can you keep me
Stockholm, Sweden // May 2024
I’ve said this all before. I hope you are all doing well and I mean it.
I’ll start this entry off by telling you that I’ve been having trouble slowing down and I’m not sure why or how I got here. I’m sitting outside at a café in Stockholm. It’s neither warm nor cold. Everyone in this city is beautiful and the streets are so clean you could eat off of them or something. I’m not sure how to phrase that.
Of course, I met a guy. Kind of two. I met up with this darling Swedish gentleman at a café near the apartment my parents are renting in Vasastan, a second-degree posh neighborhood mostly populated by wonderful blonde women pushing sleeping babies in minimalist strollers. Like the rest of the city, it’s clean, quiet, and well manicured. We, the man and I, met at a café which resembled Vasastan at large with its clean lines, particular decorations, and quietly friendly clientele. I make everything into a list. No idea what we talked about. We actually met at a different café on the other side of town. My memory is quivering. It’s cold at night.
Like everyone here, he has gentle eyes. They are blue in a very unassuming way. He showed me around for a few days and I fell for him and his perfect dollhouse city because that is what anyone would do. My heart is broken from an Australian man, an Irish man (collateral), a French Canadian woman, and a lifetime of guess-and-checking my way into sex. We’ll call the Swede Måns (read “Mons”).
Måns walks at the perfect pace and he holds my hand just tight enough. Our palms rub together and cause some hot sweat to form a kind of film between us. He wipes his hands on his jeans, I wipe mine on my shirt, our hands meet again. We do this for a few hours, lay in the sun, kiss a few times, and say goodbye. Everything is a list. It’s been a couple days of kissing, really, when he tells me he’s starting to think in English. I think that’s cute, but I’m terrified by the fact I can influence someone beyond my immediate presence. (The sun never goes down.) He tells me he likes me a lot. I say the same. I wish I didn’t have to leave. It’s not true. I’m excited for the future in a childish kind of way. Somewhere down the line I’ll have to pay for all of this.
My parents and I are staying in my father’s coworker’s penthouse. It’s eleven stories above the rest of the city. I think they are terracotta roofs, you can see their tops for miles or kilometers, depending on what language you are thinking in. A girl and I, we met outside of a metro stop at half past midnight. She walked me far down winding roads and then some kind of industrial path towards some water. Okay, present tense. We talk about our lives and how we like to live them: make some money and then spend it all. She’d just dropped out of university and she’s tired of studying, wants to do something else, something closer to nothing at all. She lives with her mother in an old apartment in Vasastan and I imagine it’s warm there. Cold here. She takes her clothes off and I take off mine. We’re outside. Her body is slim in a really beautiful way. It reminds me of the ornamentation in the old opera house or like a really nice piano. Like the one in the palace. We’ll get to that. Her body, it’s delicate and porcelain and all those other things too. We grab hands, count down, jump in, etc. Water is freezing. She’s not that cold. I’m shaking. There’s mud or something in my hair. Trash maybe. We’re still in the city, afterall. We’re making out in the water. We’re making out on the land. We’re making out on a dock. We’re making out in the woods. We’re making out on a military base. She thanks me. I thank her. She says she’s been hardly living these past few months. She’s been waking up in the late afternoon, laying around until she falls back asleep. The sun never goes down here. You have to decide when it’s night time.
I got home late that night smelling like a swamp and my body was shaking from the cold. I slept in the sunrise (it rises, but never sets) until midday. My parents were worried. I told them I was with Måns last night. I didn’t want them to know that I am a tourist just like them. It’s humiliating, being young. I can tell they are worried I am Being Young all over the place. That night, I dreamt about my grandfather who died a few months ago. He was in my family’s garage, laying on his side in a make-shift hospital bed. He was sick and it was my fault. I told him I’m sorry and he asked me to kill him. I cried and injected him with something killer and he died there in the garage. I woke up maybe two days later, it’s so hard to tell. The night before, some woman with a wedding ring on her finger told me she wants me. I thought that was funny. I asked her age and she got real mad at me for that. I drank a lot of beer and she just stared at me like I was the Mona Lisa but a boy. I lied to her, said I was in love, told her about various men, women, whatever. Some man held his wife’s stomach. She was pregnant. I asked how they felt and they both said, “terrified.” That was funny. Back to the penthouse. This was a few nights before or after the skinny dipping. I can’t tell. I spent the next day, last day, previous day, whatever day, with Måns. He held me some and the sun never burnt my skin. I don’t know how many days I’ve been here.
