A funny thing happened

No it didn’t.

Simply had to use that headline because I have no imagination left. I want to write something really interesting, entertaining and funny but all I come up with is monster mash and cat vomit. Not much fun in that.

So, what else is not new? That I am a bit strange. Not odd. Strange. However I’m working on being not strange. As if that would be better. It would at least be normal.

I woke up early this morning. I had a nice dream. Not sure what about but I woke up feeling nice inside. Sort of happy.

For some reason, or lack of reason, that feeling made me remember when most people in a chat room I used to visit thought I was gay. No offence to gay persons of any sex, but I know I am not gay, or bi, because nothing in this world attracts me more than a woman.

Or, well, sometimes a very good meal can be more attractive but let’s not derail ourselves here. Not too much at least.  Which leads me to think maybe I seem gay to some very straight people because to them I act or express myself rather like a gay person would from their point of view. That’s the only way I can understand it.

I had a gay friend on the internet for some years. He acted like any person would. Nothing like I thought a gay person would. But he told me he was gay and I had no reason to suspect he wasn’t, but I still didn’t find him to be different from any other friend I’ve had. Except maybe that it was easier to talk to him compared to the supposedly straight guys I also talked to from time to time.

I guess to some of the other straight guys I was a threat in the battle we all fought to gain the attention of the model on cam, in whose chat room we all gathered night after night to chat time away. Or something of that nature.

To be honest, I never liked to compete with anyone for anyone’s attention online or offline or anywhere. Sure, it’s a flaw to not be a very competitive kind of person but I’ve never liked to compete because I’ve never learned to lose without losing my face. I can’t take it on the chin like a man and move on. Instead I often want to end my life instantly. To rid me of the pain of loss I refuse to compete and let everyone else worry about that.

I have taken part in competitions but always had that fear of being devastated if I lost, which I almost always did. Still, those times I really wanted to be in the competition. Because winning would have been priceless.

Back to the matter of my supposed gayness. I can see why the question appeared in my offline life as early as in school when I was only still entering puberty. I was the guy in the back of the room, with the long hair, who tried to hide from being noticed and who was the target of almost everyone’s ridicule.

About to party, 1983

I read books about hobbits and talking animals, I made strange drawings of ducks,smurfs, rabbits and of characters from Star Wars and  the Asterix comics, I wrote strange stories and I listened to weird music.  I played with dolls. And I let my hair grow to down below my shoulders. I didn’t participate in any fighting or sports. I had only one friend – a guy. Only got to play with the girls during recess, or be all alone, because none of the guys wanted me around. Of course I must be gay. Maybe that’s why my childhood friend stopped seeing me once we got into our teens. I always thought it was because I was such a nerd but perhaps I seemed like a gay sissy too.

Anyway, it didn’t bother me what anyone thought. I always knew who and what I am. Again, I have nothing against homosexuality, I’m just not in that closet waiting to come out. However, I suspect some of the boys and later men who have called me gay may have had a closet of their own to deal with coming out of. I’m only guessing.

Mostly though, I think they were only trying to intimidate me or insult me or perhaps they were jealous of me having better luck talking to some of the women because I was able to make decent conversation. At least I could in a chat room but certainly not while I was in school. In those days I was terrified of talking to any girl for whatever reason. And when I say terrified, I mean terrified. Torture seemed like a better alternative.

This little story stopped making sense long ago. I’m aware of that. However – I’m getting close to the end of it now so you have only a few more sentences to read yet. A few more sentences like this one, which starts off like it will be leading you towards some sort of meaning at the other end but in fact it just stops suddenly. Annoying, isn’t it? I should know, it happens to me all the time. How and why, are not valid questions at this time.

The end.

That certain girl

I know how it started. I remember who that certain girl was. The years have passed but the memories remain. It was probably at school. I’m certain it was at school. As a young child growing up I had very few friends. I remember playing with some of the other kids living along the same street but I can only remember one real friend from those years.  A boy of the same age. We remained friends up to around 12 years old. Then he began to not want to hang out with me because he wanted to be with the older kids and I was still very much a child. Didn’t care for the same things so the friendship faded out.

