p.m. and I wonder why we have to go, but without getting any answer from anyone. By the elevator I ask my sister, "Are they getting divorced?"

She tells me that she doesn't know.

Divorce was a complicated topic for my child mind, though it was a topic that now-and-then surfaced within the family. How could they work it out, that my father would live somewhere else and I would then be visiting him on some random days, but then come back to live with my mother, this I never understood?

*

I don't know for how long we were out, maybe a half an hour or close to an hour, but not much more, because it was cold and dark outside. I still remember looking at our 5th floor kitchen window, with its the red curtains outshining all the others pity dark blocks; then turning my look at my sister who is looking at that same window for any signs that are we supposed to come in or not. That sign never came, thus after we had reached our deadline – which I feel to remember to have been 9:45 p.m., – my sister decides to go back in.

When we step in we are greeted by our mother who really didn't have any other news, than that our father is whining and crying in his kitchen corner; therefore she ordered us to our beds. After that cold hike I had no complains to jump in my warm bed, though only to listen from there on my parents further discussions. The rape of me is a topic, so is the future of the family. My father rambles something back, although occasionally relieving himself a bit further. I don't really remember what they exactly talked about, but my mother is insistently digging into my father's mind, so to know why he is drinking, and eventually I hear him shouting, "My son will be a homo."

My mother scolds him for talking so loudly on that topic, but also insists that this might not at all be the case, because so had "our" counselor said. She further continues with some detailed words that my counselor had said – about this topic – but I can't hear what it was. Eventually I fall asleep and that would have been it, if my mother would not have awakened me to hear my father's news. I am dragged out of my bed, to find myself looking with my sister at my father crying, who is sitting on the kitchen floor holding his head down.

"Tell your children that you promised to stop drinking."

My mother tells him.

But he – just – cries without daring to look at us.

"Tell your children that you promised to stop drinking; tell them what you told me."

She repeats herself.

After which he says, "I promise, I will never drink again."

After incest, rape and torture, I felt myself more of a spectator rather than a participant. In other words, did anyone care except for my mother? And besides he cuts himself a bit short after all the troubles he had caused us, doesn't he? My mother, too, was waiting for something more, but she was satisfied after being allowed to continue the scene with some rap of her own, after which I was back in my bed waiting for a new day and a new adventure.

### Letter 31

So you see, we can bet she liked her new role in the family. Her drunk husband sort of get sober with the help of couple of 12-step meetings, doing that all while holding on to a job, a job he surprisingly confesses he like.

It was a small company doing some heavy duty maintenance work, it was a company run by a Finn. Once I even went with my father to visit this boss of his; he showed us his home and an under-construction-light airplane that he had in his basement. As I understood, the boss even trusted my father enough to discuss the possibility of he buying himself into the company, simply by labor, this because he was about to retire and his son wanted to continue with his own businesses. But my father couldn't handle it. He had no ability to handle criticism not to mention professional criticism, so it all fell apart. And, of course, he blamed his wife for this rather than himself. Wasn't it by her order that he had walked away from that job, so to take a job closer to home.

But back to my mother: During this same time my parents had signed me into some after school activity organized by some state program, the topic was nature and wilderness. It seems so that the state – or better said the municipality – was forced to offer a Finnish language interpreter if enough Finnish kids would join the group. Therefore, the interpreter called around the local Finnish families so to encouraged the parents to sing in their kids on this program, something which my parents did. So now with her two Finnish kids – me and another – in the two dozen strong group, her neediness was secured.

My mother, who had just won her husband's surrender, is walking around seeking verifying certificates of her gloriousness. And this interpreter of mine, if I can call her so, although being somewhat distant to me was somewhat trusted by my parents. Trusted maybe because of some past history that I don't know about, but for sure also trusted because being distant to us, we weren't a sick and disturb family from any angle if looked upon.

So to her, my mother goes and says that I, the son of my father, had seen my father crying some nights ago and that could she talk about this incident with me, "Because it has to be troublesome for a son to see his father cry like that?"

And, of course, she agrees on this, but therefore buys into what my mother is selling, which is her feminine savior act. And, of course, as any shopkeeper out there, my mother capitalizes on that sold product; in other words, she stockpiled more lies for future use.

*

But part of that product, that lie that my mother was selling out there, was me, me as an psychological and physical entity; but me as my mother molded me to be, that is, a survivor of a singular rape and son of a recovering alcoholic father and a son of a savior mother. I was not a former underage sex slave who was pimped by his mother, which would be my true self, no I was that something else, something that fitted my mother's own world view.

*

See, she had to have known by now, that through all the torture and suffering she had made me endure, I had survived with a blank spot in my mind. As any brainwasher out there, she have to have understood, that she might as well implant her version of the truth in that blank spot of mine. So just as an example – just as an example – being there now discussing this topic of my crying father with my after school care taker – the interpreter – the session became nothing but a crime scene orchestrated by my mother. The purpose being, the motive of the crime was, to have me bite and chew on that vicious venom called her plausible truth. In this lies the fundamental core of her will over my life, that I would progress to live my life through a soulless identity; so I would prepare myself as an true idiot, as an true servant of Moloch, for my own suicide mission; which would be nothing but a loser life in my mother's basement, jerking off on kiddy porn.

### Letter 32

It was spring, a nice day, when we the kids from school had been assigned by our teachers to bicycle to some rendezvous. Once there we would be met by some police-men who would teach us the basic of cycling in traffic. When we arrived at this meeting place, which turned out to be the nearby church, one was confronted with the reality that the parking lot of the church was not big enough for all the 100 bicycles, and thus the event seemed to become a chaotic ordeal rather than anything else. But negativities to the side the Swedish boys thought when they saw the policemen and their gear, and bravely they went to have a chat with them and a common laughter ensued. I didn't like this. To my friend I share my critique of this surrounding chaos and admit of being jealously about the policemen only talking to the Swedish boys.

Eventually the police men started they're lectures of what to do and what not to do in traffic. They took aside a Swedish boy and a girl – one by one – to cycle through a small track set by bright orange traffic cones. Standing there looking at this, I see one of the policemen pointing at me while at the same time saying something to his nearby colleague, who seems to confirm whatever the topic was. And when looking at them, I feel that I recognize him, or them, from somewhere.

As the next cyclist was to be chosen to ride the track with the assistance of one of the policemen; the policeman who had pointed at me just a moment ago points again at me and walks towards me to pick me through the crowd as the next volunteer to cycle the track. He didn't really ask me, but rather grabbed me, to lead me out of the crowd, while was holding my big adult-size bicycle.

I was very clumsy riding the short track set up at the parking lot. I had an adult-size bicycle set on too high a gear, and the track had turns that were too narrow. But no worries, the policeman – who had chosen me – was holding on to me while he was running by my side; running by my side while lifting his pants every second step so to prevent his big belly from popping out from underneath his shirt. There supposedly listening to his Swedish advice on how to maneuver in traffic with my bicycle, I am only thinking about from where do I know him?

After had finished the route, he let me go and I went back to the spot where I had been standing with me Finnish friend. Our Swedish friends, the boys around us, were talking about the honor I had to be picked up by him just like that, but I didn't really reply because I kept looking at the policeman in my urgent wonder as to where I knew him from.

I didn't go back to the policeman after the event was over. The event was too chaotic to allow that to happen; and besides even if I would have recognized him from where I knew the policeman from, I would not have dared to go and talk to him. On the other hand, what was the policeman's intentions concerning me? We can only guess. I'm sure he saw me being swallowed by this big swarm of kids on their bicycles, all leaving towards their respective homes.

On my journey home I proudly informed my friend, to whom I had earlier criticized the event, of all different details and advices that the policeman had given me, with the impression that I supposedly had understood what the policeman said to me, which of course I hadn't. My friend kept listening to me with the same face he had been listening on all of my earlier imaginary nonsense during the past years.

Back at home my mother was waiting for me by the kitchen table. I don't know why she was home and not at work; she had to have taken some sick leave for some whatever reason – migraine, muscle pain, or bad temper or whatever illness a remorseful soul offers you. Immediately after having kicked of my shoes somewhere in the corner of the corridor, I start to share my story about the policemen that I had met at the local church. But because I was so excited, I as usually stuttered a lot, and therefore she couldn't understand what I were talking about. I try to repeat myself. I tell her that some of the policemen recognized me, and I them. My mother doesn't get this and therefore asks me to repeat myself again, so I tell her, "I met the same policeman who had been here, when you were trying to kill each other."

I was referring to my mother's and my father's nightly knife fights.

Sure, my stuttering was bad, and especially is so when I am excited, but funny how my mother just couldn't grasp this violent side of her.

To note: The knife fights continued to the point where my mother decided that for now on we wouldn't have butcher knives in the house, but only bread knifes (this was before my existence). Once, years later, when the family lived in Finland, she even admitted half-jokingly by the Christmas table that they – i.e., she and my father – would have killed each other long time ago if there would have been a butcher knife in the house. After this nobody complained about cutting the Christmas ham with a bread-knife.

When hearing this, she now calls my counselor to tell her that I came back from school talking about some policemen that I had met during the day, and who I knew because they have visited us – the family – during some night; that it has to be related to the night when I was raped. My counselor replies to this message, "Okay, bring him in."

Therefore off we go to meet her again.

At the offices of Children and Youth Mental Health Department, the meeting takes place without much delay. My mother and my counselor ask me what had happened during the day. I tell them the story about seeing some policemen at the church, who I recognized because they had visited us during some night when my parents were trying to kill each other with a knife. I had to repeat this story several rimes, so they would finally encrypt my speech out of my stuttering and understand what I was saying.

My mother tells my counselor that she doesn't know where this is coming from, that I been talking like this all the way from the bus to the office. My counselor responds by suggesting for me to draw this acclaimed fight scene, and to do this she hands me a piece of paper and some color pens. Fine by me, I thought, and so I start drawing a scene with two big characters: my mother and my father facing each other, my father a bit lower positioned compared to my mother, my mother with her arms up in the air holding a bloody knife aimed towards my father. At this point my mother jumps in to deny such an incident, but my counselors tells her to let me continue, and so I give my finishing touch on the bloody knife, and by putting myself as a small character below my parents. If I remember right, I draw myself on the right side slightly closer to my father rather than close to my mother; therefore she up there all alone in her bewildering rage.

When my mother was allowed to tell her side of the story it went from pure denial, to admitting rough fights, to, "You know how it is... he attacks me and I have to defend myself."

A false testimony during which I sit tight on my chair keeping my mouth shut. How my counselor responded to her I don't really remember, actually I think she saved herself for the private one-to-one meeting. But now retrospectively looking, this session became the session were I the most exposed my mother's insanity compared to all the other sessions, and to further remark this was done by drawings. But sadly and predictably, this was about to become my last visit to my counselor. I never saw her again.

But before leaving my counselor asked me to do one more drawing, now one about our family, sort of a family portrait. So again I began drawing similar big characters of my big parents and me as a smaller person somewhere down below them, and that's it. After a moment my counselor wonders, "So what about your sister?"

I look confused at her, because I didn't know what she is talking about. Therefore she repeats herself, "Where is your sister?"

I lift my shoulders and look at my mother in wonder. Gesturing, what is she talking about? My mother repeats the question, but uses my sister name and only now I understand what they were talking about.

"Oh, my sister" I reply. Now I draw her somewhere in the right lower corner of the picture far away from us all.

But what is there to dwell on, the family was dead a long time before I was born. The center of the family was their fights and the topic they fought over, that is, lack of money. My sister left the family at age 13, I left at age 27, neither of us has any interest in going back, but neither do we have much interest in staying in contact with each other.

After she turned 13 she did not just turn her back on me, but also became sort of mean to me. One day after school she was there shouting to me, bashing me and saying that, "I am ugly," a freak sort of, "that I'll be one of those who will be bullied a lot at school." (Referring to junior high, classes 7 to 9).

In her view, she was the one who is fighting back, at home and out there on the streets. And she saw rightfully that I would never do that, thus by her estimation, I will perish after leaving the safety of the Finnish language elementary school. I knew this as well, we all knew it, but what was there for me to think about it. My perish was to come when it was to come.

Though a sign of my increasing inner fears was my ever-increasing stuttering, which took a violent turn during the winter of 1989. Now I was relying on a self-feeding neurosis to be able to speak. I began clapping my palms, or shaking my arms, every time I tried to speak, I couldn't help myself. So every time I tried to say a word, I needed to go through this spastic ritual. This lasted until the next autumn, when I met this pregnant speech therapist in Finland. Some way she made me find some inner peace and – sincerely – suddenly overnight, I learned to read and talk significantly more relaxed. I don't have much space to speculate how come, more than that I liked her. She had other things in her mind than my mother; she was pregnant, but eventually she left for her maternity leave, after which I never saw her again.

### Letter 33

After the rapes in my early puberty I became more of the loner that I am now. I disconnected with my childhood friend as much as I dared. Not that my friend minded this – he had become more interested in his kissing cousin rather than listening to my increasing imaginary world – it was my mother who I was a afraid of and her possible comments of my new lifestyle. Therefore, I tried to keep my personal life as hidden as possible.

But with this new found freedom of not being accounted to anyone or anything, I head straight into the nearby forest to enjoy myself. I felt free and the sense of loss of time excited me. For example, I knew this nearby Viking burial mound, straight east, but it was one notch too far away and I always lost my track before reaching it. We had found it with my friend, but he didn't want to go back as it was too far away, but now I could go there. I had no restrictions, I was alone.

It was some weekday evening that I decided to go there, though as I said, I really didn't know where it was, but rather only knew the direction to it. Therefore, I decided not to rely on landmarks but instead I decided to simply run fast enough so the sun, which shined through the tree tops, would not move too far to the right; by this I assumed I would then eventually stumble upon the mound, which I knew laid straight east. I ran past the nearby know territories so I saw unknown trees pass by. This brought me the fear of getting lost, but I didn't stop because I knew I was far too deep in the forest, that I would be better of navigating back home from the mount rather than from anywhere else. I continued my ecstatic run, which upon I relied my courage, and in that state I successfully found myself at the burial mound. Though relieved of my success, I saw there was not much to do here that to kick at the moss-covered rocks, but doing that it then lead me to find this aluminum arrow; this, of course, inspired my childhood mind.

While holding the arrow in my hand, I felt I had achieved enough from this journey and spent enough of time at the mound. I thus decided to head back home, which wasn't anywhere hard as arriving, as how would you miss the project houses, though something I had done a couple of times.

While running back, I kept pondering about the arrow. How would I introduce it to my mother, such a foreign object out of the ordinary, and aren't arrows sort of part of some weaponry? I could suspect my mother's logic about this.

In third persona memory I remember myself being there on the kitchen floor, susceptible to my mother's supremacy, who while stewing the family dinner by the electric stove, judged me to get rid of the arrow. I smile like a trained puppy, who knows to get treat after a successful trick. Though opposite to the puppy, it was my own obedience that I lifted to be the highest reward. She was the supreme goddess, ruler of the universe, and I, do I need to mention, was her only true follower.

About the arrow – the argument was from her side that I cannot be allowed to have a sharp object like it in my room, because I would scratch whatever furniture I had with it. From my mother's poor-man's perspective everything had a value, thus nothing was to be wasted. That day I'll grow out of my childhood desk, that day the desk will be sold secondhand to someone poor, like us.

I had no second thoughts of not obeying her order. Therefore with a cultist smile I tell her: "I will take the arrow back to where I had found it, but, it is too far away to go there right now. I'll go there within next couple of days, when the weather and schedule allows me to go there".

She agrees, although sadly she barely notices my radiant obedience.

The next couple of evenings I remember keeping the arrow on my desk and being spellbound of the word where it came from, which was boys with bows in their youth chasing squirrels and birds. I had none of that; I lived in my cave, which was sealed by my mother, who is sitting behind my back, behind my door by the kitchen table, hell-bent staring at her piling bills.

Eventually the evening arrived when my schedule allowed me to go back to the forest to return the arrow. But on this journey I became annoyed by this impossible obedience, and the cruel neglect of my personal will, to the level that I hesitated to go any farther than the last known rocky hill. And finally there on this top I was ready to admit that I had lost my strength, as well as my courage, to continue farther. Now I felt a sadness engulfing me, now when I understood what I was about to do. That I was not only throwing away the arrow, I was also in my fullest intentions about to seal that other world, which was full of adventures and joys. Because these were things I could not be part of, so had the gods decided, so had my mother told me.

### Letter 34

In 1988 or 1989: I found myself watching some daytime youth movie on public TV channel. It was a Turkish movie. It was about a gang of boys with all the similar characters to any similar movie. Therefore to cut the story short, in one of its final scenes the tough boy in the gang, the overweight one, was able to save some smaller kid from a burning garage of some sort. He could do it because he had on this jeans jacket, which further had a rock band logo on its back. He came running out of the house with a small girl in his arms, all while he's back was on fire, but no worries because he had this magical jacket on.

I was inspired about this, to see a tough kid like him doing something good. This didn't fit my world view at the time, though kids did bad things, so had my mother said. I told my father, with whom I had been watching the movie, that I want a similar jacket, "see how protective and useful it is."

But while fixing his tobacco pipe he dully replies to me, "You know how your mother is, she will never allow it."

I was astonished to his openness, it felt as if he was saying, "I am just acting when you mother is around, otherwise I think she is fucking nuts."

During the years I got numerous, "You know how she is," comments from him, or not to mention from my older sister, who stated her opinion about this matter privately and publicly. Contrary to them I never allowed myself to think that way, I never did; instead I just sat there and obeyed her in all matters. It never dawned on me, that I was free from the very start.

### Letter 35

In 1988 or 1989: One early evening I caught some Swedish talk show running on the TV. The hostess was an all-in-one journalistic representative of the state that she worked for; and her guest was this young man with long blond hair and a black leather jacket on, brought to display because he proudly proclaimed himself to be a Satan worshiper.

This is late 80s Swedish public TV, thus no commercials or thrills.

The hostess was armed with her long list of acceptable rules and principles, which we all were supposed to live by, and she threw them all one-by-one at her guest accordingly to her plan. But he, the Satan worshiper, sat there and listened and said, "No." I can't really remember what he argued for, but I do remember that he was a well-spoken young man and did not use profane language at all. This surprising display of soberness the hostess was not prepared for. I felt so, that for her, the most disturbing thing about him was his lack of gospel in his testimony. He didn't need us; we were out of his equation. Unable to use her cleverness to pick her guest apart – something I guess she had done to other guests before – now instead she seemed honestly surprised and speechless. She kept the show going on with allowing the random who-ever-from-the-crowd to stand up in turns to say their two cents worth on the matter, though even they couldn't be bothered by this well-mannered satanic. He had risen above us puny miserable's; he knew all too well what we stood for, which was hypocrisy in its purest, and now we knew that about ourselves.

This is what I – an 11 year old – interpreted they're dialogue to be, a dialogue that he won and they utterly lost; thus, of course, I was to follow his glorious path. I wanted that mystic aura that he had about himself, I wanted his strength to say that big, "Fuck you, to you all." How else where I about to break my bondage with my mother?

Occult magic, as I call Satanism for my part for now on, was a perfect suit for me. It was not something you proclaimed door-to-door or to strangers passing by, least not for me, for me it was a nihilist smile about your troubles. Troubles that I have no compassion for, just like you did not have compassion for me when I was tormented. What a perfect suit it was, that my sick mind would now worship its self, but more than that I had an ideology which told me to do so.

### Letter 36

From age 10 to 12, I occasionally dwelled on suicide and its possibilities, but my child mind told me that children were not allowed to kill themselves, and therefore neither was I. But, the stories from Japan, about children there killing themselves puzzled me a lot. So when reaching age 12, I allowed myself more weight on this matter and so I firmly began pondering about suicide again. To note, why I wanted to kill myself that question barely bothered me, I just wanted to die.

During this time I formulated a final thought, based on the resources available suicide would best be done by either by hanging myself or by jumping on to rocks from some of the nearby high trees. Therefore, I collected different kinds of ropes, while at the same time I taught myself how to make a hangman´s knot. At home I tested these ropes around my neck, but further, I climbed a couple times to the highest possible top of my favorite tree. There I tied one end of the rope around some of its branches and the other end around my neck. There I would then dangle – while holding tight on some branch of the tree – and wait for the next blow of wind, which would excitingly push the branches randomly away from each other, and so the rope would tighten around my neck. But I had to stop this game, I was scared of the cuts the rope's was causing me, these would obviously bring questions.

About the ropes I collected and played with. I learned the best ropes were the ones that were meant for pulling cars with, these where thick, elastic and soft, but I could only get my hands on very short pieces of these. Instead, I had plenty of narrow plastic ropes, but – as I've said – they would painfully cut my skin when put around my neck.

I reasoned the second best option to be, to throw myself onto the rocks from some of the nearby tree's. One tree in specific had caught my eye for this purpose – it laid on the north side from our apartment block. This tree was a majestic pine tree, but opposite to the others it grew alone on this rocky hill. And because this tree had fewer branches around itself, when I climbed up on its top – or rather, as high I could go – I recognized, that I was easily entertained of thoughts about accidentally dropping down on those bare rocks far below?

The tree on the east side didn't allow these thoughts; it had too many branches from its bare root to the top. So I figured, if I would jump, I would just tangle myself in those branches and nothing else. But the tree on the east side had a straight view towards our project house, which the tree on the north side didn't have. Indeed a incredible view to hang myself by. Though I still didn't know why I wanted to die, I truly didn't. Sure, my mother was part of the reason somehow, this I could admit, but how much or why, this I could not rationalize.

* * *

But these suicidal thoughts came to an end. I remember that day, it was a spring weekend. The weather was somewhat decent and my parents were free from work. There was this fight going on, a common regularity before the family took off to any day trip or any bigger journey. It was always something to fight for. It was my mother who did this again; she had again picked a fight with her husband for whatever vague reason she felt she had. Retrospectively what else could she do, this morning or any of the countless similar times? My mother had to be there shouting at us. Any inner voice, if asked, would had said to her that no one of us wants to go anywhere with her, that we all hated her to our innermost guts. (Though of course my father's relationship with her is much more complicated than that.) So that's why, today or tomorrow or any other countless family mornings, she had to be there screaming at us. Until we would, so to speak, move our asses.

Because my teen sister had gained power within the family hierarchy, she had made it clear that she wasn't coming with us today, and neither will any other time soon. My father sure wanted to go to the cabin he had built; but not with us. He had his castle upon the clouds that needed to be redecorated, and to do this he had to be by himself. I on the other hand wanted to be left alone, nothing else. I was envious of my older sister's age, which I assumed to be the reason she was left alone.

As time dragged on and the fight continued without a sight of easing, I sat on the living room couch frustrated about being forced to come along. So I thought about, What to do? I had already helped to carry our stuff to the car, which we had once again acquired. (I think permanently for now on: in other words, my father was not caught drink driving anymore, and, did not ruin the family finance with his drinking). Therefore, I figured that there was no point for me to sit around here and wait for them; so I tell the others that I be waiting outside instead, which sounded good for them.

But instead of hanging around the family car as expected, I run straight into the nearby forest and straight to the northern tree, the one growing on the bare rocky hill. There sitting high above the ground on one of its thick branches, I recognized that I was again entertaining the thought of jumping down onto the bare rocks below. I can't really describe my thoughts in detail, maybe so because in that childlike age there might not been much rationale thinking, but rather just feelings.

But after had sat there for a while I hear my mother screaming from the parking-lot above, "Niiles, I know you are in the forest, come back straight away, we are leaving now!"

And it dawned on me that, She has to be nuts to scream like that. To roar. I mean if I heard her maybe 500 meters into the forest – maybe more – then everybody else up on the hill – where we lived upon – had to have heard her too. And by having her insanity finally exposed like that, her superhuman stature began to crumple, because I now saw that she was nothing more than a bewildered being.

I don't know did I actually produce such a rational thought about her, at that time, at that moment, but more or less emotionally I did. Emotionally my feelings told me that she was not an unbeatable beast anymore, but instead, she was a lunatic person, someone who is screaming after me up on the parking lot. When this dawned me, I didn't feel myself that weak anymore; more than that, I felt I could overcome her! I knew in my heart, that the toughest part was now in the past, and that I will survive my next couple of years whatever is thrown at me. And besides – there on the tree – I rationally thought that I wanted to see the future, rather than to die now; that I wanted see the space ships of the future and the Mars colonies. That truly, someday I'd be living in the year 2050 and who knows what will be going on then; and whatever it was, I wanted to see it. And now I was ready to climb down the tree, and leave my suicidal thoughts behind for good.

### Letter 37

This tree that I planned to hang myself was by high marks my favorite tree in that nearby forest. At this time I visited it almost every day. And from somewhere I came up with this idea of planting one bright orange plastic ribbon upon its highest branch. And after had done it, to my surprise when I went back home, I could see this ribbon from all of the windows that were set towards the east – from my sister's room, from my room, and from our balcony. Sometimes I lost the sight of the ribbon, though eventually – I guess – the winds twisted the upper branches so that the orange ribbon was seen again. This was maybe 1987 or 1988 when I tied the ribbon up there.

* * *

In the summer of 1990, the day had finally arrived when the family would be leaving Sweden and moving to Finland. We had all of our stuff in cardboard boxes, and most of the boxes had been carried down to the lorry. I saw my father sitting on the balcony smoking his self-rolled cigarettes, assumable for the last time before we would leave for good. I walked over to him to find out what he was thinking about. It was a really nice day, a clear blue sky, and the orange ribbon could be easily seen in the nearby forest. I pointed at the orange coloring in the forest, and said, "Do you see it."

He says, "Yes, I do." and continues after a break, "I been sitting here many years and been wondering what it is." and pauses again, "Probably it is some kite, or something stuck in the trees by the boys down there."

Pointing at the wealthier suburbs down the hill.

I hesitate first about replying, but I feel that I have to. I say, "No, I put it up there. It's a plastic orange ribbon that I once found by the road."

"Ooh?" he says.

Then there was a silence. I said nothing; I only stood there for a while and then walked away.

The truth of this scene, which isn't that clear – example my new found mother here in Iceland didn't get it either – is that while my father had been escaping his family duties with the help of his obligatory cigarettes, and been there pondering whatever clever thoughts smokers have while smoking. That orange ribbon out there had become part of his environment of privacy, maybe even a symbol of that. But all to the moment when I, the son who he never wanted to father, the son who lived in the next room to that balcony, tells him that he had put it up there. By this, I had invaded his space and his escape. So what was there left to say, when I got the impression that he, too, knew what that orange ribbon meant for us both, and so I walked away. Rosebud.

### Letter 38

August of 2008, I was visiting my childhood neighborhood for the first time by myself. I dared not ring on the doorbell of the people who now lived in the apartment where I had been living all through my childhood. I didn't want to bother them. I stood behind the door for a while pondering about should I, or should I not, but I didn't. The door had a warning sign that reptiles live in the apartment; the sign had a big snake on it. Imagine that there might be a giant anaconda living in my old bedroom now; it can't be more symbolical.

Earlier the day I had wandered in the nearby forest, there I found my eastern tree, the tree that I had planned to hang myself by. The forest had not changed much. The wealthier suburb had expanded only a couple of house; the highway that was to be built within the next couple of years, was not there.

In the forest, only after had looked around my shoulders to see if there were any people around, I dared to climb up the eastern tree with the intention to search for that orange ribbon, which I had tied up there some 20 years ago.

While climbing up the tree, the branches of the tree felt the same, though just thicker. I wondered if I was just imagining that or was it actually true. When getting near the top, I saw more and more that there wasn't any of that orange ribbon up there that I was searching for. But instead, when nearing the top branches, I spotted a dry dead branch high up on the tree facing the direction of the project houses where I had used to live. I reckoned that that dry spot had to be near my past favorite spot. While further climbing higher, approaching these dry branches, I recognized a green thin plastic rope tied around that dried out branch. I understood that it had to have been some leftover rope from years behind, that It was part of the rope that I had planned to hang myself by. But, because it had felt too thin and painful, I seemed to have instead used it to tie the orange plastic ribbon onto the tree, and there it still was after all these years. I wondered, Maybe I had tied the rope too tight and thus the branch had later dried out and died. But having done that or not, of course I took this plastic rope with me, and I still have it.

When I brought it back home to Iceland, I wanted my closest friends to touch it, sort of to demystify my dreadful past. And because I didn't want to lose it, I kept it hanging by the pole of my window curtains, to be there seen all the time. More than that, when I have the coffee commitment for the local survivors' group, I keep the keys to the meeting place hanging from it, as a dual meaning of the past and the present.

### Book Two
### Letter One

It is the first week of August 2006, I am in Helsinki, Finland. I have just arrived from East Thailand, where I had been 161 days straight, drunk on a hotel room bed. There the owner of the across the street coffee shop eventually refused to sell me his coffee, because of the drunk who he finally understood I was. In Pattaya – a tourist city southeast of Bangkok – this one prostitute didn't want to charge me for the night. That morning I showed her my money and told her, "I need to buy a bus ticket back to Ubon (Ubon Ratchathani) and pay you, but I can't do both."

She offered to buy me my lunch, but I ran away before she came back.

No doubt that I took a beating there (in Thailand). My liver and my kidneys started to rebel due to my alcoholic diet, nothing severe but enough to humble me some more.

Here in Helsinki I am now sleeping on _Filth Instructor's_ floor – _Filth Instructor_ being a friend of mine. He, too, had had been in Thailand the past summer, though only the first two months, after which he had, as any decent person, gone back to his job. My plan was to stay at his small one-room flat for about 10 days, after which I would head south to Frankfurt, Germany. From there I would take my scheduled flight back to Iceland. I had a job waiting for me there – in specific East Iceland – but that job would begin in mid-September, so still a long way to go.

There was no doubt that I was in a mess, that I had troubles. Already in Thailand, _Filth Instructor_ had tried to help me by means of a spiritual ritual that he knew. He asked for permission to conduct it, but I said, "No." By that I left him to be a bystander to my sore spiritual decline.

Although drunk most of the past summer, I had been reading some. I shared with _Filth Instructor_ about my recent Jungian studies and what I had learned. I told him a story about some people living in the most remote location in Greenland, that there these people had never learned to sustain a clerical class, because of the simple fact that they never had any resources to do that. Therefore, they seemed to hold onto the simplest form of spiritual dogma that man has recorded. They believed simply in communication with one's inner friend and that was it. In other words, on those long and gruesome journeys across the frozen terrain, one kept his sanity by simply communicating with one's inner friend, and that was enough to understand the chaotic universe that surrounds us.

In this barely populated and extremely harsh environment, missionaries told of several accounts where one sole person had wandered to their settlement with only one message to share, "All of my family have died, I am the sole survivor of this winter."

The only culture he had left was his inner friend, everything else was gone.

I had been pondering about this. I wondered what my inner friend would look like, if I ever would admit that it existed. To _Filth Instructor_ I said that I had gained a feeling about my inner friend being a mixture of Homo Erectus, the first two-legged hominid, and Nosferatus, the last living vampire - this due to my recent troubles and the wish to resurrect myself. He laughed because he knew I was serious.

See, now penniless and defeated by the drunken orgies of my past, I found myself enjoying long walks from suburb to suburb. I recognized the perfumes that passed me by, I recognized the dry rose bush with their utterly painful looking stings on its branches. Compared to my drunken past, I now saw people running their businesses in some warehouse area, but also the young addict woman – nearby – sitting in the middle of the street, leaning on a parked car. She began following me like a stray cat, but I knew I had to kick her off. _Filth Instructor_ told me, "Good so. If you had brought her here, she would have stolen everything."

Sipping beer at a park – which laid next to where _Filth Instructor_ lived – we saw a local wacko, a shirtless young man, injecting drugs behind a leftover container – left behind by some construction company – but doing that with two young women who looked like overweight library geeks. In one other suburb, during another walk, I saw a young drunk like me, with dirty clothes and blond hair all up in the air, begging some older drunk not to start a fight, a fight he had caused. He whined and cried, "I don't believe in violence, I don't want to fight."

I have done that very same thing, it's patheticness in its pure.

A mother with her big breasts stood on her second floor balcony and shouted to the drunks, "Shut the fuck up! Every day you are arguing and fighting here, can't you go somewhere else?"

All this happened in broad daylight; and every single one who I saw lived on welfare one way or another. I knew I could stay here, too, I didn't need to leave. I didn't have to go back to Iceland. But on the other hand, I knew that I had to, I needed a job, isn't after all the meaning of life to have one?

* * *

At _Filth Instructor's_ floor I dreamed the flowing dream.

It began with an overview of a metropolitan city, with distinct looks and colors hinting something sexual and thus something disgusting and revolting. A detective pair arrives to some rooftop VIP apartment where the suspect was living. The detectives have arrived only for a chat, therefore no accusations are made and no troubles are shared. In the background of this big flat are some people, a servant class one could say. I am lying on the couch making out with a muscular transvestite man. The detective pair is surprised that the drug kingpin, which is me, is gay, which seems to be the only thing they find out during their visit. Therefore, they decided to leave, especially when my hospitality towards them was drying out. After a safe while, after the detectives were securely gone, this transvestite man who had been there with me on the coach rises himself up so to give orders to the servants. This makes it obvious, that he, not I, was the ruthless kingpin, and I had just been a cover story for him.

Fear wakes me up.

The end of dream

I told this dream to _Filth Instructor_ , but likewise myself he could not understand its unconscious nature.

Thought _Filth Instructor_ was two years younger than me, he had always been a big brother character to me. An issue we had discussed, though not in-depth. Although I had told him, that now back home, my transvestite adventures in Thailand should not be kept a secret, it became so either away. Now penniless and somewhat sober, I recognized that I was in no way able to disclose – to him – how awful these drunken homosexual acts had felt. That even the tone of my voice had changed to someone else's, presumably that of some past rapist. So unable to talk about this I instead saw this dream, so I would share what I could.

### Letter Two

After about 10 days of hospitality the plan was to take the bus to Frankfurt, a journey I would begin with a four-hour ferry journey across the bay of Finland to the capital of Estonia. When the ferry took off, I went to the deck to see the water stream from the accelerating jet engines. The engines operated by a certain scheme, or procedure, and you could calculate on which stage the engines where by looking at the stream of water which was being pushed out: a friend had once taught me this, at this very same ferry, but I understood that I had forgotten it all, including the friendship.

*

I disconnect from friends that is well known: Before leaving _Filth Instructor_ s I greeted him by saying, "That this is it then, that I am going to Iceland, but this time I am not going to stay in contact with you."

I don't remember the exact words I used, but he understood what I was saying. And he countered me by saying, "It is not nice to break ties from people after many years of friendship especially after have recently traveled the world together."

I was bit surprised by the comment, partly because of his ability to communicate, but also because of I once again saw that I had meaning in his life.

But I simply shrugged my shoulders and said nothing – in other words, I walked away and our friendship broke down.

*

It is almost as I handle friendship as a business relationship of some sort. See, loneliness has never been an issue for me. So YOU have to compete with ME. I mean, in between you and I is me. And I think _Ruri_ – my mother here in Iceland – has sensed this, therefore she once "shouted", "Promise you never forget me, you can't just walk in and out of people lives. You always have to stay in contact with me, where ever you go."

I said nothing, I only shrugged my shoulders.

But her comment made me think, and on some level I promised myself that I will least try not forget her; sort of taking this as a challenge of some sort.

* * *

To not to get lost in Tallinn – the capital of Estonia – I wandered safely around the neighborhoods surrounding the bus station, and while doing that I had to admit that I was already exhausted of my travels though still being far from Frankfurt; or not to mention Iceland; or not to mention East Iceland where my job would start in three weeks. The close by pizza joint was run by Russian-speaking, long-legged beauties. I spoke Finnish to them, but only the Estonian girl responded with a smile. She was shorter than the rest of the beauty queens, but she had this sexy brunet curly hair.

At 11 p.m., I boarded my bus with my fellow passengers who consisted of random people just like me, except for a group of young ballerinas who were heavily guarded by their 21-year-old instructor. When the bus took off, I felt calmness about continuing my journey, in my relaxed mood I became spellbound by the beautiful forest of rural Estonian, perfectly illuminated by the bright full moon.

I fell asleep, and woke up a moment later to witness the sunrise, but also that we had passed Latvia and that we were surprisingly already approaching Vilnius – the capital of Lithuania – and our last stop there. Half an hour later, In Vilnius, the little ballerinas were met by their parents, all while their instructor and the rest of the passengers disappear into the city before I had double-checked my bags. By this I was alone in this ex-Soviet state. I spotted the Frankfurt-bound bus just next to me, I craved to hop on but I couldn't. I knew it was fully booked and that's why I was about to stay two nights in this town. Therefore what else to do than to pick up that 20 kg backpack and go and search for the cheapest hostel in town?

To note: the weather was superb that morning and will continue to be that all through my journey across Europe.

At the bus station I found the small shops closed because it was still too early; by this the tourist information desk did not hand me a city map as I had wishfully planned. But luckily I spotted a map on the wall, on which I saw that the railway station was not that far away; so why not go there in an attempt to find that much needed map of the city?

At the railway station you could still see the night strollers all around; this one woman in her early 30s especially caught my eye. She was knocked out by drugs and was sleeping on the bench in a sitting posture, but was now bothered by the janitor who tried to wake her up. She had a rough face caused by drugs, diseases and recent fights; in other words, she was a homeless prostitute, and only about 30 years old. Why aren't I in her spot, why is she there instead? This I wondered when I looked at her.

While reading my map I am confronted with the reality that the cheapest hostel I knew about is somewhere on the other side of the city. Therefore, there was not much more to think about, other than when to begin my walk towards it. After my hike across parks, rivers and city highways, I arrive by noon at this ex-Soviet youth hostel, which was clearly designed for the internationalist youth of the world, which I felt the ex-Soviet staff was still waiting for; but instead they got me. The feeling was mutual aloofness.

I spend two days walking around Vilnius, during the time I learned that the biggest show in town seemed to be the big joint strip-bar/casino complex, which expressed well the moral state we live in. I calculated my finance and I decided, that no strippers for me today. Instead I decided to walk further, up the hill, by a multi-lane highway towards one of the project suburbs, to see there, for my first time, the infamous Soviet concrete ghetto.

Compared to other ghettos seen, the concrete of these houses was of lower quality and the people living there seemed to be a bit poorer. But they were as drunk as anywhere else, or as drunk as in any ghetto where Muslims do not live. A funny thing was that these concrete houses had an individual entrance wall of some randomly placed rectangular holes, something which I praised first, but after a while I realized there were only three different patterns that had been used in this entire neighborhood.

I left this area to learn that Vilnius had a really nice old town, not as big as Riga has – the capital of Latvia – but more beautiful. I spotted a film crew making a movie there. The women had big beautiful dresses from some past times, I assume from the hanseatic period, the golden era locally.

The next day I learned that Vilnius had this one massive forest reserve with long unpaved walking paths leading to an amphitheater; one could easily imagine the masses walking back and forth to the various cultural events that the summer was offering. I wondered how it all had looked in the Soviet era when this all had been constructed, because now it seemed to wither in prestige.

Finally the morning came when I was about to leave for Frankfurt. The splendid whether continued and I looked forward to continuing my trip on this half empty morning bus, and with amusement I studied the rural scenery offered to me. We arrived to Kaunas, Lithuania's second city, which, spite of being the second city of Lithuania, offered not much more than this dirt ground market place where the bus had stopped. Predictable – but saddening still – during our stop, the other half of the passengers arrived; it included one memorable crew of five lads who walked around in sport leisure suits. The lads took their seats in the back of the bus not far from me, indicating that they had on purpose selected those seats for themselves. (I on the other hand had taken about the last seat available, therefore I situated in the back with them.)

After the one-hour stop, the fully packed buss left Kaunas and so finally we were heading towards the Polish border, but the enjoyment soon vanished when the nice multi-lane highway ended by crossing the juncture to Kaliningrad – the Russia enclave in the Baltic's – now we would continued our journey on the ridiculously narrow highway that was to accompany us all the way to the Polish-German border. With my long legs I had happily offered my window seat to some overweight middle-age Brit, who happily accepted the seat believing it was goodwill gesture towards him. He shared that he would not continue all the way to Frankfurt, but instead would drop off in Poland, to continue from there with help of a budget flight. A clever man, indeed.

In front of me sat a young mother with her roughly 10-year-old daughter by her side, and her some-months-old baby in her arms. The older daughter looked up on her mother with eager enthusiasm, and by every turn wanted to help out with the newborn baby who needed constant care. The baby, as any other baby, spit out its pacifier once in a while, which then by bad luck would land on the dirty floor of the bus; but after having been picked up, and before being put back in into the baby's mouth, the young mother would always suck the pacifier clean. Something I saw her older daughter never daring to try it herself when handing the pacifier over to her; everything else she eagerly insisted to try, but not that. They get off in Berlin. There the father – I assume – was waiting for them. He was a stereotypical short, bulky, East-European man, with crew cut hair.

Other close by people in the bus included a small group of middle-aged laborers, about whom I write something later.

The "soccer crew" had made a promise to make this trip a memorable experience, and therefore was drinking enjoyably before the bus had left Kaunas. Anyone with any commonsense would have seen that such a phase for a 26-hour journey is not going to end up pretty. While resting my legs at some Polish bus stop, I talked about the partying lads to a fellow passenger of mine, a young man in his mid-20s. I identified the lads as football players. The young man replied, after a short pause and an acquired serious look, "They are not football players, they are probably going somewhere to Northern Italy or some similar place, to pick grapes for a living."

Back in Iceland, a year later – One Romanian friend of mine once told me, that if he would be a championship body builder – something which he aspired to be – he would shag the bitches all night long, play in the afternoon, and then in the evening with his friends play with his Play Station. The statement caught me so unguarded, that I never asked him what he meant by that afternoon play.

By midnight the partying of the soccer crew culminated to the level that the long-legged Baltic beauty bus hostess came with her offer, that either she confiscate their booze or they leave the bus, and this is leaving the bus by themselves or have the Polish police carry them out. All but one of the soccer crew was ready to hand over their last remaining liquor, all except their blond leader who began pathetically to whine that the terms were not acceptable.

"Fine," said the hostess and left the scene to have them think about what had been said.

While crisscrossing the ridiculously narrow highway, someone of the soccer crew puked in a plastic bag and the majority of the gang oozed into some form of a sleeping state. In this situation The Blond One finally accepted the terms, when the hostess came back to enquire his decision about the matter.

* * *

Being dizzy of sitting on one spot for about 15 hours and doing that while lingering on this narrow one-lane highway, somewhere around 4 a.m., while everybody else were asleep, I saw that one of the nearby labor men began to play with his mobile phone. Whether it was because someone texted him I can't say, but while he held his phone up after having looked over his shoulder – I in my ooze, two seats behind him – felt for sure I recognized a nude picture of some underage teen girl on his phone.

I felt I recognized such a picture well, because it wasn't so many years ago when I myself spent hours on the Internet jerking off on teen nudity.

How can people behave like this, to expose themselves so openly? I say yes. I remember once reading a story about some British guy who had printed out a nude picture of some 12-year-old-girl, so to keep that picture in his wallet. But one day on his way from work he lost his wallet at the train station, a wallet which was later found and handed over to the staff of the railway station. Surprisingly, some days later the man came back when searching for his wallet, but to be, of course, confronted about the picture he had kept in it. But this man utterly rejected any bad intentions about the picture and instead contested his motive to be nothing but innocence. For him, he said, the picture was simply an expression of pure beauty and something he liked to carry around so he could now and then look at it, to sort of cheer himself up.

I don't know what to say about that, expect that I'm not there anymore. And, of course, I didn't walk up to this man at the bus to take his phone out of his hand, to be able to accuse him with evidence in my hand. Because after such an exhausting journey I might as well have been hallucinating all along

* * *

Being exhausted of the journey I was eventually able to pass out and sleep a bit, though only to wake up at sunrise to see, for my first time, storks with their big nest on rooftops and top of electric poles. Not a common sight in Northern Europe, not at all. It reminded me of _Joseph Campbell_ – or was it _C. G. Jung_ – who said, "We adults all know what the metaphor of a stork carrying a baby means when telling that story to our children", and that I had never known what that metaphor meant.

In my early 20s I was, at one time, smoking dried out poisonous mushrooms mixed with regular tobacco, doing this with various effects. But I did this extensively enough to get a bit addicted to the tobacco. And only then did I understood what the Marlboro man stood for, before that I never had a clue about it: That the Marlboro man was a roughneck man out in the bush doing his hard labor, who would by dusk, when his labor was done, return back home to shag his cute wife. This I hadn't understood, but now I finally did. But, though I had lacked knowledge in this, I have always known why the princess has to kiss the frog so to get her prince. This is because sex is utterly disgusting.

* * *

After being exposed to the narrow Polish highway for about 20 hours, I began wondering about the level of corruptness in the Polish leadership. I mean shouldn't they have built one. This reminds me of a sudden comment by Polish friend about the obvious wickedness of the Catholic Church, when they put their leaders upon golden thrones to preach the damnation of the poor. (Though a habit ended by Pope Francis.) He said this to sort of to throw in his two cents on the matter of the truthfulness of religion. He continued by telling us that the manager of the Polish Catholic radio station somehow sees himself fit to drive around in his Maybach luxury car. My friend never came across as an intelligent person, that's why his words still resonates. See with those couple of truths, he had bombarded a religious dialog we had forced him to listen. Now "we" decided to change our topic to something that truly concerned us.

* * *

When the bus closed in on Warsaw and I saw a cluster of tall skyscrapers build in the middle of the city, now I knew why Poland seemed not to have highways. It was because the men and women who live by usury and deception had multiplied to the extent that they had build those skyscrapers instead.

"When one drives from New Jersey to New York, one has to see that that skyline was built by greed." That was a reference from some of _Joseph Campbell's_ lectures, who continued with the fact that the massive Mormon temple in Salt Lake City is only dwarfed by the next door skyscraper, which holds the paid bureaucrats of that volunteer church.

Did that greedy person get his money out of you, out of your pocket, or supposedly by legit means from someone else? This we usually refuse to answer.

Although of our rationale we humans have a hard time changing a pattern or a habit that we have learned to be a poisonous act for us.

Although of our rationale we humans eventually accept banksters, politicians, and religious leaders; although we know they breed out of us. We accept them to the level, we simply let them be.

We can pity the dog that is sleeping on an electrified metal sheet just because we accustomed it to do so, but we cannot pity ourselves when we are doing exactly the same thing.

By lunch we arrived at Berlin. I asked my fellow passenger, "What city is this?"

Surprised of my question he answered, "Berlin."

So what do I know about, who is corrupt or not?

### Letter Three

After Berlin the bus was one-third empty, so we cruised comfortably across the German countryside, which offered a highly developed landscape with the help of a continuous stream of windmills. Not that I'm against windmills for aesthetic reasons, but how in hell are these things going to sustain Germany's heavy industries? I am surely not the only one to wonder about this?

Frankfurt, at last. The bus perfectly stops by the front door of the main railway station and not by some random bus station in the outskirts of this metropolis. I felt was close to my destination – the local international airport – therefore, in good spirits, I went to search for the nearest kiosk and the city map sold there.

I had no complains about the weather, it was a splendid warm August afternoon with clear blue skies. I sat down by a coffee table on the street, and I saw that the city looked as some undiscovered oversized wealthy Swedish city, including the people, including the Near-East immigrants.

On the map the airport seemed to be about 8 or 12 kilometers away, which felt not-at-all too far away for a penniless traveler like me, whose plane leaves tomorrow morning. With my 4€ croissant, as recovery from a 26-hour bus ride, with my more than 20kg back-pack on my back, I began my hike south towards the nearby airport. An unforgettable hike to be.

* * *

When walking south, towards the closeby river Main, the inner city gave me a 100 percent pleasant look of itself. On the bridge over the river, I saw for the first time these distinct central European riverboats, i.e., long narrow cargo boats. I remember being taught about these boats at school, back in Sweden: That these boats can be run by a family, and their children would be home schooled by their mom all while their father would be steering the boat. The family could have a small car onboard, and while docked to the harbor they could drive that car off to continue their private businesses on land. Funny, how I still remember that class.

After crossing the river, I thought I was in good speed approaching the airport when I heard jet planes taking off nearby. Walking on the right side of this multi-lane highway, I approached some tennis park of some sort. I studied my map to know more about it. I learned that it was somehow connected to a nearby Nike test lab. I turned in and searched for this Nike sport center, but I could not find the entrance or any signs about it; therefore, I decide to leave it be so to continue my walk towards the airport by entering some big forest reservoir.

But before entering this forest, still part of the sport training complex, sits a relatively big inside training arena. This 20 meter or so high structure had its only windows set at ground level. In my interest I peeked in through these windows, to see a long room filled with sport equipment and a row of chairs placed against the wall; but there on the center of the floor I saw a small group of people circling around some blonde beauty. I wanted to see who she was, because wasn't this Nike's world center, so some celebrity for sure, but who? I walked closer to peek in, but still from a safe distance so as not to be seen.

I never recognized who she was, but I did see that this group of people, including the blonde beauty, did face some speaker who was talking from the right end of the room. I felt I could guess the atmosphere down there, but to make sure of my hunch I needed to take couple of more steps closer; which I did to learn that indeed, this lecturing young man was also the only one who was shirtless. And thus was, as I had guessed, flexing his muscles in front of that small crowd of guys who had placed the blonde temptation in between themselves and the speaker.

That sophisticated symbiotic ballet that I saw, made me think of the reason why I am here outside playing my part, and why they are down there doing their part? That maybe if our pasts would be different, our parts would be different, too? Maybe I would be there hitting on the girl and backstabbing whoever I needed so to get her, and maybe one of them would be out here peeking at it. Am I victimizing myself, maybe so, but am I not allowed to do it? Because if you've been through what I been through, or at least been homeless just for a while, it isn't that hard to identify with that street dog by your side, because isn't it carrying its tail in-between its legs for the same reason you are.

With these thoughts I walked deeper into this urban forest away from a world that was never meant for me. I walked and walked while counting that the planes were landing, and taking of, every five minutes, but from somewhere I could not yet see. On the edge of the forest I turned right – I assume towards the west – to walk by a multi-lane highway again, and soon after I found a tunnel beneath the highway, which then lead me closer to the airport area. But a couple of steps on the other side of the highway, just by some backyard gates of the airport, I was turned around by some road crew workers who singed and gestured: You cannot walk into the airport just like that; you should take the subway instead.

And that was it, what was there to argue about? I accepted my defeat and turned around to head back with my 20kg back-pack towards the nearest subway station, which I had passed some hours ago.

But not just defeated, I had also lost my strength and my high-spirited tempo, therefore with my wet clothes, after my high noon hike, I was not able to keep the cooling forest away from me.

While walking back to the city, following ironically the subway track, I saw two deer hiding behind some bushes. Though being urban creatures they were not tame at all, but instead were alerted and frightened of me. By this they felt real and natural, something else that we humans are. I prayed in their presence for love and compassion and for good fortunes.

I found the nearest subway station with ease because I had passed it earlier that day. On the bridge I counted that I had spent two hours to hike from the fences of the airport to this subway station, and that all-in-all I had spent 10 hours in my quest to try to walk into an international airport. My will was beaten to its last breath; I pondered if I can ever rely on it anymore?

After several similar experiences, and now looking back on them, sobriety has become a synonym for good luck, or a guardianship by a sixth sense \- an entity which tries to remind me about an easier softer way, rather than what I had planned to do.

An older friend of mine, a sober man, once told me of his youthful adventures: "I was in London once, I had just about enough money for a train ticket back home. (Somewhere in the Northern England.) But, instead of buying that ticket I decided to go and have a drink instead... I wandered back home two days later."

To have a wish to take two different overnight buses, to stay two nights in Lithuania, to do one four-hour ferry journey across the bay of Finland, to then hike 10 hours through Frankfurt, only to be turned around at the airport backyard gate; when, instead, I could have taken a budget flight from Finland straight to Frankfurt. So what do you call this self-inflicted suffering, than, insanity? And the trip with its troubles wasn't over yet. Not even close.

### Letter Four

After my subway ride, I was bit confused about how to find my terminal of departure because of the construction going on, but, eventually I found it and my one regular sleeping spot that I knew to be there. And behind this big "air-condition system" I feel into a nice sleep around 10 p.m. At 6 a.m., my senses woke me up to the looks of patrolling security, but who continued their ways without introducing themselves.

The morning had arrived and I saw people beginning with their businesses. I saw travelers trying to spot their morning flights from the announcement billboards, and the Financial Times free delivery spot being manned by some German beauty dressed up in her business dress. Business men in their suits passed her by to give her a small chat before picking up that free paper that she had. I with my tail in-between my legs, had to sneak and lure myself to do the same, but only when, when the beauty had left to buy herself a hot drink.

I decided to look around and so walked down to the subway station. There I found more people walking around; many seemed to be laborers, most likely the airports blue-collar staff. In the hassle of crisscrossing people someone was rightfully demonstrating against the U.S. lead war in Iraq, and was now in his turn reminding passing American soldiers of all the dead children they had caused in Iraq. I on the other hand was dawning to the reality of my personal finance, which was that I was nearly penniless. Therefore, instead of eating a breakfast, I decided to continue looking at the people who I saw walking around.

I saw a group of laborers gathering around a small round table. The men were drinking beer that they had bought from the nearby kiosk; some of the men left after that one drink and so left their spot for someone else who arrived soon after; some, of course, staid longer. I saw this one Near-Eastern guy in his 20s clearly having a "screw it" attitude, after which he went to the kiosk to bring back a six-pack of beer. An older man by this same table looked at the lad with the expression, Isn't it too early for that?

It forced me to reflect on my own drinking and about how much I hated to be drunk in the mornings. I would have preferred to be outside and jogging rather than be at home and drunk; and it always puzzled me how come I again chose the latter, rather than the former. Further the scene – at the airport – reminded me of my own personal realities of being pissed before brunch means disaster by lunch. Therefore I pondered, Will this young man be fired from work today?

* * *

But that was what continental Europe had to offer for me, not much more to say about it. After the plane took off, I gorged on the offered breakfast with pleasure, after which I happily landed in Keflavik, Iceland's only international airport. With a naive belief that all my troubles were now in my past, I walked over to the currency exchange counter to give away my last remaining Euros, but to get back only a bit over 5.000kr – ca. 80$ at the time – and only now it finally dawned on me the state of trouble I was in.

See, I still had three weeks to go tills my work would start – a job that was on the other side of this island. One night at the cheapest guest-house in Reykjavik would cost me 2.000kr, maybe 2.500kr. The bus ticket in itself, from the airport to Reykjavik would cost me 1.000kr, a mesmerizing one-fifth of my life savings. Needles to say, it finally dawned on me how screwed I was. I knew exactly how expensive Iceland was. It was an easy calculable fact that I would not have money for even food for the next coming three weeks, and that would be even if I would be fasting in a tent with one meal a day. Even then, in this extreme situation, I would spend the last days on a water only diet. So now obviously, without friends or a family, penniless in a foreign country, I was by far in my deepest troubles that I had ever put myself in.

I walk back to the currency exchange counter to show my Euro coins, which the receptionist accepts only because she wants some exchange money for her drawer, not because of her pity to my misery, no not that. She, as anyone else, minds only of her own business and therefore care-the-less of my suffering. I decide to buy myself the 1.000kr bus ticket, and then on my bus ride plan my survival with the reaming 4.000kr.

In Reykjavik, at my last stop, I decided not to buy the 200kr local bus ticket to the nearest shopping mall, which situated two kilometers away, this because I reckoned I be spending more than 45 minutes at the mall and thus would not be allowed to reuse my ticket. Instead I decided would walk to the mall, while of course carrying that 20kg back-pack of mine. At the shopping mall I head straight to the discount store to buy myself pasta, ketchup and some tuna fish cans, plus a big bottle of soda-water. I bought the bottle because I needed a water canister, not because of its content. I walk out of the mall to take the next bus out of the city, and so was heading north.

At one of Reykjavik's northern suburb, I switch to a bus that would take me farther north, to a small suburban satellite village, which holds only private houses, SUVs and flat-screen TVs, and a slaughterhouse – a slaughterhouse where I used to work before I got fired, now exactly a year ago. The bus passes the slaughterhouse and stops at the village gas station; from there I walk straight to the nearby uninhabited beach, in order to find myself a grassy hill, behind which I would hide myself in my tent.

