Midsommer Part 2 - Party

Preparations

"Monte?"

"...yes?..."

"We're having a little breakfast if you care to join us." It sounded more like a question.

Pelle was on the other side of the unzipped tent door. He was wearing a t-shirt, his trademark page boy cap, and rainbow colored magic hippie pants that were tailored to ankle length. 

"...okay..." with all four hours of sleep intact.

Swedes, for breakfast, they eat soft cheese and crackers. They had a large paper wheel filled with sheaf after sheaf of hard wheat crackers.  You simply broke off your portion from the otherwise complete round. There was also some toast and jam and drip coffee. A friend of theirs had contributed, at some other time, a container of homemade beet hummus which was delicious. 

Over breakfast Pelle, with a massive grin, asked if I'd tried the outside toilet yet. I told him no, keeping close the fact I was going to hold it until I was septic before I used the damn thing.

"Oh man, you've got to! There is nothing like sitting there with the door open, looking at the countryside, just taking a shit." His sincere enthusiasm was hard    to reconcile with the crude act of making.

After a modest breakfast by no one else's standards, we set to the final leg of preparations. Fumbling from task to task with any semblance of direction unclear, we threw our effort at sprucing up Kim's land. Spots were cleared arbitrarily. I would pick up nails and screws and placed them somewhere because the devil is always in the details. At one point, the centerpiece of the physical labor, the stage set between Kim's house and the barn-studio-concert hall hybrid was cleared. Loaded down with anonymous clutter, bed frames, and planks of wood, the highlight was when a bench deemed to large to fit in the shed was cut into more manageable bits by Kim and his power saw with a few of us straddling the victim. 

Once unencumbered, the stage was red like the barn and house with a large yellow seal depicting two dancing cats painted on the stage right third of the back wall. Pelle and Kim also decided to leave a table and some chairs up there. 

Eventually Julia called from the back steps of the house for help with KP duty. One of the essential elements of a Midsommer party is potatoes. Julia stood over a huge, table dominating box of potatoes as round as ball bearings no bigger than Chinese medicine balls. Covered in dirt, the potatoes and their box sat next to two bowls, one filled with cold water and the other empty.

"For Midsommer, we eat the...I don't know how you call it, but they are the first potatoes out of the earth."

"New Potatoes?"

"Yes!" I'm not sure if either one of us were right. "So you take the potato and take the brush and clean them and then put them in the bowl."

She took one from the box, placed it in the water and as easy magic, it emerged from the water clean with most, not all, of the skin scored away. Anxious, a lifetime spent in need of specific directions, I asked for clarification.

"Just wash them," she reiterated.

"Like the skin, all the skin?"

"No. Just wash them," she said with a bold struck period. The question was too silly to warrant a comma.

The water clouded to mud. The scrub brush gummed up with flayed potato skin. Each little spud was washed to best resemble the brown and white marble Julia left as an example. We talked about education and the difference between that of Sweden and America. We also talked about women and their role in Swedish society. Free college for everyone doesn't change some things. The radio hummed with random snippets of song and poorly integrated man-on-the-street interviews smash cut into the program. Julia said it was adult contemporary radio even though I provided the term. I'm not sure if either one of us were right.

The potatoes didn't give an inch. Endless scrubbing, two refills of water, the box was multiplying the starchy bastards from the inside. Nerves began to unspool and I couldn't help but feel I'd been given a task I wasn't fit to manage. I wouldn't ask them to prepare the Christmas tamales. 

Somewhere in boiling eggs and preparing herbs and making dip, Julia managed to make lunch. We sat on the back steps, Kalle joined us, and we eat buttered spaghetti with cold salmon Sanna said we could have on top. As we sat and ate Pelle took our picture and the first group of partygoers arrived.

New Friends

Linda and Anna both wore wigs. Linda's was pink and Anna's was blonde held held on by a sweatband. They both had on tights, but Linda's were far more outrageous, indicative of her soon to be revealed personality. Anna had beat up feet, but a beautiful, bronzed, round face countered with soft blue eyes. A couple, the kind of couple who isn't a couple--just really good friends--but is totally a couple, wore coordinated outfits. Maize yellow pants, maize yellow skirt, white shirts, back vests. She had large feather earrings and he had what he dubbed, "the economy cheat code," or what we would call the "Contra cheat code," tattooed down his calf. An avid gamer he later showed off a battery of video game tattoo, and he insisted the Contra code was used in many other games. Another woman was with them, handsome and older, and she was dressed like a flapper with long pearls and a silk band around her head. And from here, names stop mattering, especially my own.