Anyway, this post is not about that. This post is about that certain girl. In the first years of school she was a blonde girl in my class. I had a crush for a while. At that age it was not easy to identify what the feeling was but I remember I really liked her. For a while. I never really knew her but I liked her. A few years passed and that certain girl became a brunette. Probably because I had seen Star Wars and developed a crush on Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) so that certain girl at school had to look somewhat like Princess Leia – or at least be a brunette. There happened to be one certain girl in my class who was a brunette and actually looked a little like Princess Leia.  I never got to know her though – not more than as a friend in class. Probably just as well. She never knew about how I felt anyway. I didn’t really mind at that age. I prefered to keep my feelings to myself as I was a bullied boy. And shy, and insecure and scared of my own shadow. Well not really. With the exception of school being a pain due to the bullying, I was feeling safe and secure and enjoyed creating my own world in my mind.

Another couple of years passed and that certain girl was a blonde. Not one in my class but in  another one, at the bigger school I had recently started at. That certain girl was very pretty and I guess I really fell for her. Except she never knew about it. Not that I didn’t try to let her know in my own very twisted way. I was thirteen but not at all sure about what I was feeling actually was. So I remember writing some kind of letter. If I ever sent it is a matter of debate. I might have but I can no longer remember. Anyway that certain girl never knew about my feelings, of that I’m sure. And I didn’t really mind. Everything was still very innocent. At least in my world.

Another year or year and a half passed and that certain girl was a brunette. I guess the reader can now sense a certain pattern emerging. I certainly do sense a pattern. This certain girl was in my class and I actually talked to her before having a crush and even during the crush and also after. What was talked about was actually nothing special, mostly about school and studying but still it was talking to a certain girl, and you have to start somewhere.

Then I left for high school and got into a new class. That certain girl was now a…brunette again. Sorry, so much for a pattern. Anyway, I remember talking to that certain girl a bit now and then but she never really knew me and she never knew how I felt about her.  Maybe half a year later that certain girl was a blonde. This time it all started because she approached me. I was minding my own business and didn’t really care much about her before she suddenly talked to me a lot. I didn’t even know how to respond for some time but gradually I probably fell in love with her. I do remember being madly in love and wanting to do something about but not knowing what or how. I wrote a letter asking to be friends. Yes, I was a coward then too. So it became a kind of awkward friendship that lasted a few years beyond school but it kind of ended when I told her of my true feelings and got rejected by the words “I’ve never seen you as anything but a friend”. I was devastated, dead. It took many years to recover from that day.

So many years that I was around 24 before I ever let myself feel anything towards a certain girl again and this time that certain girl was a brunette. She worked at the same store as I did and she was a few years older and I think she flirted with me but I was too shy and scared to respond but inside I of course fell fo her instantly. Never dared to even try to find out what could have been as I was too afraid of rejection.

A year or two later that certain girl was a blonde. Again she worked at the same store as I did and this time around I did my best to be mature about the matter. Whatever mature means…I’m still not sure I’ve figured that one out. Anyway I remained calm and let things run its own pace. Which means that nothing ever happened. I think it was just as well.

Shortly after this I started at the University and after about 6 months that certain girl was a blonde again. I remember she smiled at me once and that was about all it took. Well I admit I just let my imagination run away with me this time. I think I even tried to let her know about my feelings but as usual I wasn’t too good at being straight forward about the whole affair so it ended in nothing.

Then the years passed and I devoted my time to studying. Around the last year of study I encountered a certain girl online and I found myself having those loving feelings again. Much to my surprise. Anyway the whole thing developed into some kind of friendship for a year or two but nothing was really serious, I guess. Looking back I can only feel like a fool when I think of how I felt and acted but it was a learning experience.

Almost right away after this that certain girl was once again a blonde (however not a real blonde, I learned after a while) and this time I was not looking for love but instead some kind of love happened over time. It took a few years of close friendship but then there was a time of real love, real feelings and I almost acted upon it but was too scared to really do anything. I had health problems during most of this time so I blamed that for never meeting that certain girl in real life. The feelings of love faded and the friendship remained but started to fade too as time passed and things happened in our lives. However this certain girl remains the best friend I’ve had so far. I am very happy for everything this experience taught me about myself and about others.

What about now? Is there another certain girl? What do you think?

Peace.

A new post

Hello,

It’s me again. Not sure you still remember me but I used to blog a lot in the past. Now I only blog a few times a month again. Seems I lost the edge. Got nothing much to write about. I’ve already written about my life, my childhood, my growing up, my writing, my travels and my interests. Also I’ve written a lot about my emotions and my depressions. Not much left. Have also written about my unemployment, my past health problems and my poverty. On top of all that I’ve also tried to be funny from time to time and even tried my hand at writing poetry. Last but not least I’ve written about my chat site experiences. What’s left to tell? I have no idea. Wish I could think of something good so I could get this blog going again. Now it’s dead.

Almost dead. From time to time I make an effort and come up with something but usually not much. I’ll keep writing though and hope I’ll find my way back.

Peace.

Mother’s Day

Right.

This is the day and the time and the place to type something cute and clever and respectful in order to celebrate one’s origin – Mother or Mom. So, that’s what I’ll do.

Having had a father who made a career out of learning to fly in the Swedish Air Force and later learning to control air traffic, my mother has for me most of all been the manager of the home life.

Working – as she always did – kind of behind the scenes. Taking care of my father, my older brothers and later on me, as well as caring for  her own mother, her father, dad’s parents, her younger brother’s kids, her sister’s kids and lots of friends throughout the years.

I’ve often wondered how she coped with all the work. Sometimes I’ve heard her say that she didn’t but she has always managed anyway. Because that was the way it was supposed to be. End of story. Sort of.

My mother worked a lot of different jobs as a girl and young woman before marrying my father. She delivered mail, worked in the family bakery, planted trees, worked in a café and in a laundry. Then, after getting married, she only devoted her life to being a stay at home wife and mother until she was in her 50’s and friends told her should get out of the home and work for a salary  in order to get a bit more of a pension before reaching the age of retirement at 65. So she worked cleaning in office buildings for about 10 years. During those years I was at school and she worked part-time so she could be home when I came home from school.  After working outside the home she worked inside the home everyday. Not that she never got any help from my father or from me but she still was the one to keep the home in shape.

These days I can’t help to feel guilty when I think of how much work my mother has done and how much she still works now, at the respectable age of 87. Of course she gets more help now and there is not as many she has to care for besides herself but she still keeps busy and seems to want to keep busy even though she sometimes says she doesn’t. I guess it’s not easy to accept that old age is taking strength away and that things won’t be like they’ve always been.

Also I am of course grateful for all the things she’s done for me and all the things she’s taught me. And not to mention the excellent home cooking over the years. Being the daughter of baker she knows both how to bake and cook. Even if in the later years she doesn’t always have the motivation and energy to do much of either.

Mother’s Day should be celebrated every day but at least there’s one day of the year devoted to celebrating Mothers everywhere. Without my mother I wouldn’t be here.

The gang

Garfield looks happy, The Pink Panther looks tired and Kermit the Frog seems to be having a breakdown. Well, it’s probably understandable when these guys have been dragged out of storage after more than 30 years of neglect. I would be slightly annoyed too.

Where Snoopy has gone off to, I do not know. There was no sign of him in storage. Probably, he’s gone to waste away somewhere else.

Anyway, as the astute readers have already guessed, these clowns used to be my friends when I grew up. Well, at least for some years before I hit puberty. After that, one did not happily admit to ever even owning them until one became thirtysomething.

They look like they’ve seen some action and they’re not very clean. Well, Kermit is clean but the other two….I don’t even want to know where they’ve been.