Armed with a tent that I had bought in Thailand (a tent that I now learn to be a children garden-play-tent where one cannot zip the lower floor); an old worn-out sleeping bag, which a friend of mine gave me back in Helsinki; and my field gas kitchen that I have been carrying across the world and back especially for this occasion. With these tools, I am to experience my first night as a homeless man, suffering as most of us homeless people do, from bewilderedness caused by active alcoholism.

I don't remember if it was that first night or the day after, but eventually I reflected on the reality of where I was and what had brought me to this penniless spot. And it dawned on me, that it was I, I myself who ought to be blamed for this mess and nobody else. That whatever my childhood had been and whatever had happened in that dreadful past, the fact was that I more or less left home age 19, and now 10 years later, at age 29, I had nothing but my personal choices to blame for my troubles. And my buddies back in Finland, whoever they were, are not here to help me. On the contrary, I understood that they were part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Further, I understood that in its nucleus, it was the act, the act of not being myself that had led me to this point. Therefore, I swore to never again be part of my own deception and to always be, or least try to be, truthful to myself.

* * *

My first night; a Saturday night. Though it is August, I am freezing in this semi-storm that is blowing outside of my tent. I ponder of all the countries possible, why did I choose Iceland to be homeless in? I put on about all the cloths that I have, in a vain attempt to keep myself warm in this lousy sleeping bag; but I still wake up about every second hour due to the pain that cooling inner organs cause.

* * *

At 6 a.m. I decided I couldn't stay in that sleeping bag anymore, it was too tormenting for me. In an attempt to heat myself up, I began to stew oatmeal out of oat flakes that I had bought in Finland and brought with me for this purpose. In one hand, I had known that I be penniless and miserable; but on the other hand, I seemed not too been able to predict how much I would suffer.

There thinking about my state I reflected that eight mounts ago – February 2006, still in Iceland – I purposely purchased such flight tickets that I'll have a three-week period in between the date I arrive to Iceland, and before the date the slaughter season would start again. The plan was to hitchhike around Iceland, to sort of hang around up on the highlands, before arriving to this eastern village where I would begin my work. Earlier that summer I had told this plan to _Filth Instructor_ , but he duly commented, "They are just going to ask you to continue hitchhiking."

Back then my deceptive mind refused to understand his comment, and therefore I was shivering now.

Because I couldn't imagine myself staying one more night in this tent, I therefore decided to walk to the house were the slaughterhouse lodges some of its staff. I figured that maybe I would see someone from the past, someone who might want to help me.

I walked in at noon during this nice but chilly Sunday afternoon, and I found my Romanian friend eating brunch in the collective basement kitchen. The little bit loose and distant friendship cached well from where it had ended, me getting fired last year. A topic fun to discuss with a man who is currently living in a tent. I told him that, "I have no doubt of taking my old job back, if it is offered."

He paused to think, after which he encouraged me to ask about a empty spot on the line, "because there might be one".

I immediately thought that it will be my first thing I do tomorrow morning.

More than this, he also suggested for me to squat in the one empty room by the corridor. "Nobody will notice you."

Nobody did, but I dared not to stay around during daytime.

After dinner, behind my grassy hill, I decided to relocate my base camp closer to the workmen's lodge, up on the mountain sloop. It was on the other side of the ring road that circles Iceland. There I found myself psychologically much better positioned than earlier by the beach. Matter of fact, I was spiritually very much uplifted about this position, now when I saw myself overlooking the nearby settlement, rather than being downhill hiding from it.

Close to 9 p.m., - Sunday evening – I felt it was safe to sneak into the lodge so to squat in that mentioned empty room. What a pleasure those concrete walls gave me, I would never have imagined it. The next morning (Monday) I walked back to my old work. I felt straight away that I was somewhere where I should be. By Tuesday afternoon the boss had come to trust me to be a humble worker and so I was given a job. Wasn't I, after all, a man living in a tent. The slaughterhouse supervisor who knew me better than him, and who had fired me last year, was not so pleased to hear that I was back. But what could he do about the decision his boss had made.

On Wednesday, the next day, I went back. I had a job and place to stay and a paid lunch during working days. I had survived once again. And no question about it, that this was all due Iceland, there's no one else to thank.

### Letter Five

In burst of anger, I prayed to god

That there is no god but god and prophet Mohamed is the messenger of God.

I prayed such for three times,

which made me feel an absolute harmony.

I asked myself, is that anger a gift,

because hadn't it made me pray, and caused me this state of bliss?

But wasn't that anger caused by pain and terror,

so was all that suffering a gift, too?

In this state of familiar personal madness I prayed to God to help me with this anger, which was once again tearing me apart. God replied by advising me to look at my books – would there be any help? Of course, I doubted, though I didn't want to leave this sign without a try. My fingers ended up on Rabintranath Tagore's autobiography, I opened it and it read:

On the breast of the shoreless sea,

destruction swings and sweeps, in dreadful festival.

The indemtable wind, above and below, have become one

they seized this tiny toy, seized for their [joy].

I had one question that remained:

What happens to this tiny toy after been played upon?

Is it left afloat to drift, or will it be allowed to sink, deep below?

I pictured above the monsoon thunderstorms that I saw in the Siam state the past summer, that storm of fire up in the sky, which ignored to touch the ground were we the puny ones walked upon.

I told Anonymous about a friend of my who though only being 30 years old, had already been in over 60 countries. Anonymous, an Afghan war-vet from the Soviet era, said, "I envy him – he has no family, no children, he is free."

I never heard anyone say something like that. I thought one was not allowed to speak such things, to dismiss ones family in such a degree.

I read once about a billboard at some prison in India, it stated the following, "Prisoner, who has put those chains around your arms?"

I admit, I have never managed to sit in mediation posture so to try to understand if the world is true or false.

This is my left arm, I therefore exist.

The lie is the truth, the truth is the lie

Eventually I learned that a closed fist beholds nothing;

and that my drunken path had made my life painfully real.

I had obviously chosen the wrong path;

I understood that I had to re-orient myself.

This is my right arm, I therefore exist.

Only a beast or a god can live as a vagabond.

### Letter Six

Although having a job I was still penniless those first weeks, but no worries because the weather turned good again and so I happily spent my time lying outside on the grass, rather than inside bunked without a computer or a TV. I recognized the weekend noon sun having an obvious recovering effect on me and by every moment I sensed my spiritual strength coming back. Water and sun all things grown with these two elements, you can't prevent it. I don't remember how come, but eventually I learned that one can snatch leftover gas canisters at the Reykjavik city camping site – maybe some bums showed me that. I wondered – and still do – that with that knowledge could I have had managed those three weeks, before my job would had begun in east Iceland. See, I had calculated the gas canisters to be the single biggest financial burden.

But not being humbled enough from recent experiences, there in the sun I started to dwell on my own nonsense again. Once surrounded by some flies who likewise took refuge from the wind behind the hillock, I began wondering, that compared to bees, where do flies go after having stuffed themselves with whatever filth they have found? See the bee-wolf, too, follows the bees to their hive, so following the bee-wolf one finds the honey the bees hide, but who do you find when you follow the flies? I reckon you find the lord of the flies.

The problem wasn't that I had these funny thoughts again, the problems was that I always needed to double-check these ideas and thoughts with my few friends that I supposedly had. This chatter of noise, completely pointless stuff, messaged to my fellow intellectual misfits, became a ritual of self-denial when the letters written never had room to spare for my true daily suffering. And so I was again living the act and the act was living of me, exactly what I had sworn about a week ago to never do again.

This is important because the biggest lie was that I was supposedly alright, which of course I wasn't. I was – and I am – deeply troubled by my past, there is no way around it. A counselor of mine once told me – a person who has experienced all the same what I had – "Whatever you chose to do in your future, your past will always affect that choice, so the question is, are you going to allow the past to effect in a negative way or a positive way?"

I believe in this statement truly. Example, a friendship that I now have with a profoundly intellectually disabled woman, who is 10 years my senior, is obviously based on my necessity to communicate my experiences of living in this world vulnerable and alone, without family or friends, just like she has done all her life. Who else but she can truly understand me? I need her, I don't need that white collar job; I need to write this book.

* * *

When my nonsense caught up with me again, soon after my drinking did, too. I got my first salary the beginning of September, but only a salary for less than two weeks of labor; therefore, I had to spend it wisely. I believed I was cool with the beer, but instead I didn't understand that the beer was drinking me.

On October 1st, I got my first full salary and it all went for the local strip-bar scene, with not a penny saved for any future life. What an accident, one can think. But then came my November salary and the same story again, which sincerely really bothered me. Obviously, there is no future in living in a lonely house far away from the road and doing slaughterhouse work for 10-12 hours a day; and doing it without being able to save some money.

So some evening after work when pondering what will happen when my December salary arrives - with it´s Xmas bonus - I understood that there was not much to think about because obviously, I will drink my salary in a similar fashion as I had the previous months. But to my amazement, in my guts I knew that I didn't want to do this. I sincerely didn't. But I didn't want to do this not just because being a poor slaughterhouse worker in rural Iceland is a deadbeat way of a life, but also because I have already once been fired from this very same work that I now had, and all due to my excessive drinking; therefore obviously I will lose my job again when the staff finds out that my drinking has accelerated beyond the last year's low. And, maybe not for you, but for me - at that stage - being fired means being homeless in a tent; and because this would happen in January, Iceland, it would mean certain death.

There lying on my bed thinking of these realities, I could see a dark mist gathering above my chest – I sincerely saw it – and I understood it to be that external power outside of me, that power which make the decisions about how much I drink, how much money I waste or what chaotic things I do when I am drunk. That none of these things was anymore in my control – probably never was – but were instead in the hands of some external power, which was stronger than myself, and lived outside of myself; in other words, that dark mist which was now floating above me.

I saw no reason to battle it. I will perish in front of it, it was granted. Thus instead, I surrendered. The next day or so I went to search for help, which I found, and with that help I have stayed away from that next drink since then.

### Letter Seven

More about that autumn, as I met this vagabond older man named _Neil_. He was originally from somewhere in England. He got a job at the same slaughterhouse where I was at. He had been doing fish industry work for most of his life. Now he had arrived to Iceland from Greenland, there he had been on-board some fishing vessel. In Iceland he had first gained a job in a fish factory in the south of Iceland, but was fired because of some scuffle he had with his young Polish foreman. Now he had arrived at our slaughterhouse by answering, "Yes," to all questions relating to his work abilities, he was fired the next week.

Niel, now in his mid-50s, was now penniless, jobless, homeless in Reykjavik, he was without doubt a reflection of what I was about to become. Therefore, the four months he stayed in Iceland, I didn't want to lose my contact with him. I still have his phone number; he told me he'd be homeless in London if I ever wanted to meet him.

Once after all that superficial stuff that we use usually talked about, I caught him unguarded and asked about his troubles. He stopped his thoughts, dropped his eyes to look through me, into his own emptiness, and then changed the topic by babbling about something else. One thing he often mentioned was this murder mystery in India, which he claimed to have gained some inside knowledge during his travels. Some unsolved murder of some wealthy Brit it was, and still a reward money offered by the British consulate.

"Now that would be a good sum of money." he often shared.

I pondered if he had committed that murder himself and was now drifting from one place to another because of it. Why else would he continuously be checking if that reward money was still offered? I on the other hand shared about my plan to get one of those loose loans that the Icelandic banks were handing out at the time. And after receiving it, I would leave the country.

"You know, one could buy a hostel in Thailand with that money... Who would miss Iceland with its weather?"

But that friendship with him did melt something in me, because as I said, I saw that one day I'd be just like him. I followed him to the weekend soup kitchen, and even asked about the whereabouts of the local 12-step community. But I was powerless against myself and so behind the next corner was always a new pack of lies awaiting me.

One night when this nasty storm was ruling the sky, _Neil_ called me to ask if he could come over for the night to sleep in the house I lived in. I could not speak for everyone so I told him, "Not now, tomorrow maybe, after I had discussed it with everyone else."

The small but warm central bus station closed at 11 p.m., after which he had to find a place to stay, the police had already turned him away from their cells. I heard via the phone that there was not much spirit left in him. I could understand, as that first winter storm of the season caught us all unguarded.

* * *

That same night this one mouse was running around in the house, escaping the same storm that _Neil_ was trying to hide from. During the evening I had my door open, so it had to have slipped in when I was in the kitchen or in the bathroom. But, when it heard that I was coming back, it then must have hidden behind some bookshelves. Later in the evening, when I finally was in my bed trying to sleep, the mouse then tries to find its way out again, but my door was closed now. I who am terrified of all cracking sounds and moving shadows, turn on the lights to see what is going on. And I see this one mouse running from one corner to the other, resting only behind some of my furniture. I shake and writhe with fear and therefore became unable to kill it, although being armed with a stick and hardtop shoes.

Seeing it there still on the floor, keeping me awake long into the night, being tortured by the idea of possibly being fired again and therefore by all means joining _Neil_ in that cold blizzard very soon. Tortured by one more sleepless night and having the necessity to wake up at 5 a.m., and of course ridiculing myself about my fears towards this fat mouse. Therefore in the intent to resurrect my life out of its looming final end, I decided to make a blood pact with the help of the mouse. That instead of pursuing _Neil_ with his vagabond troubles, I decided to resurrect myself now-and-forever. I didn't want to kill the mouse; instead I wanted to torture it in the name of Satan himself.

My plan became to trap the mouse behind one of the shelves, which it ran behind about every 15 minutes – one side of this shelf was not tightly pushed to the wall, therefore it could run behind it. I reckoned that next time when the mouse would run behind the shelf, I have a simple job of jumping out of my bed to run and push the shelf tight to the wall and by this the mouse would be trapped behind it.

I kept the lights on, so to spy on its moments from my bed, all along while keeping my long legs safely up on my bed – You know, it might have been possible, that the mouse would jump and tear my legs off. From this safe post, I was looking at the daring mouse running from one safe spot to another, doing this in its attempt to find a way out of my room. Eventually I see it, as planned, getting closer to the bookshelf that I am about to use as a trap; and then when it goes behind it, I instantly jump out of my bed to squeeze the shelf tight to the wall. Mission accomplished. The mouse is trapped.

I run back to my bed to listen to the mouse trying to figure out what had happened. I hear it trying to get out from the gap that I had now squeezed tight. I hear it scratch and push itself, but not having the strength to widen the gap enough so to crawl through it, therefore it surrenders and stops. Now I hear a short silence, after which I hear the mouse circling around, scratching and pushing all-around the bottom of the shelf, obviously being in a search of another way out, though of course unsuccessfully in this, so again a silence.

The mouse now knows that it is trapped, that the gap by which it came in has been blocked and that there is no other way out. A pause and silence, after which a scream, a scream you wouldn't imagine a small mouse being able to do. So rather to die exhausted of thirst and hunger, the mouse decided to right away gamble it all. In other words, the mouse risks its own physical wellbeing by trying to jam itself through the wall and the shelf, in the intentions to produce a gap wide enough for it to crawl through. And it does it, the god-damned mouse does it – the mouse moves the shelf and squeezes itself through the newly opened gap and – a moment later – sits down in middle on my floor, in front of me, simply to demand a right to live. I look at it and I understood, that, that mouse, at this moment, has more will to live then two grown up men has combined.

I opened my door and let the mouse go.

### BOOK THREE
### Letter One

In the summer of 1990, the family moved to Finland to live there in a small rural village. The village is situated about 40 kilometers east from my father's village of birth. This area is an all-out rural state, which in Finnish context means farming, timber work and small workshops. The locals are the typical reserved rural Joe's and Jane's, who consider anyone not born in their village as alien. Now as an adult I would hesitate to live there, but as a teenager I really didn't mind the place; actually, I sort of liked it there. As I saw it I had – after my tortures childhood – been sentenced for a parole sentence called teenage life and from this point of view that rural world which surrounded me, fitted more than fine.

My parents were captivated by an amnesic order and so believed that I would simply walk out of the front door and get going on with my boyish teenage life. I guess I wished for this, too, because I tried it; but, of course, I failed. I had no courage, no self-esteem and I was absolutely spineless. If I was faced with any challenge, I backed off. I stuttered a lot, I had this heavy ache on my face, and I was socially absolutely unskilled, thus needless to say I felt absolutely awful about myself. Besides a big issue became my lack of interest in girls, which was translated into me being gay. Especially around age 16 and onwards, I was constantly bombard about this issue - constantly. It only dawned on me much later, after had left the village, that my peer's constant enquiry about my possible gayness was based on their private interests, i.e., their queer sexuality.

So you see, I didn't fit in, not at all, but the rural landscape didn't demand it. The great distances in between us demanded also others not to be picky of whom to make friends with, thus I looked acceptable for some. I made friends with some kids nearby, who were all one or three years younger to me, except one friend who had mild intellectual disabilities.

If I could go back-in-time and redo things from that period of my life, the only thing I would change would be about bullying the family dog. It didn't deserve it; it only wanted to be my friend, which I of course could not handle because it reflected too much of my sad reality.

* * *

The first two years went pretty good, my violent stuttering was in the past and now I was stuttering only a lot. At school I stayed out of trouble – i.e., the bullies – by taking the bus straight back home so to hang around with the kids that I knew in my area.

Eventually I felt more secure about myself, so in that naivety – at age 14 – I went to this Christian summer camp – a sort of rite-of-passage locally. I wanted to be like everybody else, and I guess, too, wash that Jehovah's Witness mantel off myself, which I thought I had.

That spring I got myself baptized, my father arranged his younger brother to be my godfather, and had by his own words a bitter fight to get himself rejoined into the state church. What a mess, because five years later I secede from this very same church and some years later I disconnected all my ties with my family, even this godfather of mine. I offer my sincere apologies for all the inconveniences.

During the spring towards this summer, there wasn't any real support from my parents to do this Christian thing. My father, who had joined the church for the sake of this endeavor, once in a while tried to turn my mind about this decision; but I stayed on my decision stubbornly. It was all teenage politics on my behalf; I simply wanted to do what everybody else was doing. Maybe there might have been some religious reason, some spiritual search, but my awkward baptismal ceremony had left me a awkward feeling. Or pointless, rather than awkward, my faith was not tested anyhow, just some drops on my head and that was it. My young cousin standing opposite to me, knew more about faith and praying than what I did. I felt myself silly, it all felt silly.

* * *

When the summer arrived, the ten days at the camp became a bizarre reality check of my social skills. There in the locked down environment, I had no escape from the bullies, and so I simply lie in my dormitory bed while they came one-by-one to spit on me. Even when they once poured urine on me – from a bottle that someone had peed in – I did nothing. I just prayed for it all to stop, but of course without answer. But lying there in my bed, deep into the night smelling spit and urine of myself, out from somewhere this thought pops up in my head, "Hey, this is how it has to feel for rape victims."

But thinking this way without any reference to myself.

Some of my friends told me to fight back, as they did, and pointed at the fact that they were now left alone, but I didn't. Contrary to them, I smiled and felt myself recognized when my pants where pulled down. One night, the night before visitor's day, my bed was tagged with, "Niiles is a homo." And again did nothing, simple as that. My friends had to take an initiative and so they turned my bed around before our parents would arrive, now leaving the tag towards the wall.

As a result of these experiences, I was now marked as this defenseless weakling who had this humiliating and embarrassing past that anyone could expose and laugh at. At the schoolyard, for the next couple of years, I could not trust anyone to sneeze or spit behind my back. I walked on eggshells and prayed everyday that this experiences would not be brought up. If it was I simply I blanked or denied everything.

### Letter Two

During classes 7 to 9 – between ages 13 and 16 – I had average grades at school, except from math and Finnish. The teachers from both subjects gave special education, which did help my spelling a lot, but my math never succeeded beyond that bare minimum, if even that. I shined a bit at History and then later when the course changed to Social Studies, but the format of doing presentations and group assignments was too dreadful of an experience for me and thus my grades were simply average. There were many interesting topics, like biology or arts, but I was so around the clock observing others supposedly observing me, so my whole experience went down the drain.

At the finish of 9th grade – age 16 – you're compulsory education is over in Finland, meaning you are free to choose the school of your chose, or none at all. Because school is free of charge and there are zero work opportunities for unskilled youth, you usually chose to continue your education. Students who have above average grades and have interest in white-color jobs choose senior high school, alternatively students with average grades or less and have interest in blue-color jobs choose vocational school – of course, it is not as black and white as I described it to be, but more or less it is.

I hinted my wishes to be the so-called 10th grade – i.e., to do one extra volunteer year – after which, with automatic better grades and being one year older, I would then have the courage to apply to the more specialized technical school out of town. I didn't mention that latter part to anyone, but it had to have been an obvious possibility; therefore my mother played her cards behind my back. Thus, suddenly one day at school the tuition officer – a respectable firm man in his late 50s – pulled me out of my class to tell me that I can apply to the in-town electrician course with the help of disability quotas related to my stuttering. I knew by this my spot in the next autumn class was about as insured as it could be. I shrugged my shoulders about this, and so I was to spend next three years in this village while being surveyed by my mother.

* * *

See, her plan was always to keep me there dependent on her, so I would be living there imprisoned by them. I was expected to grow by that same amnesic order she had, and thus I was expected to simply go out and play with the other youths. But I couldn't, I was too much burdened. So she opted for her second best choice, a dependable gay son, a weakling so to speak; she wished for a son who would not dare to leave home, not to mention challenge her.

Once in a while she would say, "Being gay is all right." which felt absolutely awful.

At some point I did ponder was I gay or not, all due this constant bombardment. But I wasn't. Later, I rebelled against that message – which I still get – with homo phobia. I had no other way out. My apologies.

Age 16, my mother called a meeting with the local youth mental health department to deal with my isolated teenage life. So there I was now having a session with three women – two counselors, one who I knew from before and one unknown out- of-town specialist, and of course my mother – to discuss, why am I not like the other boys in my age. Why don't I drive around with my scooter and chase the girls just like they do? I don't know if I have ever in my life felt so suffocated than during that half-hour, after which I had to walk out.

You might wonder why she called this meeting, which was the cause in its self. The meeting was about parading her rape victim son, to cement that singular incident, which was the only thing her act could feed off. She refuted any doubt about her act, that she would not be holier than thou. She was it, that was how she viewed herself and that was how see thought others should see her, too. Look at her alibis, example the women who she had now arranged to this occasion, they too swore that she was holy indeed.

* * *

At the car ride back home I told my mother, "When school is done, I'm going to join the French army and that would be it."

This would have been a superb thing to do. But I didn't do it, that dark shadow, my past, the burden, prevented everything, and so I turned out to be the loser geek that I am today, someone who doesn't react to anyone, or anything. Seeing this she began with her ritualized bashing ceremonies, which lasted to about the last day I saw her at age 27.

"Shit head." Was her most preferable insult towards me.

* * *

Whatever I was about to do, the past was ought to come along, for the good or for the bad, one cannot turn that fact around. I said at school that I was killing cats with my crossbow, which wasn't true; I just killed nearly 1,000 small birds with my air gun. I idolized different terrorists and murderers, and swore to become one. At one point I thought for sure that I was a vampire, and thank god I cut myself only on the one same spot, thus leaving only one ugly scar.

Age 15, one mail commercial of children's underwear became my object of sexual fantasies. I kept it under my bed for couple of days tills it was gone. I understood my mother had found it, but she said nothing. Instead, a couple of days later when a new commercial arrived, she grabbed it and proclaimed in front of my father, "Why do they put children in such underwear photos?"

All while keeping a long, steady look at me.

Who knows what she would have allowed, if it would have been traded with complete amnesia and submission? Personally I believe that pretty much.

By my mid-20s she had convinced my father that after I had finish my higher education, I would be better off to move back to the village so to live close to them; doing that either in the family cabin out in the woods or in some rented apartment next door to them. See, it was all set and arranged that I would become mother's basement pervert. That was her plan Z, that was her last hope.

### Letter Three

From age 16 to 19 I attended the local vocation school, there I learned that most of my peers had grown to have small-time jobs and steady girlfriends. In other words, everybody lived a more mature life then what I did at home. Once a classmate of mine asked what I'll be doing the coming weekend. I literary answered. "I'll go home and play with my new kitty."

Contrary to me, he was heading out for a good drunk and an exciting Saturday night fist fight.

Vocational school was - as predicted - little bit rougher place then high school or senior high – the socially derailed percentage was here in full representation – the bullying was more physical and less verbal, but in a strange way it became an enjoyable experience. Not that I defended myself, but just being there face to face taught me that I could at least do that if I wanted.

We had a lad who had been in the army, but quite because he couldn't take the monkey life he was offered. We all took it as a collective pride and so we said for a long time, "He survived the army, but couldn't take our vocational school."

Many of us quite, but I boldly stayed.

* * *

In 1990, the Finnish banks collapsed and the main economical aftershocks landed around 1991 and 1993. Riddled by a new wave of mass unemployment, the government took a consciousness policy to statistically reduce youth unemployment with a heavy increase in – state sponsored – higher education. By this vocational school became the easier softer way to polytechnic (technical university). Sincerely I don't know anyone from that time, who after applying, was not accepted in some polytechnic somewhere in rural Finland.

We were given a long list of possible polytechnics to apply to; I went through the list and found the most northern - and distant - polytechnic to be interesting indeed. I chose it, applied, and got in.

I visited this village where I had lived during my teens, many times after I had left for my higher education, but I never got together with any of my former classmates. I remember some years later, two former classmates of mine calling me in sincere good spirit, so to ask how I am doing. But I struggled the entire phone call to remember, who they were and what they looked like. I had erased everything. Now many years later I have no contact to anyone in the village and have not been there since 2003, which I have to admit is pretty mean. Neither of my parents lives there anymore; they have moved out, too. My sister, as I have said earlier, left on her 18th birthday.

### Letter Four

But before our higher education, we lads where sent off for our compulsorily military services. If no special request is done your service location and unit will be chosen for you and will be based on your place of residence. I didn't like this at all, I wanted to get away from the village lads who I'd been seeing for more than six years now. More importantly, I didn't want them to spread stories of my impotence to my future unit, which would have been simply too much to handle. So I made my father call some numbers to enquire about the possibility to change my service location. I wished for the Swedish language division in South Finland – the marines – which I rightfully assumed nobody from my village would choose to serve at because of the language barrier. If I remember correctly, the same officer "we" called called us back that very same day, to inform the change has been done, and so I was to join the army in the summer of 1996.

In a certain way I loved the military. I loved the black and white rules. I felt myself equal with others, which was an unfamiliarity for me. I recognized fast that I was judged from my deeds not how I looked like, or not to mention who I was, or what my past was. It was all instant feedback, something very simple to grasp for my troubled mind. Thus, I fell in love with the military rules and I was there to stay.

My plan was now to steady but firmly lose my parents and to do that to the point I could snap that umbilical cord and then never see them again. But after our first two weeks of training was done and we were all to be sent home for our first weekend leave, I went to my lieutenant to tell him that I didn't want to go home, that I instead wanted to stay here in the barracks for the weekend. This was totally unheard of, believe me. Maybe he didn't understand my intention, or whatever it was, but he responded with curfew orders and other troublesome regulations that supposedly I had to follow. It made me feel that he didn't want me to stay, but instead leave and get out of his face.

What I was supposed to do, go and sleep in an ATM box – which this one buddy of mine confessed doing occasionally during the weekends? I felt betrayed. Not that I had a chance for an officer career because of my bad grades from school, but for sure the military brotherhood would have been something to hold on to during that transition period away from my parents; but now I saw that all that was not going to happen and therefore I was pissed, I really was. Therefore I turned it all around, the ridiculous military humor became something done by time-consuming resource-wasting nobodies, I laughed at it, rather than with it. I swore to never to do anything there, so I held steady on my B-class service ticket – which I had gained because of my stuttering – and so refused any military training. So I sat the remaining seven months on a warehouse office chair rolling my thumbs. I've never been so unemployed then back then. At midpoint, when the low morale was eroding me, too, I wanted to quit and enroll myself into the civil service unit, but my mother forbade me. Good so.

Whatever you do, don't quite stuff you have began with.

* * *

I finished my military service in the spring of 1997, and my school was about to start the next autumn, so I had this one summer to spend, so what to do? Somehow I got a kick of luck and got this job – for the summer – at the local power company. The story behind this is that my mother forced me to several times go and ask for that job, which then paid off. I should notice that this was my first real job, from where I have of course some memorable memories, from which I could only redeem myself by bribes. My three coworkers made it clear that a positive reference comes only by one vodka bottle each, a promise which they fulfilled.