I met another man at a bar last night. He was taller than me, blond, handsome, and had some funny tattoos. He asked about my childhood or something like that, so I told him about those years I went missing and he cried right there at the wine bar. The wine was French Catalonian. It kind of tasted like nothing. He told me about his dead mom. It broke my heart because everything about mothers breaks my heart. He hugged me before I said hello. The hug felt so warm, so real, like he already knew me. I told him about Måns and he sympathized. He was equally lost in a man he knew nothing about, some Italian who treated him like shit. I asked to kiss him because I couldn’t tell what was happening. He said, “I don’t want you to be confused.” We kissed and it felt great. I felt evil in a kind of way because Måns is lovely and the girl, she’s lovely too, but I had to kiss this man because he had these really gentle hands. We walked around some more and ended up at his apartment in the suburbs. It was a tiny studio in a Barbie-pink building. We had slow sex, showered together (more sex in the shower), and he held me in his bed and whispered in my ear about the last six months of his mother’s life. She was feeling weird one night, “out of balance”, I think he said, and she asked him to sleep in her bed for the night to comfort her. He said no for some reason and awoke in the morning to the sound of his mother screaming, “I CAN’T FEEL MY LEGS.” Paralyzed from the shoulders down. The cancer that was killing her had spread to her spine. Her last six months were nothing but misery besides the time she got to attend his graduation. He cried then. He was holding me. We were both mostly naked I think. Pillow-talk.
I left because I had to take my night meds and clean my contact lens (I only have one. They can’t seem to find one that fits my left eye.). Fresh air. We will call this man Jan.
A note from my flight to the EU:
the attendant is begging us not to touch our screens i dont know what will happen if i do but now i feel like i have to the wine is getting better or maybe im getting tipsy i cant tell and the guy behind me is still reading my phone i remember the first time i ever wrote on a plane it was after dropping my brother off at princeton i was crying so much i didn’t know what else to do and i was terrified of life alone with my parents they’re lovely but any parenting is overbearing to a dejected 17 year old begging to get tattoos begging to move out of the USA and begging to change everything about his life i wrote on that plane something…can’t recall
the plane disappearing in the cloud was the only thing i can remember now
i think everyone is drinking the wine but i can’t see anything but i can hear everyone is talking to one another because the screens are still broken
im trying to read facial expressions but everyone looks like a schiele painting but more expressive like almost Van Gogh or something. he had one good painting and it was the potato eaters one.
Jan asked me to swim with his friends today on the cliffs. They’d bring some wine and it would be fun. I had to refuse because I needed space and time to piss out the last week of thoughts.
I wrote to Edmund White about Måns. I figured he would know what to do. I’m not sure why.
Dear Edmund,
I write you this email from Hagaparken, a yellow and green pocket of nature in northern Stockholm, perfectly curated for romance. I’m running as I type this because I can’t sit still.
I’ve met a man here, a Swede named Måns. He’s wonderful, a few inches shorter than me, blue eyes, blond hair. His clothes fit him perfectly in that his jeans sit just low enough to see the Ralph Lauren name on the belt of his briefs. We met online of course and then at a cafe. He’s shown me all of the best parts of this kind of sleepy city and we’ve kissed some but that’s all. Sunbathed too. He and I both know I have to leave for Barcelona at the end of May. I’ve been re-reading “The Farewell Symphony” and it feels like I’m reading it again for the first time. I finished “Guide” by Dennis Cooper just before landing in Sweden. Both have kind of metabolized alongside this Måns affair and I feel so lost in like a really golden and youthish way.
I am wondering how to get over someone who’s perfect and a boyish love which could only exist in a city where I don’t speak the language.
My apologies for any typos. I’m still running. I’m 21 and really confused.
Sincerely,
Charlie
He wrote back.