Why post this? Have I returned to childhood? No, not really. Just had the idea early on a Sunday morning and decided to follow through on it. Simple as that.

Nostalgia

Image via Wikipedia

I remember the early February days back in 1986. Last half of the last year of highschool had just begun.  Walking home from the bus station after having gone through another day of school. Probably thinking of some movie I had seen – or some book I was reading. Hearing the sound of some song in my head. Softly singing the words to myself. Might have been some tune off of Jackson Browne‘s album Lives In The Balance but it may also have been one from Steve Winwood, John Mellencamp or Bruce Springsteen. The full catastrophe of our prime minister being shot dead in the street while on his way home from a cinema had yet to hit the nation. Things were pretty good and as normal as normal can be.

Why do I think of this now ? I was watching  music video clips on YouTube today and suddenly had some flashbacks from when I first heard the songs.

In those days  I was often thinking of some story to write. Settings, characters and themes, bits and pieces of dialogue were floating through my mind  while I walked the 2ooo meters back home. Also I was most likely thinking of a certain blonde girl in my class whom I happened to have a big crush on at the time. I had just begun to communicate with her through old-school hand-written letters sent by postal mail. That’s what people did back then. They actually sat down with a pen and paper and wrote letters, folded the paper, put it in an envelope and mailed it. Then they waited a few days for the receiver to read and respond to the letter.  It wasn’t all instant like today’s email, chat, twitter and Facebook. Anyway, I had probably just gotten a letter or just sent one and had to think about what would happen next or what the response ought to be. It would still be more than  a month before I would get the letter that would shatter my hopes and dreams but for the time being I was happy to have the connection I had.

What else was I thinking about? Probably politics. I had just recently begun to take an interest in political matters and my freshly formed and rather shallow political views were decidedly left-wing. That was one reason why I bought Jackson Browne’s album. Also I had begun to pick up on some political currents in the music of Springsteen and Mellencamp.

Sweden back in those days had a political climate dominated by the ruling Social Democratic Party (Arbetarepartiet Socialdemokraterna) and the mood  of the society has since  been described as rather dull and  bland. However , I liked living in Sweden back in those days. Unemployment was almost zero, taxes were high but the standard of living was also at the absolute top among the nations of the world. Things worked back then. Life was safe and secure and you didn’t have to worry as much as today. Sure there were only two channels of national public service television available and not too many radio channels. But it worked. It was stable.  The future looked bright as a job would not be too hard to find once school was finished.

While being a rather dull and bland society, Sweden  was and is heavily influenced by American popular culture. To the degree that some critics were saying even back then that Sweden ought to be the 51st state of the United States of America.

We have most of the fast-food franchises (not as many then as  there are today), are influenced by American cuisine, we listen to American music, read American books and magazines,  follow American sports, watch American TV-shows and of course lots of American movies. We wear clothes influenced by American fashion and we are generally skilled at speaking English.

Being a teenager in Sweden was hence not much different  from being a teenager in the United States. At least that was what many  of us believed since not many had actually visited the United States or had any real knowledge of what it actually is like to live in the American society. Our image of American life was formed by TV, music and movies and while not entirely false it was by no means realistic. It was a dream or perhaps a kind of illusion we all  willingly indulged in. Even those of us who  were opposed to the American influence upon the rest of the world.

I’m not sure where I am going with this post so I might aswell end it before I digress further.  At least it is a sort of glimpse of a time long gone. Perhaps.  Maybe only a lot of words.

Christmas stories

Late last night right before falling asleep I had this idea I would write a post about the Christmases of my past. Basically some memories of the way Christmas used to be when I still was naive enough to believe in it. However, thinking about it made me feel both sad and angry , as those times are gone forever and I should let them be gone. What would the use be to revive some ghosts of the past just to amuse my readers ?  So, after thinking some more I’ve decided to let this idea sit for a while. When I have made my mind up  about doing it I will start posting about it. Might not be until next Christmas though.