Towards the end of the summer I recognized that there was nothing to celebrate with my job, wasn't I after all working at this damn village and living at home while doing it? It was a situation that foretold a long bitter journey to figure out how to break that bondage I had with my parents. Finally the evening came when I had packed my bags to head off north by the next morning train. In my high-spirited mood my intentions slipped my tongue and I said to my parents, "This will be it then, that you won't see me again."

This was followed by an instant barrage of disciplinary comments from both of them, the gospel was, "We have done this and that for you and now you say this. Dare you to forget your parents, dare you to do that."

I dared not.

### Letter Five

I liked the whole atmosphere of youth and the excitement and intent to study hard so to progress in life, and to be allowed to pretend that I was doing that too. I opened the 1,000-page calculus book from page one and tried to solve anything that came along; my patience ran out at page 10, I had lost track before it had all begun.

* * *

I stayed away from alcohol that first autumn; partly because of the shock of the labor my studies had brought me, but also because I dearly hold on to the imagination that I, too, was a cheerful student who was doing his best. Though by spring that image vanished when the bad grades finally arrived; but what troubled me more, was the reckoning on the fact that the skills that I had – professionally or socially – were not good enough to get a summer job; and with neither student benefits nor a job, I knew I was forced to go to live with my parents because I had failed to scam an pay check from the welfare office.

I was devastated, but I couldn't admit it. I was after all a survivor of a sinister brainwashing operation, and as a consequence I walked around with no serious thought process at all.

I didn't have friends, I didn't have anyone to share my troubles with. Even if I would have had, what would I have told them: that my past is this-and-that and that I had now messed up my first year of studies, and therefore I am now forced to go back home to live with my parents; who are the root problem in the first place? Back then nothing like that was part of my thought process, it could not have been. I was never taught to be independent or how to survive; in other words, how to be an adult. So what else could I do, then to retreat and head home to be spoon fed by my parents, just as my mother wished for.

In the Nordic countries there is this big annual holiday during summer solicited, a weekend during which a clear majority of the nation changes their urban dwelling to some rural cottage. To there get wasted with their families and friends. I who didn't have friends or a family decided that before leaving, I would at least celebrate this weekend by getting wasted at home by myself. While doing that, while brawling with my carpet, I had my first doubt about my relationship with alcohol being of the normal degree. But this topic as anything else serious, I could not process in any meaningful way – therefore I simply left it there.

* * *

Earlier that spring I had tried to dress myself in nice fashionable cloths and to drink some beers at home before heading out for the weekend bar scene, but somehow that didn't feel right at all. I didn't feel comfortable in my clothes, I didn't like the party happy people who I met, and besides I didn't like losing all that money on those silly drinks.

Next autumn a classmate of mine invited me to come along with him and his friend to a certain black metal themed bar. (Black metal, as, satanic heavy metal music.) I remember on purpose putting on an all red college sweater, so to be as unfashionable as possible in any scene that I would encounter.

I found the bar at ease, because I had been there before. But the unfamiliar music scene that I was now searching for was on the second floor and open only on Wednesday and Fridays; this I understood to be reason why I had missed it earlier. I walked up the stairs to see my friends at a close-by table. To them I said "hi" and that I would buy beer before I sit down. After have done that, and after having sat down with them, I recognized the relaxed mood that my friends were in. I also noticed the somewhat unfamiliar music that I heard, and the few people that I saw scattered around the place (maybe a dozen, maybe less).

Eventually I finished my – first – beer, after which I stood up to walk over to the bar to buy myself another one. But while doing this I didn't hurry, I instead by every step breathed in the cheap bar scene that I was witnessing; The filthy floor that a drunken eye does not see; the plywood walls simply painted black; no decorations except the lights, the loudspeakers and the smog machine; and the heavy smell of cigarettes. An all-out low-class act that is disguised by beer and loud heavy-metal music, what a suitable place for me.

At the bar I said some words to the bartender, maybe something about my favorite bands or something else while enjoying some sips from my newly bought cold beer. I took a couple steps from the bar and the bartender, but I didn't go straight back to my table. Instead, I walked to the three kids who were randomly headbanging at the emptied corner, which was the small stage of this bar. And there with them, I gave it a thought, who I was, and where I am and then I screamed – I vividly remember that.

That scream was towards all that I resented, and all those I despised.

I felt the power of a war cry.

I felt that nothing or no-one could prevent me from scream, slur or to insult you.

Because this is what I like to do,this is what I intend to do;

from now-on to the eternity, I'll be screaming like this.

In other words, the ugly duck had grown into a black crow; a big fuck you to you all!

I looked at the kids on the floor and they just screamed back, if I recall it correctly. I saw that the bartender was simply happy about the gathering crowd, and that the people on the couches were as relaxed as they were a minute ago; likewise was my two friends, they were still enjoying themselves and their beers, and doing that with total acceptance of what I had just done.

I never wore the red college sweater again, but I for sure came back. My comfortableness didn't come instantly, but with time it did. By time I learned that the young addicts around me were more troubled about themselves – whether they have shit in their pants or not – then about who sat at the next table, which was me. The girls with their pink hair were gorgeous, but I never dared to say a world to them. If nothing else, I just sat there, enjoyed the music and enjoyed myself getting drunk. I had no worries. I could be myself and do whatever I wanted; I could worship Satan whenever I liked.

It took a while to learn my drinking style, which was to engulf myself with the cheapest beer in town. As a penny wiser I never drank on credit. If nothing else I stayed at home and drunk my home made fruit wine. If I got tired of that, I carried that wine to the bars; a couple of times in a one gallon bucket – it looked to obscene so when I was caught, nobody said anything. Later I learned that others, too, were circling for happy hour beers; one night some hip place, some other night some other hip place, and luckily in this small student town of ours, one for every night. After some years, after I had gained some "respect," I was invited to join a drinking society which was named after the great _David Hasselhoff_. The only requirement was to be drunk one half of the year. I guess with some practice I would have made it, but I said no. For me that scream was enough, actually it was everything. I didn't just want to be drunk, I wanted to scream. I didn't want to chase the girls, or to gamble, I just wanted to scream, because I hated you all.

Now sober, I miss that scream more than the drink. I really do, though I have learned that one cannot choose one out of the two, that the bone always has two ends.

* * *

I wish to tell you, that by joining the European Union Finland was forced to lower its high alcohol taxes, after this one pint of beer would cost you, at its cheapest, only 1€. So when my student benefits where roughly 300€ a month, you see that financially I had no problems whatsoever. Though embarrassingly this isn't exactly true. During my first and second year of studies I remember calling my supposedly rich aunt for back up money. What an embarrassment, and thus my sincere apologies. But back then, I hadn't yet gained that financial resilience that I have now, back then I didn't know one can survive endlessly on oatmeal, pasta and cheap beer. Now I know.

* * *

Eventually after hanging around at the bars for a long-enough time, some girls just takes you over and there is nothing you can do about it. I lost my virginity at age 23. I was drunk, she was drunk, I was too drunk to get away from her, so I told myself, "What the hell, let's do it".

We went to her home, got naked, after which I hated every moment and swore never to have sex again. It was an uncomfortable spot to be in. One way I hated it, one way I loved it. One way I adored that womanly beauty that I saw, but then at the same time it was a pile of flesh that I didn't want to be part of. I left her place before she woke up; I couldn't stay there with her. I hope it was not a too rude of an act to do, but I had to leave, I was shivering. I wonder, that the dog she kicked out for the occasion, ever wander back? I guess so.

* * *

About the same time a friend of my arranged a date with his girlfriend's girlfriend, something I never asked for but something I had now ended up in. I was, of course, uncomfortable about this. I didn't know what to do, and I didn't know how to lose her? The restless 10 days when this sudden issue was going on, the only thing I could think about was about how to have this end in an appropriate manner, something which I eventually did by a phone call.

It was a weekend afternoon and we had this network gaming event at our small dormitory apartment – i.e., with our computers – so I decided to take the phone call outside, which I either way would had preferred to do related to the stress the topic of the phone call inherited. The phone call went as it went, the girl had no clue what went around in my head, but we decided it is over now before it had even started.

But when walking back to my student dormitory I remember reflecting upon what had I really experienced? I don't really remember the exact thought process that presided over my final awakening, but after I had walked the about 500 meters route to my front door and now standing there knowing, that as I open that door the gaming mayhem behind it will suck me into itself. In this moment this thought popped in my head, "Yes, I have been sexually assaulted in my childhood, and this was the cause to all these problems that I have, and that's why I had to break up with this girl as fast as possible."

This was the first time I could make some kind of acceptance of my past and its sexually abusive nature. I was 23 years old.

### Letter Six

During the summer of 1999, I got a 12-week job, what a luck! It was at a factory plant that produced mobile phone chargers for Nokia mobile phones. The factory was relatively close-by, but far enough so I needed to arrange new accommodations for that summer. I was so fond of having a job that I planned to quit my ailing studies, so to have a steady job at the factory; but the factory plant was shipped off to China before I could declare my will to the management; and besides, my mother was firmly against this decision. "You began your studies, you finish your studies."

That summer in this small town, I got myself in my first Saturday night fist fight. It began from chatting with a co-worker of mine – an impolite character – who suddenly for some unknown reason throws this bar stool over his side and walks away. That stool by all lucks rolls onto the feet of one 300- pound gypsy. This gypsy didn't see who did it, but saw the direction from where the stool had come from, which was from my table; which had, besides me, two pretty girls sitting by. I guess the gypsy knew that it wasn't me who had thrown the chair, but that I knew who had thrown it. Thus he came over to our table to ask me about the stool and who had thrown it at him? But I firmly refused to disclose anything. You know anything else I can be but not a snitch, besides the pretty girls by my side increased my testosterone level to the level of blind courage. To keep the story short, one thing lead to another and the big guy sort of slapped me on my face. Instinctively, I knew that the next slap from a mean-looking bastard like him won't be a slap, so I reckoned I'll be better off trying to knock him out before he knocks me out.

In an impulse I gave him a head butt and several upper rights – I dared not to punch his nose or eye but instead only his left cheek – and by every punch he took a step backwards to eventually stumble and fall flat on his back. Might be so that while falling down, he might have hit his back of his head at the bar desk – I don't know this, but I suspect – but while falling down he pulled me down with him. I tried to twist myself off him, to raise myself up, so to at least stand on my knees, but I could not because he pulled me back every time I tried. In that wrestling position to have him lose his grip of me, I gave him a heavy knee to his lower stomach – I dared not smash his testicles – after which he finally let me loose and I could stand up again.

In this bar full of people, whose main focus is now this fight, I am standing above him to see that he is – indeed – as mean as he had been all long, and that he still wishes to tear me apart only if he could stand up again. Obviously I didn't want this to happen, so I decided to stomp him. But when lifting my right foot up in the air to aim at that left cheek again, I sensed the pleasure and the enjoyment of the coming, because I knew – at that moment – that this was the kick that I never had done against all those bullies from the past. So to increase my strength, I took hold of the desk of the bar, so to smash my right foot as hard as I can at this poor fellow's face. As hard as I can! Bang and sayonara.

Who would have guessed that this mean machine would stand up after such-a treatment, but he did! Though dazed and confused, he tried to swing some punches at me, but I was two steps ahead. I was in full gear of excitement and was ready to give more, who knew fighting was so fun? But luckily someone from the crowd pushed me away and down the stairs and out of the entrance door.

I left the place full of joy and excitement. At home I was so excited that while shadow boxing the past events, I stretched some muscle in my back, which still today bothers me once in a while. Further in that early morning hours, I called my out-of-town friends to ask them if I am in danger of revenge. They didn't care, instead they only mumbled something back. Eventually – at 6 a.m. – my excitement left and I went to sleep, but to wake up to this following scene.

Dream:

Although of the arctic latitude the sun has to rise relatively high so to shine into my room, this because of the thick spruce trees just by my ground level window. (Relatively high means about 9 a.m..) Thus, when I woke up I knew it was still relatively early and not noon, by having that shadow in my room. But, there, dozed I feel myself squeezed tight towards the wall, like someone else is in the bed taking all the space. This confused me a lot because I was sure that I had gone to bed by myself. I wanted to inspect this, so I turned my head left and I saw someone's big feet just by my left shoulder. This caused a horrific fear taking hold off me. Though I wanted to rip off the blanket to see who is in the bed, I could not, because I was paralyzed by fear.

So slowly I looked at this unknown person raising himself up at the other end of the bed. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't, so instead I was forced to look at this sight.

I see a bald young man with a sadistic smile, who is covered by different shades of filth – black, yellow, red – raising himself up at the other end of the bed, to look straight at me, and I recognize him, it is me. I want to jump off the bed and run away, but I can't because I am still stiff scared, thus I kick and scream myself awake to learn that it was only a dream.

The end of dream

It doesn't take much to analyze such a dream after such a major incident as the last night's bar fight: of course, I understood that the other person in my bed was a sort of devilish reflection of myself, the dark other side of me, someone who I had now been fed with the living blood of someone else. Though it was only years later when I could connect the dots, that I truly have an inner revulsion towards violence, and if I wanted to live a happier and joyful life, then I ought to respect that non-violent side of myself and act on its wishes rather than imagine myself to be the next heroic avenger.

### Letter Seven

I met _Filth Instructor_ during my third year of studies with the help of a common friend of ours. _Filth Instructor_ was neither a racist nor a drunk, but instead had this significant burned upside down crucifix on one of his arms when I saw him for the first time. By the time he became the honest friend that I never had.

_Filth Instructor_ had knowledge in mediation and wisdom in the occult, and, of course, was an avid fan of true evil black metal music. At the time I knew nothing of these things, for me the sound in my head that came in a state of silence just wanted to expand to some unknown breaking point, therefore I wanted to stay away from it as much possible. But when being introduced to the culture of the heathens, and by _Filth Instructor_ mentorship, I gained courage to go beyond that breaking point. So now when reaching that borderline area, rather than pulling myself out of it, I by all means tried to be sucked into it, fly into it, so to experience that other world on the other side.

To describe what I am talking about: Take this daily example of walking barefoot on your lawn and doing this without any fears of anything unusual, but suddenly you step on some small pot hole and you feel your feet falling an inch into the grass. Now when the predicted didn't happen, but instead you experience a loss of balance and a abnormal sensation relating to it, that is the gap, that split second is the moment which leads you to the other side.

Some random night, when lying on my bed, spontaneously out of the blue, my feet might lose their sense of gravity and suddenly dip into the mattress, and if I wouldn't instinctively jerk them back, my entire body would be pulled into that gap. Sometimes – though rarely – the back of my head would similarly lose its sense of "gravity" and so I would fall head first through the mattress into some unknown abyss; if I didn't jerk myself out of the spell. If it were just an elbow that lost its sense of gravity, it usually wasn't enough to pull me into that other word. So it didn't always work, but often it did. The biggest problem was that unconscious jerk, which I might half-a-second later regretted because I knew I had spoiled my chances for the night.

Though most of the time entering this other world was not all that consciousness as I express it to be, most of the time, it was me waking up from a nightmare and finding myself paralyzed by fear and therefore forced again to observer these craziest scenes played in front of me.

There is much to say about these things, but I cut the long story short by saying that eventually I started to question what was the point of all this. That what was the point in cosmic madness and magic TV as we called it back then? I enquired this from those who were interested, but without gaining a satisfying answer.

I flew in my room; I flew around on the streets. I often experienced crazy dreams of dying and then again flying to some bizarre place. Once or twice a second gate was offered to me, but I dared not to enter. But at the end of the day, I asked myself, what was the point in all this? Well, as I said, I never gained a satisfying answer, so my highest glory became sneak peaking at showering women, or simply try to get laid in my dreams, which in other words would be - more truthfully said - borderline masturbation, rather than anything else.

The summer of 2006 was when I finally read one biography of _Aleister Crowley_ , but to find out his highest magical glory to been – by his own words – gay sodomy on top of some North African mountain; to there see, while high on hashish, some sort of dragon passing him by. To repeat, by his own words, this experience was crucially important to him. I concluded that if you ask me to follow this, I have to say, "Sorry buddy, but I will not".

* * *

But identical to Mr. _Crowley_ I also lived in my own whirlwind of pervasions and fetishes. Back then I had a secret pervasion in searching child pornography from the Internet so to fulfill my satanic dreams - something I never disclosed to anyone. If I succeeded that night, I would go to sleep in a most disturbed and shaken state, to then be awaken shortly after in the most awkward of hallucinatory scenes.

Today I can tell myself that I had a sexual interest in nude teen girl's, but not more than that, especially child pornography, which I came across those few couple of times, was an obsession of some other nature than sexual. And once I got sober all this ended just like that, which, I have to admit, isn't all that true. One year into my sobriety I saw this violent Hollywood movie. The story culminated in a mesmerizing scene of violence and revenge. I walked out of the movie theater telling myself, "Fuck it, fuck forgives. Why can't I demand blood, too?"

Two hours later I am in my room, by my computer, clicking again on some porn link, which is promising nude Russian teens. But the link did not give what was promised and so I was given a second chance to think about what I was doing. In specific I pondered about, I am going to tell my sober mentor about what I had just done, or about something else, something more severe, some other day sometime in the future. I decided the later suited me better. A couple of days later, after I had made that phone call, I felt pride about myself, because I knew I belonged to the selected few who would do all which is necessary to uphold a sober mind. See – ironically – we the people often hold on the tightest to our own idiocy, which bother us the most, rather than to our positive sides, which are there to help us to success.

But I had learned my lesson. I learned I should not play with fire, that I should always be on path of forgiveness, that I should never derail myself from this chosen path. This because, for me the consequence of not forgiving, or to loath in anger, are severe indeed.

Years later I've had to conclude that I ought to stay away from porn. Though it has been hard, but I have now been sober for more than a year. The issue was that I always seemed to find myself looking at porn that expressed humiliation and deceive. I knew it was too interrelated to my own past and I therefore would be better off to not watch it at all.

Masturbation is another issue; the best sleeping pill out there. The problem is that for the past 15 year I have consciously understood that every sexual fantasy I have, happens – if anyhow analyzed – in my parents' bedroom, included with all those disgusting colors of black, yellow and red. Not that my mother is there, but just being there myself is enough.

* * *

But THE major event in losing my interest in the occult and in the fetish, was when I caught myself telling my counselor about some random nightmare that I had seen some days earlier. I realized with her, that it wasn't me the 30-year-old man who saw the dream, but it was me the 11-year-old boy who saw it.

Dream:

In short the dream was about some skeletons chasing me in some strange rundown neighborhood. My parents were there, too, and were ready to flee the scene in their car – which they were sitting in – but to my surprise they didn't really feel themselves threatened at all; to contrary, they seemed to be simply waiting for me to come. Needless to say I was chased, I felt threatened, but I couldn't reach their car fast enough. I couldn't run away from the skeletons because I had this strange wound in my lower back; this confused me to the degree that I had to slowdown to turn and have a look at it.

The end of dream

So why did I dream like this, why did I still need to interpreted my bleeding anus to be a wound in my lower back? Why else because the 11 year old in me was still seeing these nightmares, not I, who I am today, but the child in me.

As I said, by this a lot of energy left my unconscious when I understood that all my pervasive interest in the esoteric and the occult was there so I could relive and retackle my childhood traumas. But, relive and retackle so I would never grow up. See, I asked myself, what had I gained from worshiping my nightmares and with the belief that they were a satanic message of some sort, compared to my sobriety? This broke the spell and so I became much more interested in conscious healing and sharing – and listening – rather than on that pointless esoteric nihilism – or whatever you want to call it.

But this doesn't mean that I would not experience out-of-body experiences today, because I do, but I do it more seldom and I do it for different reasons. Example when I baptized myself two years ago, I had two weeks of nightmares, nightmares of the most horrific scale – cannibalism, murder, rape, rape of children, torture of animals and end of the world scenes. And then a year later, after having left the church and then gone back again, the night after that, I was caught unguarded by this out-of-body experience that lasted maybe two minutes.

Dream:

I found myself floating above my bed, maybe half a meter above, all along while an unknown force was strangling me with such an intense force that I felt my windpipe being crushed.

I knew at that moment that this is all the imagined, but I also knew that if no other way then this, then this is the way I would finally accept that this had been done to me in my past; and that religious symbolism that I had once again engaged myself with had given me strength to accept this.

The end of dream

But please see the dual forces, and that there is no middle ground. Time moves on and so does life, but do I do so too? I don't like to be awaken by some unknown force choking me, or seeing nightmares of torture and cannibalism. These things bothers my day; but I prefer these experience be caused by my positive engagement with life, rather than to be caused by that negative loop.

### Letter Eight

That drunken war cry, that scream that I shared before, where it lead me I will tell you now. One drunken night with _Filth Instructor_ , we were attending this gig that some local metal band was playing. The crowd was not more than about two dozen; but who all were enthusiastically jumping to the tunes of the music. I felt they were by age a bit younger than what I or _Filth Instructor_ was, and so I might have been the oldest person around, and clearly the tallest person.

The band played their songs. This one song had these intervals of a silent phase and then again a loud and fast phase. During these silent phases the young crowd was engorged by the band to shout some, "Hey, Hey," slogans, I on the other hand shouted, "Kill all Christians." Somewhat _Filth Instructor_ did that, too, but nobody heard us, because the crowd was too loud. The band kept playing that same song and after a while the enthusiasm of the crowd was paling down. Now when the next silent interval was approaching, I sensed that no one will shout the familiar, "Hey, Hey," slogan anymore, therefore I told _Filth Instructor_ that we now ought to shout, "kill all Christians" again, and louder than ever before, because now everybody would hear us. But he restrained himself from that glory, though he suggested me to do it myself. In my drunken state I told him, "So be it, why not."

And bravely I waited for the next silent interval to arrive – something I did while taking a stand above all – so I could shout at the right spot, as hard I can: "Kill all Christians!"

After which all the youngsters turned they're looks at me in one simultaneous motion, to have an look at who had embarrassed himself in such manner, to then, after have seen who it have been, they in a similar simultaneous moment turned their heads away from me to continue their business. I am there all along supposedly standing proudly of my actions, though for that one second, too, I felt that embarrassment also. I turned my look towards _Filth Instructor_ , whose impression tells me, you got what you asked for.

But what did I care, I swallowed my embarrassment with one more sip of beer to then curse the kids to be nothing but milk and cookie Wicca's who were not true evil believers.

* * *

It is funny how our embarrassment, when not accepted, leads us into more embarrassments. The following story is shows that proven truth. It all begins during a 2004 New Year's Eve party.

A friend of mine had asked me to join his family and friends for that New Year, at his hometown, which was about a one-hour train ride away. Reluctantly I accepted the invitation because I knew the "social milieu" might be too challenging for my drunken taste, but I was talked over by my friend and so I went along with the plan. To make a long story short, preferably so because of all the embarrassments the story contains, but that night almost ended with my friend fighting me in front of his friends and family. Lucky, almost, because eventually my friend accepted my deepest apologizes for my jackass act, but only with a head butt of his. Next morning when I woke up with this group of people with whom I had been "partying" the last night, I told them straight, "For now on I get drunk by myself and never again try to socialize with anyone of the regular standard." Not that I disliked anyone of them – they didn't take it so either – but because I had finally learned my lesson that I simply didn't know how to behave myself in public.

* * *

"Don't drink with the amateurs." Was my pro-mentor's comment, when I told him about my last weekend adventures.

But I couldn't let it stay there; I needed to counter trouble with trouble. I couldn't simply drink this away, especially when the bar scene had shown me its limits by my last war cry. And while searching for a solution I met one racist buddy of mine, and shared with him about my recent happening. To my surprise he replied with a similar story from his family gathering from the past Christmas and New Year.

We were sincerely fed up with these troubles the others seemed to cause us; therefore, on his initiative we decided to finally start this secretive racist organization that we – i.e., he – been talking about for a long time. The goal was now to promote Finnish supremacy and cause a nationwide revolution based on that. What a mess.

* * *

At that time _Filth Instructor_ had left town, so that might have been part of the reason I involved myself in this. I lived in the underworld, I lived in my isolation; I needed guides when my head would pop up out of the sand. I needed Odysseus to visit me. He knew the political affiliates that my racist buddy had in South Finland, and so now-and-then warned me about going along their idiocy. But, for the sake of the story I guess had to do it.

### Letter Nine

With all this turmoil going on, go ahead and try to finish that school degree of yours, indeed good luck with that. Though, did I really care? A roommate of mine, from my third year of studies, commented once that he wondered how my school was going when all he saw me doing was playing computer games. I had thrown in the towel a long time ago. I had decided that I would take the longer and the harder road. I had decided that I would get my degree only if others would show enough mercy to get it.

See, any decent international school would had denied me that diploma; this because after two more prolonged years, on top of the regular four years, I had out of 52 finished courses 28 bare minimum grades; and out of my chosen technical fields all where bare minimum grades, simply put all. I only did well in one random literature course and slightly on my final thesis. (The thesis was about cryptology applications, a topic I was allowed to choose myself and to do in my own phase.) All my math exams during those years I had to redo several times, but only to pass them with bear minimum grades. It took a toll on me, in the end I felt that there was no point anymore. So Instead I came to school drunk, once even passed-out on a language exam. It was Swedish, a language that I spoke fluently, but because of my lousy spelling, I knew I would get an average grade drunk or sober.

So you understand, in May 2003, I had six years of this mess behind me. While my worthless diploma was being printed, I saw my blessing arriving via a work announcement posted up on the window of the local public work agency, it said: "Wanted: seasonal staff for an Icelandic sheep slaughterhouse, work period from mid-August to end of October."

Independent laborer or dependent on state welfare, there were no way I was to lose this opportunity? I applied immediately and I got the job within the next couple of weeks. I still wonder why the hell did I come back, though a pretty predictable act from someone who's first thought after seeing the last paycheck was, "Why the hell didn't I drink more?"

I didn't think about all of those places I could travel to, or about saving the money so I could travel and search for a better job somewhere else. No, these were all minor issues, sort of meaningless nuances in life. Therefore, sincerely, my first thought of mind when seeing that last paycheck was, "Why the hell didn't I drink more?"

Indeed, it was a predictable thought process for someone whose idea of how to get that next job was to first to sign in on welfare, then get a public housing apartment, then to go the public work agency and wait until they hand you something in your hand. And if they wouldn't do it, well who would mind? After all hadn't I this fabulous idea about writing a world history book based on _Oswald Spengler's_ ,'Decline of the West'. To sort of write a last and final chapter to his pessimistic masterpiece; to write about our digital age and the pre-futuristic world that we live in, all something he could not anyhow predict.

For me, back then, the whole project sounded superb in its inferiority. And so I began my self-imposed 10-month long solitude sentence, a ruling which I was defenseless to argue against. And this madness doesn't even end there; there is one more thing that I haven't told you about, one mad thing. See, all along during those student years, I believed that I was the ANTICHRIST, I really did.

It worked out the following way: I had some brainstorm of some fabulous idea, an idea by which I believed, one could rule the world. And then came this feeling, a true feeling, "Hey, wait a minute; a) it was a really good idea; b) that no one else had thought about before myself; c) therefore, I have to be the Antichrist, due to my torturous past.

(I did not see myself as a survivor of sexual assault, but of horror and terror, and these things in mythological scale. Therefore, when asking myself, why my past had to happen? I had no other answer than, because I was groomed to my future position as the Antichrist. Therefore, any kind of success, or possibility of success, was success towards that goal, to be the ruler of the world. In other words, the only thing which would compensate the experienced horror, was to be someday nominated to be the antichrist. (But please understand, this is a world were good is bad and bad is good. See, you made the nuclear bombs, when I didn't, therefore you are bad and I am good.)

People don't believe me when I share about this, not even my counselor(s), people rather laugh and smile. But the thought process is still there, I mean, that I still sometimes think that I am the Antichrist, though these days it feels different. First, I get saddened rather than praise it; then, though still in the heat of the moment, but somewhat later, it feels like another side of me is wreaking havoc and I, the real me, has to wait there a couple of seconds until that black dog calms down and disappears again.

Personally I have analyze this phenomenon to be an simple, but awkward, mental illness were one sees oneself as a grandiose character – like Napoleon or someone else – only to prevent memories of the past erode the falsely constructed daily life. See, the true self is the sufferer, therefore to deny that suffering one needs to deny oneself, too.

