| August 12, 2003 - The drunken Swede |
| Dear Friends, during my last week in Uppsala my friend, Carla (the one with the British transsexual admirer), came over from London and stayed a few days with me. Her first evening there we went to eat at this place I always liked to hang out at. It has comfy chairs and coffee tables in the back for just reading and drinking, and there are regular tables and chairs for people who want to eat. They also have an outside area with umbrellas and these heat torch thingies for when it's cool. Anyway, we were sitting there having a brewskie while waiting for our food to show up when this very tall, middle-aged Swedish man came over and sat at a table near us. Since you're all aware of my penchant for attracting freaks, I'm sure you realize how quickly my freak-o-meter reacted. And sure 'nuff, he was drunk out of his gourd. He started yacking at us in Swedish in a rather "full of fatherly wisdom" way, but the only word I could ever understand was the word "house". However, we did kind of get it when he called Carla a "bitch". But he didn't say it in a mean sort of way at all; it was more like some fatherly bit of advice. So right after that some other drunk came walking up to the Swede. This one looked like he might have been Indian or Pakistani; he definitely had a foreign accent while speaking Swedish. He came up, all excited to see the big Swede, and from his tone you could tell that he knew him. The Swede glared at him for a long moment and then said very loudly, "F*** me!" At that they both burst out laughing and started shaking one another's hands and boxing with one another the way teenaged boys sometimes do. After about ten minutes or an eternity (who can say because you feel like you're in another dimension in those situations) of these shenanigans, the Swede solemnly pronounced in English, "I have a son." He did it in a very Martin Luther King kind of way. I don't remember really what the Pakistani's response was, but I thought, "So what? So did the Virgin Mary and she didn't go running around drunk, accosting strangers, and calling them bitches." Although it would have been a hoot if she had. So after the two of them yammered at one another a bit more, the Pakistani guy left. The Swede seemed kind of at a loss as to what to do, so after a few minutes he wandered around, well lurched around really, several of the tables and headed off down the street. Carla said, "That was lots of fun. I love it when stuff like that happens." She was dead serious! Of course, Carla isn't a freak magnet like JOHNNYLEEN, so she only occasionally has to fend them off. To her it's a great adventure, but to JOHNNYLEEN it's just a huge annoyance. After that, every time I heard footsteps coming up behind me, I'd furiously whisper to Carla, "Is that him? Is he coming back?" At least he didn't offer us a booger. Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |