The Cote D'Azure was now flat and 2-dimensional in the distance; one of the muted pastel horizon lines Dali used to paint, with the light at Port Lligat in eerie calm somewhere in the foreground. Indeed, he thought, life had attained a quality both tolerable and surreal, the daily idiosyncratic turnings blending together into a slightly dulled reality, one disaffected by wine, the angry sun, and the flat, teal sea, always watching. He was done with drugs, done with alcohol, done with waiting; life was worth coping with raw and undiluted, the measure of understanding only what you could see in front of you. He'd been reading Kerouac over morning coffee grinds, but lately he'd formed the firm conclusion that he was dull and sentimental, old Jack; his 'experience' seemed cheap and second-hand, as he always seemed to be chasing women and shirking responsibility. Things ought to be tense and mutual, Clark decided, the opposing forces in everything that the Zen masters and enlightened people spoke of, not just befriending the moment, or whatever the fuck old Jack was doing.
Clark now set his sight's on Stockholm, the south was beginning to make him restless, the sun closing in claustrophobically, incessant and bright. He remembered with sudden clarity the last party he went to at Brown before 'the escape', his leaving spontaneously and running down to the boatyard dock's from that awful Marie Anderson's house, it's gaudy roman column's and stucco alcoves hiding his muffled curses and tears. He always had to end up getting so fucking sentimental, just like Kerouac, he had to make the injustice of the world personal and immediate. The last time he was in Stockholm, August 1968, he was visiting his father's family in Stureplan, an exclusive and polished neighborhood downtown, where young, rich Swedes gathered at night in the square and toasted their perfect looks in the shadows of brooding gray apartment blocks, unaware of the rest of the world.
At night while his parents and sister slept behind thick, ancient stone walls and Nordic design, he snuck out alone to Ambassaduer and Spybar, caught between mingling silently amongst the throngs of attention-seekers and cool kids, and drinking until words flowed unrestricted. He ended up doing both in varying degrees, and stolen glances turned to bold, direct confrontations, mumbling halting Swenglish at that wonderful distance that's almost better than a kiss because you can feel someone's breath and intent, singular and directed. He didn't go home with anyone though, and the evening imploded and crumpled under the weight of expectation, really of nobody but himself. Stockholm was both chaotic and abandoned at night, little knot's of people drunk, aimless, traveling, or just out for a walk spread between narrow cobblestone boulevard's. The rich kids in Stureplan were cynically known as 'Bratten' or brats, as the men looked spoiled and smug, with meticulously slicked-back hair and pressed polo shirts over slim white chinos. Their clothes fit snugly over that enviably Nordic bone structure, usually with a well-worn smirk, content watching everyday mortals roam the long streets at night; Stureplan belonged to them.
He interjected too much of the past with the present when he was in Sweden; his childhood there couldn't be resolved over simple place; it defied physics where the flat, geometric landscape of red-roofed farms and stone churches dotting muted fields, as seen from the window seat on an ascending SAS jet to New York. It was ironic though; the young Swedes loved New York, they idolized the stubborn American landscape of steel and glass, failed mortgages and a four-car garage. Clark was an idealist too; he romanticized Stockholm and friendly and utopian; the harsh realities of the Nordic seasons and the sacrifice demanded by the welfare state was blinded by blonde, blue-eyed wonder. Their style was so fucking easy, he thought, without pretense or trend-worshipping. Well, everyone worshipped some sort of trend, he figured, but it was different if you created it too. He remembered that asshole Thurmond Gates making fun of his smart, ironed shirt and plaid tie at a party a few years ago; he'd crossed the unspoken divide of American prepster ethics, and the blueblood muscle-bound twerps didn't appreciate the infringement. "I'm just having fun", he had demurred quietly, too intimidated by Gates hulking stupidity to spin off a quick retort.
There was something so noble and honest about the large majority of the world, even the United States, who knew nothing of the excess and boredom of the pasty white old wealth of New England and New York, D.C and Los Angeles, ambition withering under a material rain. Not that people in the humid stench of rural India and leafy Appalachian hollows didn't lust after the same crap rich people did, but they made do without, and what was more, they found satisfaction in subtle, yet rich connections to the land and the seasons, something we seemed to tune out with 'climate control' and 'on demand' everything. The autumn was turning slowly, with satisfying effervescence it fizzled south and brought cool, calm skies and crisp evenings to the sea. He was now in Copenhagen, and it was late September, October tomorrow in fact. Copenhagen was pretty and old, dressed in the cold, austere grays and regal reds that framed most of Northern Europe, a mix of welcome and tradition. The young Danes were liberal and stylish as he'd heard; versed in the latest western trends, yet beset with the same urban [or was it urbane?] boredom of his friends back in Rhode Island.
He found a mooring at a little marina surprisingly cheap, 30 Kronor a night, given it's location a few hundred meters from the imposing stone palisades of the royal palace and parliamentary buildings. He'd developed a slightly grizzled polish from the wind and the cold, whipping rain at sea the past few weeks, and after a vigorous scrub in the little shower stall below deck, scalding water and sharp scrub brushes stinging his sheltered pink flesh, he set out into the city to find a barber and a good dinner. It was late afternoon, almost 6, and as the last embers of sunset extinguished themselves over the modest cityscape of low apartment flats and modernist steel and glass affairs, he noticed a few girls sitting on the quay across from him, admiring the yacht and whispering to each other. The oldest, maybe his age or a few years older, she was tall and intimidating, with sunflower blond hair cut all uneven and ragged across her strong, arrogant jawline, her neck slim and delicate below that intense, almost violent Nordic bone structure, a viking anew.