* * *

In the book 'Forgiveness' (2000) – edited by _McCullough_ , _Pargament_ , _Thoresen_ , _Robert_ – _Emmons_ writes in his chapter Personality and Forgiveness, that "number of theorists have speculated that narcissistic fantasies, protect, restore, and repair the person´s sense of self-esteem. [In other words] fantasies of revenge can be a powerful means of salving narcissistic wounds."

For the jet set high-flier this might mean that he has once again gained justification to be unfaithful to his supermodel girl; but for me, these Napoleonic fantasies are crucially needed, because how else can I accept my atomized underdog position. Though, of course, they also becomes the root cause why I am socially impaired. I mean how do you associate with Napoleon?

### Letter 10

August of 2004, I put a "dot" on my masterpiece with the help of some proverbs by _Mao Tsetung_ , and so I was ready to head back to Iceland for a second slaughter season. And doing this, without any understanding that the 10 months just spent were the clearest expression of my own insanity.

* * *

The seasonal staff was surprisingly about the same as last year. We had again two different groups; the Swedes and the Poles, and the local Icelanders as a third party. The Poles were separated to live on the other side of river, which divided the small village; and the Swedish block, which included one or two other Nordic nationalities like me, lived 20 meters from the slaughterhouse.

If I were to stereotype the Swedes, I would say that they were all couple of years younger than what I was and that they all came from middle class backgrounds. They were from good families so to speak, some even from active Christian families, which was an exotic oddity for me at that time. But because of their Western passport and family backed credit cards, they could easily travel the world around and back, and sometimes doing that a couple of times over.

I can't really say we were a mile apart of our experiences in life, but we were apart, but my at that time near fluent Swedish allowed me to pass just as them, by age, and by nature. Therefore, they accepted me as one of them and so I could forget my dual trash, my dual geek life that I had back home; but not in the full extent this I dared not. See, I dared not let their young gay sober life truly affect me. I had after all my own sworn oath to counter trouble with trouble. See, for me back then, the meaning of life was to mess things up, and therefore – and foremost – I could not accept they're positive naivety truly affect me. Naivety which would have been a perfect dose of kryptonite against my social cynicism. But instead with my white knuckles, I held tight to my belief that I was the Antichrist and soon to be granted, not one, but several Nobel prizes.

Although, even with this taxing menacing delusion, I was finally to formulate a close to complete picture of my past and – therefore – was soon to disconnect my ties with my parents. But that foresaw a new scary future of being dependent on none. Thus I became easily irritable, which caused some troubles towards the end of the slaughter season \- a small fight.

But I did it again. I went back to Finland, though I shed a couple of tears for Iceland, which I didn't want to leave. But before continuing with my stay in Finland, I want to share more about the Swedes. Because nobody prevented me to follow them to any of the places they were about to travel to. It was all possible for me to, but as I said, I didn't do it, I went back home instead.

* * *

That autumn of 2004, one night when partying with my fellow seasonal workers the following incident happened:

We had traveled the whole day across the country to get ourselves to Reykjavik. At around 10 p.m. I was already heavily drunk but I still had my small vodka bottle left, which of course I had to open and drink before we would hit the streets. Later that evening – in Reykjavik – on the dance floor of some unknown bar, I felt this zombie state creeping in. This is the state were others black-out, but someone like me becomes a walking dead zombie. It´s like my arms and legs are under the control of someone else – I can see them move and what they do, but I can't tell what to do. Therefore, I knew I needed to get out of the bar before I do something stupid and regretful.

From the second floor of the bar I manage the stairs down, to find myself pushing through the dense crowd to reach the front door. Relived of what I accomplished, I happily step out to breathed in the fresh air, but I am drunk and I wobble, and I feel a need to sit down. I see this smaller bar across the street. I suspect I would be safe there, this is after all Reykjavik, I mean it is my first time here, and therefore I have to assume I will know no-one there.

I fumble and swing my way across the one-way street. The door of the bar, opens and this young blond doorman leads me in; I am pleased of his politeness and his assistance. But two steps in the bar I see that the bar is full of people and that half of the Swedish girls from work are here. I knew on the spot that I am going to regret this night one-way or another.

I am dancing and fooling around just like all the others, all to the point when the DJ hits the slower tunes. Now everybody, including the girls, leaves the floor; but I stay there standing alone. Not really knowing where to go, I stay there until one of the girls walks back to floor to dance the slower tune with me.

The close physical situation gets intimate and we start to kiss, something that I haven't really done before. I take a break to look into her eyes and the strangest thing happens. I see her face disappear, and I see her head is not there anymore. It's a sight that astonishes me indeed, but more than that I see – through her head which is not there – a pair of eyes approaching behind her back, from the opposite corner of the bar. Stunned of this sight, I have to look closer at the approaching eyes, and I see when they are just about at my face – positioned there were her eyes would be – that those eyes belonged to one of two the rapist from my childhood, the older man, the Finn who always liked to kiss me and force his tongue in me.

I couldn't bare the situation. I wanted to stop kissing her and walk away, but I was too drunk to do that. I had no control over myself. So what I instead did was to drool on her neck so as to have the kissing stop. But because of not being immediately caught of my disgrace, I then try to save myself by trying to licking that drool back. What happens is of course a disaster. She panics, but she doesn't know what to do. Her friend sees this and so comes to her rescue. She sees what has happened, so, or course, she curses me while leading her friend into the bathroom. Leaving me standing and reflecting on the reality, that how come I knew something like this would happen at the moment I walked through that front door?

Next Monday evening, I apologize for my actions with a box of chocolate and swear to never to drink again. Though to this day I don't really know what those words exactly meant, because I for sure drank the next possible opportunity given to me, and saw no contradictions whatsoever in doing that.

But – you see – I lived a different life then the Swedes; I could not relate to their experiences and neither could they relate to mine, and thus I could not follow them to wherever they were about to travel after our work was done.

Once – some years later – this one young Swedish woman with superb long legs, told me a short story of her living in the Australian outback at some ranch with her hostess family and three other travelers – three young men – and doing this close to a year; and the short story ended there though I enquired for more details.

Back then in my 20s I could not have been able to handle that kind of sexual tension, I would have gone nuts. Similarly as the night with this kiss, I would have at this ranch, ended up in some tight spot from where I would have felt a urgent need to escape from; and one-way or another I would had made that escape regardless of the consequences.

I wish to note, that of all things written in this book, this chapter about this kiss was by far the hardest thing to write about.

### Letter 11

I spent the first weeks of November in Helsinki, drunk on my friend's couch. I was drinking with his wife while he was out working, what a sight it was for him to come back from work. Sleeping late on one of their couch, I was awakened from my hangover by their 3-year-old son. I saw myself better off to leave so to live with my parents. Though before leaving I told my friend, that, "He won't see me for a while as I am about to join the French Foreign Legion... that my life had become meaningless to the degree, so why not try and see if they accept me."

I didn't tell him, that the only thing which would prevent me of doing this would be me getting out of my closet; in other words, to be the survivor who I am. I foresaw that I had nothing to gain from a life that was burdened by the baggage that I was carrying around; so to try to prosper in a foreign army was obviously a better option than to be dependent on public welfare – something I always seemed to return back to.

* * *

In December 2004 I was at my parents' apartment for about 10 days. They had changed to new smaller apartments twice since I left seven years ago. I was now sleeping behind the living room bookshelf – a gap reached by the corridor as well from the living room – which behind I was now masturbating, and doing that – I guess – for someone's notice.

One night in my bed while trying to catch my sleep, I saw this small ball of light, a kind of bee-type of "thing" flying towards me from the distance, doing that while a buzzing sound increased by every moment it got closer. I wanted to move out of its way, but I couldn't. I was paralyzed. Hence, I reckoned to better off to surrender and to take this hit without complains. And in an accelerating speed this small ball of light approached me through the bookshelf, to then hit me right between my eyes. This then caused an electrified zap that then released the spell, and so I was mobile again. To this day I have no clue what this all was about, though I guess my sick behavior to – still – masturbate although my mother might be listening next room could have a significant cause in it.

* * *

I told my parents that I would not spend Christmas at home, that I will leave for Belgium on the December 22nd, so to visit a friend of mine who lived there. I did mention about a plan about trying to get a job in Denmark - which was an honest plan, if I would fail the army requirements. When hearing this, my mother dared me straight, if I go to Denmark because of drugs and booze. I denied such intentions by all heart. See, the Danish liberal society was a curse on earth for my mother's "high" morals.

But all along, while living there with them, I knew I would never see them again, that I would not come back this time, I had promised myself that. Therefore, I made my father drive around the countryside where our ancestors have been living, so to make him tell all the stories he knew about these past people. I took notes, notes that I sadly lost by time. My intention was that although I disconnected my ties with my family, my future children, if any, would not grow up rootless because of this decision.

I made my father share again everything I had heard him tell me before. Example, where was the bedrock of the house where my fifth grandfather had lived, and all the stories he knew about that place. He shared these stories still as keeping some parts of them for later occasions; see you always had to squeeze the end of the story out of him otherwise he might not tell it to you.

At the same time his brother-in-law had been finally sentenced for a two-year prison term for sexually assaulting underage girls – the girls had been working at his family owned horse farm. He was now doing time in some special made businessmen prison – i.e., he walked around during the days as a free man while being accompanied by a private guard – all while the young women that he had assaulted were still derailed and still needed counseling. My father sat there by the kitchen table, defending his brother-in-law in some silly matter. My mother argued against him, reminding him that the court trial was not really about him being guilt or not, but how grave these accused acts have been. My father didn't want to fight back and therefore simply said, "Least in our family, the bygones are bygones."

Something he said, while giving me a look to search for my agreement upon that.

I was standing restless, on the kitchen floor, looking at both of them and, of course, I felt angry, but I said nothing. Instead I reflected on the fact that soon this will be all over, that soon I will never see them again.

The last night had arrived: I am with my father watching movies from the public TV channels. My father is snoozing, but as usual wakes up just about as the last scene of the movie is to finish. To sort of have a last chat before going to sleep, I ask him, "Where were you when your father died?"

He says, "Sweden."

I paused to ask him if he went to his funeral.

He says, "No."

My relationship with my father was now sealed. I had nothing else to ask him or to tell him. I was now a happy man, and with ease I left my silent father by the sofa chair, to live out his last remaining years of his sad miserable life.

Next morning they both came to greet me at the railway station. I might even have hugged them, but I remember waving them goodbye from the train. And then it was over, I never saw them again.

### Letter 12

I jump of my southbound train at Tampere to take from there, without any further hassle, my budget flight. I am about to fly to Brussels, Belgium. My train arrived around 9 a.m. – or earlier – and my flight was set to leave around noon, thus I thought I'd be better off to sit down in the nearby bar to have some drinks there, rather than to walk around the city center until the airport shuttled picks me up by the doorsteps of the bar. It had to have been Sunday morning, because I remember the streets being empty.

I stepped in to the bar, to join a lonesome crew of half a dozen professionals, who were scattered around in their own corners in this relative spacey bar. Though of the recent sunrise, here inside it was dim and dark; in other words, it felts as no soul was present yet. But not long time after I had sat down, this tall lean woman in her 30s walks in. I assume to buy her first drink of the day, though before doing that she takes a look around herself to see what the scene is this morning. Well the sight is what it is. Thus after having acquired herself that drink, she comes over to my table to ask of her permission to sit next to me. I of course said, "Sure," and smiled to the fact that she had reasoned me to the most socially acceptable person in this low-life place; something which doesn't happen that often. I mean gay men recognize me often, but women seldom do.

We gave it a chat. I mentioned Iceland and my jobs there, she mentioned about her past job at Faeroe Islands at some pig farm. I mentioned about going towards Belgium, South France and Spain. She talked about driving once a stolen car up from Spain to Finland via Paris. Not much more then that, after which she had her drink and left, but before leaving she swore that she is not an alcoholic, I might have done the same to her.

Eventually my shuttle arrived and without much delay I was positioned to board the plane. I spoke French zero to none, so I felt it necessary to at least learn how to count to 10 before we land.

* * *

The plane landed in some suburb of Brussels; there we were greeted not by the customs officials but by a young merry lad dressed in a Santa Clause uniform, stationed there to hand out candy to the arriving children. The airport shuttle dropped us off at the Brussels railway station, what a pleasant surprise, I first thought, but to arrive after sunset to a new city worried me a bit. I wished to ask someone about how to get to the city center were my hostel would be. I chose to ask a fellow passenger – my first in a long-line of polite and well-mannered men from Central Africa – but he didn't answer, but instead enquired of me do I speak French? I said sure and counted to 10. He smiled and advised me to go to the railway station information desk. I agreed.

In the whirlwind of this international railway-station, I saw this one brown-skinned man of a trans-sexual nature doing much of nothing. I thought that why not I asked him how to get to the information desk, but he looked at me and walked away without saying a world. I assume it was my English that he was offended of, or?

But I didn't take this too personally, but instead turned around to see surprisingly the information desk just right in front of me, across the whirlwind of passing people. There I was handed a subway map and advised to use the subway to find my location. I did this, but after resurfacing from the subway I immediately took the wrong direction and so walked myself lost in the darkness. During my stroll, I recognized the clear majority of immigrant population in that inner city environment and also the two Russian lads who were following me; whom I knew I couldn't outrun with my ridiculously heavy luggage.

Eventually after having peeked over my shoulders many times and after I had reached some sort of roundabout, and stopped there, the Russian lads approached me to politely ask if I needed any help, that "were I lost?"

I stuttered and said, "No," while trying to hold on an all-knowing comfortable act.

They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and walked away. Embarrassed, I headed down the next street to the street I had just came from.

Exhausted and lost, I stumble upon a porch which belonged to an old France speaking couple; I dared to enquire them about my whereabouts and where my hostel might be. Happily they began assisting me, but after which they wondered all sort of things, from where I came from and of my doings. There talking to them – in English – they felt somewhat left out and surrounded by the multiply generations of immigration. They were the distinct minority, especially if you counted their age. I left them with many thanks, after which I headed down the street they had suggested me to go. Eventually, I reached my hostel, where I heard that I came just in time to get the last bed available. I thought to myself, Gone are the days when one didn't need to reserve dormitory beds.

### Letter 13

I would spend four nights in Brussels, after which Christmas was done. Only then, I estimated myself daring to trouble my newly acquired friend, who was living in the French speaking southern part of Belgium. During that stay in Brussels I mainly wandered around the main city park and the main streets leading back to the hostel; this seemed the most logical thing to do when I didn't have much money to do anything else. Besides, I was still planning to join the French army. Therefore, at ease, I fooled myself that I am out there jogging and doing stuff, though one of my Arab roommates didn't buy this and instead pointed at the beer I was sipping before going to sleep.

But about this city park where I went, it was a true metropolitan park, something I had not yet seen. Those couple of days wandering there I got myself lost many times over. I even seemed to have reached its outer limit, and a view of wheat fields and some farm houses in the distance emerged. While trying to find my way back, I met other people who were lost, too, but I smiled and advised them to go there where I came from – towards the wheat fields – imagine that. I didn't do this with mean intentions; I just didn't know anything else to say. This is what my lousy social skill leads me to do. I can only offer my deepest apologizes now afterwards.

I continued by climbing small hills and crossing marshlands, and by annoying the local rich people by walking on their special purpose horse-tracks. One lonely Japanese man on his horse was polite and it made me a bit embarrassed. The locals, the upper class, were rude, but why wouldn't they be? I am sure that they had paid for their services, opposite to me.

After sunset I eventually found myself out of the park, walking into some unknown wealthy neighborhood. Everything was different here compared to the immigrant populated inner city where my hostel was; this place had privately owned houses, which were fully decorated with Christmas lights. The nice cars of the people, were correctly parked by the road and by their houses. There were neither small shops nor rundown houses here. Who wouldn't chose to live here, if one is given the chance to choose?

I walked out from this neighborhood in a attempt to find the next subway station, but only to realize that I didn't have the slightest clue about where I was. Thus I opted to follow the nearby trolley tracks to find the next stop for the trolley. It was 8 p.m., the trolley arrived within 15 minutes. The coach of the trolley explained, that, "The trolley drivers are on strike, so I was lucky to get this one, that this might be the last one today."

*

I went back and followed my footsteps and I saw, to my surprise, there in the sand were sometimes one pair of footsteps but other times two pairs of footsteps. Later I learned, the time when there were only one pair of footsteps, it was from the time God was carrying me on his shoulder, and when there were two pair of footsteps, it was from the times we were carrying someone else together.

*

After I sat down in the trolley I knew it was all downhill from now on, that I had a easy journey ahead. I read the trolley route map, and asked the coach of the trolley to drop me off at the nearby subway station. He was pleased to be of any service. At the gate of the subway station, I was blessed by a well-dressed young Central African man waiting there to help me. I walked up to him, to have him affirm that I had understood the subway map right. He politely listed on my plan and said, "Yes, you are on right track, just make this one change and you'll get to your destination."

I was comfortable riding the subway until my pink cloud was broken by the realities of the urban underground world. My fellow passengers, one pair of immigrant men, had a scary battle-hardened look that I had not yet witnessed. And I seemed not to be the only one scared around here, at the surface entrance gate we were met by a gang of six riot-geared ticket inspectors. Holy moly, I thought, what is going on here?

* * *

The closest subway station wasn't that close to my hostel, but I didn't mind because I knew the neighborhood by now and so with ease I began my stroll up the city square. I saw a kiosk of some sort, and I walked in to buy some snacks for the evening. The immigrant shopkeeper took a look at me and offered a discount on some foreign beer that he got, but I got offended of it, because I saw, he saw me as a boozer? So I began to bargain for more, which of course led the deal to end and I walked out empty-handed.

After a shower, I didn't stay at the dormitory room; my Muslim roommate's sober eyes were too much to bear. Instead I went to the hostel bar to hang-around there with the gathering crowd. There the bartender played me a Finnish song from some '50s movie that he said had become fond of – i.e. the song. He was some regular guy from some Roman-Latin country, no significant education as I understood, and his travels had now brought him to be a hostel bartender here in Brussels. He seemed to be all right with that, but why was he that, why couldn't I do the same? I didn't have an answer: Maybe he didn't experience his life as I did mine? For me, my life was a continuous stream of troubles, maybe it wasn't so for him?

At the bar I recognized the Swedish girls had their own crowd of boys whom they seemed not to want to share with the rest of us, therefore they slipped away to their own room(s). Though maybe it was the other way around, maybe the boys had made that decision? But by this I was left with an about two dozen strong group of random people who saw no problem with spending Christmas Eve at this hostel bar, something which I liked. Screw Christmas, screw it forever.

One Arab, an Algerian man, with whom I shared my dormitory room, joined us at the bar. I had sensed that somehow he did not get along with the other Arab men. They, the Arab men, were all in their 30s, and I recognized, that though being Arabs – North Africans – they didn't have a common Arabic dialect to communicate with, thus they spoke French to one and other.

The Algerian man shared with me that he was an underemployed barber, but despite this, with the help of a disciplined scheme, he was still able to save some money; money that he would use to rent a studio apartment someday for himself. He shared that he lived once in Northern Italy, but he had been there for 11 months without work. That he used to think that it was cool to take money from the state, but he had learned by this experience that you always need to have a job, that being unemployed for 11 months was not a pleasant affair. "Not at all," he reaffirmed.

He was waiting for a friend to stop by, which many people seemed to be doing that evening. Random people seemed to arrive all night and the staff seemed to know all of them. (See, the local hostels have a third night check-out-order, which by the immigrant crowd – as any other guest – have to move on to some other nearby hostel that has the same rule.) One Arab man even staid over the night, he slept on our dormitory floor; though by 3 a.m., he was found and kicked out by the regular lock down check. No hassle about it, he just tried his luck – who wouldn't have done the same on Christmas Eve.

Eventually one Ukrainian lad in his mid-20s came to meet this Algerian barber who I was talking to. The Ukrainian lad had a about 10-year-old boy with him, but who was distracted by the staff and so stayed playing with them, rather than talking to us by our table.

I couldn't understand the social network that I was witnessing; and when I recognized that the surrounding vagabond life style was becoming an object of jealousy, I saw I was better off to leave for my dormitory bed, now when my drunken state made my manners unpredictable. Besides, it was close to midnight and thus Xmas 2004 was by all means in the past.

### Letter 14

That next morning a strange incident happened, an incident which unfolded itself by seeing the Central Africans gathering in the lobby. The issue was, that among the about eight person strong group was one flamboyant man whose character was clearly different compared to the rest of us, and therefore he caught my eye. I don't exactly remember the exact chronological order of things, but I would say it went something like this.

It was morning so I went to the upstairs toilets – a walk during which I saw the African group gathering in the lobby – but there in the bathroom I recognized that all of the toilet paper was gone, except the some scratches of paper left in one boot; but no worries I thought because I didn't need any now. I finished my business and walked downstairs, to arrive back to the lobby and to see again this group of Central Africans. I had learned earlier that they run the breakfast service around here, so I thought, that they were there chatting together after they're morning chores had been done.

But while looking at them, I became mesmerized by their difference to "us" – in size and in nature – they were a group of people who I had not yet met. I dared not to look at the one gorgeous woman among them, and to the opposite I could not take my eyes of that flamboyant gay man in their group.

Soon after this flamboyant man leaves the group, to walk past me, to head towards the upstairs toilets, the toilets from where I had just come from. I sense my opportunity and thus waited a bit, but after which in a spellbound state of mind, followed his path. Taking the last couple of steps slowly sneaking, almost waiting by the stairs, so to study in what boot he went in. I know he is alone, because nobody was using the toilets when I was using them and nobody walked past me when I was standing by the bottom of the stairs – nobody except this flamboyant man. So in what boot did he go into?

I hear him in one of the boots on the right side, but which one I do not yet know? That is until he finished his business and gets out from "his" boot, and now I see, that he been in the boot that had the last reaming scratches of toilet paper in it.

Before he sees me by the stairs I hurry to take my steps towards him, so not to be seen doing anything suspicious. While he washes his hands, he glimpses at me with his left eye, when I walk past him as smoothly as I can.

After those cool and easy steps towards the last pair of toilet boots, I do not enter any of them, but as relaxed as I can I stand there looking through the window, which is set there at the end of this short alley. And as instinctively one can plan things, it truly goes so, that my friend – this flamboyant man – finishes his businesses and walks away before anyone else comes after me.

After which I chose to immediately sneak into the boot he had used to relive myself big time, and of course to do this in full knowledge that if there were any toilet paper left in the boot, the flamboyant man would surely have used it by now; but not just that, also knowing that this is a country where in old houses like this one, one does not flush toilet paper but instead puts the used paper in the trashcan beside you. So what do I do to wipe my behind? What else then to dig in into the trashcan to search for used toilet paper, thus of course to spot the first papers on top, which I assume obviously to be leftovers from my friend, this flamboyant man. So with some level of decency I then chose the most cleanest of them, to wipe my behind.

* * *

With this accidental high climax achieved, one has to wonder, what about all the other times when it all went somehow wrong; the times when I was caught, and I had to run so to escape my embarrassment? What I am asking for, is who am I? I mean the hawk spots for mice, and I spot for...? Yes what do I spot for?

*

_Gyges_ the invisible man, rapes the Queen, kills the King and steal the treasure of the state. _Claucon_ says, so would we all do if we would have the power to be invisible; and that we praise the virtues man – who didn't pillage – only because we fear punishment of not supporting the virtues.

But if I would hold the ring of Gyges and I would be invisible, would I not – by the previous story told – pour vomit on myself and crawl in my own feces, rather than pillage and destroy?

To _Claucon_ , _Socrates_ admits, that he can't offer any other rewards for living a virtues life, than to have a soul which is lead by oneself, rather than enslaving desires.

But he said this in the context of an immortal soul, which can only be destroyed by vice and evil deeds. See _Socrates_ saw it so, that similarly as rot destroys timber, or as corrosive destroys copper and iron, so does the vice and the evil destroy our immortal soul.

But I am neither virtues or unjust,

because albeit invisible I am a coward.

I dare only to turn my corrupt deeds against myself.

I dare only to destroy myself.

*

In Jerusalem, _Jesus_ said to those Jews who believed in him

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

But they answered

"We never [been] in bondage to any man; how thou, shall ye make us free?"

Jesus replied,

"Verily, verily, whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin and the servant abideth not in the house forever, but the son abideth forever, thus the son shall make you free. But because my word hath no place in you, ye seek to kill me."

John 8:32-37

* * *

I had sudden public toilet fetish when entering my second year of sobriety: I recognized that I was wiping my behind with the water from the toilet sinks. I talked about this with professionals and friends and only so I could end it. I was taught that the symbolism of the act was filth, danger (diseases) and the anal.

*

_Jung_ reminds us of the manic guy at the hospice, who keeps wondering why he is obsessed by these obviously meaningless thoughts and acts, and _Jung_ answers to him, "because there is a force in you that you cannot control."

In other words, an entity, a creature, which isn't you, but is inside you.

### Letter 15

Brussels was an interesting experience, with its atomic center settled by those well-to-do bureaucrats, who are surrounded by perfectly kept old bourgeoisie houses; but then just a small walk away there are people pissing on the walls, prostitutes by their windows, and rundown houses with barely one wall yet standing. I did not know who belonged where. At the shopping mall, while chewing on my lonely 4€ croissant, I overheard a Finnish family enjoying themselves by a nice meal that they had bought. Because I did not know whether they arrive by business class or not, I decided not to go and talk to them.

By December 26, Christmas is over by all means; therefore, I dared to head south to meet my friend as planned. I said my goodbyes to the hostel staff and the rest of the people who I had by now learned to know, and so I began my walk towards the railway station. I passed this concrete mayhem looking railway station once as it was so ugly and obscene, but peoples pointed at it – while – saying that it indeed was what I was searching for.

I fooled myself with the train seats and so sat myself unknowingly in the first-class cars, though only until I was kicked out. I noted to myself that I came from a classless Nordic country, were only recently the well-to-do Eurocrats had demanded seats to be reserved for themselves.

The train went south towards the French speaking county. I remember passing only one major town, which gave off a miserable post-industrial look with its rundown steel mill. While closing in on my destination I wished that I could stroll around in the village before my friend would arrive to pick me up, but he was as planned waiting for me at the train station. He had Roman-Latin blood, his family ancestors had come from Spain, doing so by the honorable orders of the Spanish royalties. He was shorter than me, but who isn't. His name was somewhat similar to mine, and he was of same age as I am, and we had identical birthdays – what a surprise. He was a good-mannered person and a good host for all the three nights I spent there with him. Straight on he took me to some local bar to taste the local beers of that specific village. We visited some Christmas market before heading towards his village, and the village bar there, to drink again the beers of that village. At this bar, although the hostess was a high-quality lady in her early 70s, the fact was, that the half dozen customers in the bar all were one step short from being low-end bums – myself included.

While going through the local beers that my friend suggested me to drink, I got a bit merry. This worried me somewhat as I had not yet been introduced to his family, as a consequence I began to ponder about my drunken manners. But no worries – about being drunk or not – the family was pleased to meet their son's tall Nordic friend. The family had two grown up sons, and two teenage daughters who both still lived at home. A peculiarity was that the father of the house had once again – that morning – threatened to kill himself, a familiar pattern I was told. After all the chit chat was done I waited eagerly for the sunset and my friends invitation to his very own wine cellar, something I remembered him talking fondly about back in Iceland, were I had met him.

For me, as a Finn, wine cellars are totally out of the ordinary and therefore I had imagined this crazed idea of how it all would look like, but instead it turned out to be an big potato cellar with wine and liquor bottles placed formally by the walls – some beer chases laid randomly on the floor, too. This was a middle class family, this finally dawned on me.

My friend had earlier shared that he had stopped drinking with the help of some medicine, which he's doctor had proscribe to him, and therefore was not having any drinks. This all went a bit over my understanding and so I simply mumbled back some casual support; besides the only thing I was anymore thinking about was my friend's magic hash pipe, which I knew he had hidden somewhere around.

After the hash pipe and after a day like that, I was indeed merry, and thus I felt the need to recall how to be a good-mannered drunk and high guest, rather than a good-mannered drunk guest. But no worries. By the time we walked back to the house everybody had already gone upstairs and thus we stayed by ourselves in the downstairs living room watching children's programs. But it wasn't fun enough and my friend told me that he wants to go to his room and play with his monkey, which we decided would be best thing to do; and so we separated our ways. Upstairs in my room, the high and the wine that I had experienced, and the classical music that I was now listening to – via my headphones – made me wonder why in hell I always have to go for the cheapest beer in town; that why don't I choose nice wine, like the ones I had drank today?

