Bitter Bitch Read online

  We are lying on his unmade bed. He unbuttons his trousers, takes my hand and puts it on his penis and I touch it like I think you are supposed to. I am not entirely sure because I have only touched one cock before in my fourteen years. The first time was when I was thirteen and I was with a boy from my year and I just squeezed it. I had read a sex scene in a Stephen King novel in which the wife of the main character walks over to him while he is in the bath and squeezes his dick. It sounded exciting and it was the only information I had about how the male anatomy works. So I squeezed and squeezed until the poor fellow told me to pull up and down instead.

  This time with Stefan I know what a foreskin is and I know that you are supposed to move up and down. He comes on my hand and it is warm and slimy. He kisses my forehead and I go and get some toilet paper so we can wipe ourselves off. We still have nothing, absolutely nothing to talk about, so we kiss some more. My body is not quite as sweaty and feverish as it was earlier, it is not pounding everywhere and maybe it is almost, but only almost, beginning to get boring? I see that it is past midnight and I wonder if we are going to fall asleep because suddenly I am exhausted, but Stefan seems to have other ideas. His breathing is heavy and his fingers are searching my body, inside nooks which are previously untouched. It feels strange and unfamiliar and I try and push his hand away, because now it is moving hard, bumping inside me. It is pinching and groping, like an instrument made of stainless steel. It is not a warm hand any longer. I try and look into his beautiful brown eyes, but he closes them and is unreachable. Something is cold, I think it is me and I try and change position but Stefan is pinning my arms and lying down on top of me and I am having a hard time breathing. He fumbles with his trousers and I can feel how his hardness is trying to find its way between my legs, which are pressed together. I try to resist, but Stefan is much stronger and slowly my legs are pushed apart.

  Just then, when I think I am going to suffocate because I cannot get any more air, just then, when I really start to panic, the doorbell rings. Stefan freezes, opens his eyes and looks at me. He seems surprised and I realize that my face is wet. I must have been crying. I wipe the tears away with the back of my hand and Stefan still looks half asleep when he leaves the room to open the door. Dad is standing there and he looks serious.

  ‘You have five minutes to get to the car, where I’ll be waiting,’ he says, turns around and leaves. I blush with shame from being exposed as the fourteen year old I am, and I can see from Stefan’s red face that he is embarrassed too. I gather my clothes, my school bag and carefully tie my Doc Martens’ boots while Stefan sits on the edge of the bed watching me.

  Everything is quiet, there is a swishing sound in my head and the only thing I can think about is how many LPs he has. So many, an amazing number.

  Dad is silent in the car on the way home, but it is not a punishing silence and I am grateful that he is not yelling at me. I stare straight ahead at the road and see the headlights making yellow tracks in the black night.

  My brain slowly starts working again, and I wonder how much Dad knows, what he saw. But I do not say anything, I do not dare explain or ask because it feels like my cheeks are red with shame, red from tears and hard kisses.

  But later, when I am lying in my own bed, in my own room, in my own body, in our quietly sleeping terrace house, it comes. The fear. An abyss with steep sides that drop straight down. I lie stretched out under the covers, staring out into the darkness for what feels like an eternity, until I hear Mum get up and set out breakfast.

  I go to school as usual and when Cissi asks me what it was like and if I am in love I say yes, maybe a little. But he is so much older, and since I am so ugly he is never going to want to go out with me.

  When Stefan calls the next evening and says hi, I say hi back. He is quiet for a while and so am I, but finally he says that he does not think it is going to work between us. OK, I say. Bye. Bye, he says.

  The next evening when I am on my way home from Cissi’s it happens again, a black abyss which overwhelms me. It is autumn and the evenings have just started to grow cold and dark. I am biking home the usual way between the houses and the streets are quiet and empty. Suddenly I hear a car driving slowly behind me. My head starts spinning and at first I do not dare turn around and look, I just listen to how it is creeping along, following me. I bike faster and I hear it speed up. I can feel the heat from the headlights which are close to my legs. My head is pounding and when I see the playground in front of me I turn off the road and bike as quickly as I can between the swings, the sandpits and the jungle gyms. The car is forced to drive along the road, to the side. There is a phone box in the playground and I stop there but my hands are shaking so much I cannot get the coin in the slot. I finally manage and I dial home where I know Dad will be sitting on the leather couch with his cocktail.