But, that being said, a quick note on names.

Julia - Yoolyuh

Linda - Leenda

Kim - Keem

Anna - AuNuh

Lasse - Lahsay

Otto - Uh-toe

And go ahead and ask if I'll ever apologize for pronouncing my name the  correct way ever again.

Retreated back to the kitchen, potato and scrubber in hand, I watched as the damn burst and new friends trickled in by the score. Eventually the handsome woman joined the potato effort. With one deft movement her brush and potato disappeared into the water and it came out like she had swapped in Julia's example with sleight of hand. More true blood Swede's joined us in the kitchen and eyed the box of potatoes with interest. I was quickly relieved of my post.

Fitta

Pelle stood over Linda and a girl with braided auburn hair with his arms crossed smiling. They were at work lashing two sticks together like two bowed arms with interlaced fingers. One was the longer support bar and the other was shorter and more arced to accentuate the shape.

"Pelle!" 

"Monte!" He have me a hug, our standard greeting.

"What are y'all up to?"

Pelle flashed his slice of grin and with childish enthusiasm said, "They're making  a Midsommer pole."

Linda, fastening the sticks at the top interjected, "So, the Midsommer pole is a symbol for the penis, and they stick it into the ground to penetrate the earth and make summer. Instead, were making a Midsommer pussy."

I stood back and saw the perfect elegance of the parenthetical shape.

 "Do you want to help?" Linda asked.

I gagged on a coterie of disgusting jokes I'd make on my home turf and chirped, "Of course."

We ventured into the forest and gathered flowers and ferns and green pine needle twigs until out arms were full and walked them back to the work space. The auburn haired girl was already hard at work. Having acquired some fishing line from Kim, she was decorating the Midsommer Pussy. Bound up in the verdancy of Kim's fields, draped in velvety greens, woven with the flowers of late spring, the totem came to life.

The girl in the maize skirt and feather earrings came up, tilted her head and said, "Ah, a Midsommer cunt."

I went to the porch where Kim was holding court with his men. He had a beer in hand as he had most of the day.

"Have you see the Midsommer  Pussy?" I asked like a teenager with something to report in the locker room.

Kim looked over his shoulder, "Ah a Midsommer Fitta."

"Is that the word? Feelta?"

"Fitta. F-i-t-t-a."

"Fitta."

Kim and his men laughed like they had taught a toddler a swear word.

"Tonight," Kim continued, "go up to a pretty girl, a girl you like, and say, 'Fin fitta."

"Fin fitta?"

They howled. 

"That is the dividing line at this party, the girls that will let you tell them fin fitta," Kim added as he and his men continued to chuckle.

Midsommer Dinner

Pelle let me know dinner would be soon so I cleaned myself up. While combing my hair and doing my best to glop the foulness out of various places with nothing but the aid of Kim's sink, I was feeling better about the hat situation. No one seemed to be really wearing hats, the soft ratio similar to any theme party back home. 

On returning to the yard, everyone must have convened and decided now was the time, because every head had a cover of some kind. Sailor hats, floral wreaths, Austrian mountain farmer hats, bonnets, and  umbrella hats. One guy even had what must've been the leftovers of a Halloween costume wearing a paper pirate hat with a cassette tape set over cross bones emblazoned on the front. Get it? He's the Pirate Bay.

"Where's your hat?" Julia asked from under her stocking cap.

"I'm gonna make one. Like a Caesar."

"Like a what?"

I grabbed a few scraps of fern from the leftovers of the Midsommer Fitta and indicated how they would go around my head but not touch. It immediately clicked and she quickly saved the operation from itself. She went into Kim's field and cut what seemed like far too much fern, and assembled the laurel wreath in a matter of minutes. It itched like hell, but it worked.

Pelle soon emerged from Kim's house freshly showered and dressed to the nines in an olive suit with a fedora perched on his head. A moment was taken to erect the Midsommer Fitta--someone had knitted a vulva from flowers which twisted in the breeze. Dinner was called and the Midsommer party had officially begun.

