Assisted Living: A Novel (6 page)

Grandpa was having a splashing good time in a waterbed filled with urine when someone rang the doorbell. He was soaked in sweat and sucking his own dick. He once told me it’s the most diabolical pleasure of all, but that it gets harder when you get old, even if you’ve got the right body for it. His back might crack at any moment, but that probably just makes him hornier. I’ve tried it on myself, but cant even come close. You’ve got to be tall and skinny as a scarecrow. You’ve also got to have loads of selfconfidence. The real pros are more than eight feet.

—It works better with your eyes closed, I remember Grandpa saying, and that’s how he was doing it.

He was also listening to Carl Orff’s
Carmina Burana,
or rather,
De Temporum Fine Comoedia-Vigilie
, while a different speaker was pumping out Venoms “At War with Satan.” Our room’s packed with books, mostly history and philosophy. They’re in random topsyturvy stacks that reach as high as the bed, and if you want to you can crawl across them. Every now and then Grandpa picks up a book, but he instantly gets sick of it. That’s when you get to hear what he thinks about those pussyscribblers … someone shoulddrink them under the table! lightweights! gutless breakwinds, miserable assholes, windbags! Off with their hands and feet! just for the fun of it! like in Karaganda! you write a book! a single sentence! and you’ve waived the right to live! God forgives everything you do to wordwrenchers!

And so on and so forth.

—I’m the one and only consummate Thelemite, because I shit on Crowley’s life and piss on his work!

Grandpa’s bitter he never got to scrap with Aleister … Sometimes he flaunts the dirty letters Stefan George, Proust, and Wittgenstein sent him when he was a strapping young buck …

—Now you can see what they go in for, those Aunties Green, Brown, and Violet. Why, those hoitytoity spinsters have only got cockandass on the brain! Marcel stuck nails in rats and came on his mama’s picture! And Boy George, what a primadonna! “Als sieger dring ich einst in euer hirn, ich der verscharrte …” Hot-damn, that’s for me! A great horny owl in a magpie’s skirt! I’m not even going to tell you the sorts of thing he wrote! No one would believe me! It’s just too, too revolting! And Ludwig! no point in trying to outtalk an idiot or outlumber a calf. Here he writes that he wants to meet me in his nasty Norwegian cottage! I’m supposed to bring two weeks’ worth of shit in my bowels! without a hair on my body! smeared up with resin and covered in horse-hairtufts! then he’ll whip me until I’m just a bloodystain! leave me for the skuas! There you have it! Genius in all its glory! Bighead, smallwit, spread your legs and take a shit! I’m finished with the likes of them! Poppycock and tommyrot! Hefty tomes full of difficult words! A million shittyass viewpoints! Cultures only cock-andbooze! if you just scratch the surface!

But now Grandpa was contorted like a sandflea and sucking for all he was worth; his body shone like lead against the oxbloodcolored sheets. Homemade comfort. Some people call that position thirty-four and a half, since its half a sixty-nine. Grandpas cock is average, just a little thin and worn. It was holding its own, though, that’s for sure. He was sucking so hard his stomach was growling. He has dainty lips, a strong tongue, endless spittle, and his eyeballs rolled behind their greenpainted lids. It seemed to be going good for him, selfmade is wellmade, so I took myself down the stairs and through the hallway to the outer door. I unlocked it and looked out. Standing there was an old man no one had seen before.

—Is the head of the house at home?

He had a voice like Mr. Bean’s, you know: constipated and Biblethumping.

—Yeah, but he’s giving himself a blowjob.

The man didn’t waste any more words, just pushed me aside, rushed in, and yanked off his caracul and galoshes. He showed himself into the living room, plopped down on a rockingchair, and stayed quiet. He looked like a normal guy, just kind of old and serious. Most of them are like that, quiet their whole lives, slaving away, faring ill.

I’d like to be one of those.