The next day we slept late, after which my friend wanted to drive me across the border to France, in order to visit some shopping center. (Just a small drive.) France looked wealthier and, of course, the price of wine astonished me. I imagined drinking all the offered wines and so understood that I would die from the resulting killer hangover. That I should stick to the cheapest beer in town, this I concluded to be the best thing for me.

Back to the village, my friend took me for a walk around the nearby neighborhood – a complet rural scenery. I mentioned that when flying over the Netherlands, I had seen no forest at all; instead, only greenhouses and only later here in Belgium I saw some forest but even then nothing compared to North Europe.

He shared in a saddened tone, that indeed, the people in the city sell their small piece of rural land to buy themselves a new fancy toy. A sympathetic sentence that he soon continued with saying that he too owns a small piece of forest, and he too is about to sell it, so to buy – nonetheless – a red sports car. I said nothing, as he seemed not to see any contradictions in his action and beliefs.

(I keep specific details of the landscape undisclosed for the sake of anonymity.) Eventually we turned around and began walking back to the village, while doing this my friend shared some thoughts about his neighbors; one story was that he had beaten up one older man at some village gathering – breaking his jaw – because he had insulted one of his younger cousins. I enquired about the wisdom of that action, but my friend didn't respond.

He later showed me a spot where he once had crashed his car while driving drunk, and further told me: That while waking up by the steering wheel he had seen the police car approaching from the distance. He had immediately jumped up and ran out on the fields, so to escape the police and the insurance hassle. Something that he did, but he was also got caught up in the barbwires criss-crossing the fields and doing this to the extend that he needed hospital care the next day.

Later that day we visited his grandparents, who were a nice old couple in their early 70s, but while drinking their strong wines I became somewhat drunk again and so slightly made a fool of myself. His grandfather was an old man and a war veteran from the Second World War, my friend shared eagerly his journeys from these times.

Surprisingly later in Perpignan, South France, I saw a monument of the deeds that my friend's grandfather's unit had done. I was surprised, and although I couldn't for sure translate the France text on it, I took it so that the monument and the story told was interconnected.

### Letter 16

That evening my friend had arranged a dinner party at his friend's place. His friends lived north from us, and I remember that we drove quite significantly on the highway to get to there. They were a nice young couple who lived in their fine suburban row house.

The "France" guest etiquette was really hard for me: to kiss my male host or for that matter his fiancée felt overwhelming. I sat down on the couch and opened my own can of beer and was straight scold not to do that ever again. I'm sure there was something else, but the monkey sees none. I was tired, drunk and lost. I didn't know where I was or what I wanted to do.

Some additional people came and we ended up eating pasta with a nice sauce. The others who came were well-mannered and well-educated young people in their 20s, a sort of crowd I did not have any experience hanging around with. Therefore, after dinner I stayed happily by the dinner table with my Belgium beer, to look at them looking at the pictures, which were projected on the living room wall. These were pictures that were taken by my friend from his recent travels in Iceland. Eventually the evening was over, meaning I had survived it. I left my 25$ cognac bottle unintentionally there as a gift, and tried to give goodbye kisses to whomever who wanted them.

From that released energy of leaving the house, while driving back home we started to talk about stuff; my friend shared about his relationship with alcohol and the problems he had caused himself by drinking. This, of course, was an uncomfortable spot to be in, because all those troubles that he detailed for himself were things I had done myself. Therefore I changed the topic, but surprisingly shared that I had been raped in my childhood. I was tired and drunk and it sort of slipped my mouth. My friend wanted to slow down the car and stop by the roadside to listen, when I saw this happening I said, "No, please don't, this is not a big deal."

And then I passed out.

But to note, this was my first time ever, when I told someone in person that I had been raped in my childhood.

* * *

You remember the fight during New Year's Eve 2003 that I had with my friend? The background to this event was that I had written this strange movie screenplay based on my life, which I then had emailed to one friend of mine because he was in the art business. I told him via that email, that this is my past more or less, something he was, of course, astonished to hear. But we never spoke about this topic, I never brought this topic up again, I left it there. So that buried energy then unleashed itself out at the party and in the aftermath of my bad manners. In his burst of anger towards my child like drunken act, he shouts in between his curses, "My job is not to be your private counselor!"

And I understood he was absolutely right about that. I cannot demand my suffering being understood or worshiped by others. I need professional help or help from people who volunteer to help. That I am not anyhow special, that I need to allow my friends to live without my drama, this is crucial for me to grasp.

* * *

Back to Belgium:

The next day we awaken to a snowstorm that Belgium logistics were not prepared for. This then affected my travels in a way that I stayed one more night as my friend's guest. To spend the day he wanted to show me his newly acquired flat, thus we drove to the village where it was. But because of the weather my friend reasoned that I was better off to sleep there at his apartment, rather than to go back to his parents' house. Therefore we spent the next night at his flat while watching Scarface, the movie, and smoking hashish.

The next morning the weather had eased and the roads had been cleared just as my friend had estimated, and so he felt it safe to drive me to the same railway station I had couple of days ago arrived at. By this I recognized that I had gained a small understanding of the geographies of the local villages. I was pleased of my entire visit and said my good byes by expressing my great appreciation to the hospitality he had offered me. But after I boarded the train, I never saw him again. The last thing I heard of him was that he was working in Africa for some Belgium mining company. Sometimes I wonder, did he ever get his dream girlfriend which he so much dreamed about?

Indeed, no wife, no life.

### Letter 17

I had booked a budget flight from Belgium to Gerona, which is about 100 kilometers north of Barcelona. The plan was to spend New Year's Eve in Barcelona, after which I would head north to France to enlist myself in the French army at Perpignan – Perpignan is a major town in South East France, i.e., France's Catalonia. It all sounded like a good plan.

My commuter train took me to this South Belgium city where my flight was to leave the next morning. I had booked a cheap hotel room here, which was a bit far off from the railway station, but half away from the airport. Now walking toward this hotel, after had experienced my friend's politeness and everyday civic life, I began to doubt the sanity of my journey and its destination. But what could I do, I reasoned, when turning back was not an option.

The hotel turned out to be something I hadn't yet experienced. The house in itself was an awkward cube that had been built – at least – one quarter out of plastic. Believe me please. The receptionist, the only staff at present, left us for the night, and the shared bathroom in the corridor was a self-cleaning one, imagine that. So sometimes it had the self-cleaning red light on and therefore one was left by the corridor to wait until the cleaning process was over. How or what part of this shower-toilet complex was cleaned I never figured out, although of my extensive studies.

There trying to sleep alone in this plastic box, faraway from humanity, the only thing I could do to my own likeness was to watch business channels on cable TV. But while doing that I asked myself: Why can't I do something that I like somewhere I would like to be? Why do I have to be alone in this plastic box so to watch business channels, why can't I do that in Iceland after a day's wok from a small salary slaughterhouse job? Why I am here of all places, why am I not there? I didn't have an answer because there wasn't an easier softer way for me at that time.

Back then I needed a constant theater of imaginary thoughts to sustain my daily life, plus be allowed to be drunk at least one half of the day. I knew I would not get a job at the open labor market with these demands; therefore, I knew I would always fall back to be the welfare recipient I always had been. Thus, I needed to continue my journey.

The next morning I awakened knowing that there is no airport shuttle to pick me up. So better off to leave as soon as possible, so to walk across highways and village back alleys to reach my destination, the local airport terminal.

* * *

I survived the plastic box without becoming too shattered, but obviously to curse those lonesome hotel nights. The local seculars had firmly prevented any religious material to be placed in any drawer, but no worries now I come carrying my own.

Remember the Greenlandic tribe without a resource for a priest-class and therefore having a simple culture of talking to one's inner "buddy" during those long cruel journeys across the ice sheets? Remember that manic force inside you that _Jung_ says is a force in you, but is a force not of you? So when holding on to _Jung_ 's views that – about – all recovery to sanity happens through one's search and findings of one's personal image of God, then the puzzle pieces are not that shuffled after all. Because isn't it then simply so, that one only ought to sit down and listen to the one who talks. But one day when listening on myself it dawned on me how come I don't talk back?

That's why I don't walk into hotel rooms – anymore – without carrying spiritual material of my own, because I don't know if the seculars been here, too, to put that barrier in between me and myself. Which indeed would be sad, especially if this is the one lonely night when I am about to hang myself by those closet wires.

And thus he was baptized,

and the spirit of God descended upon him,

and thus he was born of the spirit,

and became quickened in the inner man.

Book of Abraham, Moses 6:65

### Letter 18

A half day later I am in Gerona Airport, northeast Spain, i.e., Spanish Catalonia – I finally understood that I am not the only one thinking about spending his or her new year in Barcelona. So how about those cheap hostel beds, do they exist there or not, did I honestly want to go there to find that out? Besides, even if they are there, the bus fare to Barcelona is $20 and I needed to come back also. So why not stay in Gerona? At the airport I collected some addresses of the local hotels which were cheap enough for me, after which I jumped on the shuttle bus so to get to this nearby city.

After a not so long walk from the bus station, I found a bar and enquired from there about the hotel in the same building, and as I had predicted the ownership with the bar and the hotel was intertwined. The bar hostess told me the price of the room, which was $15 a night, and I took it on the spot because I knew it was cheapest offer in town. The place turned out to be a bare one-star hotel, if such things exist. It had dusty shelves and an old lousy bed, but it was a double room and I had a window view at the house across the street and its roof-top terrazzo. This had to have been December 29th.

With my cheap room I had now settled myself down in northeast Spain. The only thing I needed to do, was take the next bus to Perpignan, and there enlist in the France army; and that would be the end of the story. But was I ready to do it? I did not know. Because I wanted to keep both options afloat, I therefore began drafting letters that I would send to key relatives. My intention was to describe my situation: where I am, what I had gone through, and who my mother really has been. To sort of get myself out of the closet, but it all flopped. The letters became too long, they were too troublesome to write, and I didn't know what to write and what not to write. But neither to whom to write: I mean these were people who I hadn't seen since my youth, so would they actually care? Could I demand them to care?

* * *

It was wintertime, which in Catalonian context means nice breezing temperature during the day, but freezing cold nights. There were no affluent public heating – something which any North European is inherently accustomed too – thus I laid shivering in my bed while trying to catch my sleep.

I stayed in Gerona for four nights, though I paid for three. I needed to stay that extra night because after New Year's Day was Sunday, one more red day, thus the long-distance buses would not be going until Monday. But I – the penniless vagabond – rightfully assumed that I'd get that extra night for free, because nobody would be there to check am I at my room or not.

Gerona was great, it felt wealthy. They seemed to have put time and effort on their inner city architecture. The new public square was modern looking and clean, and most of all, the old medieval castle and the nearby medieval houses were kept in good shape. I had to admit that it looked better than what it looked like in the north, from where I came from. I was surprised about this. After seeing Brussels, I thought that it only get worse the farther south you go; but now I saw that this wasn't true. I give Gerona 10 points.

My diet became French bread and cheese, included with cheap Spanish wine, sold conveniently at any of the local super markets. My favorite spot in the city became this one spot at medieval city wall; it was well-kept and easy to access. There, by this guard tower, I drank wine and eat my bread, all while looking at the red Catalonian sunset.

I pondered about the big choices I had ahead. I had put myself in an either or not situation; that either I get this done, that either I start to live my life as an survivor of sexual assault, or I take the bus across the border and join the army. There were no third lingering option anymore, it was freedom or escape and disappearance and nothing else. I was fierce about not going back to Finland, or anywhere else without fixing my past now. The burden from not acting in some reliving way seemed too increase exponentially every moment; and besides, I felt that increasing burden didn't even belong to me, it belonged to someone else.

The afternoon of December 31st I had arrived again at my favorite spot so to look at the sunset and to have my dinner there – wine, bread and cheese. Some people were passing by while walking up and down the stairs. Sure some corners smelled like piss and filth, but I'd seen worse in similar places, and now for the sake of respect I didn't want to pee in some random corner, but instead happily relived myself in some empty wine bottle, which had been left after some other sunset worshipers.

At some point some kids came by to smoke their joint – upon the same tower that I was on. They were about 14 years of age, and they were maybe four of them. They saw that bottle that I had just peed in and which I had left by the opposite corner stone, when seeing it – full of something – they just couldn't help themselves. What was I supposed to do, scream stop, it's my piss? I dared not, so I instead stood there to look with corner of my left eye when the bravest of them dared to take a sip of my pee. One figures out pretty fast that you are indeed drinking piss and not wine, so she the bravest one spit what she drank, and curses and kicks the ground, though not too much, not to expose her own embarrassment. Not more than that, after a while, after they had smoked their joint, they were gone.

After sunset it seemed that not much was happening in the city, so I decided to head back to my hotel room to come back later closer to midnight. I assumed things having loosened up a bit, by then. Now alone again in this shit hole hotel room, wasting my time on drinking wine that didn't get me drunk, on a New Year's Eve of all possible dates, I certainly had again some doubts about the sanity of my life and the way I was living it. But those few hours left for self-critical thoughts was not enough for any serious conclusions.

Midnight arrived and I was back on the streets, to finally understand that there is nothing going on here, for me that was. See, to my surprise, everybody was spending their time with their families and friends, either at home or at some restaurant and a random passer by was not welcome.

So there I was walking in circles on the street, waiting for midnight, having only a couple of teen girls drunk by a park bench making sounds. I thought about joining them, but something prevented me. Later I saw some other loner like me going to have a chat with them, suit him I thought, but after a while came the police, too. I was relived of not being there questioned of my businesses in this company. If I saw it right, the police took the girls with them and chased the guy off. After midnight the bars and restaurants opened their doors to the public. I made some friends with some Central African guys who been wandering the streets, too. Later one of them invited me to join them for a car ride, but I dared not, and he politely understood why so, so we broke our ties. And besides after such a long day I knew I looked like a wreck, so what was there really else to do, then to go back to my cold hotel room bed. Only to wake up the next day knowing that New Year's Eve is now over and gone, and that this is Saturday morning and tomorrow will be the last day after which the regular life starts again. So what is my call, do I join the army or break clean with my past? What do I intend to do, because I can't stay here in this hotel room forever?

Now this terrible stomach ache began. Food poisoning one might say, but from wine and cheese, hard to believe, thus psychosomatic it all was. I had fever and I shit in my pants. I peed in bottles because going to the bathroom was too tormenting. So there I was lying in my bed, freezing and shivering.

Sunday, next day, my physical agony uplifted my spiritual unease, and therefore I could reason that if I join the army, I might as well deal with my past, too, that doing both wouldn't hurt, would it? I looked at those letters that I had been drafting to my relatives, and I saw that they didn't work out. They were too long, and because being handwritten, were barely understandable. And again who to send them to? These were people I hadn't been in touch with in years. So it truly couldn't be the best choice.

I don't really remember the prerequisite thoughts, but there being tormented by this food poisoning, alone in this cold and dusty hotel room. I saw it could not get any worse than this, so why not call my sister to demand an audience, which I did at 2 a.m., local time on January 3rd. I broke down and became really emotional during the most part of the phone call. I began asking about the drunks from our past, did they ever go in her room during the nights; she said, "No," but she then asked me the same, and I answered, "Yes."

At that time I understood that there were two or more rapists during a longer period of time, but I could not truly put my mother in that picture, or her act of incest upon me, all of that was still undisclosed for me. So instead I shared about the rapes, and that our mother hadn't believed me when I had hinted to her that something was going on. But rather to the contrary, she had told me not to spit in my room, or not to sleep walk during the nights, because all the mess I supposedly caused by that.

My sister was, of course, astonished to hear this. I learned from her that the last rape, the one when the police had intervened, had been kept as a secret from her. She knew nothing about it. She also shared that back then in her teens, she had been out a lot, out on the streets, and thus did not know what had been going on at home.

She continued with remembering the scene when I, as a toddler, was physically attacked by our mother, something she admitted that she had not told anyone yet. She also confessed that she is a regular smoker, which I countered with confession of being a regularly coffee drinker, and we both laughed to these absolute taboos named by our mother. But also that she is now pregnant after numerous miscarriages, something she had kept a secret from me. The date for the birth was set to be on October 10, identical to my birthday, what a coincidence, but when hearing this, the midwife had changed the date to be October 6, and on that date her son was then born.

After that emotional phone call, I decided that the best way to act further on this matter was to contact my friends that I met regularly. I didn't want to call them, because it was too late, so I decided to send them text messages via my mobile phone. It was a bit of an awkward thing to do concerning the topic, but I felt I needed to act somehow immediately before I possible lost my courage and lock myself again.

I counted five friends to be worthy of bothering, to them I then sent a close to 350 character long text message. They responded five different ways, from nothing to any support in between.

After the couple of hours of sleep, I awoke asking myself if I am a new born man. The answer was no. This because I still needed to contact my parents. So without further mediation, I sneaked out of my hotel room early enough so as not to end up paying for the fourth night. At the bus station I pointed at my bus ticket and they pointed at the bus, and so I was on the move again.

I wanted to go and check out this draft office that I knew about, to make there my final decision about joining the army or not. But then, on the other hand, I wanted to go to Carcassonne – farther north – there I knew about a cheap hostel. I needed a cheap hostel to be able to sit down and write my letters to my parents.

* * *

On the bus I got a phone call from my friend, from Finland. He was wondering why I had last night bothered him with such a silly matter. I said, "Sorry."

It was my professional friend, i.e., alcoholic.

I told him that I am in Spain. He had no clue of that, I hadn't disclosed that via the text message.

But people react in different ways when they hear my story, this is something I have come to terms with. In time I have learned that if the response didn't feel appropriate, I should not take it personally anyhow; they are still my friends; however, I feel their comment being ill chosen compared what I had just said. I have also learned that sometimes people don't even hear what I had told them, they sort of block it out, to later confess, "But you didn't mention that."

But I did.

But the response also changes when the storyteller changes. I recently shared about my continuous thinking of my past, a daily ritual that I have been involved with for the past 10 years. Of course, I have to have mentioned it to others before, but now I heard through the chatter someone replying, "It have to be horrible."

I dwelled on it and shared more about it, and I got similar replies from others. _Ruri_ – my mother here in Iceland – her eyes opened again, I was now sharing something other than that anger.

### Letter 19

I arrived to Perpignan to learn that this town has been the home of Salvador Dali, or I least I got the impression that it has been. When walking around that afternoon, I made my decision not to join the army, but to instead try to live the civil life with this new sweet beginning.

I don't know whether or not that army option really was an option, or rather just a blackmail scheme set up against myself? If so, the fact was that the military salary – in the barracks – was about the same before taxes compared to what I got at an Icelandic slaughterhouse after taxes. And to live in that locked down environment of discipline and bullying, sincerely who chooses that if one doesn't need to? But because I had traveled so far to get here, I decided that I would at least to stop by at the draft office that I knew about.

My father once shared these wise words to me, that, "Whatever military you intend to join, they will always tell you there that they are the best."

That day I learned that this was indeed true, because so I was told in the Finnish army – that they were the best – and so I was now told in this France army draft office that they, too, are the best; and I assume so is one told whatever military one intends to join.

Surprisingly – at that well-kept office – nobody cared that I didn't sign the contract, but instead they just shrugged they're shoulders when I walked out after having watched their English language introduction video. I left with a smile, because I was sure that the firmly fit 5-foot lieutenant was eager to share his ill luck of ending up in this low-paid draft office rather than at a well-paid battlefield. Just one signature on that paper and the whole circus would have began

* * *

Before leaving Finland I had bought myself a return flight ticket from Gerona to the Baltic's, set somewhere around the January 20. This I had done, if I was not accepted to join the ranks of the French army, I would at least have something to fall back on. Now when I didn't join the army my trip became more recognizable. First head to Carcassonne and find that cheap hostel that I knew about - this because I am running out of money - and there, I would then write a letter to both of my parents, after which I would travel back to Finland with the help of that that flight ticket I had. To note, back to Finland meant back to North Finland, to the town where I was signed in. There I assumed the welfare office being able – as obligated – to hand me some kind of apartment out of their stocks without much delay.

The thing with this hostel in Carcassonne was that it offered free of charge stay for volunteer staff, an option really hard to find among European hostels, especially during off-season. I looked and looked but could not find anything on the Internet, but then one-day at the Helsinki subway – November 2004 – I saw a Christmas commercial of the Carcassonne board game, which reminded me about the occult castle south of Carcassonne. I put South Carcassonne as a landmark on the Internet search engine and vóilà I found this hostel. My racist buddy always talked about this castle, I could have had cycled there, but I didn't. I asked myself who's life am I living, his or mine?

I reserved three nights at this hostel, after which I planned to ask could I continue my stay as volunteer staff. In other words, my plan was not to arrive as a bum and straight out ask for handouts, but first pay for a couple of nights and only then ask for those handouts.

When I arrived to Carcassonne I called the owner as instructed, someone who told me to wait for her at this Irish pub in the city center. There when I expressed my purpose to be there, the France staff signed me their Irish co-worker to intervene. He offered his hand and greeted me with much openness, a skill he for sure had learned with the help of working many years in bars. I on the other hand was embarrassed of myself and my lack of social skills; all acquired with the help of years of solitary confinement by my computer. But he told me to sit and wait until the hostess would come and pick me up, which she did around 5 p.m.

She turned out to be a typical middle age British woman, who had changed her dull British life for rural France. During my stay, she told me that while anchoring herself with her hostel, "The world now came to her instead."

One would say that she seemed to be well put.

She kept talking about some African man that she had met during her recent Africa journeys, and who is now soon coming to stop by in the intention to get his VISA so to stay with her. For me back then it all sounded too much: one more young lover, from someone's Africa trip. I was judgmental, but I didn't say anything, she was, after all, my hostess. But later, close to the end of my stay, this man then arrived. He was maybe 10 years senior to her, and had this humble face and short gray beard. Indeed, who would say no to his company? But I could not even then express my acceptance only by time when I had dwelled upon this experience further, only then I found my acceptance.

So I got my volunteer spot, what a relief. So there I was mowing the lawn and fixing the bicycles, all while drinking red wine behind every turn. My mam saw me drinking and I felt a bit embarrassed. I was at my job.

I called my sister from Carcassonne – it was not an emotional phone call anymore. I asked her if she had talked with our parents after my previous phone call. She said, "No." I asked if she would. She said, "No," that I instead should talk to them first.

I didn't like this, I wanted an easy way out. I told her about my plan to write a letter to them, which suited her. But I also said that I want to break totally clean with them, that I never want to see our parents again. She didn't mind this, but expressed her own wish to still be in contact with them, after all hasn't she a baby coming who needed grandparents, whoever they were. It wasn't a long phone call. I finished by saying that I'd call her again when I had mailed the letters, so she can predict the aftershock. This suited her.

That first year I had a problem with my sister's refusal to disconnect with our parents. For me our parents were wild animals that you only go and see if they were caged and chained, though in time I learned to accept my sister's decision. Though later she also disconnected her ties. See, our mother eventually lost her mental health, I guess there where nothing but that insanity left in her.

To note, for my sister it was more about to stay in contact with our mother, not really with our father. She despised him – to her – he was the semi-wetbrain drunk, an idiot who lived up in his own fantasies and delusions. For me it was the opposite. I hated our mother the most; our father was closer to a forgivable character.

I stayed maybe 10 days at this hostel, and right away I began drafting on my letters. But I also had to reaffirm myself that sending the letters was the best thing to do, compared to calling them or not to mention to go and talk to them. The latter was totally out of question. I was furious and I was angry. I couldn't be allowed to be close to them. I would just smack them with a baseball bat or something. And about phoning them, I asked myself, What would be the point in it, when the point was to say goodbye not to discuss. I had no interest in their reaction, never have had. My biggest dream was always to simply walk away and for that sending a letter felt like the best thing to do.

I rested myself by taking my mams dog _George_ out for a walk – some long-haired pedigree bugger. It was rural France right out of a post card: Small wine fields to the right and to the left, your road leading into a grove. Tree branches heavy with leaves, hanging low almost touching the road.

By time I recovered from my stomach cramps, so I cycled south cycling to the nearby supermarket. I bought the cheapest hash meat on sale and only after I had eaten it, I dared to ask what did the France text on the package say. It was was, "For animal consumption only." I decided to stick to my crepes, which smell of pleased my mam; it suited her hostel she told us – me and other customers.

The days where going by and I knew I wanted to finish my letter here, so I put myself to work. I might even have been couple of days sober to do this work. I decided that the best thing to do, would be, to send two identical letters to both of my parents – in other words, to write one original version by hand and then take two photo copies of it and then send these copies to my parents' individual addresses. At the time my father had tried to separate himself to his cabin, while my mother was working in the nearby village, in a hospice for senior citizens. The plans was that when she would get her pension check she would move to her childhood town and leave the old man in his cabin to live there as he pleases.

What I remember about the letter is, that it became 16 pages long; therefore I knew they will have some trouble in reading it, but I also knew that the message would be eventually understood, which I later heard that it was. I wrote all what I remembered at that time; that there were several rapist and my mother suppressed me when I tried to talk about this to her. That she was part of the whole thing; this I did not yet grasp, and therefore I didn't mention it. I left my father out from much of the letter, though I did blame him for being the bum that he was and by this had forced us into poverty. My biggest question was whether or not I was going to ever see them again. I couldn't make a decision about this, so I ended the letter with writing, "That it might be so that I will contact you in the future, if I feel it to be necessary for my well-being."

And that was it, job done.

I cycled south to the nearby town, and to the local post office there. There in the small post office – I made two photocopies of the letter and packed the sheets in neat orderly fashion in their independent envelopes. I signed the letters and purchased the necessary stamps, and then I let the two letters go of my hands to drop into the sealed mailbox. It was a good moment. It was all over.

* * *

Halfway to my hostel I stopped by at a bar. I sat down and drank a glass of beer, which was offered in a tiny little water glass. I didn't mind. I looked at the guys looking at the daily sports event on TV. For that 15 minutes it felt interesting, I could relate to the interest they had in it – my team, our team, we together. That contemporary world was there, I felt it. I would have taken it if I could have held onto it, but I couldn't. And I can't really say why, though my head spins 1000 cycles a minute, so that might be one of the reasons.

* * *

Honestly said that disconnection is by far the wisest decision I have ever made in my entire life. And honestly said all the people who I had met who have experienced incest or other form of sexual assault within their families, I have heard only few done the same. And in my opinion, they all – who don't – suffer from that. It's like people behave as they would be in some aranged forced marriage, which they intend to go along just because somebody told them to do so. Why not say "fuck you, I don't want it" and walk away? What is the rudeness in that, especially after all that shit you have been put through? There is no profanity in the context of incest and rape, there simple isn't.

Once in Thailand (2009) I met this Californian man – a man maybe 40 years old – he had just relapsed again because of some love problems he claimed he had. He shared that he, too, had experienced incest in his childhood and also from his mother's side, but through time he had made that magical forgiveness act; but laughingly he confessed that it didn't really turn out that well. The mental health of his schizophrenic mother eventually derailed to the stage that she needed daily care, something which he volunteered to do – hadn't he forgiven her – but only to be later almost charged off elderly neglect. He admitted that in his unconscious will he had – unintentionally – projected all that anger and resent he had towards his aging mother.

I say, say fuck you, and walk away; and don't go back, that is truly my advice. Never go back.

* * *

Now eight years later while reaping the rewards of not getting in touch, I see that it will never happen. They – my parents – tried a couple of times to contact me. It was in Iceland via the Finish foreign ministry and the Finish embassy in Reykjavik. The message was, "They are worried about me."

The second time when I got this message, I talked to one of my sober mentors; he advised me to deal with this. Nervously and scared I went to talk to the staff at the embassy – where the letters had been sent – to say, "Please look at me, do they need to be worried about me?"

They understood and put a message forward that I wished to be left alone.

At some point in time, I thought that it would be fun to go and see my mother dying of old age. To be standing there by her side while she is peeing on herself in her bed, to be there laughing and ridiculing her, to make sure she gets it that she is now dying all-alone without anyone to careless about it. But I saw that I couldn't do that, because all that was just revenge, something I couldn't hold on to; thus I asked myself to simply leave her be.