Everyone had brought a dish from far and wide. Nothing seemed unfamiliar, but I couldn't tell you want any of it was. The potatoes had been par-boiled and covered with fresh herbs. Casseroles and cheese and little jars of pickled herring in various sauces covered the tables set up in the soon to be dance hall.

"I don't know what any of this is."

"Then try it all," a girl with blue eyes and flowers in her dark hair and an incisor next to her front teeth said. "Are you allergic to anything?"

"No."

She motioned to the spread and I loaded up a full paper plate on her advice. The extent to which I wish I could put words to the dishes is hard to convey, but all I can say is it was delicious. In every color and flavors from savory to sweet to sour, sitting in the shade as the Swedish summer articulated its expanding presence around us, my stomach was the least of what was fed.

The drinks began to flow. In what, to me, seemed like a very Swedish approach, Pelle and Emilie had commissioned a couple of girls from Gothenburg to make little slips of paper with vin/öl on top and a little drawing of a wine glass on bottom. The hosts placed a lockbox with some change in it on top of the bar, and it was an honor system. Twenty Swedish Crowns got you five of whatever you wanted. They had two beers, one an exceptional Swedish summer ale, and a phalanx of boxed wines. The next day, when the count was done, they--according to their calculations--had more money than they had beer and wine to sell. And who says socialism doesn't work. 

Dance Around the Midsommer Pole

As we we ate, an older couple from a neighboring farm pulled two violins from their cases and begin to saw out traditional folk songs. The man wore a wide brimmed felt hat rounded over the crown and the woman wore a very motherly dress tied at the waist. The songs were mournful and exuberant in alternating verses. It was reminiscent of the high, lonesome sound which, one day, after it had been filtered through the hodgepodge of American immigrant influences, would become bluegrass. Not as frenetic, more European in their affectation, but like some long lost cousin with a family name never butchered on Ellis Island. 

"Okay, everyone, were going to do Midsommer dances." Pelle announced. He likes to open and close his hands in front of him in a small window when he speaks to a group. His sentences always end with his hands closing as he smiles.

Pretending to be shy, Julia had to grab my hand and lead the way to the circle forming around the pole. The group alternated boy/girl and we all grabbed hands. The fiddle players made eye contact and without the aid of a countdown launched into a jaunty folk tune built on the same characteristics of songs sung in groups for time immemorial. All on a four count, with verse-chorus-verse structure, and not too many words so they're easy to remember. The circle would move in one direction, the circle would move in another, and then some simple actions were choreographed to mimic the words of the chorus.

Melodies were easy to pick out. I was always a step bend on the actions. One song, after a round,  I recognized immediately. The actions were a bit of a tell. During the chorus, you bent over and pantomimed washing clothes in a bucket and then went into a motion where you hung these invisible clothes on an imaginary line. This is how we wash out clothes, wash our clothes...

After they finished, the crowd began to clamor for one song in particular. And like a crowd pleasing cover band the man and woman set to their fiddles. The circle moved in one direction, then we stopped, and the actions began. You put your hands on the side of your head like gills, put you hands behind you over your butt in a point and wagged your little tail, and then jumped in huge leaps around the circle. The frog dance. Silly, and for children, the crowd reacted accordingly. Smiles and laughs took the group, some free-from frog jumping--complete with in air twists--began to work their way in, and the kind of giddy and unpretentious fun that makes holidays, time with good friends, and traditions fun cracked the party open.

The next song we were all led in a twisting line closer and closer together until we began to have to bridge our arms and let people under. The chorus was a meandering "la dee dee dee da la dee"

We went through the classics pretty quickly and people began to request more songs and as we went further into the catalog the players began to run out of chops. So we all applauded and eased into a more current version of fun.

Who me?

I'm from America.

From Texas...Austin.

Haha, yeah, cowboys.

No. Nope, I don't own any guns.

Yes, Texans do love their guns.

No, Austin is very different. You know how in American politics Republicans are red and Democrats are blue? We call Austin the blueberry in the tomato soup. ... ... The BLUE-berry (makes motion with hand indicating small berry) in tomato soup.