  ‘Dad!’ I cry. ‘Dad! There’s a car following me!’

  ‘What? Where are you?’ he replies, and when I hear that he is anxious it frightens me even more and I am crying so hard I can barely talk.

  ‘Sara!’ I hear him yell on the other end of the line, ‘you have to tell me where you are!’

  ‘In the park,’ I cry between sobs. ‘I’m in the park and he is somewhere here too!’

  ‘Stay where you are, I’m on my way! Do you hear me Sara?’

  ‘Yes,’ I sob, ‘hurry!’

  I stand there and do not dare look because I know that the phone box is lit and the park is pitch black and he might show up at any moment, the unknown driver, the man without a face. But nothing happens and finally Dad comes, he tears open the door to the phone box and gives me a long, hard hug. He puts my bike in the boot and when we are sitting in the car I can see that his hands are shaking too.

  ‘Did you get the licence plate number?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I was afraid to look. I just biked,’ I answer.

  ‘How can you be so stupid?’ he asks angrily. ‘Don’t you understand that we need the licence plate number in order to catch him?’

  I start crying again and try and explain that I was so scared I didn’t think of it. Dad grunts and yells the whole way home, mumbling about stupid women and idiots and I stare out into the pitch black night one more time and think about how lucky I am that I did not tell him about Stefan. What damn good luck that I have not said anything to anyone.

  How could I ever explain my excitement, the way everything was spinning and pounding and how it suddenly wasn’t there any longer? That it was over and his fingers became hard?

  It is autumn and I am cold all the time and each day after school I crawl under the covers to get warm. I lie there and fantasize about a grown-up life in New York, about men in business suits who have money and want to take me out. They love me and I love them, I make love to all of them, one after another. It makes them grateful and happy and they say that they have never met anyone like me, ever. I am fourteen and I cannot stop hungering even though I suspect that it is hurting me. I want so badly and so eagerly. Most of all I want to be grown up and worshipped.

  One day on the bus it happens, a daydream that almost becomes reality. I have forgotten my bus pass and I am trying to convince the driver that I am just fourteen so I should pay the youth price. The driver smiles at me and says that it should be a crime to be fourteen and so beautiful. He introduces himself and tells me his name is Jens and he is twenty-one.

  And I smile like an idiot and feel the tingling happiness in my chest make everything grow warm, and two hours later we are sitting across from each other drinking coffee at Hallström’s Café.

  This time I do not make the same mistake as I did with Stefan, although I almost do. It takes a while before we go to his place. For months we take endless walks, watch a hundred movies at the cinema and spend hours in my room with Mum and Dad at a safe distance in the kitchen. But it is all a matter of time, because I am constantly hungering to be grown up for real and I know what I need to do to seal our contract of love, my contract of adulthood.


  One night we decide it is time and shortly thereafter Jens forces himself into my dry, narrow fourteen-year-old cunt which actually does not want his dick, but something else. It burns and hurts and a red blood-stain stares angrily up at us from the white sheet. But everything is real now and I stay at Jens’s place almost every night. I have a toothbrush and a pair of underwear in my school bag, together with my books, pens and lip balm.

  Jens is nice and he thinks that he loves me and I think that I love him. We listen to Sinead O’Connor and assure each other that nothing, absolutely nothing compares to you!

  He whispers things in my ear when we make love, beautiful things I like to hear. His words make me forget that my cunt is dry and I walk around with a constant burning sensation. It takes a month before we realize that he has given me chlamydia and herpes. He gets his test results over the phone and I see his face turn red.

  ‘It must be from backpacking last summer,’ he says, embarrassed.

  Doubled over I limp to the bathroom, because hot baths are the only thing that help ease the pain for a time. Mum wonders why my stomach hurts and I say that I do not know. When she tells me to make an appointment with the gynaecologist I do not protest. The receptionist who answers is kind and understanding and she makes the appointment for the following week. I do not protest either when Mum wants to come with me. I have never been to a gynaecologist before, but I suspect that it will be disgusting and unpleasant.

  Mum waits outside while I go into the examination room. The male gynaecologist is waiting, sitting with his back towards me, but spins his chair around when he hears me open the door. He smiles wide and I stare in surprise when I realize that it is our neighbour.

  Then I am lying in the chair with my legs spread, being examined by Per-Ove who lives in a yellow house in our street. I usually wave when I cycle past. Per-Ove works in his garden a lot.

  ‘Well,’ says Per-Ove, pulling on his rubber gloves, and sitting down to look between my legs.

  ‘How are Mum and Dad?’

  ‘Good I think.’ I answer quietly because suddenly I have run out of air and my throat feels constricted.

  ‘Well, good,’ says Per-Ove and pushes something that looks like a cake cutter made of stainless steel inside me.

  ‘Have you got any apples on the trees yet?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ I reply shortly, because it is burning like fire between my legs and I need to concentrate so I will not scream.

  ‘Our apples were also late this year,’ Per-Ove says, and pulls out the tongs, hard and quick.

  ‘Ow!’ I sob and I start to cry.

  ‘There now, that wasn’t so bad!’ Per-Ove says, and pushes in a cotton bud. ‘That’s what happens when you’re out and about not being careful!’ he says, and smiles crookedly.

  I look at his eyes which are staring at my insides. Small, narrow pig-like eyes embedded in thick, fat wrinkles. Shiny beads of sweat are forming on the top of his bald head. I look at the black pores which discolour his vein-covered nose. Having his nose down there, far too close, feels more degrading than anything else.

  ‘Yes, it definitely looks like herpes. We will find out about the chlamydia in a few days, but you can count on having that as well since your boyfriend is infected,’ he says, and takes off the gloves and throws them in the bin.

  He grins widely and watches me openly while I clumsily get down from the chair. I am shaking as I try and put on my underwear because Per-Ove is still staring at me. He has sat down at his desk now and is leaning back with his hands crossed over his enormous stomach. He is sitting quietly, grinning the whole time I am getting dressed, and I feel a fury grow beneath my embarrassment. It pulls and tears and when I turn around in the doorway, I hate. I stare right back into Per-Ove’s scornful eyes and see his grinning mouth and yes, I really hate him. I want to say something, maybe hurt him, because I am tired of being fourteen, tired of constantly being controlled by boyfriends, faceless men, Mum and Dad.

  But most of all I want to get Per-Ove to stop smiling that ugly, fat grin of his.

  ‘Don’t look so satisfied!’ I say as I stare back. ‘Don’t you know that everyone thinks male gynaecologists are disgusting?’

  Per-Ove stiffens, his eyes grow wide for a brief second and he opens his mouth to say something, but I beat him to it.

  ‘Damn sadistic pervert!’ I hiss and walk out, slamming the door hard behind me.

  In the waiting room I see Mum get up from the sofa and my anger quickly disappears and is replaced by deep embarrassment.

  ‘What did he say?’ she asks when we have left the waiting room.

  ‘That I have chlamydia and herpes,’ I reply.

  She does not say anything, just continues walking along the long hospital corridor, looking straight ahead. We walk like this, quietly, side by side, all the way to the lift at the end. She is going back to work and I am going to school. The lift comes and I get in, but when I turn around I see that she has not followed me. She is still standing in the hospital corridor outside and looks me in the eye for the first time.

  ‘You should be ashamed,’ she says as the lift door closes. Her lips are narrow and I see that they are trembling with anger.