And what about my father – that lousy cowardly drunk – every time I got that feeling that maybe I ought to meet him – why not, to somehow resurrect his sad fucked up life – I changed my mind when I recognized that I was giving him plausible deniability, about not being aware of what had happened in his family, which, of course, is complete bullshit. He knew, he fucking knew! He was an adult, he lived there, so he had to have known, simple as that. And he knew, despite how drunk he claims to have been.

If you lived close-by to a Nazi death camp and there is line of empty trucks coming from it, after which a strange ash falls down on from the hospital oven pipes. You knew what was going on there whatever you claim afterwards. You knew. My father just didn't care. He had other priorities, i.e., his booze, his gang, that party. In other words, the best times of his life.

So you see, I stick on my firm decision not to go back. The moment she began banging my head into that wall she stopped to being my mother, and instead became this forced roommate of mine. I have no obligations towards her, or neither towards my father. I have my own mental health to take care of which is handful enough for me. If they need my physical existence to be close to them for the sake of their piece of mind, well bad luck because that ain't happening.

Never to see you again, not even in our afterlife.

### Letter 20

Back to Carcassonne city, my mam drove me and this gorgeously fit Australian girl to the city center, to let us off there with her goodbyes. Pleased of my stay, I thanked her for all her help. Our mam told us that there was a train strike going on, specifically it was the ticket inspectors who were on strike. I had second thoughts first, but obviously I had to try my luck to board the train without paid tickets, wasn't I after all a stuttering tourist who knew nothing about of local habits? During the about 100 kilometers train ride, I remember seeing an inspector of some type in the other van, but when we reached the next stop and a new group of passengers arrived, he stopped bothering himself and walked away. I was, indeed, relived. Now relaxed, I could enjoy the sight of one million pink flamingos on the lake nearby Perpignan.

I feel to remember that I didn't stay for the night in Perpignan, that I instead took the next bus straight to Barcelona, though I might be mistaken. But I do remember that by the border of France and Spain was this swat team waiting for whatever swat teams wait for; and by looking at one of the ski-masked soldiers holding his shotgun up from his pelvis I understood why they were there.

Back in Gerona, it's evening; the last time I was here I had left the town's cheapest hotel without paying, so what to do now when being even more penniless? Indeed, what else then to hang around by the park benches all night long, while waiting for my shuttle for my early morning flight. I chose the small park close-by the hotel that I had stayed the last time here. (Might even been across the street.) It was familiar, thus it felt safe.

Close to sunset I remember some gypsy children walking to me to wonder about my doings. There was not much to talk especially without a common language, so not much happened and eventually they go tired of bothering me and so they left. After midnight a slim, half toothless man in his 50s walked by, he stopped to urge me to come along with him. I got the impression that he lived close-by, and that he was offering a place to stay. But I didn't want to go along with him, I just needed to survive to 6 a.m., but I didn't know how to tell him that. He got a bit frustrated when I didn't accept his help and so left and walked away.

Somewhere about 2 a.m., I heard a cat screaming across the street; I turned my head and saw a cat running across the street to the bushes – sort of – nearby. I went to have a look at it. I saw the cat hidden in the bushes – barely seen under the street light – but then when I spotted it, it ran away again, screaming in pain to the other side of the street. It had a rat trap slammed onto its tail. Poor thing. I could not do anything; it went too far, and I could not leave my luggage unintended.

One cannot sleep just like that on the bench, you need some blankets, the cold temperature gets you eventually, you have to move, you cannot rest and sleep.

* * *

All across South France I saw these masses of homeless people, locally named to be white trash. If I understand their plight correctly, they are the descendants of laid off miners and other heavy industry professionals, who seemed now drift around without any attachment at all. None of them seemed to be in any desperate needs, just dirty and roaming. At the train station I saw this one young man – lost like me – begging money for a train ticket to the next city. Past him – us both – walked handsome young men – of African origin – in their military uniforms, assumable heading home on their military leave; home to their proud mothers who had made their dinner ready. There were older street-hardened characters, too, but plenty of young couples who seemed to enjoy them self pretty well in their appointed individual street corners. There they sat on some sheets of cardboard boxes happily playing with their puppy dog.

Later to this, a friend of my said from his UK perspective that some people truly chose to be homeless so they can play with they're puppy all day long, something which they would be prevented if they be living in – government run – apartment blocks. I questioned him the bizarreness to make such a foolish decision, but my friend refused to discuss this as for him it all fell down on individual choices.

* * *

Children of chaos who now in their adulthood chose to live in the very same chaos they were brought up in. The way we survived becomes the way we survive; however dark, however grim it all was, our loyalties belongs foremost to our past.

If you want to pinpoint ask so what prevented me from ending up homeless on the streets, then I would say that I always believed in the future.

I heard once this clever thing to be said, "If you are depressed today that's nothing, but if you are depressed today and see no hope in the future, now that is a dangerous place to be in."

I never lost that hope. I maybe had doubts about it, but I never fully lost it.

At age 6, I had judged my parents to be bewildered and lost, and thus were miserable as-well-as poor. I was not like them and so I saw a future for myself. Therefore, that vagabond life always felt as a soulless state of being. To neither have a hunger for life nor an urge for success, this I couldn't bare; I felt I was living a dead beat type of a life.

Remember _Cain_ is still out there wandering our earth, because God could not imagine a harsher punishment than to be a vagabond. And that – the ancient Greeks viewed man as a social creature, as we all do, but therefore the Greeks saw man also to be a political creature, to be someone who has a will for civic duties. See, the Greeks despised the tribeless, lawless, heartless man; someone who would leave the battle against Troy. And _Aristotle_ reasoned, that only a god or a beast can live without the state; that the state is a necessity, it is something which is produced by nature so man has a place to live.

Many in our modern times don't relate to this. If you are one of them, then remind yourself of the primitive fact that our ancestors spear hunted sable tooth tigers and massive cave bears for a living, that this is what our bodies evolved to do, limping or not. (So says the great _Arnold Schwarzenegger_ in his 'Encyclopedia of Body Building'.)

And besides, at least for me, if I keep it real and I am rigorously honest to myself, I know in my heart that I am ruled by my fears. I remember once – when being ten months sober – whining on the phone, to one of my sober mentors, that, "Here I am living in rural Iceland, out of sight, doing a shit job for shit money... I am stuck."

My mentor tells me to move to the city and get a new job.

I responded word-by-word, "I am not one of them who are given jobs or apartments in cities."

Imagine that and all the other 10,000 forms of fear that rule over me, one can only wonder how they still entangle my daily life.

That if you love those puppies so much, why don't you get a state-sponsored vegetarian degree and then open an animal shelter? A comment I bet you get and endless stream of "Yeah buts" from all the puppy lovers out there on the streets.

### Letter 21

Eventually it was time to move on. I don't remember much of the flight, I slept like a baby; but there was a long stopover somewhere, maybe Poland. I remember the second check-in and the airport personal being awful firm about luggage weight, this one Russian man had to weigh in his winter coat, which then exceeded his weight limits. Looking at it, I thought gone were the days, when one could smuggle books in the pockets of your coat.

Though I felt that the air hostess – who was in control of the check-in – simply wanted to give troubles to this well-to-do ladies' man, assumable because she had been dumped by one the previous weekend.

After check-in, after some further announcement, a passenger was picked up by the police. With tears in her eyes she admitted the luggage brought to display, indeed belonged to her.

Funny how one night on streets makes you smell like piss, but that's how I arrived to Riga. At the bus stop outside of the airport, I seemed to have tried to puncture someone's eye with my Catalonia flag – which was sticking out from my back bag – but I missed and got only complaints.

* * *

(This is end of January 2005.) I stayed two nights in Riga: The evening I arrived I went straight into shower, after which I crept into my dormitory bed. I have never loved dormitory accommodations so much like at that moment. During my second day I wandered around the city. Riga impressed me. I learned that Riga was one-quarter bigger then Helsinki in all measures, by this knocking out my last remaining Helsinki hypes, which I was pleased of. See, I lost my last reason to live in Finland. On my book Riga became the second in greatness, only dwarfed by Stockholm, which is the best city in the world, though hesitantly I say to because I have not yet been to Beirut or New York. Back then people believed in that Baltic economical hype, and so did I. Everything looked better here, Riga was after all the home of waitresses who wore mini-miniskirts! Need I say more?

That second day I bought myself the tickets for the next bus to Tallinn, Estonia. The bus would leave 11 p.m., tomorrow – that was the next available bus. In chronological order that second day in Riga went about the following way.

That second day – I spent the whole day wandering around the city, to then later to go back to the hostel to take a shower and to make friends with the Russian receptionist. This I needed to do, because the receptionist – a man in his 40s who spoke somewhat lousy English – was now my gate keeper for my tomorrow's long-haul wait for that 11 p.m., bus departure. The question I had, was about what will I do tomorrow night, am I to wait for the bus here at the hostel lobby or somewhere on the street? I succeeded in introducing myself more thoroughly, and so resurrected my lousy first impression. Last night I had not yet accepted Riga to be the home to Latvians as well as Russians – a unique tension any city seem to need – but know I had. Because of that, I had now a allowance to spend as much time I wanted in the hostel lobby, while waiting for departure of my tomorrows night bus.

A vice that I have been taught to be caused by budget flights is strip bars, a vice in plentiful supply seen in Riga, and I could hear these honey traps calling me. But before answering these calls I decided to get drunk the regular way, at the regular bars. Two Korean travelers wanted to follow me, something that I didn't mind, but I dumped them at some point when I decided to go and meet the strippers of this town.

I stepped in pretty late, around midnight.

The strip bar that I wandered into didn't have many customers, maybe three or four besides myself, I knew this was a bad sign because now the spotlight would be turned on me. But this didn't cause me to leave and neither did the super expensive menu, because firmly I believed that I could hold my pants up tonight, but, the strippers simply didn't leave me alone. Therefore, the drunk me, slurred to them, "One stays and all of you rest please go."

I kept the blonde girl on the left and bought here one of those $50 drinks, just to make the bar owner happy. I don't remember how come, but one thing led to another, and I started to share about my daily doings, my recent travels and about the letters that I had sent to my parents. I didn't care, I was drunk and was supposedly just mumbling something to myself and thus laid it all out. But I sensed something, a change of atmosphere, and so turned my look towards my hostess, this blonde stripper – Anna – and I saw that she is reflecting upon something all while having this distant look in her eyes. I gave it first a thought, if I should, but then I asked, "Did this happen to you, too?"

She says nothing, but instead slightly nods her head, while keeping her staring long look at the opposite wall.

I asked, "Did they too celebrate what a good fuck it was."

She slightly nods her head again.

So one more drunk and an emotional strip bars scene, so what? So what, because she was the first person who I met who was also a survivor of sexual assault. One does not forget.

Well, good, if the scene would have ended there, but it didn't. I was after all filthy drunk, just as the bar owner wanted me to be. So it all had to end in a private booth, with my big dick up in the air, and Anna stripping her clothes off. What an embarrassment, but that's where disaster drunkenness leads you. Not much more than couple of more drinks and then leaving the bar somewhere past 3 a.m.

* * *

The moment I walked out of the bar this one young prostitute attached to me; might been that the strip bar arranged it somehow, I don't know. She was a real pretty brunette, but 17 or 19 years old, one cannot tell. I was drunk and told her that the bar had already ripped me off out of all my money, but she insisted to stop by at the ATM to see if there were any left, which there was. I feel to remember her charge for the night being 50 local currency – if it makes any sense to anyone – something which I agreed upon. But now we needed to find a cheap hotel room. No worries, she knew one just closeby, of course she does. While singing us in for a $50 room, I could only think what a waste of money.

I remember telling her when being led up the stairs that I be fucking her in her butt, because of all of the expenses she had caused me. "Sure," she said "but please keep quiet." Saying this while pointing with some embarrassment at the – still – nearby receptionist – a lad in his early 20s.

So what happens there at the hotel room is the following. She jumps on the bed while I am pondering about what a silly good room I have purchased, a thought process which brings me back together again. There standing by the end of the bed, by some big mirror behind me, by some table stand of some sort, I ask her if she really wanted to do this. She straight off, without any hesitation, answered, "Yes."

I don't remember did I ever ask her age, because I don't remember her telling me that, but, I do remember her saying that she goes to some school and has a boyfriend, though she also replied to some of my drunken slur, that, "Yes," I can be her boyfriend, too. But while standing there, while having her waiting for my incentive, I collected my thoughts further and said: "Hey wait a minute what you are doing is not safe, that you can't just get into hotel rooms with strange men like this. It is not safe."

She didn't respond to that, so I continued: "Look even I have friends you should not get together like this, that when people are drunk or are high on drugs they behave crazy and out of control. That you cannot trust men like this, you cannot simply do it. That look, even I have knife in my pocket." And I pointed at my jacket somewhere on the floor. "So what about all the crazy guys out there, what do they have with them? I mean they are drug dealers, and who knows what."

But she just shrugs her shoulders, sort of saying, No worries, this is perfectly alright, don't worry about me.

After a silence I stopped bashing her and thought instead, Suit her yourself.

Posing on the bed with her young Venus position, she then orders me to put the money on the table – the table which by I had been standing by – and to get into the shower; though, of course, I asked will she join me? A proposal she declined. I tear my clothes off to stand there drunk, with my long johns on, to have my last look at her before walking into the bathroom and before closing the bathroom door. Properly as she has ordered. But only for a short moment, after which I step out of the shower to open the door of the bathroom to see her gone, and gone with the money I left on the table. What a relief.

I never saw her again. I checked many times if she took anything else from me, like my wallet or my passport, but she had not. What an honest little scamster she was. Or was she? Whatever was her cause to leave just like that, I sincerely wish her all my best.

### Letter 22

The next day I heard that these strip bars drug their customer so to have them go along with their sky high charges, something which might be very well be true in my case. Although I have my doubts about this, since I once drugged myself with date rape drugs and I remember that high being much more powerful and nauseating force to deal with, than the experienced "high" at this strip bar.

I fell it fits good to share now about this afternoon when I date rape drugged myself. It is a real bizarre piece of a story.

* * *

It was the spring of 2002 when this happened. It was just some regular weekday morning and I was supposed to go to my school to do something there, but before 10 a.m., I felt this urge to get drunk instead. Therefore, I called my professional friend – i.e., alcoholic – to ask him, "What's up, do you want to head out and get pissed?"

He said, "You are joking."

Meaning, he didn't believe that I wanted to get drunk before lunch, that I was too amateurish to want to do it.

I argued against and said, "No, I am serious. Let's go and let's get drunk, right now. What do you suggest?"

"Well alright then." he said, and paused to suggest this one bar in the city that had happy hour all day long, but happy hour based on what time it was. In other words, by every our hour the beer got a bit more expensive compared the past cheap price.

"So better be there before 11 o'clock," I told him.

"Indeed." He replied.

* * *

After my 45 minutes of stress to be at the bar before the 11 o'clock bell-ring – i.e., before the next price hike – I opened the door and stepped in, but to see men in their 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s, having their first drinks of the day – drunkards in other words.

The bar was run by the local cinematographer; therefore the bar had cinema posters of classic movies on the wall, Casablanca and such. The crew of drunks was about a dozen strong, I saw my buddy among them. I hinted that I would like to sit separately from the drunks. My friend understood my withdrawnness, though he was having a cheerful time. I lead him to table close-by the big windows and the front door, far away from the drunks. The place was nice and clean and had a lot of space, not dim and dark, but the crew there was simply a disaster.

Not long after sitting there, in came some of the young addicts who I knew from the metal bar scene I have mentioned earlier about. I reminded myself, that one of them lived close-by, so obviously why not see them here, too. These were young people who always looked to be in some form of malnutrition and tormented state. Over time I learned that they all had forced incarnation under their belt; sure prison time for petty crimes, but more often quasi-forced institutionalization to cool them off from drugs. They seemed to spread hepatitis among each other, sometimes by accident sometimes on purpose. Once this lad showed me some bite marks at his palm, he cursed that now he too had hepatitis and now his liver, too, will fail after x amount of years.

The young addict, his girlfriend, and they're one or two hang outs, sat down with us. As a result of this, some of the old drunks began to drift to our side of the bar, wasn't the youth on our side after all? This wasn't the worst-case scenario per-se, but this penniless addict who I knew then showed me these pills that he had with him. He told me to take some, though with a price of a couple of beers. It sounded like a rip-off but I agreed although, this is after all the trash life that I been searching for. And believe me please, although I had my doubts to take those pills, I was also sincerely taken and flattered to be offered anything by the addicts. By the way, my professional friend was "cool" enough to get his pills for free; he didn't ask for the price, he simply put his fingers in the small box held in front of him.

But these two pills that I took were just awful, awful beyond a possibility to describe, they totally bended my mind in the strangest of senses. No hallucination or anything of that matter, but an extremely loose and drunken state emerged, including nauseating. But nauseated also of seeing my professional friend and my addict friend kissing each other with the biggest homo kisses ever, all just in front of me! Just revolting! But something that was hoorayed by the trash crowd across the bar, and soon pretty much the whole drunk crew came over to our table. I was too drunk and nauseated for this, so took a distant from the crowd by changing table, there I wished to out run the effect of the pills with the help of time.

But this old horny drunk followed me to my table, and he began to share with me that he wants to kiss me, all because of how beautiful I was. I had no defense against this talk, to the contrary I was just flattered by his request. The only thing I could do when he brought his tongue and big fat lips close to my face was to slur and drop my head down on his lap, and not more than that. I was in a state where whatever he would like to have done to me he could have done it, only if he could have taken me to some more private place. Indeed, he suggested that why not go to his place, he lives after all just around the corner. I was of course horrified of the idea, but I answered, "Don't you mind that I am bald?"

"No, no you look fine, you are beautiful."

And so he started touching my hair.

I had a will, but it was the will of his. So I could only beg for mercy: "Don't take me with you... I have been raped in my childhood, I could not deal with it if I would happen again."

My wording might not have been that exactly, but more or less it was. He understood the message, so he asked who it was, was it my father or somebody else? I don't remember what I slurred back as an answer, as this was not something I wanted to discuss with him, here, in this state.

He says, "Okay I won't do it; it was done to me also."

And he shares this craziest story of the times when our town was occupied by Nazi German forces:

A group of Nazi soldiers had collected a gang of maybe six boys - a group this drunk belonged to – and then ordered them inside some shack. There standing by a wall they were then ordered to turn around and pull down their pants and bend over. And then by help of a riddle, it was counted who of them had to stick some stick or something up his arse.

To share these things between each other in that state and place, I can't pick and choose what part of the experience felt the most sickening and revolting. The whole experience felt mind-boggling. But I survived the scene. I learned to rebel him and his kisses by physically falling flat, if nothing else then by trying to fall down from the couch. But then I got scared of being thrown out of the bar because being too drunk. This so, because I assumed _The Old Drunk_ would try to follow me, and who knows what would happen then. Therefore, I tried – now – by all means to stay as consciously awake as possible, to try to drag out the effect of the pills with the help of time. I remember at some point some people from the other table shouting to the drunk to let me be.

"You are abusing him!"

Which he and I together denied in a loud voice. Bizarre.

But eventually he left me because of the numerous complaints received; especially when the bartender himself ordered him off me. This bartender also took a look at my sorry state and suggested me to doze off and then head home; which is a totally unheard suggestion. See, in Finnish bars, by law, one is not allowed to sing or to be drunk.

I woke up around noon, after an hour of my drunken sleep. I took no second thoughts about leaving the place or not, and in a rush I tumbled myself out. I walked straight into a nearby grocery store to cause some more trouble, after which I could only walk the long route home.

* * *

This experience left me absolutely astonished of the effects of these pills. I tell you once more, that his will was my will, simply as that. That, in any private settings he could have done whatever he had wished to me and I would have been just flattered about it.

### Letter 23

Back to Riga – I was heavily drunk when I came back to my mixed dormitory room. I for sure woke up half of the travelers sleeping there, if not, then all of them.

Earlier that day I had bought a black market CD by a music group named Faithless and they're album, "No Roots." The first song has this repeatedly chorus of "No root, no trees, no family, no me." A statement the whole album was dedicated to. I related to that as there was no me because there were no family. Further I sensed the pleasure the lead vocalist had when sharing his journey in life, after had experienced a childhood where his father had not come home after supposedly going out to buy a pack of cigarettes; but I also sensed my pleasure on listening on his story, and just like that I lost my appeal to the familiar metal music that I had been listening on.

Heavily drunk lying on my bed, while experiencing my big moment, I was interrupted by the complains of a follow traveler: "Could you please, turn down the volume."

Although I was listening on the music via my headphone, I was still listening on it to loud.

I understood, it was time to go to sleep.

* * *

I woke up early the next day being too intoxicated to sleep. I found some random crew of travelers hanging around in the living room. If any of them stayed in the same room that I did, this I did not know. I was the monkey who saw none. This one American girl recognized me, she asked about my last night? I paused to remind myself who she was and now I recognized her, too, after which I laid it all out for her and for others to hear. I usually don't paint a nicer picture of my doings, but rather purposeful express with loathing details the previously experienced.

*

In Thailand in 2006, I asked one Danish woman of Asiatic origin what her ethnic background was. I asked on purpose was she a Greenlander? Afterwards Filth Instructor felt the necessity to scold me. He said that I will never get laid that way, that in Denmark the Greenlanders are at the lowest bottom of the social heap. I told him that I knew that very well, that I just wanted to test her true colors. Filth Instructor saw my point, that indeed, she was not one of us.

### *

I wanted to go out, to eat my breakfast, maybe to get a drink or two. I can't stay here; I was too restless of my last night's adventures. This Sicilian man in his late 30s wanted to come along. He lived in the UK, worked at some car manufacturing plant there, and had now had arrived by the budget flights. We both knew the market area and decided to have our breakfast there.

The day before I had spotted this cafeteria built out of plastic rags, it had looked interesting and so I suggested it to him. At some point two other men joined us; they spoke German to us, but where East Europeans. The discussion lead quite fast to the local sex scene. The Italian man was somewhat impressed with my last night's adventures, thought I couldn't figure out which part. He confessed, he had followed me because he wanted to get laid before his afternoon flight.

"So can you help?" he asked.

I translate this plea to the two other men, they pulled out the daily paper and opened it at the yellow pages and told us to choose and pick. I make the story short: Because my English was chosen to be the best among them, they – the three men – made me call these phone numbers. After having had done that I translated the offers them, though offers which were not in detail told by the phone. The men discussed their options, after which they chose the best service suiting them, and so the Italian man joined the two Poles in a quest to get laid before lunch. I was asked to come along, but I couldn't. I didn't want to, but I blamed my financial restraints.

*

If I would have died as an active alcoholic, I would have liked to have been reborn into that plastic rag tent to drink there for my immortal life. As an active alcoholic I loved this kind of bum life; drink endless amount of cheap booze while being surrounded by misery and dirt. If hungry, stand up and get a pizza slice with the homeless grannies out there somewhere. Just walk over the pool of mud and you'll find them. I was in seventh heaven, I really was.

*

Eventually I Left the place, I couldn't stay there forever, my aim was after all to get sober not to get drunk again. Besides it was check-out time at the hostel, and I needed to reaffirm my deal with the receptionist, that was I allowed to hang out there at the lobby tills my bus leaves at 11 p.m. Happily I learned that this was still no problem for him, so I dragged my stuff to the living room where I found this American girl again. She wondered where the Italian guy had gone, but didn't yet say that, only later. It suited me well that she sat there waiting for a chat. I learned that she studies in Scotland, or was it England, but in a town where the U.S. Open golf tour is annually held on the European side – or some significant American golf tournament is held. She told me that she had an Icelandic friend there with her, whose father had accidentally been in an Icelandic movie, a movie that I knew and liked.

Six months later, back in Iceland, this one Finnish guy told me that his Icelandic fiancé was studying in Scotland, in a town where this golf tournament was held. Wow, what a coincidence I thought, though I didn't tell him that, but instead – later – to a common friend of ours – an older German man – but he just shrugged his shoulder and laughed, "It is no strange coincidence or anything like that. It's because _This-And-That_ has shagged half of Iceland's women."

Which by, I now understood, that not all things need to have some mystic meaning and need to be endlessly dwelled upon. That sometimes things has their own natural explanations, although one doesn't know that when it happened.

At the hostel some other travelers joined us, two Korean guys, for example – different Koreans from last night – one of them said that he didn't understand Western search for happiness. That he believed it was fundamentally based on expectation of a safe and well-organized society, that in his country, no job means, no nothing. So you go for that job whatever tears you need to weep to get it. I and the American girl somewhat accepted this and so let him have the last word on this matter. But these were our conversations.

* * *

I did hold my act together pretty well, I felt confident there on the couch. I didn't need to be the looser geek who I were back home, I could be one more traveler just like everybody else. One can twist much on the topic of different acts that we live by, these costumes we wear. I the survivor sometimes question myself whether there is anything beneath those layers of acts that I play by. After all, didn't I die back then? Leaving, therefore, nothing put a fluctuating superficial act to live by?

Maybe it was that I stayed sober that afternoon and so could mind my manners, but by 9 p.m., when being drunk again I somewhat lost my manners again. What happened was that this Dutch girl walks in out of nowhere. She wasn't that cute as the American girl, and by walking in like that she interrupts us; but not just that, she straight out refused to drink any of my wine that I offered to her, and lo-and-behold this because she came from an alcoholic family.

Instantly I felt she had walked into my primal battlegrounds, to put her guard post right there to be seen by all, I had to counter, I had to. Because don't tell me how it was, I was there too. See, once-upon-time I didn't respect other people's experiences – I still have problems with that – I only respected my suffering, or those who I qualified to have suffered a sufficient amount. Therefore, I pulled out one of my racist cards to some of our topics, to counter her on some issue about Jews, that, "Jews cannot be blond."

This she opposed and after short thought replied that she personally knew blond Jews. But I boldly countered her by saying that I don't believe her, which somehow caught her unguarded and she said nothing. How come, this doesn't matter, because I knew myself that this was all bullshit; I had myself a blond Jewish friend up in the north. What an embarrassing end for such a good evening.

Indeed, the drunk-a-log needs its log.

* * *

What had happened that day, which made it such a memorable day, was that eventually we got hungry and I and the American girl decided to head out to search something to eat. She was from Chicago, I feel to note. But, while searching for a pizzeria, it caught me where I was and what I had been doing: That I had spent half a day with her talking about all kinds of stuff, and now we were walking around in a search of a pizzeria, and doing this all while she is really a cool chick. It dawned on me there, that I hadn't done something like this before. And back in the hostel, after had eaten that pizza and after had taken some regular sight–seeing photos, we again sat down in the living room, but now firmly alone. Now – one of the things she wanted to share to me was this joke she seen from the movie 'Team America'. First she tries to upload the sequence from the Internet but the connection is too slow for that, thus she goes ahead and tells me the joke instead, a joke that makes us both laugh. But while laughing to it, I realize that no girl has ever before told me a joke; no girl before her has tried to make me in specific laugh.

But then the Dutch girl jumps in, which didn't really matter because it was time for me to move on. Something which I did with many goodbyes, and thanking once again the hostel receptionist about his hospitality to let me stay under the roof of his hostel for so long.

### Letter 24

It's all dark and everybody spoke Russian, but least at least Latin alphabet was in use, therefore the Tallinn bound text is easily sighted on the front of the bus. But still being obsessed by this blond issue, I spotted one blonde woman among the crowd entering the bus and with my drunken guess I assume she is a Finn in some way or another.

I took my numbered seat in the front of the bus while she took her seat in the back, but I spotted she had an empty seat by her side. After the bus took off, I went with my drunken courage to introduce myself to her. She turned out to be an about 40-year-old Estonian aerobic/gymnastic coach, who with that craft had traveled half of the Western world. She spoke relatively good Finnish because she had spent some part of her youth and childhood in the post-war Karelia – i.e., conquered Karelia – there her father had been appointed to supervise some work with the local Finnish related ethnic minorities. It's a romantic story for any Finn because those minorities are pretty much all gone by now.

I had two bottles of wine, she had one, and we had a seven hour bus ride in front of us; so we had an a merry good time late into the night, keeping for sure other close by travelers awake. I had no booked schedule with my ferry and she had nothing special to do the next days ahead, and she was divorced. I could have gone along with her, but I did not know how to play that game and my drunken courage was not enough to dare to try. Instead we said our byes when she jumped off the bus by the outskirts of Tallinn.