Pelle. We met while traveling in Marseille and he told me I could crash on his couch at some point on my trip, and here I am.

Six months.

Yeah, it has been amazing.

Europe and Asia. All over. Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia.

(motions his hands to the scene) How could I ever be lonely?

No. Austin will be there when I get back.

Midsommer? I think it's very special. It's very special to me. I don't think many people would get to do this.

Quiz

At some point Pelle and Linda herded us to the stage for quiz time. Apparently Julia had made a quiz specifically for the party, produced handmade answer sheets, and printed enough copies to support a group of almost one hundred.

"Do you have a group yet?" Anna asked me as she swirled her likely very hot and uncomfortable blonde wig on top of her head.

"No."

"Be in our group!" The handsome woman chirped as Anna smiled.

We settled into the grass and the quiz began. Pelle and Linda went to the front of the crowd and explained they'd be hosting the quiz. Julia sat on the stage and got to watch her handiwork. Kalle was the technical assistant. The categories would be music, special Swedish trivia, the Internet, anagrams, then you had to draw a picture of Pelle and Emilie. 

"I'll be conducting the quiz in Swedish, and Pelle will be doing the English." Linda finished.

"Boo!" I yelled across the yard. As the only non-Swedish speaking person I felt guilty. "You don't have to do that."

They both smiled and a chuckle rippled through the crowd. 

Next we picked team names. My group was stumped, and I came up with one I could barely fit out of my shit eating grin. They gave me a funny look, but as accommodating hosts, they went along. Linda came and collected our name and she didn't understand. I told her it was a play on a common American saying. She cocked her head and went on to the next group. After a few minutes she did role call.  Lots of team names were in Swedish. One team named themselves "Number One." And then she got to our group. With one hand she pointed to our little circle and said, "This team is...How 'Swede' it is."

The collective huh? rippled through the crowd. Pelle looked at me.

"It's like a saying in America. 'How sweet it is.' But with...like...Swede in it. It's a play on..." I just stopped. Fucking Americans and their need to make a spectacle of themselves.

Pelle looked at the crowd and rattled something off in Swedish and finished with "How Sven it is?" and shrugged his shoulders. 

I love trivia. I'm two-thirds useless information and felt this was my moment to shine. I was going to impress my new Swedish friends kind enough to bring me into their group.

The first category was music and they had arranged for Kalle to play short clips of each song of the band in question. 

"This first band is a Swedish punk band from the 1970's whose name is also the name of a type of helmet worn by our soldiers during World War Two."

Oh, shit.

It went on and on and on like this. Who is going to be on the Swedish 20 note next year? What is the library in Sweden housing the works of some author famous for their censored works? What is the name of this Swedish song that started an Internet sensation? What is the name of so and so character from Tin Tin? (Not even Swedish, Belgian, but you get it...)

I got three questions right. They played a clip of a Pussy Riot song, I knew they wore balaclavas, and I de-coded the anagram for Pussy Riot as all of the anagrams had something to do with the rest of the quiz questions. The rest of my team somehow knew almost less than I did. We did not win.

Afterwards I told Pelle he really didn't have to do it in English. He said even if I wasn't there they would have still found some excuse to do it in English.

Permanent Sunset

The tangerine, crimson, and rose petal ink of twilight bled through the opaque blue sky. Vin/öl tickets became sweatier and more crumpled as they came out of everyone's pockets. Music began to thrum from the dance floor. The cement floor announced each step of the dancers. Kim and his men held court on the terrace, permanent fixtures of his porch throne room. A fire blazed in the pit across the yard. People occupied available space in pockets all over the yard. Sanna finally arrived and let us know she couldn't stay up late. She's a nurse and had gotten off the late shift and had to go in for the early one. The chaos of holiday fun churned, a whirlpool around a flower frocked vagina proxy planted in the middle of the celebration. And somewhere a quiet American watched filled with wonder at the of this life he's stumbled through confused and elated with each unexpected turn. Murakami says you never know your fate in advance, but when you look back at all the connected dots to a given point, it manifests itself with the utmost clarity. A trip chosen, a journey taken, a life abandoned, a room booked at random, a good Swede, a bus ride, and here I sit cross legged on the ground in the Swedish countryside wearing a fern wreath trying to slow my brain enough to absorb the embarrassment of riches proffered this wayfarer. And what little darkness there would be reclined into the valley, but only on the outside.