  I look at the closed lift door in surprise and think how strange it is that she hasn’t understood – that the only feeling in my entire body is shame, nothing but shame. Did she think I was proud?

  And I can never explain that the only thing I have done is try to survive. Escaping to Jens was an alternative, the only one then, and this time there was not a parent stopping me. Having sex with Jens burned and made me sore but it was still better than having to be around Mum and Dad’s humiliation; the only way to avoid being infected by their anxiety.

  That is the way it was, even if I wish there had been another way to grow up than through these voluntary rapes. Maybe if I had been drunk. Or a boy.

  PEACOCK

  If I ever have a daughter I hope she will not be pretty. Being a pretty girl turns you into prey, an easy victim for shitty, sexist socialization. The kind of socialization that leads girls to think their worth lies in their appearance. If you are not all that pretty then there is a chance you will make it by fostering some sort of talent, like being good at school.

  Being fourteen and pretty, combined with an insatiable need for acknowledgement, was devastating for me. It is just pure and simple luck that things did not turn out any worse than they did. At one point I shaved off my hair and I have never been as ugly or as free, but then I started longing to be pretty again. That is how it rears its ugly head, the need to flirt.

  Feeling invisible can create such a exhausting hunger you will do almost anything, even if to some extent there was a kind of freedom in my parents’ lack of interest. Sometimes I am grateful they never asked if I had done my homework, how the test went, or what I was drawing or thinking. For some of my friends who grew up in upper-middle-class homes, these parental demands created a huge amount of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy.

  But maybe it remains easier if those demands come from your parents rather than from yourself. In the best case scenario you can rebel against your parents, and I think that is simpler than rebelling against yourself.

  My own need for acknowledgement has never really disappeared, it has just taken on new forms. When I started having obsessive thoughts about being a peacock, I realized that work was not all it was cracked up to be. For a long time the only thing I felt good at was being a journalist, even though I despise the myth of the artist, which assumes that certain people are simply born with talent, something you either do or do not have. And it just so happens that the ones who are seen as being talented are often white men from the middle classes, at least according to the those who have the power to define what an artist is and create space for them.

  I hated the speeches made by the director of the University College of Film, Radio, Television and Theatre at the end of each term. It was always about how some of us were talented artists
and others not. So naïve, so middle class, elitist and grandfather-like! Despite this my desire grew and at university I felt recognized and acknowledged for the first time in my life.

  When I started working at Swedish Radio, the silence came as a shock. It was a silence that was deafening, weighed down by meanness and it crushed my fragile longing to be seen. I remember how surprised I was when my first documentary aired and no one said anything, neither management nor colleagues. I thought the world would end. It took several years before I realized that it had nothing to do with me, my potential talent or worth; it was simply the ruling culture.

  The image of the peacock started to pop up in my head just after I won an award for a documentary. Up until that moment, a prize like that had been the best thing I could have imagined when it came to being acknowledged. The strange thing was that once it happened, I did not feel anything. I was barely happy, and suddenly images of peacocks popped into my head when I was biking, shopping or picking up Sigge from daycare. I would be standing in front of the mirror, tying a yellow ribbon in my hair and I would see a peacock.

  The emptiness of it all was suddenly so visible, just as it had been when I was getting married and it was all great fun until it was time to stand up before all of the guests. Then I realized to what extent a wedding was just a display, a performance in which we would be shown off and inspected. Then like now, I was embarrassed and I felt vain and silly and resentful. Why did I need to win awards? (Why did I need to get married?) What kind of crap is this? Competing in radio!

  Then I found myself sitting with therapist Niklas yet again, crying because I was a damn peacock.

  Why do unhappy people keep living together, year after year?

  I think about this as I eat breakfast, watching all the couples. Sitting in the breakfast room with everyone disposes me to bitter bitchy thoughts, not because I have the slightest idea what their marriages are like, but when I amuse myself by trying to decide if any of the couples are happy, they all look resolute and embarrassed and it seems that this must mean something, that a suppressed silence is ruling in here.