She looked at him with the sort of calculated indifference that makes you wonder why people can't just be people, emotions tied to actions and not just lust. Clark, suddenly self-conscious and reserved after so many days at sea, made a quiet promise to be youthful and forthright in Stockholm, to walk with a light spring in his step, assertive but not arrogant, an observer and the observed. Her name was Helena, she informed him like an afterthought as she broke seamlessly into the rhythm of his stride, and her friends looked on in awe and horror. She had used the rather lame pretense of asking the time and bumming a cig off him [I lost the damn pack! she swore in perfect English]. She then launched unabashedly into her real motives: late the previous night [or early this morning?] she'd had a vision, a dream of a young American man who would come on a ship the next morning, he would arrive at 6 in the evening at the Kungsholm Marina, and he would bring her salvation.
The details of this vision were that it occurred after the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine, both of which she 'fucking hated', but felt obliged to partake in when with her wealthy Stureplan friends, lest the experience of clinging vicariously to someone else's life lose its edge. She was "actually quite a smarty" she informed Clark, but was on indefinite leave from the Royal Technical college, after deciding she needed to take some time 'away from engineering and indifference.' Clark was still wary, his mind raced and his extremities tingled with possibility, but he sensed there was something else, a beautiful girl caught in addict limbo perhaps, hustling herself on the street or selling dope under the pretense of 'visions' and American men. Yet the further they walked, no far out of earshot of Helena's friends ['they all have jobs and boyfriends' she informed Clark sullenly] he was beginning to think she was 'the real deal', as his father liked to say. 'Shit like this doesn't happen in real life though, this is the substance of narcissistic paperbacks and bored housewife fantasies', he though: the idea of a perfect stranger, a beautiful stranger, approaching him for nothing more than companionship and curiosity seemed absurd, yet somehow perfect. Stockholm was gorgeous, yet also gray and somber, the sun struck at oblique, creeping angles at this latitude, and the streets were a maze of shadows and narrow allyways. He asked her where they were going, and for the first time he saw past her confident, cocky shell as she managed a nervous smile and said 'well, where do you want to go?' 'Your bedroom', Clark thought with a smirk, but turned off this urge, this girl was more complex than that, perhaps not physical object at all, but a real companion, a confidant, a stay-up-until-4-in-the-morning-and-talk-about-life kind of friend... how long had he known her: 10 minutes!? 'This is my problem', he though, 'I pathologically trust.'
Her body was boyish and fit, a somehow linear mix of womanly curves and angular, bony bits.. she reminded him of a teenage boy with boobs and long, stalk like legs; her torso was like a Roman bust perched on stilts. She excited him in a way that intimidated him deeply, if she'd challenged him to a triathlon or even a race down the block, he might decline with a prick of embarrassment for fear of losing. She didn't walk, she sailed, compromising gravity in a way that seemed graceful and ridiculous at the same time. He mentioned Stureplan and she scoffed deridingly, that was for '2-dimensional people and pricks', she informed him. He was a little hurt, and a tad confused.. hadn't she just been partying there last night. Besides, he'd developed this complex, this fantasy of the young and smart and flawless dwelling in the square that he took any criticism of the place personally. She saw the disappointment in his face and apologized, she hadn't really meant it, she was just trying to impress him a little bit. 'Who does that!?' Clark thought in genuine awe, not the criticizing-something-you-like-to-seem-cool part, that was a universal human attribute of insecurity, but the bit where she immediately confessed her sin. That sort of honesty was disarming, it made you look at your shoes or change the subject, but Clark vowed to play on a level field and admitted that he had dropped out of school [fled was a better adjective perhaps], stolen a boat, and sailed across the Atlantic.
He thought she was going to kiss him. Her eyes lost their fiery blue glare for a second and dilated blankly, she tottered forward a half step and caught herself, then stared up at him like an atheist who has seen the face of god. "No! no no no. That can't be. Clark, you are a fan-fucking-tastic story teller [she must be an expat, you don't learn words like that in grammar school, he thought], but you can be straight with me.. so, what brings you here from the states?' She clearly didn't believe him. Refused to. The boat was right there: if he really wanted to he could show her the old yellowed registration plaque below deck stating ownership by "Mr. Charles Starling, Newport, Rhode Island", not Clark Nilsson. Yet even this probably wouldn't have sold her: she'd already changed the subject to where he wanted to eat, clearly uncomfortable with further dialogue on the matter, external or otherwise. Clark wouldn't let it go though, and pressed her one last time. She laughed, a quick, bitter chuckle, one that admits defeat yet also questions justice, a departure from her normally airy cheer. "Really, its absurd', she started, but then trailed off. 'What!?' Clark was losing his patience on this strange girl. 'It was in the dream. He was going to come on a stolen sailboat, from the states, and be tall and blond. Last bit shoulda tripped me out already I suppose... gotta stop these damn drugs.'
Whoa. This girl was heavy. Like, someone worth pursuing, someone worth a hard, cold winter full of enduring the ridicule of native Swedes over his language skills while waiting tables in Stockholm to be with, the yacht deteriorating in some cheap boatyard, he thought. Helena careened sideways, off kilter like a falling tree, and Clark's mind flashed to thoughts of the hospital, getting her stomach pumped, the authorities demanding him to show some ID, and his grand plans of escape coming unwound. No though, she wasn't high, she wasn't drunk, just fucked up on life, as cliche as it sounded, she really was, he thought. Either that or a tad mental, but that was a whole different story, and one he didn't have the capacity to deal with at the moment. [to be continued!]
[To be continued]
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