Amazing

Six months.

Wow. That's cool. How has it been? -- His English wasn't strong. A goateed friend of Pelle's.

Amazing.

So, what was the name of your quiz team again?

How 'Swede' it is. It's like a play on the saying, how sweet it is. It's dumb.

Okay...Yeah man, I would love to travel more. I haven't even seen much of Europe

I've found that to be kind of common. I haven't seen lots of America. How do you know Pelle?

We've been friends for a long time. We are building a boat together. 

That's awesome. Is she seaworthy?

Well, no, not yet. We took her on the water, but there is still lots of electrical things we need to fix. And make it look nice.

What's her name?

That's a bit of a conversation. Pelle wants to name her Habibi. It's the Arab word for blessing, but I don't know.

It's a good name. There is an excellent graphic novel called Habibi. 

I don't know what that is, but I want to change the name. We've already sailed her with that name and it's bad luck to change the name after you've sailed the boat with a name.

Hmmmm....gotta respect the sea, I guess. Where have you traveled to?

Peru.

That's awesome, man. How was it?

It was okay. I don't know, Swedish people don't get too excited. It's like, every traveler I talk to from America they say, "amazing!" It can't all be good. I was traveling with this one American from Ohio and everything was amazing. I was like, no, some is shit. And they way he talked to the villagers was...ugh...it was so embarrassing.

That's funny, I say amazing all the time. And in truth, Brussels is kind of a shit hole, but I loved it.

It wasn't amazing?

The Power of Pop

The playlist was crowd sourced. Somehow Pelle had gotten the wi-fi to work even though it hasn't been up in months. People would go to the laptop, put songs in a queue and wait for their song. Aside from some deep, deep European house, 97% was western, English language pop music. This group of Swedes has an uncanny knowledge of music. It could just be this specific group, heavy with musicians and college students, but I heard Django Reinhardt, The Congoes, The Seeds, Fela Kuti, Talking Heads, Ramones, plenty of rap, and reams, just reams, of American pop music. There was one young woman who loves Beyonce maybe more than J. She would stand in her high-waisted denim shorts over the shoulder of whoever was operating the laptop and request Beyonce track after Beyonce track.  

Swedes dance hard. The merits of their angular, full body tilt is above reproof if some of it did breach into avant garde modern dance. They use their whole body, they lift their feet off the ground, they clap, they sing along, they close their eyes, and abandon themselves of all apparent ego.

Anna, who shed her wig and had a shaved head underneath--only adding to her charms that had fully overwhelmed me by this point--would kick her dirty feet out and jerk her body backwards with her hands stiffened into points on the end of her crooked arms sliding back and forth. In the heat of "Heart of Glass," I clumsily spurted out, "I wish I could speak Swedish with you." She narrowed her pale blues and said, "but I speak English. We've been talking all night." Flirtation perceived as a referendum. Look out ladies, he's single.

Sweltering, the room was humid with the flailing bodies. A natural circle was formed and occasionally someone would descend into the middle to do nothing special, but the beat decides and they follow. When "Regulators" came on, my excitement was written all over my fake thug posturing. I was forced into the middle where I proceeded to rap the entire song. They took my rings, they took my Rolex, I looked at the brothers and said, "Damn, what's next?"

Then "Survivor," by Destiny's child came on, and animal frenzy seized the crowd. People charged into the room to join the fray. A girl dressed in some kind of racing suit with monkey legs looked to be in a near spiritual trance. Sweaty armpits showed as all hands where in the air. Hips swung and whole bodies from the ground as Swedish accented lyrics echoed off the walls. And for a moment, it was the greatest song I'd ever heard. 

In the moment, up close, it's easy to take these songs and denigrate them as part of the undoing of some perceived cultural excellence. The cotton candy machine that is popular culture spinning more sugary fluff consumed at large only to rot the teeth and brains of a doomed cultural consciousness. I was one of these, so vehemently opposed to these girls from Houston so many years ago. But, in this moment, when you stand back and watch as these people from a far corner of the globe embrace it for what it is, a song, it reminds of music's unassailable power. Unifier, and body mover, and sing-along lubricant, fractured from the borders we use to guard our long held pretensions, it's music. As simple as it is a force beyond conventional logic, its our human magic made to transcend the many man made strictures of language and border and age even leaving behind the shallowness of mortality.