Dreams

Dreams, people, dreams are dangerous.  If they don’t come true they can destroy your whole life. If they do come true they can destroy your life too. Did MoonieZ have dreams ? Does MoonieZ have any dreams at all anymore ? These are valid questions and this post will be my attempt at answering them.  Now you must understand the young MoonieZ grew up in a time when social change was in focus and when there seemed to be no limits to what could be done through social engineering and political struggle. The Swedish society did change a lot during the 1960’s and 1970’s. And in this atmosphere of  change MoonieZ grew up dreaming of becoming a comic book artist, a filmmaker, a writer of fairy tales, a professor of languages and a lawyer. Sometimes he dreamed of growing up to be able to travel to Middle Earth and at other times he dreamed of teaming up with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and take on the evil Empire. Later he dreamed of  being in a band, playing guitar or drums. However not being good at learning how to play any instruments he soon abandoned such dreams and settled for the ones he thought could be possible to reach.  When he reached his early teens he thought working in a library could be pretty good for a living. There he’d be able to get his hands on all the cool books he wanted to read and he’d be safe from the mean kids in school who used to bully him and other evil people out to do him harm for no good reason. He dreamed of writing novels and thought this would be a dream that could come true. Maybe he could become a teacher at a university much like his favorite author at the time – Tolkien – and spend his spare time inventing a world of his own and then writing stories about it. All those years and all those dreams. When MoonieZ was 15 he got to try out working in a department store for a few weeks and thought that maybe he could do that for a living later on. If nothing else worked out. Still he was dreaming of getting into some kind of academic work. To study history, do research and maybe teach it to others.  In highschool he still dreamed of becoming writer and he wrote a lot whenever he had time. His mind was filled with ideas for stories and characters to put into the stories. At one point he dreamed of writing screenplays for movies and worked one some ideas and read all he could find about how to write screenplays and develop characters. But soon enough he returned to the idea of writing novels. That dream carried him through school and then when school was about finish he had to decide what to do next. So he sent an application to study at the University and was accepted but by that time he had started working at a supermarket and didn’t want to stop working so he turned the University down and went on working. Still he wrote a lot when he could. Life was ok. The dreams were not coming true but it was ok. There was time to change that later. Or so he thought. But the years passed and suddenly he wasn’t a young man anymore and still he was at the same job and still he wrote some stories but didn’t try to be published. Nothing was happening. Little by little the dream faded away and almost died.

There was another dream too. Through all of MoonieZ’s life. The dream of being loved and having someone to love. That dream didn’t go anywhere and mostly looked like it would never come true. At times there was hope that it would though. However that hope was always in vain. Still MoonieZ kept dreaming and working on his dream to come true and as far as anyone knows he’s still working on it.

“Airport”

The Motors – Airport. This tune I’ve always listened to when it played on the radio. I guess it has to do with me growing up very close to an air force base and that my father worked on that base during my whole childhood. I know dad liked this tune too.  So these days this song reminds me of the past and also of my own experience with airports and air travel.

To the memory of the F18 Wing, Royal Swedish Air Force

This is history now. The base is gone and a only some of the buildings remain. The ATC tower has recently been torn down. Up there in the tower on top of the hill my father worked for many years. I have always had the idea that he’s still up there watching over the flights and over the countryside and over me.  I felt safe and secure while my father was alive. I felt safe as long as the tower was there.Now I don’t feel safe anymore.

My father was my security. I wish I had gotten more time to know him. Most of my real insight into what he did and who he was has come to me after his death. That feels good in a way but also makes me very angry. Why can’t I have more time. Be happy for the time you had, you might say. That’s true, I should be happy and I am happy but still miss the time I could have had. Miss the years that I could have spent in better ways. Well I know it makes no sense but I want to write this anyway.

There are people out there who used to make fun of me because my father was in the Air Force and because he sometimes came to my school wearing his work clothes – his uniform – like the other parents did. I am still angry that some people made me feel ashamed of my father when all I wanted to feel was pride. Well I am proud and no one can take it away from me.  Not then and not now and not ever.