__________

Aunties Green, Brown, and Violet
—figures from a book by the Swedish author Elsa Beskow

Als sieger dring ich …
—From Stefan George’s poem “Der Gehenkte” (The Hanged Man)

I was reading Grandpa the personals from the Västerbotten
Volksblad.
I made sure to skip the really perverted ones, though, where someone was advertising for a person of the opposite sex. Those’ll make you sick after only a few lines.

“A slightly bitter woman is waiting for you. I’m 19 and have 3 kids. I look 40. It all feels so strange. Why did they do this to me? I’ve done my best, but I simply can’t go on …”

Or: “Skinny white guy, 24 years old, short, with everyday interests, seeks girl with special interests. I don’t think I’ve ever done it, but I’m willing to give it a try. I’ve got a pretty secure job and I’m happy to share. Everything we’ve pent up needs to come out. I’m living with Aunt Sigris right now, but am looking for my own place..

But Grandpa was only interested in the homoads. Unfortunately, all the ones who wrote in to
Gay Guy Contact
were too far away. Southerners seem to be gayer Nonetheless, the locals did seem to be getting gayer by the hour. Grandpa was lying on the ribbackedsetee and sucking down some Johnny Walker Black Label, and I was reading the ads in the order they were printed.

—“Shy, incontinent Sävarbugger, who’s usually a wallflower at dances, wants to find a fellow he can snuggle with. You are laid-back, nice and sweet, inmates preferred. I’m bald and nervous and only smoke at parties. I work at a daycare center. Desire is driving me wild. Especially interested in illegal immigrants! Respond to: ‘Got that spring feeling down in Obbola.’”

—Damn, what a repulsive pig! Onto the next one …

—“Horny guy, 39 years old, small and dark, looking to find a sex-hungry backseatjockey in a preppy cardigan and berretta. You are 67 years old, deaf and dumb, suffer from psoriasis, and preferably live in Vuollerim. Extra plus if you’re bitter, angry, and have a chronic smoker’s cough Reply to: ‘We two in in the old jalopy, Wilmar.”’

—Go on …

—“Crabby sanatorium dweller, 29 years old, with a thin blond mustache wants to be slapped around by a wellhungguy. I have an appetite for most things that make life a party, and I’ve hung out with Etienne Glaser and Hans Werthén, to name a few. Interests include: casualsex, emptyshells, the vermiformappendix. I’ve got AIDS and the guardianship of an autistic child. Respond to: ‘If there’s no time, there’s no time.’”

Grandpa sighed dejectedly, and I knew what he meant.

—“Sallow, fat, cowardly man in upper middle age seeks contact with a flexible snugglebunny with huge manboobs. I’m bulimic and want you to cum inside me while I puke. Respond to: ‘Churchwarden who believes in truelove.’”

—Well cut the dick off that one, Grandpa swore.

—“I am who I am and I’ve been paid back with interest. It’s good to walk a straightline. How we can meet. Take a car if it’s too far. I live alone. Drink and jack off. Us men should stick together. Like those young guys too shy to try a smokesucksmutyourselfup session in Kusmark. Whats the big deal. That’s all. Respond to: ‘Bertil.’”

—That must be Hilding Henning up in Sälgdal. He hasn’t fucked anyone in over fifty years. And he isn’t going to fuck me, none of them are …

__________

Etienne Glaser
—actor, producer, and scriptwriter

Hans Werthén
—Swedish industryman

— Sweden’s only had one writer worth his salt and that was Elfred Berggren from Furuögrund. I’ve read
God of Robots
over a hundred times. He was the same age as me and Himmler, but died at thirty-two when he was raped by a ringedseal …

Grandpa poured himself some more smallbeer. He was trying to crush a whole bottle of Veronal into his mug, and he was stirring with the stick normally used for mercykillings. He was wearing a T-shirt with the words “Adolf Hitler European Tour 1939–1945,” a warharness, and Israeli commandoboots with Hushalongs. I was wearing my culturalrevolutionary outfit and a black skimask. We were getting ready to go out. We’d made quick work of newlyhatchingeggs, newbomkoalas, and teutoburgers. For dessert, Ibiza cream and Pat-pong dates. Grandpa had spent the morning reading Deschner’s
The Criminal History of Christianity
and Villeneuve’s
The Torture Museum.
Now he was going on and on about the stagparty literaturi.