Måns sounds like a handsome, sexy and kind man! Best Edmund
Sent from my iPhone
I met some guys at a book signing in the cooler part of town. Jon Lindsey was there and I told him about my magazine. I said it was “local” which is funny because it’s based in Montréal and only half of us speak any French at all. The writer people liked that I was wearing a Xiu Xiu t-shirt (I accidentally burnt cigarette holes in it while we talked), so they invited me to some event. The man who runs the bookstore where the signing took place asked me to grab a drink beforehand. We met at a jazz bar in the most expensive part of town. He sells books and I sell nothing (magazines), so we both opted for the cheapest beers on the menu. The jazz bartender was silent and sexy in this very European old man way, like all his age had been tucked behind his ears, gravity deferred etc. Book store man and I drank a bit and talked about bands. He was in one for a while and toured with some medium sized indie guys in second rate cities. He’s lovely, the bookseller. He has these gentle eyes (labrador) and friendly smile (mutt). We made our way to the venue, Soho House, a mostly obnoxious yupped up bar slash event space slash co-working nonsense. The show was great, but mostly in Swedish so I did my best to suss out meaning in movements. Soho House is in what used to be an old church, so the event had a semi-religious weight to it. A guy read a poem in Swedish about Coca Cola or something like that and it was enchanting watching him devour the microphone in shorts and a short sleeved button down shirt sweating all over himself in a room full of half broke artists half confused rich people looking for a nice place to drink something very very overpriced.
I’m laughing. Fresh air. I’m smoking outside with a magazine editor’s parents. They tell me I look like their son. I laugh a bit, but they’re serious. The old guy isn’t laughing. He isn’t moving at all. I make my way inside. There’s Allie Rowbottom. She wrote something important, but I can’t remember what it’s about. She’s more beautiful than anyone else in the room. That must be what it’s about. She reads something from her book. That’s what it’s about. It’s great. I think about my brother and his writing. I haven’t read his work in about a year. I think about writing the same way I think about sex and suddenly I’m self conscious about my outfit. Jon Lindsey reads something with a lisp. The last sentence is directed at me. “You.”
The next night I’m at the royal palace. There’s some private opera thing happening. My dad knows one of the performers which is funny because my dad knows nothing about music. The opera features a woman in a snake costume falling in love with some other woman who looks like a doll. Jesus is involved. I can’t tell what’s going on. I look down at my phone and see a text from Måns. The lady is singing really loud. It feels impossible. Hot in the face. My dad taps me and asks if I’m okay. His voice sounds muffled. I pass out right there in my seat. Feint, sleep, whatever. I wake up a minute later and feel sick. I’m covered in sweat and it’s the intermission. Fresh air. We’re outside. The lawn is perfect. My dad points to a man. “That’s Sweden’s Warren Buffet.” I tell my dad to go say hi. “You need more of my energy.” I don’t know what I mean by that. I’m drinking something. The palace is massive and everyone here is beautiful.
I’m thinking about sleepovers. The quiet basement. Carpet was once white. Take a deep breath. Another. Remember your best friend. He loves you more than you know. Your mom will pick you up in the morning. You don’t want to sleep. You never want to sleep. The couch feels weird on your bare back so you squirm until you decide it’s worth getting up. You’re in the bathroom staring at the mirror. The place smells like deodorant and it’s still hot from the steamy showers you and your best friend took earlier. He loves you. You love him. You can’t see yourself in the mirror. It’s too dark, but you don’t want to turn the light on and wake up your best friend. He still loves you. He’ll love you in the morning too. You sit on the toilet lid. Your eyes have adjusted. The whole room is kind of dark gray blueish. There’s a window to the backyard and you can hear crickets. Another deep breath. You won’t sleep tonight.
Måns and I lay in the park. The sun comes in and out of focus. The view, panoramic. I lay on Måns’ chest. His heart beats a bit quieter than I’d expect. I wonder almost aloud if beauty is universal because there’s only one sun. Grass, eyes, skyline, grass, arms, man, eyes. I’m looking for something. He smells sweet and his skin is warm. I think of a page in a book I don’t remember reading. All I remember is the line, “can you keep me?”
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