Bjorn

America.

Like where in America? -- He was a stouts fellow with a beer perched near his lips. 

Texas....Austin? 

I've heard if Austin. Lots of music, right?

Yeah, lots of music. The city dubbed itself the 'Live Music Capital of the World.' Bands every night.

That's cool.

Lots of pretty Swedish girls here. Very pretty girls. That girl you were just taking to, beautiful.

Yes. She is my wife.

Cool...So, what's your name?

Bjorn.

Awesome! I have a friend at home named Bjorn.

Bjorn is a very common name here.

It means, 'bear,' right?

Yeah, yeah, it's bear. Maybe me and him are the same. He is the American Bjorn.

Maybe. Y'all both have beards. And he loves pretty girls.

Yes. The American Bjorn.

But...he's black. He's a black man.

That is different.

A little.

He's probably the only black Bjorn in the world.

I'll be sure and let him know that.

Cigarette Crisis, or the Last Ones Standing and the Outside Toilet

Dawn broke around 3:15, but clocks were irrelevant. The morning was grey and hazy like all of the soon to be hungover heads turned inside out. Most people had cleared out to bed. Even the porch was clear of Kim and his men. Sanna left for work and asked if any of us had seen Kim as he was not in his bed. None of us had.

The remaining few occupied the porch in the stead of Kim's usual court. I didn't recognize anyone. It was as though they'd never been at the party at all. Music still played, but a quieter morning mix cooed through the soft cloak of early hours hugging the countryside. Psychedelic Mike, a guy with proper hobo tattoos and an orange pashmina wrapped over his head played Holly Golightly's , "Don't Nobody Love Me Like the Devil Do."

Two sisters from Malmö now living in Berlin had materialized from the ether. One girl was named Ilsa and was the vision of Swedish beauty. In a black dress with her flower wreath perched on her head, her shape was that of a silhouette a fashion designer would sketch as the first lines of a dress for the perfect woman. She must have leached all potential beauty from the womb whence she came. Her sister was a lovely person, though. They insisted I visit them in Berlin, but the dates didn't match up.

Everyone was out of cigarettes, the international symbol for the end of the party. Suddenly Kim appeared at the head of the road with a woman. She said goodbye and disappeared. He sauntered up and gave a cursory explanation that he'd fallen asleep in the woods while talking to an old friend. Just a friend, but he did mention he had mosquito bites all over his ass. He also explained to me Ilsa was the definition of, "fin." I knew enough Swedish to require no translation.

A self proclaimed drummer took over the stereo and put on Paul Simon's Graceland. Symbols and synchronicity and all that. He loved to drum with his mouth. Dooka-da-dooka-da-dooka-da-do he went on and on subdividing every beat with his mouth. There was an upturned potted plant on the table used as an ashtray. He'd lift it up, pick through the remains, and smoke half and three-quarter consumed cigarettes down to thrapple. 

The sisters left and promised they'd take the small roads home. Psychedelic Mike wandered into a field. The drummer went inside the house to peruse the song selections never failing to percuss his way along. Kim, wrapped in a blanket and with a woman's straw hat on his head, fell asleep. He looked like a long haired Viking Van Gogh. 

It was finally time. I couldn't go on like this. Behind the house, we regarded each other with suspicion, me and the outside toilet. There were instructions in Swedish written inside of a word bubble coming from a duck's mouth. Maybe it was a goose. I did as Pelle had instructed. I sat myself down and as my foot pushed the door open, the countryside framed  itself through the shadowed particle board interior. Cool breeze circled around my legs bare to the ankles. Shades of green stood vertical and horizontal. Soft light percolated through the morning clouds. The low sheet of slate gave so a few isolated beams could reach the gentle curves of sloping sprouted earth. The stalks of early summer wheat quivered their shaggy heads in the breeze as if yearning for the thin pools of scattered light. And the world aches with beauty.

I went to my tent, hung my laurel wreath I'd forgotten I was wearing hours ago above my zippered door, and collapsed into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.