—A knife blow to an old woman’s back’s got more culture than anything those scribblescrabbling morons will ever come up with … belleslettresloving cuntlickers … that’s what they are …

Yesterday we played games until our eyes bled and our brains boiled: the first World Cup in sprinting, eighteen teams in three divisions, twelve branches per year; then the World Cup in skiing with twelve legendary competitors in different places around the world and with different distances and styles, also with eight teams, four from each team in the individual runs; then a little boxing and wrestling to wind down. All it takes is dice, a will of iron, some schizofantasy, and paper and pen. Then we played soccer with a hundred and twenty-eight teams; a hockey tournament with sixty-four teams—tabletop, of course—then the World Cup ’90 and tennis on the Sega; then Risk, chess, and Beat the Homo; and, finally, a homemade game involving exterminationcamps, where each of us plays a different commander. And now for the rest. We played Dragons and Demons, Lords of the Rings, and an awesome wargame Grandpa dreamed up about Diadochi. Now that I think of it, a few days and nights must’ve passed …

We heated up sandwiches in the microwave … with tonsils, two jars of bustedappendices, and the dailynews …

We drank beer from casks and then pissed in them so we wouldn’t have to get up … To play like we played, you’ve got to forget everything else … You’ve got to have a nativebestiary, a true cornucopia to populate your teams with … You have to like protocol … talking big and talking small … simulation … When Grandpa and I play together, I feel there’s a bond between us … No one else could’ve done it … When we play, it can sound like this—it was the ninth-year A-division, I had cerebralpalsy-women, Kåge-Suburbs, and Schools, and Grandpa had the Bush, Kåge-women, and Finland …

—Who’s running for the CP-whores in the marathon?

—Who ran last year?

—Let’s see … They were in B then … Konda Forssell … time was three hundred and fifty-six … three points …

—Nah, I don’t trust her … Has “The Ant” run yet?

—Nope … she’s just sitting there scratching the skin off her nose to make it smaller …

—Then we’ll take “The Ant” … she’s a fighter …

—I’ll take a wild stab … I’m bringing in “Sinbearer”!

Then Grandpa took his sweet time telling me about “Sinbearer” a nasty old tramp who’d lurked around Skellefteå in the ’20s …

—He was big and fat and popeyed … not to be confused with “The White Boss,” who was another guy entirely, had dandruff for eyebrows … but everyone was terrified of “Sinbearer” … he wasn’t right … He limped along with a sack bearing all the world’s sins … He didn’t say much, but when he talked, his words were both timid and perverse …

—“You don’t eat pork, witch?!” he’d laugh, or: “Badluck and pigslop! that’s all I’ve ever met with!” or: “Best meat’s between the legs, best sausage between the stones!” That’s what he’d say, when he got someone alone. He had a coarsemade pillory and testes like pitepalt.

Grandpa told one tramptale after the next …

—A good story is always sterile, monotone, he liked to say. Spleen and ennui are all you can hope for … Then it got even more longwinded …

I got to hear about “Five-Penny Jonas,” a sullen little caramel and thimblehawker, who liked to eat live colts … about “ByeBye,” also known as the “Gypsy Dancer,” who was beautiful as a näken and liked to seduce young men with his accordion and then slit their throats … about Åkerström, who drank more than a hundred liters of water per day and had a habit of suffocating snakes by sticking them up his ass … about “The Hobo King,” who worked the roads and never stopped crying … about “The End Times,” who ran steelwire at faceheight across the road and killed forty-three cyclists … about gypsy Karlsson-Tydén, who made whisks but couldn’t bear to part with them … he wandered between Skellefteå and Ume his whole life and never got anywhere … about Lejonberg, the frowner, who fenced with pigs using his stiff, naked cock … about “Neerdowell Fredrika,” who had more lice than all the Croats in the Thirty Year War combined … about “Sitting Pretty,” a rickety bowlegged tramp who liked to enjoy a smoke dangling over a great height … about “The Big Scare,” “Finn-Pavola,” and the sweet and mild Sehlstedt, a fervently religious tramp with a holy medallion around his neck …

