met Linda and Nicole. To him this was just more evidence of all the hardships he had to endure, but I wasn’t sure if it ought to be regarded as entirely negative. We had been sitting in a bar and caught sight of two attractive girls a few tables away. We were both focused on the tall blonde with the incredibly pretty smile, whose name turned out to be Linda. During our discussion of tactics about who was going to go for which one, Roger argued that he should go for the blonde—the one we both liked most—because, as he put it, he deserved something nice for once. He thought I ought to be prepared to support him in this and set my own sights on the brunette in the cap, and maybe even put in a good word for him so she could pass it on to her friend later.
I pointed out that it was a bit difficult to sort that out when we had no idea of their opinion on the matter, and that we should probably count ourselves lucky if they wanted to talk to us at all. Roger said I was just trying to make excuses, and in the end I agreed to try to set things up as best I could for him and the tall blonde.
After a couple of beers we plucked up the courage to go over to them, and luckily they asked us to sit down. I stuck to the agreement and mainly talked to Nicole, who turned out to work in comics and was great fun to talk to, while Roger and Linda had a separate conversation. All in all it was a very pleasant evening, and a couple of days later we started dating our respective girls.
I liked Nicole more and more. She taught me all about drawing and comics. She was very engaged with the environment and animal rights. She was a vegan too. Ate soy mince and You-can’t-believe-it’s-not-chicken, but occasionally her concentration would lapse. Sometimes she was halfway through a bag of sweets before realizing that they contained gelatin. She would check the list of ingredients, then go and spit them out into the toilet. I enjoyed the afternoons and evenings I spent in her apartment, lounging about on her sofa talking to her while she drew her cartoons. Sometimes she answered, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she went off on long rants about society and Swedes and people in general. Her cartoons weren’t all that nice to look at, or even particularly comprehensible. They weren’t very realistic, but they were produced with passion and care. I loved them. We ended up getting together, and went out for at least a month.
Roger and Linda embarked on a relationship as well, but I soon started to get reports about her failings. She talked too much, laughed too loudly, devoted too much time to her appearance. She was far too interested in his background. She would “interrogate” him, as he put it. Wanted to know what he thought about all sorts of things. She wanted to go out a lot too, and do fun things in the evenings, but these rarely turned out to be all that much fun, although they still cost a great deal of money. When she eventually—after Roger, on my suggestion, had told her that he wasn’t comfortable doing all those expensive things and proposed that they stay at home and do things there instead—floated the idea that they experiment with more adventurous sex, he dumped her.
He came round to see me and Nicole and went on about how awful it was for him. He sat there on the sofa claiming that the world was against him.
“I was always going to end up with the nutter!” he said. “Typical. You had all the luck, as usual,” he said to me, glaring at Nicole over at her drawing desk.
He also went into great detail explaining the difficulty he had had in telling Linda that he didn’t like cream in spray cans, or blindfolds, and then—once he’d told her—finding a decent way to end it. He later declared that at least I hadn’t had any of those problems, seeing as Nicole dumped me a few days later.
—
Once I’d described a number of occurrences with the help of an outline of the body on which you had to indicate where you
I pointed out that it was a bit difficult to sort that out when we had no idea of their opinion on the matter, and that we should probably count ourselves lucky if they wanted to talk to us at all. Roger said I was just trying to make excuses, and in the end I agreed to try to set things up as best I could for him and the tall blonde.
After a couple of beers we plucked up the courage to go over to them, and luckily they asked us to sit down. I stuck to the agreement and mainly talked to Nicole, who turned out to work in comics and was great fun to talk to, while Roger and Linda had a separate conversation. All in all it was a very pleasant evening, and a couple of days later we started dating our respective girls.
I liked Nicole more and more. She taught me all about drawing and comics. She was very engaged with the environment and animal rights. She was a vegan too. Ate soy mince and You-can’t-believe-it’s-not-chicken, but occasionally her concentration would lapse. Sometimes she was halfway through a bag of sweets before realizing that they contained gelatin. She would check the list of ingredients, then go and spit them out into the toilet. I enjoyed the afternoons and evenings I spent in her apartment, lounging about on her sofa talking to her while she drew her cartoons. Sometimes she answered, sometimes she didn’t. Sometimes she went off on long rants about society and Swedes and people in general. Her cartoons weren’t all that nice to look at, or even particularly comprehensible. They weren’t very realistic, but they were produced with passion and care. I loved them. We ended up getting together, and went out for at least a month.
Roger and Linda embarked on a relationship as well, but I soon started to get reports about her failings. She talked too much, laughed too loudly, devoted too much time to her appearance. She was far too interested in his background. She would “interrogate” him, as he put it. Wanted to know what he thought about all sorts of things. She wanted to go out a lot too, and do fun things in the evenings, but these rarely turned out to be all that much fun, although they still cost a great deal of money. When she eventually—after Roger, on my suggestion, had told her that he wasn’t comfortable doing all those expensive things and proposed that they stay at home and do things there instead—floated the idea that they experiment with more adventurous sex, he dumped her.
He came round to see me and Nicole and went on about how awful it was for him. He sat there on the sofa claiming that the world was against him.
“I was always going to end up with the nutter!” he said. “Typical. You had all the luck, as usual,” he said to me, glaring at Nicole over at her drawing desk.
He also went into great detail explaining the difficulty he had had in telling Linda that he didn’t like cream in spray cans, or blindfolds, and then—once he’d told her—finding a decent way to end it. He later declared that at least I hadn’t had any of those problems, seeing as Nicole dumped me a few days later.
—
Once I’d described a number of occurrences with the help of an outline of the body on which you had to indicate where you
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