I continued to the last stop, the local bus depot, which was an unfamiliar place. I had not been here before. I made some people point out the direction to the ferry harbor, and so I began my walk –at 5:45 a.m. I arrived at the harbor from the backside, so I had to walk one extra mile to get to entrance gate; but at least the gate was open so I didn't need to wait outside, something which I had feared the most because this is after all the end of January.

The ferry terminal was empty, I saw no one there. Being tired and having my ferry departing after two hours I decided to lie down on the bench and have a nap; but for security I put my alarm clock by my side so I would not over sleep. It did work, but during my sleep some crowd had gathered around the benches and my vagabond lifestyle brought some laughter when my alarm clock woke me up. It irritated me, I mean what should I have done, where is your sympathy?

Nothing special about the ferry, it was a four-hour trip during, during I slept all the way. But while getting my act together on the Finnish side, I picked up this brochure published by the ferry company. Its cover story was about their party host. On the cover I saw a full-page picture of a gay man in his uniform, i.e., the host. That picture caught my eye and so I stayed behind to have a look at it. I pondered on it and it made me jealous; because how come he had made it but I had not?

I reasoned that he was gay, because he looked like he was. But although of being that, I saw that he was in a sincere good manner proudly paraded as a party host for this small ferry company. It isn't rude to say, what a perfect job for him. But then I asked myself, where am I, and what am I doing, what had I professed to be? I had no answers, and I knew it was because I had neither accomplished nor achieved anything in my life.

I am talking about individualization. _Jung_ understood the troubles the gays, the artists and the professor's daughters have when trying to individualize themselves in this mad world of ours. Looking at the cover I saw that this man was different, but I also saw that he had settled himself down in our open society; that he had been accepted. I knew I was different, but I also knew that I was still a wandering soul.

This man had made his journey and I had not. That it was not always about my past, but might instead be about who I am, that problem – about myself – finally dawned on me.

I understood the mesmerizing effect of the picture predicted that it was time for me to find my spot here among you, though it'll still be a long journey for that place and time.

### Letter 25

I walked out of the harbor to be back in Helsinki and Finland. The last time I was here, I felt that I had overextended the hospitality of my friends and thus I didn't want to stay for a long time. Instead, I wanted to leave as soon as possible. North was my destination. I had put all my cards on one ex-roommate of mine, that he would give me a place to stay – at his small student flat – until the welfare office would give me something permanent to live in. The only problem was, that my friend hadn't yet responded positively to my request. See, he is a type of character who never gives you a clear answer to any of your enquires; it's a really irritating thing when you are living in a fox hole.

But I had other problems facing me, there were two friends in Helsinki, who I had sent those confessing SMS messages from Spain. How am I about to confront them? This I did not know.

It was _Filth Instructor_ and a common friend of ours, a decent fellow who was married and had one son. I met this decent fellow first. It was lunch time so he had left work to come and have lunch with me, and to pay for it all, what a pleasure. But straight on I saw the patter that I didn't want to talk about my childhood, by dodging any serious enquiries on that matter. _Decent Fellow_ was not anyhow taken by this. Retrospectively I would say, that I was the most able to discuss the latest happenings with him there, than later with anyone else.

_Filth Instructor_ who lived in a shared apartment with _Decent Fellow_ was not all that pleased. There were some mild resentment that I had not shared about my childhood earlier, and now when I stonewalled again hidden energies lead us in an unfamiliar drunken skirmish at a bar. At present was also one of his friends - one more fighter - someone who I never learned to share _Filth Instructor_ with. After the couple of days I left Helsinki to head north. Accidentally that early Sunday morning I bought myself a subway ticket when travelling to the train station and to all of my surprise the ticket inspectors were present. Lady good luck saved me from a 250€ fine.

Up in the north my ex-roommate had finally given me a green light to come. The problem had been that he had been out of town, and that he hadn't known when he'd be back. To accept me like that was really a nice thing to do, because one could not truly know when the welfare office was to hand me an apartment. Someday, sure, but when?

But there with him I stonewalled totally. One night he tried to open up a discussion about my childhood, but I barred him point-blank.

One funny thing was that he didn't accept my drinking, which to me back then was an impossibility to grasp. I was there as his guest, his place was the only place on earth where I could go now, and still l continuously pushed him about this topic.

"Drink, but don't get drunk, is that what you mean?" I asked

"Drink outside on the balcony, or where?" I wondered

I could not grasp that I wasn't allowed to drink, not at all. So there I was in his one room flat, drunk and surfing porn to once in a while jerk off in the bathroom. God's grace, what a guest I am.

* * *

I got my place, just waited over the weekend at it was all fixed for me; imagine that, so who complains about the nanny state now? And a pretty nice place it was also, closest to the city center that I had ever been. I could have begun anything from there, if there would have been a job that is. But there weren't any, not in North Finland.

It might have been around February when I moved in. Now with a registered address I knew I will – so to speak – pop-up on the grid, that my mother would at ease find me now. This caused nervousness and stress, so I went to this one public office that takes care of these kinds of matters. There I told about my situation, which sounded good for them, but I needed documents and verifications to be blacklisted from the public records.

My public records? They were all in Sweden; I thought, so what to do? Together with the bureaucrat, we concluded to start with my sister. Can she back up my story? I called her, and sent some emails to her, but the communication run astray. What was I to share, when I myself couldn't truly comprehend my story, nevertheless discuss it? I calculated it was easier just to leave the country. I searched the EURES database and found a slaughterhouse job available in Iceland, not seasonal work this time, but a full-time job. Sounded good, indeed. Thus I applied for it and got it. The work was supposed to begin the second week of March (2005).

* * *

I didn't behave rationally that February. I was hell-bent when I felt I didn't have enough money to buy the flight tickets to Iceland, thus I became obsessed with robbing somebody – point-blank – to gain that money. I spent a crazy week fighting my own moral order. I wanted to walk into the local kiosk and rob it but I couldn't, on one side it felt awfully wrong, but then on the other hand I blamed myself for being stuck in Finland forever. But then I understood thief's does not rob people anymore, thief's gets credit cards these days. When the credit card arrived, I instantly went on a spending spree. I mail-ordered a laptop, a digital camera and on some other electronics, with the rude intention to never pay for them.

During that same time – at home – I had self-drawn maps on the wall of the post-revolutionary Finland and its conquer neighbor countries, plus drawings of planetary trajectories; which investigation, I thought, would lead me to understand ancient mythologies related to them. I cannot say how true all this was to my mind, but far away was my mind from reality.

Eventually the last night came, so I drank my last drinks with my racist buddy, all paid for by my credit card, to then take my final flight to Iceland where I have since lived.

(I paid all that debt some years later; I even called the public work agency that I had scammed while been living and working abroad. They had no clue about it, in many countries they don't even care.)

### Letter 26

Many of us, who been customized to our neat and plasticized everyday lives, gains a motion-sickness type of nausea when the mean slaughterhouse world attacks you. To see all that filth all around you, to hear the loud sounds, but to especially touch that warm bloody flesh all the time. It is a provoking experience that you try to contain the best way you can, but you can't. Instead, a nauseating feeling creeps in, and it won't leave you after work. First you recognize you've lost your evening appetite, and then you recognize that you only wish to sit and watch TV after work. In its final phase you're barely able to walk without feeling like throwing up. And then tomorrow, it's back to work to start the gory process over again.

It took me again two months to overcome this. I was scared that this nausea would never pass me, but with the help of early morning drinks – strong liquors, not beer – and evening hot-pots I finally prevailed over it.

During these first two months this nausea, combined with my very low budget and the Icelandic moon landscape that now surrounded me, made me doubt my recent actions. Had I acted properly related to my parents; had I made the right decision to come back to Iceland were I knew no one? This I asked myself. But then one day at work, we the small crew – all east Europeans – were weighting ourselves on a scale, so to ridicule each other about how fat and lazy we were. And I, too, skinny me, dare-fully stepped on the weight to see the assumed weight, but to be astonished with the fact that I now weighed 210 pounds. My perception of myself had been for the past five years, that I was a 185-pound weakling, and before that a weakling weighting even less. All that seemed to have changed by having a scheduled work, a scheduled diet and a scheduled attendance at the local gym. I witnessed with my own eyes, that I had become a man among men. Something I had believed would never happen to me. So I sensed a rush of pride and an overall pleasure in my existence and doings.

I fell in love with that slaughterhouse job that I had, now when I understood this might be one of best changes ever offered to me. And to the opposite I cursed that welfare life that had entangled me for so many years. For many generations I should say, hadn't I been begging at the very same welfare office that my grandfather had also been begging at, a half-of-a-century earlier.

* * *

But one cannot say goodbye to the past just because one wishes to do so, and so I started to ponder what was going on back home and how my parents were doing? On one side I doubted my actions, to disconnect myself the way I had; but then on the other hand I was absolutely furious and demanded nothing but blood for the past harms. And when I had no outlet for these forces and no one to share them with, they're battles eroded my moral compass again.

* * *

I left rowing out to the sea to find that other side that everybody else was talking about, but I didn't find it, it wasn't there, or is was too far away.

Instead of feeling less burdened, I felt restless and discontent.

So when the triple gods of _Fear_ , _Lack of Courage_ and _Self-Pity_ broke out a storm, what else could I then do then but to turn back? But I asked myself, turn back to what, to go back ax swinging or go back with my tail in-between my legs?

It never crossed my mind to ask for help; I sincerely thought one does that rowing all by one self. The way we survived is the way we survive. So when one fails, one simply stops trying, to let the wind drift you back to the next close-by chaotic shores.

Even if someone would have set a place and date for me to come and share my story, I would have bizarrely countered that by asking why?

To share your story isn't an easy thing to begin with, and besides I had no previous experience of doing that. Remember I had, at that time, only spoken out some topics of my past, I had not dwelled on anything, or allowed anyone to reply to what I had said. There was no self-reflective honesty in me, which would have guided me through the process of sharing. In my drunken and immature mindset, unity with others wasn't a necessity for success, to the contrary it was a pitiful alliance.

So I trenched the rocky shores to end up at a lonely island named revenge. Once there, I found out that before the act of violence there is a drink, and when there is a drink, there is a second drink, after which the drink is drinking me. So obviously that imagined act of violence, that heroic act of revenge, had been nothing but a drunken fantasy. This of course was too much to bear, so to recapture that drunken glory I had a tattoo made on my left arm, a skull that had the text, "Kill 'em All" over it. To celebrate that moment even further, I had two textual tattoos made on my right ankle, both politically inspired – "Building # 7" and "imagine accepting the truth" – but somewhere down there I saw one "i" letter missing.

It is a unique set of emotions that you have, when looking at your tattoo for the first time and see that it has a spelling error. It is truly. But not much more about that, because what about Mr. Antichrist? He is not someone I have forgotten, not at all, this Antichrist alter ego was there all along traveling with me. So you can bet that I pondered it a lot, by the nearby rocky beach, How in hell can the Antichrist have a tattoo with a spelling error? Indeed, it didn't really fit in the omnipotent picture of him, so for sure I started to have my doubts of being truly THE Antichrist. But king alcohol is omnipotent, king alcohol is magical and powerful. So while sipping my beer on those one-ton beach rocks, I thought to myself, I'll come up with something, I'll come up with something.

And simple as that, the Antichrist was alive again, though undoubtedly limping with broken wings from now on.

I went home with the help of all the buses I needed to take, after which I burned a small swastika on that spelling error. About a week later the – entire – rectangular outline of that symbol surprisingly dropped off, leaving a red itching spot behind. By this can we so say, that every story has a happy ending?

That was mid-August 2005, after the tattoo I was about to head towards a new slaughterhouse that I had found in the north of Iceland. This I needed to do, because my drinking had caused me to be fired from the job that I loved.

To note, of course, I am a vegetarian now.

### Letter 27

August of 2005, I was again on a bus carrying all my stuff in couple of big plastic bags. The season was 10 weeks long, I needed a job beyond that so I straight on enquired can my contract be extended. After some weeks of consideration they accepted me in their meat-packing facilities, by this I stayed employed the next five months until I signed myself off and went to Thailand in March of 2006.

July that summer (2005), I had contacted _Filth Instructor_ to tell him that I been fired and that I have gotten a new job in the north of Iceland. He responded with saying, that he wants to join me. Thus he applied – for the 10-week season job – to then get it.

The seasonal staff here was more of a slaughterhouse crew then the well-mannered Swedes that I had met before, sure there were well-mannered Swedes here too, but not in majority. I shared rooms with an all Finnish team, with was a surprise. We were five Finns plus one Greenlander bunked together. The Greenlander left us only after two weeks: he had drunken skirmishes with one of us, but mostly he left because his individual drinking exploded to a new high, so he had to have felt better of to change accommodations while he still had a job. The last time I saw him, was in the end of the season and we had been given our last salaries. I found him drunk in his small room worshiping the dozen of liquor bottles he had bought. The bottles lay in a neat row by the wall. Silly bottles with colorful labels that for sure had cost him a small fortune – the alcohol tax is extremely high in Iceland. At that time I hadn't seen such an obsession therefore I felt a fear about what I saw.

We the Finns were all trash, we even had one self-confessed thief among us, the youngest one. _Filth Instructor_ felt the immediate necessity to scold him, but he wanted to first ask permission from the two older Finns – both were in their late 30s. No worries from their behalf, to the contrary they were just happy to have a fight announced. _Filth Instructor_ twisted his head when he told me this, "I mean, although they do not know him, he is their co-worker (same work position)."

We all were heavy drinkers, except _Filth Instructor_. These two older Finns knew the local magic mushrooms scene and so we went out to search for some, which lead that we ate these mushrooms in mass quantities. One Friday evening and once again drunk and high, _Filth Instructor_ being more interested in magic he dragged me out onto the local soccer field to do laser fencing (swordplay), "To engage our intuition," he said.

We screamed and shouted like teens and a police car eventually arrived. _Filth Instructor_ knew what to do and so we ran as fast as possible back to the house. We could run away – as he had predicted – because the police car had to drive a loop before they could start chasing us. Back in the house we found one of the older Finn's breaking the walls by throwing some wooden stick around, might have been the kitchen plunger that he tried to have stuck to the wall. I felt the price tag by every blow and therefore went straight to wake up his friend, so to let him – try – constrain his friend. Dizzy and puzzled, he asked me what was going on. I gave my emergency message while heavily stuttering. After a silence, after a moment of thought, he caught the fun and in a hurry jumped to his friend, so to support him in his rampage.

Astonished of this I fell on my knees not knowing whether to cry or laugh. I didn't know if this, what I was experiencing, was fun or honestly something bad. See, I was now obviously living the trash life that my mother had always warned me about. Just a moment ago, I had been chased by the police because I had behaved as any drunken teen, and now I was supposedly worrying about what my drunken roommate was doing to this rotten old house. Honestly did I care? My roommates were trash, they had told me so, but now I saw that I was no different from them, so I have to be trash, too. I felt a heavy rush of pleasure and pride in me, now when I knew I was not following my mother's order to live that holier-than-thou life, something which she always insisted that I should do. I wept, I cried, I laughed. _Filth Instructor_ knew exactly what was going on and went to tell the others about it.

* * *

I had taken a straight open dialog with _Filth Instructor_ now when we had more time together. The past three years we had lived in different cities and different countries. I didn't share about my tattoo that had a spelling error, though he might have guessed it. But I did share my newest hunch or beliefs that once in my childhood I might have caught my mother masturbating – that I might have had sexual intercourse with her, that I remember not having yet accepted – and that my mother had banged my head on the bathroom wall to the level that I had lost my consciousness, all because I had played with my boo. We both knew the fetish traumas such an event could cause. To deal with this, one night after having failed to get high by shoveling mushroom up my arse, I then came back from the bathroom holding some of these mushrooms in my hand. I tell _Filth Instructor_ , "I am going to eat these, do you want to look?"

He is in bed reading a book after a boring drunken night, but cheers up when I announce what is going to happen. In coordinated fashion, he lifts his back up the wall while at the same time putting down his book and his reading glasses. And so I go ahead with what I desperately needed to do. Who else would be a friend to an incest survivor?

* * *

Sometimes I and _Filth Instructor_ separated ourselves from the others; they really didn't mind, the two older Finns knew each other from their past adventures and so also had much to catch up on.

Together with _Filth Instructor_ we hiked one weekend to this volcanic area, which have tens of – or hundreds of – small and significant-sized volcanic craters. We purposely choose this close-by significant crater to climb up on, doing this with the intention to then descend and camp in its volcanic epicenter. Actually, it was a small mountain in itself.

After sunset around 9 p.m., there in the crater, after all the arduous efforts of the day, we found ourselves surrounded by high walls of black ash and nothing else. The place had an distinct ammonia smell and we wondered was it safe to sleep here, but also figured that there were no point to think about this because we were too tired to hike out of the crater. Thus, we went ahead to put up our tent in the center of the crater, though before sleep we entertained ourselves with Hustler magazine and red wine, though of course _Filth Instructor_ was more interested in his magazine and I in emptying my bottle.

During the night a strong wind broke loose, it challenged our tent, and we thought it hand loosened up from one corner. I went to have a look at it, but there were no problems; we were just inexperienced and fearful of the worst. But now outside of the tent I looked around to see that the black walls of the crater had disappeared, that in this nighttime darkness I only saw a thick fog around me. I crawled back to my sleeping bag to dream the following scene:

Dream:

I wake up in my dream to the sounds I hear outside of our tent. I wonder how this can be, because for sure nobody could have hiked up the slope middle of the night. I peek out of the tent to see what is going on, and to my surprise, through that thick fog which I had previously seen, I see now a group of strange transparent creatures walking towards our tent. They were about two dozen of them; they were not physical but instead transparent; a greenish light projected from their features, green being of course the color of the spirit. And as closer they got, I saw the different shapes and sizes of them. To finally understand these people where clearly disabled people with their uniquely framed bodies. Some of them had this special facial difference, a clear stigma if one would inherit such a physiognomy, some had other types of physical abnormalities, like shorter statue or a humpback.

As this group was getting closer by every step, the scene was becoming more intense by every moment, so I started to shake and kick – maybe even scream – to wake myself up. When I did this, I was relived but, of course, puzzled of the sight that I had dreamed about.

The end of dream

Previously that day, while hiking, _Filth Instructor_ had told me about a book that he been reading before leaving to Iceland. The book had been about Iceland, about the old times. Some side story, in the book, was about how the local people had ill-treated disabled people. One paralyzed man was carried up to the mountains against his will and left there alone, to then crawl back by his own means.

I summed up that in Iceland with history of cousins marrying each other and birth defects related to that, and lack of resources for all, one only needed to carry the new born baby, or – why not – an impaired child, up on the highlands to then stuff it in between the lava rocks. After which one would just wander back and claim whatever one wanted, because nobody would find the body anyway. Up here, the wilderness is just that massive and the population is simply so small

But now in my dream all these people had come to me and I was puzzled how come? See, I understood straight on that I saw that dream, not example _Filth Instructor_ or anyone else for that matter, but indeed that I saw the dream. So how come? And how come disabled people?

That was Sunday morning and by Sunday evening after a long, and after a second bottle – this time vodka – and for sure after plenty of hitchhiking, we eventually reached our village. Around 9 p.m., at home after we had settled down and were ready to go to sleep, I had an urge to go out for a walk; this was after all a memorable weekend, which needed to be somehow remembered further. But _Filth Instructor_ said no thank you, he stays in his bed; he been whining since lunch. So be it, I go out myself, wasn't it after all my inner urge that wanted me to leave the house?

Strolling around the village, I end up wandering by the all-purpose restaurant:

I see it's packed full and I see the party consists mainly of disabled people. Some arranged evening one has to think, but now late Sunday evening the party was about to end and so there were a crowd gathering outside the front door.

But in that crowd I spotted this one woman who had same distinct facial forms that I had seen in my dream the previous night, and further in that crowd I spot also one man with a humpback who I also recognize from my dream. And then all the others looked identical to the people that I saw in my dream. I was, of course, shocked of this clear transgression of the spiritual world and the physical world; therefore, I wanted to stand there and stare and look in details at this different shape of nature that I had not been confronted with before. But I knew I couldn't, I knew how my staring was seen from their side. So I left puzzled and confused of what I had experienced.

Back home I rewind all this to _Filth Instructor_ , who commented as usually, "Do thy, what thy wilt."

But how to come about that, what did I want to do? I did not know that, I had no answers, and so if not by next morning's breakfast then at least by lunch I had forgotten all of this. Though this I was not allowed to do, because when walking home after work this car drove past me, and I saw on the passenger seat a person who I recognize from last night and from my weekend dream.

(Some details in the story was reduce for the sake of anonymity.)

Obviously somebody was trying to tell me something, but although I tried, I could not make any sense of the messenger or the message.

The season was soon over and I was soon to be left alone. The past 10 weeks and been fun, but it won't be like that anymore. Someone, or something, hinted to me to go out and search for something else, rather than to stay in my foolish drunken life that I had now lived to its happy end.

See, during the past 10 weeks it had dawned on me that here I was again in rural Iceland, the epicenter of wilderness in modern times. The next group of houses is 20 kilometers away and the next major town is 140mk away, only rocky highlands and mountains in between. I questioned, If one wishes to retreat from that big ugly world, how does one know if that is a positive or negative retreat? I wondered further, Did I even have a chance behind those snowy mountains, or should I stay here out of harm's way in safe hands? I didn't have an answer – there probably isn't one – therefore, I seemed to have found my people instead.

See, clearly I had a strong force within me, which pulled me towards the deformed bodies, the ugly people so to speak. But ugly named by whom, who else then that cruel world out there that ill-treated me, too? And don't stop the investigation there, but ask, why did my past need to happen, and why not to somebody else, why me in other words? Well because, I am ugly and different, but note, not made to be ugly but indeed chosen and picked upon because of being ugly.

It took me some more years to understand this thoroughly, but I was at least closing in on my journey.

### Letter 28

During those 10 weeks I heard different stories of different travels that people had taken, and these where not nice Swedes any more, but people who had been drunk and doped up in all sort of places. Needless to say this was not the crowd I had met before. My racist lollapalooza dwarfed to the bare minimum, now that I saw that we'd been thinking too highly of ourselves, that we were instead nothing but lads on welfare and nothing else.

I met this one friend from the United Kingdom, one year senior to me, and not a drunk I wish to note. He had traveled to Iraq straight after the conquest off it; he had swum across the river to North Korea and been busted by the Chinese authorities when coming back; he had stories of a transvestite motorcycle circus in Pakistan and dying children in Palestine and of flip-flopping frogs in Cape Horn, South African; and he came from the same poor class that I came from, but chose instead to be 10 years on the road rather than to get that degree. He taught me not to buy those computer gadgets, but instead to buy a ticket to somewhere.

When listening on his stories from Iraq: I pictured him in Basra, saying, How do you do, to the British soldiers patrolling there. And I understood that I had gained evidence that one truly doesn't need to live by socially acceptable norms, but indeed one can truly craft one's own destiny.

I claim, I was from the get-go raised to either live on welfare or to live to hand out welfare, and the only in-between choices was to be made by that all mighty social order. My individuality did not exist; only fear existed when thinking about the life outside of the tribe, the life in the Jungle.

How else should I understand my choice to occupy myself with six years of failed studies? I can only guess that I did this, because I assumed I would gain a reward after all the supposed work. In other words, that I would become a welfare patron rather continue to be the welfare recipient that I was.

But _Goethe_ says, "The greatest joy in life is the enjoyment of one's own personality."

Thus, the only remaining question is, what do I want to do? Not what I should do, not what somebody else thinks what I should do, but explicitly, what do I want to do? So do I want to be the patron of welfare checks or not, or do I want to see those flip-flopping South African frogs?

See the idealized happiness becomes once again, the boy or girl who walks whistling into the forest while talking to the passing by bees and birds, and who fearlessly picks out the stick out of the lion's pawn. No worries just happiness, easier said than done.

### Letter 29

February of 2006, I'm still in North Iceland, all but a few of the foreign staff has left, and none of the locals are making friends with me. _Filth Instructor_ emails me that he wants to go to Thailand to train Kick Boxing. I email him back that is my plan, too. I bought the tickets, which by the plan became to be on the road for six months. I have this following dream couple of days before I leave.

Dream:

Some typical North European recreational park with a running track cut into the tall coniferous forest, this done with the help of the wooden hash laid on the ground.

I am just a kid, maybe 10 or 11 years old, and I am there cycling, which would be an absolutely forbidden act on any of these tracks. I am there with my sister and my mother. They are friends and are chatting to each other. My sister is in her teens.

With my adult-sized bicycle, I cycle past them, doing this on this hilly track. Now when going downhill I catch some speed, doing that to a fearful degree. And, at the bottom of the ascent, before closing in to the next small uphill, I recognize the possible and exiting but fearful jump, therefore I stop. Excited, I wait for my mother and my sister to appear behind the trees, and when I see them I shout, "Look I didn't jump!"

In other words, look you didn't need to tell me what not to do, I didn't do what I was not supposed to do all by myself!

The end of dream

Do you see that force that prevents me? Maybe that kick-boxing world championship title was a false goal for me, but if so, why was that by-submission-created lackey character of mine intervening so I would fail my chosen trial? To this day I don't know how come, although to this day it always turns out that way.

* * *

One thing happened there in Thailand. I had traveled back to Bangkok to say good-bye to _Filth Instructor_ who was now leaving after two months of stay, I had three months left. Nothing special about that, but later that evening, by midnight, I was wandering the local tourist roads to see what was going on. Of course, the prostitute scene interested me, though I didn't admit to this, because hadn't I after all stayed away from the main whore streets on purpose?.

Now while sitting there by the street eating some snacks from the vendors, I had to thank but said, "No," to several professional ladies, and doing that all to the moment when this one girl caught my eye. She saw me and that I had recognized her, thus I felt a necessity to walk over to have a chat with her. She had just arrived with the taxi. She was more dark-skinned then the others, and had this significant structured jaw, which affected her spoken words similarly to some one's big nose. She where about 21 years old and later I learned that she was Cambodian; I forgot her name, but some years later when trying to find her so to do my amends, I was reminded that her name was _Maria_.

Well Thailand is Thailand and both parties have only one thing in mind. I asked her straight out on the street what her charge was for the night? She replied $12, which fitted fine, the penny wiser who I am. And so we went up to her place, which was in the next house to us.

She had this windowless room on the second floor, which included one double-bed and a private toilet and a chair and a table set by the opposite corner to the front door. She was a really nice girl, a polite character not a street hustler at all. From somewhere she offered me a joint, but she told me that I had to roll it myself, which I clumsily did, something she remarked about. I smoked the joint all myself as she didn't want any of it, neither didn't she want any of my drinks.

Not much chatting after the joint was done and soon we were naked in her bed. I wanted to play her, lie and cheat to her; this has been my plan all along. I started to talk about why not head out to the shopping malls tomorrow and stuff like that, and how pretty she was and so forth and so forth. Of course she was pretty, no complaints about that, but the problem was that I had no other plans for tomorrow then to get pissed and that's about it.

My sexual impotence bothered us enough, so we decided to go to sleep. But I woke about 5 a.m., to the air-conditioning being typically too cold, which irritated me a lot. I tried to sleep but I couldn't. Around 8 a.m., I had enough and woke her up to bother her enough to give me one more round, which she allowed. After different measures and different acts I was finally satisfied. She jumped off the bed to go to the bathroom. I stood up to frisk my pants on and so I was ready to leave as soon as possible.

I don't exactly remember what led to what, but while sitting there on her only chair by her only table, looking at her lying naked on her bed – on her belly – I began looking around and saw a Britney Spears poster in front of me and all sorts of feminine small stuff scattered around, similar things I seen my friend's sister collecting. It caught my thought, and I now sensed that _Maria_ was sad, that she was – actually – crying in her bed. I tried to engage with her but she didn't want to respond. She said she didn't care if I paid her or not, but instead, she asked me to leave. Hearing this I understood that it had dawned on her that she was nothing but a $12 prostitute and that shopping mall bs was just bs. I wanted to cheer her up with some small talk of mine, so I asked her what her name was? But crying she answers, "I have no name."

And it all unfolded to me, her past, my past, this moment and my future.

And I didn't want to go there, but instead I wanted to change.

### # # #
I end this book by saying that life without possibility for parole is not a human rights violation; and that crimes against children should never be outdated by law; and that physical castration of a rapist should be considered as preventive treatment, rather than punishment, and therefore allowed.

Sincerely yours, Niiles Punkari.