Later he talked about Augusta Hamberg and “Poas,” who wandered around Storberget in Lycksele … about the English disease, about huge, hairy warts, and about the poisonous tallowcandles that wereused to get rid of stomachparasites … a driedup old mocassin if ever there was one … about “The Black Girls,” Jonas and Johannes Södermark, who played bedandbordello with every gypsy to cross their paths … they were dark, had rings in their ears, and blowjobs dancing in their eyes … and in their mouths and their bellies, by God … they’d sell out their own grandpas … so long as they didn’t quit … yes, Grandpa realized he’d lost contact with the trampworld …

—Who wants Sub in the marathon?

—Johan Westermark … he got full points with three hundred and seventy-eight last time …

—And I have Kåga-Women … by Satan … for lack of anything better, it’ll have to be “The Stork” Sundqvist …

Then we were finished with rolling dice and writing stuff down … the marathon was played with ten times ten dice, you start at the top of the list and go down one roll at a time … At three throws, “The Ant” Greenland slipped … she was thirty points behind the nearest challenger … The others were close, between a hundred five and a hundred ten … After five throws, half the marathon, the positions were:

It looked like I had two losers to deal with … “The Ant” and “SATO” were the haircurdling showstoppers … Moronic Greenland threw a 24 in the seventh. The tramps and “The Stork” caught up to the leaders. It was starting to look like a triple for Grandpa …

—Noooo! Looks like Johan, the bastard, can’t even get his cock blue! I groaned when he threw 27 in the ninth.

Grandpa took the ten small white dice with black pips and rolled them imploringly over his open palm … Then he tossed them onto the felt cloth with a sly look … A quick glance revealed: 36 … fair, but nothing to holler about. The last roll was anticlimactic. Grandpa rolled a three-double: The Bush 6p., Kåge-Q 5p., and Finland 4p., Sub. 3p., CP-q 2p., and Skola, the old master-team, 1p. “Sinbearer’s” winning time was a nice 384 … 6 of 10 rolls of 40 or better … But the ten-time runner scored over 400, so he’d averaged above 40.

The World Cup ran two “days” with six meets per day. A runner could only participate in one race a day.

100,400, 1500, 5000 marathons and 4×100 the first day …

3×3, 4×4, 4×5+1×3, 6×8, 10×10 and four stretches with 3×3 dice …

The second day: 200, 800, 3000, 10,000, half-marathon and 4×400 …

2×6, 4×5, 5×6, 8×8, 9×9, and four stretches with 4×4 dice …

When we played “Lord of the Rings,” Grandpa wanted to be Sauron. When I said it was against the rules, he beat me with
Bolshevism from Moses to Lenin.
He refused to trade down to a balrog, and waved his hands dismissively when I read the racial descriptions of the Uruk-hai, Huorns, dragons, and Nazgul. On a whim, he let himself be persuaded by what I read aboutthe Nazgul in the rulebook: “If revealed with the aid of magic, they appear in the guise of great, haggard kings with cold, evil eyes..

—Okeydokeysmokey, I’ll be a ghost, then … and I’ll be a black Numenörean … and an Uruk-hai … You’ll be a fallohidehobbit … a hummerbagge … a buggerwoser …

We made up our own rules this time … We said you didn’t have to die if you died in the game … Grandpa won … he always does … he makes the rules … he pulls the strings … he’s behind it all …

__________

näken
—a water sprite