2. In Sweden
Bjorn was from Gothenburg. In the 1970-ies, when Bjorn came of age, ABBA topped the hit charts and Sweden had legalised pornography. Bjorn lived in a neighbourhood where most fathers worked at the Volvo factory. Bjorn’s dad did too. Apart from voting Labour and believing in social democracy the family had no religion and Sunday at church time his dad washed their car, a 1973 Volvo 142 DL he had bought at the employee discount. The car was orange. Orange had been the colour of the year.
Once in October 1976, when Bjorn was seventeen and still a schoolboy, he overslept and had no time to do it in the morning. The pressure kept building throughout the day as Bjorn tried to concentrate. First he had Swedish grammar and then he had European history. Learning about something as unsexy as Napoleon’s invasion of Russia didn’t help. Au contraire, the problem kept getting worse. Bjorn had an urgent need to do something about it.
When the lunch break came Bjorn went to the teachers lounge. He knocked on the door and waited. Ms. Blomquist, his French teacher, opened. She was not pleased to see Bjorn.
- What do you want? said Ms. Blomquist sharply.
- I am looking for Mr. Larson, said Bjorn.
- He is busy. We are eating now.
- I have a message for him.
- I will give it to him. Where is the note?
- It is not anything written. I have to talk to him.
- Mr. Larson will not like to be disturbed, said Ms. Blomquist. Can it wait?
- It is important.
- As you wish Bjorn, said Ms. Blomquist and closed the door in Bjorn’s face.
Teacher Larson came out.
- What are you doing here? said Larson impatiently.
- I have a problem, said Bjorn.
- Don’t come asking for me. People will notice you.
- You can help me, said Bjorn.
- Not now.
- Please?
- Go away. Come by my place tonight instead.
- That’s too long to wait.
- Keep your voice down. Someone might hear you.
- Maybe they should hear me. Everyone should hear me. Wouldn’t that be fun?
- Don’t speak like that.
- So, are you coming?
- This is not the time or the place, Bjorn.
- I know of a place.
- Where?
- The bomb shelter in the basement. It is empty and you have keys.
- The bomb room is not nice.
- It will do.
Mr. Larson was right. The bomb room was not a nice place. The underground shelter was designed to be used in case the Soviets came and it was dark, cold and damp. Worse, the room was nothing but unpainted concrete walls.
- Why did you drag me down here? said Larson.
- We can make it comfy, said Bjorn.
- Comfy? There is nothing in this room, said Larson.
- We need a mattress, said Bjorn.
- A mattress? Here? You lost your marbles Bjorn!
- We can get one.
- From where? Ikea? I don’t know why I listen to you. Let’s get out of here.
- The school has mattresses.
- No we don’t. This is not a hotel.
- In the gym.
- Those are not mattresses. They are gym mats. And they are not in this building anyway.
- So we can fetch one.
- You are crazier than I thought, Bjorn. Cute, but crazy. Everyone in the school will see us.
When the manufacturer sold the bed-sized mats to the school the salesman said they were soft yet durable, that they had a good dampening effect when kids fell on them and that the thick plastic cover made them easy to clean. This was correct but they were a bit heavy too. There was a stack of mats in the storage room in the gym, next to footballs, nets for ball games and other PE equipment.
- We can’t stay here, said Larson. Too many people come and go.
- So we bring it back to the bomb room, said Bjorn.
The teacher and the student each grabbed an end of a gym mat and carried it out and across the schoolyard. Hundreds of eyes saw them, all the kids, many of the teachers, and the headmaster from his window.
None of the onlookers saw what was really going on. The truth was too unusual for them to imagine. People tended to believe that things that happened around them were normal. There was for example, at the same time as Bjorn and Larson came with the mat, a workman up on a ladder at the south wall of the school building. Nobody knew what the workman was doing up there but it looked like he was there for a reason. This reason, people assumed, was probably legitimate and mundane. People saw the workman, watched him without interest and forgot him.
It was the same with the teacher and the teenage boy. What people saw was a teacher who, probably for legitimate and even boring reasons, was carrying a gym mat across the schoolyard. The teacher had commandeered a student to help him. This was also normal.
A small group of boys stood by the door. They were hoping to say something cheeky when the teacher and Bjorn had to walk past them.
- Going for a nap, are we? said one of them.
- More like a quickie, said Bjorn.
The boys laughed.
Larson wanted to give Bjorn a stern warning look but didn’t dare to draw attention to himself. The teacher pretended not to have heard the joke and kept walking.
In the bomb room the two sat down on the mat to rest. They sat so close that their knees touched. What happened next was not according to the teacher’s rule book, so it should not be described in detail. Sufficient to say that Bjorn, with his face pressed against the plastic surface of the mat, had his urges satisfied. Teacher Larson also felt better when all was said and done. Mostly done.
After cleaning themselves and their makeshift bed with paper which Bjorn had nicked from the men’s room and stuffed in his pockets, the two carried the mat back across the schoolyard.
The group of boys were still standing by the door.
- You were right Bjorn, said the cheeky boy. It was quick even by quickie standards.
- I heard that, said teacher Larson. Mind your language Goran!
Later, when teacher Larson and Bjorn spoke about the mat episode, Larson wanted to know what Bjorn had learned from it.
- That we get hornier when we are afraid of getting caught?
- Not that. The other lesson.
- That if you bluff, you should bluff with such confidence that nobody suspects you.
- You learn fast, said Larson.
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